CIHM Microfiche Series (l\Aonograplis) ICI\/IH Collection de microfiches (monographies) Canadiwi ImthuM tor Historical MicroraproduGtioin / InMHut Canadian da microraproductions liiatoriquas 995 Tadinial Mid WbNoanphie Now / Notn iMhniqiMt M MWio«raphiqu« Th* ImtlniM h» ammpnd to obtain tlw b«t orifinil copy aniWil* for fihnint. Fanurat of Ihn eo^ urtiich may ha MMioafapiileaMy iiniqu*, which may ala,r any of tfw inuflat HI Ihv laproauctiont or whiah nay litnificantly chanfa tha inual mathod of fihning, ata chacltao balow. 0Colo«ra4 eonan/ Counartura da eoiilattr D D Cowrt dtmind/ Couwfiura wtdonmupiv Comre rotond and/or lamiiMtid/ CouMTtura mtturtc tt/ou paUicuM* I I Cow titte minini/ I La titrt di couMTtur* manqiit I I Carm 9<0|r a phiquat an eoulaur n Coloured ink (i.a. othar than blua or Madt)/ Encre da eoulaur ua bibUofraphiqua, qui pauaant modWaf una iniafa raproduita. ou qui pauaant axifar una modif ication dam la mMwda nomiala da f ihnaia torn indiqu«t Colourad paiat/ □ Patat rastorad and/or laminalad/ Pafai rastaurtat at/ou paNieuMaa SPaiat diteolourad. ftainad or foxad/ Pa«n dicolortat, tachatiat ou piquiat □ Pa«at datachad/ QShowthrough/ Tranfparanca I yj Quality of print variat/ iJCI Oualiti in««ala da I'impr D D Continuous pagination/ Paflination continua Indudaf indaxlasi/ Comprand un (das) indax Titk on haadar takan from;/ La titta da I'an-tlta prooiant: f issua/ □ Titia paga of issua. Pa«a da tiua da la □ Caption of issua/ Titra da dipart da la D livraiton Masthaad/ Giniriqua Iptriodiquas) da la li>raison 22X 12X WX ax Tha copy fllmad hara haa baan raproducad thankt to tha ganaroalty of: National Library of Canada L'axamplaira lUmt fut raproduit grlca 1 la g4n4roait« da: Blbllothiqua natlonale du Canada Tha imagas appaaring hara ara tha bait qualltv pouibia contidaring tha condition and lagiblllty of tha original copy and In kaaplng with tha filming contract apaclf icationa. Laa Imagai lulvantaa ont *t* raproduiiat avac la plua grand loin. compta tanu da la condition at da la nattat* da raxamplaira fllm«, at an eonfermM avac laa condltlona du contrat da filmaga. Original coplaa in printad papor eovara ara fllmad baginning with ttM front eovar and anding on tha iaat paga with a printad or illuatratad impraa- ■ion. or tha back eovar whan appropriata. All othar original copiaa ara fllmad baginning on tfw firat paga with a printad or Illuatratad impraa- •Ion, and anding on tha Iaat paga with a printad or Illuatratad impraaaion. Tha Iaat racordad frama on aach microfieha thall contain tha lymbol — ^ (moaning "CON- TINUED"), or tha symbol ▼ (moaning "END"), whichavar appliaa. Laa axampkliraa origlnaux dont la couvartura an papiar aat Imprimta torn fllmta an commancant par la pramlar plat at an tarmlnant loit par la darnlAra paga qui compona una ampralnta d'Impraaaion ou d'illustratlon, toit par la tacond plat. lalon la eaa. Toua las autras axamplairas originaux sant flimts an eommancant par la pramiira paga qui eomporto una ampralnta dimpraaalon ou d'lllustration at an tarmlnant par la darnitra paga qui eomporta una talla ampralnta. Un daa symbolaa auivanta apparaltra tur la darniira Imaga da chaqua microfieha, salon la caa: la symbola ^» signlfia "A SUIVRE" la aymbola ▼ aignifia "FIN". Mapa. plataa, charts, ate., may bo fllmad at diffarant raduction ratios. Thoaa too larga to ba antlraiy included In one avpoaura ara fllmad baginning In tha upper left hand corner, left to right and top to bonom, as many frames es required. The following diagrema Illustrate the method: Lea cartaa. planchea, ubieaux. etc.. peuvent itra filmts t das uux da reduction differanis. Lorsque le document est trop grend pour ttre reproduit en un soul cliche, il est film* * psrtir do Tangle supirieur geuche. de gauche i droite. et de haut en baa. an prenant le nombre d'Imeges necessaira. Las diagremmes suivsnts lllustrent le methode. 1 2 3 1 2 3 4 5 6 MCMoeon nsoiuTiON tbt cha(t (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) I.I IM in l»24 mm^ ^ APPLIED IM/CE Ine ^^ 16S3 East Main SIrMt g'^S RochMler, Naw rorfc 14609 USA ■ffr <^^C) ^83 ~ 0300 - PtioM ^S (716) 280 - 5989 - Fox CITY OF COMRADES BASIL KING m- .•^ ^ 1^^' %'H^tt4^a. 'a^/ over my shoul- der; "I shaU be sorry." "If I didn't know it wm a faai thing I wouldn't V THE CITY OF COMRADES wanted to take ye in on it— not you, I wouldn't; and dead easy." "I don't care for it." " Ye're only a beginner — " "I'm not even that." "No, ye're not even that; and this 'd lam ye. Justtwo old ladies— lots of money always in the 'ouse— no resist- ance—no weepons nor nothink o' that kind; and me knowin' every hinch of the ground through workin* for 'em two years ago — " "And suppose they recognized you ?" "That's it. That's why I must have a pal. If they'd git a look at any one it 'd have to be at you. But you don't need to be afraid, never pinched before nor nothink. Once yer picter's in the rogues' they'll run ye in if ye so much as blow yer nose. You'd just get by as an unknown man." "And if I didn't get by?" "Oh, but you would, sonny. Ye're the kind. Just look at ye! Slim and easy-movin' as a snake, y'are. Ye'd go through a man's clothes while he's got 'em on, and he wouldn't notice ye no more'n a puff of wind. Look at yer 'and." I held it up and looked at it. A year ago, a month ago, I should have studied it with remorse. Now I did it stupidly, without emotions or regrets. It was a long, slim hand, resembling the rest of my per- son. It was strong, however, with big, loosely articulated knuckles and muscular thumbs — again resembling the rest of my person. At the Beaux Arts, and in an occa- sional architect's office, it had been spoken of as a "draw- ing" hand; and Lovey was now pointing out its advan- tages for other purposes. I laughed to myself. 2 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Ye're too tall," Lovey went on, in his appraisement. "That's ag'in' ye. Ye must be a good six foot. But lots o' men are too tall. They gits over it by stoopin' a bit; and when ye stoops it frightens people, especially women. They ain't near as scared of a man that stands straight up as they'll be of one that crouches and wiggles away. Kind o' suggests eyil to 'em, like, it does. And these two old ladies — " As we reached the comer of the Park I rounded slowly on my tempter. Not that he thought of his offer as temptation, any more than I did; it was rather on his part a touch of solicitude. He was doing his best for me, in return for what he was pleased to take as my kindness to him during the past ten days. He was a small, wizened man, pathetically neat in spite of cruel shabbiness. It was the kind of neatness that in our world so often differentiates the man who has dropped from him who has always been down. The gray suit, which was little more than a warp with no woof on it at all, was brushed and smoothed and mended. The flannel shirt, with tumed-down collar, must have been chosen for its resistance to the show of dirt. The sky-blue tie might have been a more useful selection, but even that had had freshness steamed and pressed into it whenever Lovey had got the opportunity. Over what didn't so directly meet the eye the coat was tightly buttoned up. The boots were the weakest point, as they are with all of us. They were not noticeably broken, but they were wrinkled and squashed and down at the heel. They looked as if they had been worn by other men before hav- ing come to the present possessor; and mine looked the same. When I went into offices to apply for work it was always my boots that I tried to keep out of sight; but it 3 THE CITY 0;F comrades w«t Pi^y what the eye of the feUow in coounaad •eemed detennined to search out and judge me by. You mutt not think of Lovey a* a criminal. He had committed petty crimes and he had gone to jail for them; but It had only been from the instinct of «;lf-pre,ervation. He worked when he got a job; but he never kept a job, because his habits always rired him. Then he lived as he could, hftmg whatever small object came his way-^an apple from a frmt-stall, a purse p iady had inadvertently laid down, a bag m a station, an umbrella forgotten in a comei-anythu^t The pawnshops knew him so well that he was afr^d to go into them any more-except when he was so tired that he wanted to be sent to the Island frr a awith s rest In general, he disposed of his booty for a tew pennies to children, to poverty-stricken mothers of famihes, to pak m the saloons. A, long as a few doUars totted he Lved, as he himself would have said, honestly. When he was dnven to it he filched again; but onlv ; wnen he was dnven to it. It was ten days now since he had begun following me about, somewhat as a stray dog will foUow you when you have given hun a bone and a drink of water. For a year and more I had seen him in one or another of the dives I himg about. The same faces always turn up there, and we get to ha the kind of ac .uaintance, silent, haunted, tolerant, that bmds together souls in the Inferno. In general, it is a great fraternity; but now and then-often for reasons no one could fathom-some one is excluded. He comes and goes, and the others follow him with re. •ontful looks and curses. Occasionally he is kicked out. which was what happened to Lovey whenever his w«ak- ness afforded the excuse. It was when he was kic\ed out of Stinaon's that I had 4 THE CITY OF COMRADES picked him up. It wat after midnight. It wis cold. The tight of the abject face wai too much for me. "Come along home Krith me, Lovey," I had laid, casually; and he came. Home was no more than a stifling garret, and Lovey slept on the floor like a dog. But in the morning I found my shoes cleaned as well as he could clean them without brush '/r blacking, my clothes folded, and the whole beastly place in such order as a friendly hand could bring to it. Lovey himself was gone. Twice during the interval he had stolen in in the same way and stolen out. He asked no more than a refuge and the privilege of sidling timidly up to me with a be- seedling look in his sodden eyes when we met in bars. Once, when by hook or by crook he had got possession of a dollar, he insisted on the honor of "buying me a drinL" On this particular afternoon I had met him by chance in the region of Broadway between Forty-second Street and Columbus Circle. I can still recall the shy, half- frightened pleasure in his face as he saw me advancing toward him. He might have been a young girl. "Got somethin' awful good, sonny, to let ye in on," were the words with which he stopped me. I turned round and walked back - : him to the Grde, and round it. "No, Lovey," I said decidedly, when we had got to the comer of the Park, " it's not good enough. I've other fish to fry." A hectic flush stole into the cheeks, which kept a mar- \ vdous youth and freshness. The thin, delicate features, ascetic rather than degraded, sharpened with a frosty look of disappointment. "Wdl, just as you think best, sonny," he said, »• 5 THE CITY OF COMRADES aignedly. He 9«kcd, abruptly, however, "When did y have yer last meal?" "The day before yesterday." "And when d'ye expect to have yer next?" "Oh, I don't know. Sometime; possibly to-night." "Possibly to-night— 'Ow?" "I tell you I don't know. Something will happen. If it doesn't-^well, I'll manage." He had found an opening. "Don't ye see ye cam't go on like that? Ye've got to Jive." "Oh no, I havenV "Don't say that, sonny," he burst out, tenderly. "Ye've got to livel Ye must do it— for my sake— now. I suppose it's because we're— we're Britishers together." He looked round on the circling crowd of Slavs, Mon- golians, Greeks, Italians, aliens of all sorts. "We're dif- ferent from these Yankees, ain't we?" Admitting our Anglo-Saxon superiority, I was about to say, "Well, so long, Lovey," and shake him off, when he put in, piteously, "I suppose I can come up and lay down on yer floor again to-night?" "I wish you could, Lovey," I responded. "But— but the fact is I— I haven't got that place any more." "Fired?" I nodded. "Where've ye gone?" "Nowhere." "Where did ye sleep last night P* I described the exact spot in the lumber-yard near Greeley's Slip. He knew it. He had made use of its hospitality himself on warm summer nights such as we were having. 6 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Goin' there again to-night f" I said I didn't know. He gazed at me with a kind of timid daring. "You wouldn't be— you wouldn't be goin' to the Down and Out Qubf I smiled. "Why should you ask me that?" "Oh, I don't know. See you talkin' to one of those fellas oncet. Chap named Fyncheon. Worce than mis- sions and 'vangelists, they are." "Did you ever think of going there yourself?" "Oh, Lord love ye! I've thought of it, yer But I've (ought it ofF. Once ye do that ye're doni or." "Well, I don't believe I'm done for—" 1 began; but he interrupted me coaxingly. "I say, sonny. I'll go to Greeley's Slip. Then if you've nothin' else on 'and, you come there, too — and we'll be fellas together. But don't — don't — go to the Down and Outl" As I walked away from him I had his "fellas together" amusingly, and also pathetically, in my heart. Lovey was little better than an outcast. I knew him by no name but that which some pothouse wag had fixed on him derisively. From hints he had dropped I gathered that he had had a wife and daughters somewhere in the world, and intuitively I got the impression that without being a criminal he had been connected with a crime. As to his personal history he had never confided to me any of the details beyond the fact that in his palmy days he had been in a 'at-shop in the Edgware Road. I fancied that at some time or another in his career his relatives in Lon- don — like my own in Canada — ^had made up a lump sum and bidden him begone to the land of reconstruction. 7 THE CITY OF COMRADES Then he had become what he wa*— an outcaat. Theie I wu becoming an outcaat likewiie. We wen "fellaa to- jether." I wa« thirty-one and he waa fifty-twa My comparative youth helped me, in that I didn't look older than my age; but he might easily have been leventy. Having got rid of him, I drifted diagonally acroH the Park, but with a certain method in the teeming lack of method in taking my direction. Though I had an objec- tive point, I didn't dare to approach it otherwiie than by a roundabout route. It it probable that no gaze but that of the angels was upon me; but to me it seemed as if every glance that roved up and down the Park muat spot my aim. For this reason I assumed a manner meant to thnnr observation off the scent. I loitered to look at young people on horseback or to state at some specially dashing notor-car. I strolled into by-paths and out of them. I passed under the noses of policemen in gray-blue unifonna and tried to infuse my carriage with the fact which Lovey had emphasized, that I had never yet been pinched. I had never yet, so far as I knew, done anything to warrant pinching; and that I had no intentions beyond those of the ordinary law-abiding citizen was what I hoped iny swagger would convey. Though I was shabby, I was not sufficiently so to be unworthy to take the air. The worst that could be said of me was that I was not shabby as the working-man is at liberty to be. Mine was the suspicious, telltale shabbi- ness of the gentleman — far more damning than the grime and sweat of a chimney-sweep. Now that I was alone again, I had a return of the sensa- tion that had been on me since waking in the morning — that I was walking in the air. I felt that I bounced like 8 THE CITY OF COMRADES a babble evety time I stepped. The day before I had been giddy; now I waa only light. It waa a« if at any minute I might go up. Unconidoutly I ground my foot- itept into the gravel or the gram to keep myieif on the iolid earth. It waa not the first time I had gone without food for twenty-four hours, but it was the first time I had done it for forty-eight. Moreover, it was the first timt: I had ever been without some prospect of food ahead of me. With a meal surely in sight on the following day I could have waited for it. More easily I could have waited for a drink or two. Drink kept me going longer than food, for in spite of the reaction after it the need of it had grown more insistent. Had I been offered my choice between food and life, on the one hand, and drink and death, on the other, I think I should have chosen drink and death. But now there was no likelihood of either. I had hus- banded my last pennies after my last meal, to make them spin out to as many drinks as possible. I had begged a few more drinks, and cadged a few more. But I had come to my limit in all these direaions. Before I sought the shelter of Greeley's Slip a hint had been given me at Stinson's that I might come in for the compliments show- ered on Lovey ten days previously. Now as I walked in the Park the craving inside me was not because I hadn't eaten, but because I hadn't drunk that day. Two or three bitter temptations assailed me before I reached Fifth Avenue. One was in the form of a pretty girl of eight or ten, who came mincing down a flowery path, holding a quarter between the thumb and forefinger of her left hand. Satan must have sent her. I could have snatched the quarter and made my escape, only that I lacked the nerve. Then there waa a newsbc^counfri a 9 THE CITY OF COMRADES ing hi* gaiiM on a bench. They were laid out in rows be- fofe him— pennies, nickeli, and dimet. I Kood for a minute and looked down at him, ettimating the eaie with which I could have itooped and iwept them all into my palm. He looked up and imiled. The imile didn't dif- arm me; I wat beyond the reach of any auch appeal. It wai again that I didn't have the nerve. Lastly an old woman, a nurse, was dealing out coins to three small chil- dren that they might make purchases of a blind man sell- ing bootlaces and pencils. I could have swiped them all •s neatly as a croupier pulls in louis d'or with his rake- but I was afraid. These were real temptations, as fierce as any I ever faced. By the time I had reached the Avenue I was in a cold perspiration, as much from a sense of failure as from the effort at resistance. I wondered how I should ever carry out the plans I had in mind if I was to balk at such little things as this. The plans I had in mind still kept me from making headway as the crow flies. I went far up the Avenue; I crossed into Madison Avenue; I went up that again; I crossed into Park Avenue. I crossed and recrossed and crisscrossed and descended, and at last found myself strolling by a house toward which I scarcely dared to turn my eyes, feeling that even for looking at it I might be arrested. I slackened my pace so as to verify all the points which experts had underscored in my hearing. There was the vacant lot which the surrounding buildings rendered so dark at night. There was the low, red-brown fence in- closing the back premises, over which a limber, long-legged fellow like me could leap in a second. There were the usual numerous windows — to kitchen, scullery, pantry, 10 THE CITY OF COMRADES laundry— of any (ood-iixed American hotuc^ tome one of wh- li wa« pretty ture to be left unguarded on a tuin- mer r tht. TTiere were the neighboring yaidi, with n ore low fence*, offering excellent cover Li a get-away, wiA another vacant lot leading out on another street a tittle farther down. I had to many time* «trolled by the hou*e a* I was doing now, and had *o many time* rehearsed it* characteristics, that I made the final review with some exactitude before passing on my way. My way was not fai There was nothing to do but to go back into the Park. As it was nearly six o'clock, it wa* too late to search for a job that day, and I should have had no heart for doing so in any case. I had found a job that morning— that of handling big packing-ca*es in a warehouae— but I wa* too exhausted for the work. When in the effort to lift one onto a truck I collapsed and nearly fainted, I wa* told in a choice selecdon of oathf to beat it a* no good. I sat on a bench, therefore, waiting for the dark and thinking of the house of which I had just inspected the outaide. It wa* not a house picked at random. It wa« one that had posse*sed an interest for me during all the three years I had been in New York. I had, in fact, brought a letter of introduction to its owner from the man under whom I had worked in Montreal. Chiefly through my own carelessness, nothing came of that, but I never failed, when I passed this way, to stare at the dwelling as one in which I might have had a footing. The occupant was also a well-known architect in New York. In the architects' offices in which I found employ- ment I heard him praised, criticized, condemned. Hia work was good or bad according to the speaker's point of II THE CITY OF COMRADES ^fcw. ItHou«l«htolw«Mytood,widitn^{, irtuch would be b^ of .11. Had I been quite .u« ai to the last pomt, I think I could have done it. But I wawit quite .ure. I wa. far from quite .ure. I could miagme the ttep over the edge of Gieele/. Slip ai a itep mto conditiona worie than thoM I waa enduring no,n iindjo I had drawn bade 1 had drawn back and wan- Owed up-town, m the hope of aecuring a job that would give me a breakfait. I wonder if you have eve- done that? I wonder if you have ever gone from dock cu nation and from nation to ahop and from .hop to waiehouK, wherever heavy, un- akilled labor may be in demand, and extra hand, are treated with a brutality that .lave, would kick againn. '"""^ '">P?,<»f e*™'"* fifty cent.? I wonder if in your grown-up hfe you have ever known a minute when fifty cent, nood for your .alvation? I wonder if with fifty cent, nanding for your .alvation you ever mw the day la THE CITT OF COMRADES wImb you couldn't gu ht NoF Then you will hardly mdentand how aatunl. how raudi a mattar of couna^ tha thing had baeome which I wa« naolved to do. It wat no luddcn idea. I had been living in the con- pany of men who took luch fintt for granted. Their talk had amaaed me at fint, but I had grown uied to it. I had grown uied to the thing. I had come to find a piquancy in the thought of it. Then Love/t luggettioni hac not been thrown away on me. True, he wai out for imall game, while I, if I went in (or it, would want something bigger and more ( sating; but the basic idea was the same. Lovey could make a haul and live for weeks on the fruit of it; I might do the same and live for months. Andifldidn'tpuUitoff successfully, if I was nabbed and sent away — why, then there would be «ome let-up in the struggle which had be- come so infernal. Even if I got a shot through the heart — and the tales I heard were full of such accidents — the traged; would not lack its element of relief. It might be out of one hell into anothet^-but it would at least be out of one. Not that I hadn't found a bitter pleasure in the lifel I had. I found it still. In one of Dostoyevsky's novela an old rake talks of the joys of being in the gutter. Well, there are such joys, lliey are not joys that civilization knows or that aspiration would find Ieg-''3mate; but one reaches a point at which it is a satitfac on to be oneself at one's worst. Where all the pretenses with which poor human nature covers itself up are cast aside the soul can stalk forth nakedly, hideously, and be unashamed. In the presence of each other we were always unashamed. We could kick over all standards, we could drop all poses, we could flout all duties, we could own to all crimes, and 13 THE CITY OF COMRADES be "fella, together." A* I went lower and lower down it became to me a jdnd of acrid delight, of positively intel- lectual delight, to know that I was herding with the most degraded, and that there was no baseness or bestiality to which I was not at liberty to submit myself. If there had never been any reartions from this state of mind I — but God I It was a disadvantage to me that I was not like my cromes. I couldn't open my lips without betraying the fact that I belonged to another sphere. Though the broken-down man of education is not unknown in the underworld, he is comparatively rare. He is compara- tively rare and under suspicion, like a white swan in a flock of black ones. I might be open-handed, ingratiating, and absurdly fellow-well-met, but I was always an out- sider. They would take my drinks, they would return me drinks, we would swap stories and experiences with all outward show of equality; but no one knew better than myself that I was not on a fooring with the test of them. Women took to me readily enough, but men were always en their guard. Try as I would I never found a mate among them, I never made a friend. Therefore, now that I was down and out, I had no one of whom to ask a good turn, no one who would have done me a good turn, but poor, useless old Lovey sneaking in the shade. I was m a measure between two worlds. I had been ejected from one without having forced a way into the other. When I say ejected I mean the word. The bit- terest moment in my life was on that night when my eldest brother came to his door in Montreal and gave me fifty dollars, with the words: "And now get out! Don't let any of us ever see your face or hear your name again." »4 THE CITY OF COMRADES As I stumbled down the ttep* he gave me a kick that didn't reach me and which I had lost the right to resent. He himself went back to the dinner-party his wife wai entertaining inside, and of which the talk and laughter reached me as I stood humbly on the door-step. From the other side of the street I looked back at the lighted win- dows. It was the last touch of connection with my But it had been a kindly, patient family. My father was one of the best known and most highly honored among Canadian public men. As he had married an American, I had a good many cousins in New York, though I had not made myself known to any of them since coming there to live. I didn't want them. Had I met one of them in the street, I should have passed without speaking; but, as it happened, I never met one. I saw their names in the papers, and that was all. My father and mother had had five children, of whom I was the fourth. My two brothers were married, prosper- ous and respected— one a lawyer in Montreal, the other a banker in Toronto. My elder sister was married to a colonel in the British army; the younger one— the only member of the family younger than myself— still lived, at home. , . We three sons were all graduates of McGill, in addition to which I had been sent to the Beaux Arts in Paris. Out of that I had come with some degree of credit; and there had been a year in which I was in sight— oh, very distant sight!— of the beginning of the fulfilment of my child- hood's ambition to revolutionize the art of architecture in Canada. But in the second year that vision went out; and in the third came the night on my brother Jerry's door-step. IS THE CITY OF COMRADES I had nothinc to complain of. The fanuly had borne with me-and borne with me. When we reached the tune when I wa« .uppwed to be earning my own Uvinr Md my father'f aUowance came to an end, my mother who had tome money of her own, kept it up. She would be keepmg it up still if ,he knew where I wa»-but the didn't know. From the moment of leaving Montreal I decided to carry out Jerry's injunction. They » ,uld neither see my face nor hear my name again. I didn't stop to con- «der how cruel this would be to the best mother a man ever had-to say nothing of the best father-or rather. When 1 did stop to consider it it seemed to me that I was taking the kindest course. I had no confidence in myself or in the future. New surroundings and associations would not give me a new heart, whatever hopes those who wished me well might be building on the change. For a new heart I needed something which I hadn't got and saw no means of getting. CHAPTER n SOMEWHERE about dutk I fell asleep. It wa« dark when I woke up. It was dark and still and sultry, as it often is in New York in the middle of June. The lamps were lit in the Park, and in their glow shadowy forms moved stealthily. When they went in twos I took them to be lovers; when they went alone I put them down as prowlers of the night. I didn't know what they were after, but whatever it might be I was sure it was no good. Not that that mattered to me! I had long been in a situation where I couldn't be particular. When I had risen and stretciied myself I, too, moved stealthily, dogged by a crime I hadn't yet conmiitted, but of which the guilt was already in the air. As I had nothing by ^hich to tell the time, I was obliged to wait till a dock strucL I hoped it was eleven at least, but when the sound came over the trees it was only nine. Only nine, and I could do nothing before one! Nothing before one, and nowhere to go! Nowhere to go, and no food to eat, and not a drop to drink! Doubtless I could have found water; but water made me sick. With four hours to wait, I thought again of the dark river with its velvety current, running below Greeley's Slip. Aimlessly I drifted toward it— that is, I drifted toward Columbus Circle, whence I could drift farther still through squalid, fedd, dimly lighted streeu down to the water's «7 THE CITY OF COMRADES >t of the :;r.&r."--?'"- ^Trs;.! easy, pleasant way of an stepping nl,n„-j . , ''^'■<""' the adventure I had planned was not without its fascination. I wanted to see what .t held in store. If it held nothing-weU then ao X skulked back into ?Se depths of the Park aeain Those who went as twos began to disappear, and the Sv shadows to steal along more funively.'^Now and th ^c^^ of the„ „,,hed jne or hung i„ the distance su^"s! tively. It was not like any of the encounters that^e had floated up from some evil spirit land, into wWch before mornmg they would float down again .^ whS T l7V- I "" '.° ^^^^^ ^'"^ Sreat human division nal SJe r h ."5'"° ^-\-!a««d. and become a crin^- ^psrwi^birg!-^"----"- If my head had not been swimming I might at the Ia«- the faculty of deconcentrafon. It was fixed on the thine before me m such a way that I couldn't get it off Fof SLt'^^L T' T '^''"'"^ ^''^ Park,' irectlAo^e street and number where my thoughts were 1 was surprised by the emptiness and silence of the Si/Z "7\^°' *"' '""^ '■^'^ ' temembe'd thaVat this season of the year most of the houses would be clos.^ Qosed they were, looking dark and blank and forbiddj^: THE CITY OF COMRADES I happened to know that the house to which I was bound was not closed; and though the fact that there were so £ew to pass in the streets rendered me more conspicuous, it also made me the less subject to observation. Indeed, there were no observers at all when I approached the black spot made by the vacant lot. There was nothing but myself and the blackness. Not a light in the house I Hardly a light in any of the houses round about I Not a footfall on the pavementsi If ever there was a good opportunity to do what I had come for, it was mine. But I passed. The black spot frightened me. It was like a black gulf into which I might sink down. I re- passed. I went farther up the street and took myself to task. It was a repetition of my recoil from the children in the afternoon. I must have the nerve — or I must own to my- self that I hadn't. If I hadn't it, then I had no alternative but Greeley's Slip. I turned in my steps and passed the house again. If from the blank windows any one had been looking out my actions would have been suspicious. I went far down the street, and came back again far up it. Then when I had no more power of arguing with myself I suddenly found my footsteps crushing the dusty, sun-dried shoots of nettle and blue succory. I was in the vacant lot. * All at once fear left me. As well as any old hand in the business I seemed to know what lay before me. At every second some low-down prompting, sprung from nameless depths in my nature, told me what to do. I noted in the first place how accurate the experts had been as to light and shade. The house stood so far up on one of the long avenues that the buildings were thin- ning out. So, too, the street lamps. They were no more 19 THE CITY OF COMRADES Ain in the proportion of two to three at compared to their numbers half a mile lower down. Ju« here they were so placed that not a ray fell into the three or four thousand square feet which had probably never been built upon since Manhattan was inhabited. Even the wall of the house was windowless on this side, for the reason that within a few months some new building would prob- ably block the outlook. Oice I had crept close to the wall, I knew I presented neither silhouette nor shade to any chance passer-by. I could feel my way at leisure, cautiously treading burdock and fireweed underfoot. I came to the low wooden fence, in which there was a gate for tradesmen, which was po*. ably unlockedi but I didn't run the risk of a dick. With my long legs a stride took me over into a small brick- paved court. I paused to reconnoter. The obscurity here was m dense that only my architect's instincts told me where the doors and windows would probably be. I located them by degrees. The doors I let alone. The windows I tried, first one and then another, but with no success.' There was probably some simple fastening that I could haw dealt with had I had a pocket-knife, but the one I had cam^ for yearsi had long since been lying in a pawnshop, lo reflect I sat down on the cover of a bin that was doubt- less used tor refuse. A footstep alarmed me. It was hsavy, measured, slow. With the ease of a snake I was down on my belly, crawling toward cover. Cover offered itself in the form of the single shrub that the court contained-Jilac or syringa-^ growing close against the kitchen wall. Lovey would haw commended the silence and swiltnett with which I slipped behind it. ao THE CITY OF COMRADES The footitep receded, iloir, meatuied, heavy. Cominc to t4ie conclusion that it waa a policeman in the Avenue, I railed my head. I had no lenie of queemeti in my situation. It teemed ai much a matter of coune ai if I had been dcung the tame tort of thing ever since I wai bom. There was apparently a providence in all this, for, look- ing up, I spied a window I had not seen before, because it was hidden by the shrub. This, if any, would have been neglected by the servants when they went to bed. With scarcely the stirring of a leaf I got on my feet again — and, lo! the miracle. The window was actually open. I had nothing to do but push it a few inches Kigher, drag myself up imd wriggle in. I accomplished this without a sound that could be detected twenty feet •way. Coming down on my hands and knees, I found myself amid the odor of eatables, chiefly that of fruit. I rested a minute to get my bearings, which I did by the sense of ■mell. I knew I must be in a sort of pantiy. By putting out my hands carefully, so as to knock nothing over, I perceived that it was little more than a closet with shelves. A thrill of excitement passed through me from head to foot when my hand rested on an apple. I ate the apple there and then, kneeling upright, my toes bent under me. I ate another and another. Feeling cautiously, I discovered a tin box in which there were bread and cake. I ate of both. Getting softly on my feet, I groped for other things, which proved in the main to be no more than tea, coffee, spices, and sta.-ch. Then my fingers ran over a strawlike surface, and I knew I had bold of a demijohn. Smell told me that it contained sherry, and such know!- THE CITY OF COMRADES •4ie of houwkeeping at I pounttd »ugge«ed that it wa» cookuig-sheror. I took a long nng If it. Two U^ Sit' JSfJLer' """ ' '"'^ ""-^'^ «^« " '^- It occurred to me that this was a point at which I me, and I de ermmed to go at least a little farther. VeV reiy stealthily I opened the door ^' but m a servants' dmmg-ioom. I got the dim outlines of chairs and what I took to be a dr«ser or a bTkt .:! Another open door led into a hall «5J0"T'''''^^ °^J^' P'^"""'"* °f '•cuse, aided me at kitchen th, .undry, and the back staircase. I knew the C ^l '7 ^^""^ » ^°°' ^'^^ ^" dosed. ZZ h^!,?TUu\ '""'"* *=""* '""" anywhere in the W The kitchen clock uc^ed loudly, and present mrtled me with a gurgle and a chuckle before it st^cfc one. After this manifestation I had to wait till my h«« stopped thumping and my nerves were quieted beW ^ntunng on the stairs. As the first step c'reaked. I kep^ dose to the wall to get a finner support for my tr Jd! Were I perceived the ghmmer or reflection of a light. It was a veor dim or distant light-but it was a light. I stood on the landing and waited. If there were peo- ple moving about I should hear them soon. But all I did stirof^K "'^ ""^f"^ "' ^« — «' -ho ^^ Sleeping on the topmost floor. Creeping a little farther up. I discovered that the light 22 THE CITY OF COMRADES WM in a bcdcoom— the first to open from the front hall up-ftairi. Between the front hall and the back hall the door wai ajar. That would make things easier for me, and I dragged myself noiseleuly to the top. I was now at the head of the first flight of back stairs, and looking into the master's section of the house. Except for that one dim light the house was dark. It was not, however, so dark that my architect's eye couldn't make a mental map quite sufficient for my guidance. It was clearly a dwelling that had been added to, with •ome rambling characteristics. The first few feet of the front hall were on a level with the back hall, after which came a flight of three or four steps to a higher plane, which ran the rest of the depth of the building to the win- dow over the front door. In the faint radiance through this window I could discern a high-boy, a bureau, and some chairs against the wall. I could see, too, that from this higher level one staircase ran down to the front door and another up to a third story. What was chiefly of moment to me was the fact that the bedroom with the light was lower than the rest of this part of the house, and somewhat cut off from it. With movements as quiet as a cat's I got myself where I could peep into the bedroom where the lamp burned. It proved to be a small electric lamp with a rose-colored shade, standing beside a bed. It was a rose-colored room, evidently that of a young lady. But there was no young lady there. There was no one. The fact that surprises me as I record all this is that I was so extraordinarily cool. I was cooler in the act than I am in the memory of it. I walked into that bedroom as calmly as if it had been my own. It was a pretty room, with the usual notes of photo- 43 THE CITY OF COMRADES gnplM, bibdott, and >owM«d cimoniM which young WDnMn Kke. The wall* were in a light, cool green tet off by a few cobred reproductioni of old lulian matter*. Over the tmall white virginal bed was a copy of Fra Angelico't "Annunciation." Two windows, one of which waa a bay, were shaded by loosely hanging rose-colored silt, and before the bay window the curtains were drawn. Diagonally across the comer of this window, but within the actual room, stood a simple white writing-desk, with a white dressing-table near it, but against the wall. On the table lay a gold-mesh purse, in which there was money. I slipped it into my pocket, with some satis- faction in securing the first fniiu of my adventure. Wth such booty as this it again occurred to me to be on the safe side and to go back by the way I came. I was, in fact, looking round me to see if there was any other small valuable object I could lift before departing when I heard a door open in some distant part of the house — and voices. They were women's voices, or, rather, as I speedily inferred, girls' voices. By listening intently I drew the conclusion that two girls had come out of a room on the third floor and were coming down the stairs. It was the minute to make off, and I tried to do so. I might have effected my escape had I not been checked by the figure of a man looming up suddenly before me. He sprang out of nowhere— a tall, slender man, in a dark- blue suit, with trousers baggy at the knees, and wearing an old golfing-cap. I jumped back from him in terror, only to find that it was my own reflection in the pier-glass. , But the few seconds' delay lost me my chance to get away. By the time I had tiptoed to the door the voices were _ H THE CITY OF COMRADES «a the nma floor u mytdf. Two girb wen advandni akmg the haU, evidently making their way to thia cham- ber. My retreat beiag cut off, I looked wildly about for a place in which to hide myiclf. In the iniunta at my diipoial I could ditcover nothing more remote than the bay window, icreened by itt looie rot»^f "°-j^ J, chuckled in advance over the mystification of Miss Regina Barry, who would find on returning to her room That her rings, her necklet, and her gold-mesh purse had melted into the atmosphere. ca.^*^ In sheer recklessness I was now guilty of a bit of deviltry before which I would have hesitated had I had time to give it a second thought. On the desk there was a sc^p of blank paper and a pen. Stooping, I printed m the neat block letters I had once been accustomed to mscnbe below a plan: Thtre are m.n different from those you have seen hitherto. Wait. This I pinned to the pincushion on the dressing-table, berinning at once to creep toward the door, so as to seize Ae first opportunity of slipping down the back stairs. But again I was frustrated. . "I'm all right now," I heard Elsie say. reassuringly. "Don't come up. Go back and go to bed. Miss Barry spoke as she returned along the h^U toward her room: "The cook sleeps in the next room to you, K, that if you're afraid in the night you've only to hammer Tn the wall. But you needn't be. This house is as safe "I'haTbarely time to get into the bay window again and pull the curtains to. 30 THE CITY OF COMRADES Some five minutes followed, during which I heard the opening and shutdng of drawers and closets and the swish and frou-frou of skirts. I began to curse my idiocy in fastening that silly bit of writing to the pincushion. My only hope lay in the possibility that she would ga to bed and to sleep without seeing it. ' With hearing grown extraordinarily acute I could trace every mov.-ment she made about the room. Presently I knew she had come back to the dressing-table again. Pulling up a chair, she sat down before it, to finish, I sup- pose, the arranging of her hair. For a few seconds there was a silence, during which I -jould hear the thumping of my heart. Then came the faint rattling of paper. I knew when she read the thing by the slight catch in her breath. I expected more than that. I thought she would call out to her friend or otherwise give an alarm. If she went to a telephone to summon the police I decided to make a dash for it. Indeed, I meant to make a dash for it as it was, as soon as I knew her next move. But of all the next moves, the one she made was the one I had least counted on. With a sudden tug at the hangings she pulled them apart — and I was before her. I was before her and she was before me. It is this latter detail of which I have the most vivid recollection. In the matter of time all other recollections of the moment seem to come after that and to be subsidiary to it. My immediate impression was of two enormous, won- derful, burning eyes, full of amazement. Apart from the eyes I hardly saw anythi g. It was as if the light of a. dark lantern had been suddenly turned on me and I was blinded by the blaze. I was blinded by the blaze and 3» THE CITY OF COMRADES ihriveled up in it. No words can do justice to my sud- den sense of beinj a contemptible, loathsome tepvit. '"Shi" was the first sound that came from her. bhe raised her hand. "Don't make a noise or you'll frighten my friend. She's nervous already." Instinctively I pulled off my cap, stepping out of my hiding-place into the middle of the room. As I did so Ae recoiled, supporting herself by a hand on the wr.tmg- desk. Now that the discovery was made, I could sec her grow pale, while the hand on the desk trembled. "You mustn't be afraid," ! began to whisper. "I'm not afraid," she whispered back; 'but— but tfhat are you doing here?" "I'll show you," I returned, with shamefaced qmet- ne-8. "I shall also show you that if you'll let me go without giving an alarm you won't be sorry." Pulling all the things I had stolen out of my pocket, I showered them on the dressing-table. "Oh!" The smothered exclamation made it plain to me that the hadn't missed the articles. "May I ask you to verify themr I went on. it you should find later that something had disappeared, I shouldn't like you to think that I had earned it '"she m.ide a feint at examining the jewelry, but I <»uld see that she was incapable of making anything like a count. It was I who insisted on going over the objects one by one. "ITiere's this," I said, touching the gold-mesh purse, but not picking it up. 'I see there's money in it; but it has not been opened. Then there s this, I added, indicating the pearl necklet; "and this,' which was the 32 THE CITY OF COMRADES brooch. "The rings," I continued, "I don't know any- thing about. There are three here. That's all I remem- ber seeing; but I didn't notice in particular." She said, in a breathless whisper, "That's all there were." "Then may I ask if you mean to let me go?" "How can I stop you?" "Oh, in two or three ways. You could call your ser- vants, or you could ring up the police — " Her big, burning eyes were fixed on me hypnotically. The color began to come back to her cheeks, but she trembled still. "How — how did you get iu?" I explained to her. "And the only thing I've taken," I went on, "is the food I ate and the wine I drank; but if you knew how much I needed them — " "Were you hungry?" "I hadn't eaten anything for two days, and very little foe two days before that." "Then you're not — ^you're not one of those gentleman burglars who do this sort of thing out of bravado?" "As we see in novels or plays. I don't think you'll find many of them about. I'm a burglar," I pursued, "or I — I meant to be one — but I'm not a gentleman." "You speak like a gentleman." "Unfortunately, a gentleman is not made by speech. A gentleman could never be in the predicament in which you've caught me." "Well, then, you were a gentleman once." "My father was a gentleman — and is." "English?" "I'd rather not tell you. Now that I've restored the 33 THE CITY OF COMRADES things, if you'll give me your word that I sha'n't be molested I shall — " "You sha'n't be molested, only—" As she hesitated I insisted, "Only what, may I ask?" Her manner was a mixture of embarrassment and pity. She had not hitherto taken her eyes from me since we had begun to speak. Now she let them wander away; or, rather, she let them shift away, to return to me swiftly, as if she couldn't trust me without watching me. By this time she was trembling so violently, too, that she was obliged to grasp the back of a chair to steady her- self. She was too little to be tall, and yet too tall to be considered little. The filmy thing she wore, with its long, loose sleeves, gave her some of the appearance of an angel, only that no angel ever had this bright, almost hectic color in the cheeks, and these scarlet "Was it," she asked, speaking, as we both did, in low tones, and rapidly— "was it because you— you had no money that you did this?" ^^ I smiled faintly. "That was it exactly; but now— "Then won't you let me give you some?" I still had enough of the man about me to straighten myself up and say: "Thanks, no. It's very kind of you; but— but the reasons which make it impossible for me to— to steal it make it equally impossible for me to take it as a gift." " But why-^why was it impossible for you to steal it, when you had come here to do it? "I suppose it was seeing the owner of it face to face. I'd sunk low enough to steal from some one I couldn't visualize— but what's the use? It's mere hair-splitting. Just let me say that this is my first attempt, and it hasn't 34 THE CITY OF COMRADES tucceeded. I may do better next time if I can get up the nerve." "Oh, but there won't be a next time." "That we shall have to see." "Suppose" — the mixture of embarrassment and pity made it hard for her to speak — "suppose I said I was sorry for you." "You don't have to say it. I see it. It's something I shall never forget as long as I live." "Well, since I'm sorry for you, won't you let me — r "No," I interrupted, firmly. "I'm grateful for your pity; I'll accept that; but I won't take anything else." I began moving toward the door. "Since you're good enough to let me go, I had better be off; but I can't do it without thanking you." For the first time she smiled a little. Even in that dim light I could see it was what in normal conditions would be commonly called a generous smile, full, frank, and kindly. Just now it was little more than a quivering of the long scarlet lips. She glanced toward the little heap of things on the desk. "If it comes to that, I have to thank you." I raised my hand deprecatingly. "Don't." I had almost reached the threshold when her words made me turn. "Do you know who I am?" "I think I do," was all I could reply. "Well, then, why shouldn't you come back later — in some more usual manner— and let me see if there isn't something I could do for you?" "Do for me in what way.?" 3S THE CITY OF COMRADES "In the way of getting you work— or lomething." My heart had leaped up for a minute, but now it felL Vfhy it should have done either I cannot lay, line* I could be nothing to her but a fool who had tried to be a thief, and couldn't, as we say in our common idiom, get away with it. I thanked her again. "But you've done a great deal for me as it is," I added. "I couldn't ask for more." Somewhat disconnectedly I continued, "I think you're the pluckiest girl I ever saw not to have been afraid of me." "Oh, it wasn't pluck. I saw at once that you wouldn't do me any harm." "How?" "In general. I was surprised. I was excited. In a way I was overcome. But I wasn't afraid of you. If you'd been a tramp or a colored man or anything like that it would have been different. But one isn't afraid of a — of a gentleman." "But I'm not a—" "Well then, a man who has a gentleman's tradirions. You'd better go now," she whispered, suddenly. "If you want to come back as I've suggested — any time to- morrow forenoon — I'd speak to my father — " "Not about this?" I whispered, hurriedly. "No, not about this. This had better be just between ourselves. I shall never say anything to any one about it, and I advise you to do the same." I had made a low bow, preparatory to getting out, when she held up the scrap of paper she had crumpled in her hand. "Why did you write this?" But I got out of the room without giving a reply. I was descending the back stairs when I heard a door 36 THE CITY OF COMRADES open on the third floor and Eliie't voice call out, "R^ina, are you talking to anybody down there?" There wai a tremor in the mezzo a« it replied: "N-no. I'm juit — I'm ju« moving about." ^ "Well, for Heaven'i take go to bedl It'« after two o'clock. I never wa« in a hou$e like thi* in all my life before. It seemi to be full of people crawling round everywhere. I think I'll come down to your mother'a bed, after all." ^ "Do,'' was the only word I heard as I stole into the aervants' dining-room, then into the closet with shelves, where I shut the door softly. A few seconds later I was out on the cool ground, in the dark, behind the shrub. I lay there almost breathlessly, not because I wa» unable to get up, but because I couldn't drag myself away. I wanted to go over the happenings of the last hour and ■eal them in my memory. They were both terrible to me and beautiful. I had been there some fifteen minutes when I heard the open window above me closed gently and the fasten- ing snapped. I knew that again she was near me, though, as before, she didn't suspect my presence. I wondered if the chances of life would ever bring us so close to each other again. Above me, where the shrub detached itself a little from the wall of the house, I could see the stars. Lying on my back, with my head pillowed on the crook of my arm, I watched them till it seemed to me they began to pale. At the same time I caught a thinning in the texture of the darkness. I got up with the silence in which I had lain down. Crossing the brick-paved yard and striding > again in the vacant 1 It was not yet dawn, but it was the dark-gray hour 37 THE CITY OF COMRADES ivhich telli that dawn it coming. I wat obliged to take more accurate precaudoni than before, ai, cnuhing the tangle of nettle, burdock, fireweed, and blue luccory, I crept along in the shadow of the houte wall to regain the empty itreet. CHAPTER III 'jPHE city wai beginning to wake. Mysteriout cart* * and wagons rumbled along the neighboring avenuei. From a parallel street came the buzz and dang of a lonely early-morning electric car. Running footsteps would have startled one if they had not been followed by the clinking of peaceful milk-bottles in back yards. Clank- ing off into the distance one heard the tread of solitary pedestrians bent on errands that stirred the curiosity. Here and there the lurid flames of torches lit up com- panies of gnomelike men digging in the roadways. Going toward Greeley's Slip, I skirted the Park, though it made the walk longer. Under the dark trees men were lying on benches and on the grass, but for reasons I couldn't yet analyze I refused to thrust myself among them. A few hours earlier I would have done this with- out thinking, as without fear; but something had hap- pened to me that now made any such course impossible. My immediate need was to get back to poor old Lovey and lie down by his side. That again was beyond my power to analyze. I suppose it was something like a homing instinct, and Lovey was all there was to wel- come me. "Is that you, sonny?" he asked, sleepily, as I stooped to creep into the cubby-hole which a chance arrangement of planks made in a pile of lumber. 39 THE CITY OF. COMRADES "Yet, Lovey," "Glad ye've come," When I had fttetched myielf out I felt him tnuggte a little nearer me. "You don't mind, fonny, do youf "No, Lovey. It't all right. Go to ileep again." For myself, I could do nothing but lie and watch the ooming of the dawn. I could see it beating itself into the darkness long before there was anything to which one could give the name of light. It was like a succession of great cosmic throbs, after each of which the veil wai a little more translucent. In my nostrils was the tweet, penetrating smell of lum- ber, subtly laden with the memories of the days when I was a boy. The Canadian differs from the American largely, I think, in the closeness of his forest-and-farm associations. Not that the American hasn't the farm and the forest, too, but he has moved farther away from them. The mill, the factory, and the office have supplanted them —in imagination when not in fact, and in fact when not in imagination. If the woods call him he has to go to them— for a week, or two, or three at a time; but he come* back inevitably to a life in which the woods play little part. The Canadian never leaves that life. The primeval still enters into his cities and his thoughts. Some day it may be different; but as yet he is the son of rivers, lakes, and forests. There is always in him a strain of the voyagtuT. The true Canadian never ceases to smell bal- sam or to hear the lapping of water on wild shores. It was balsam that I smelled now. The lapping of water soothed me a* the river, too, began to wake. It woke with a faint noise of paddle-wheels, followed by a bellow like the caU of lome tea monster to iu mate. 40 ^ THE CITY OF COMRADES Kight below me and cloee to the ilip I heard the meamired dip of oari. Hoarse calli of men, from deck to deck or from deck to dock, had a weird, watchful lound, at though the darkneu were peopled with Flying Dutchmen. Lighta glided up and down the river-^which itielf remained un- seen — mostly gold lights, but now and then a colored one. Giains of lights fringed the New Jersey shoie. where, far away, sleepless factories threw up dim red iares. A rising southeast wind not only hid the start asider banks of clouds, but went whistling eerily round ifce comers of the lumber-piles. The scent of pine, and ail the pungent, nameless odors of the riverside, began to be infused with the smell— if it is a smell— of coming rain. I can best describe myself as in a kind of trance in which past and present were merged into one, and in which there seemed to be no period when two wonderful, burning eyes had not been watching me in pit ■ r.nd amaze- ment. As long as I lived I knew they would watch me still. In their light I got my life's significance. In their light I saw myself as a boy again, with a boy's vision of the future. The smell of lumber carried me back to our old summer home on the banks of the Ottawa, where I had had my dreams of what I should do when I was big. All boys being patriotic, they were dreams not merely of myself, but of my country. It worried me that it was not sufficiently on the great world map, that apart from itt lakes and prairies and cataracts it had no wonders to show mankind. As we were a traveling family, I was accustomed to wonders in other countries, and easily annoyed when one set of cousins in New York and an- other in England took it for granted that we lived in an Uluma Thule of snow. I meant to show them tlM oontraiy. * 41 4* 1 1 THE CITY OF COMRADES From the beginning my ardors and indignations tran»- lated themselves into stone. I had seen St. Peter's in one country, St. Paul's in another, and Chartres and chateaux in a third. I had seen New York transforming itself under my very eyes — the change began when I was in my teens — into a town of prodigious towers which in themselves were symbolicaL Then I would go home to a red-gray city, marvelously placed between river and mountain, where any departure from its original French austerity was likely to be in the direction of the exuber- ant, the unchastened, the fantastic. All new buildings in Canada, as in most of the States, lacked "school." "School" was, more or less in secret, the preoccupation of my youth — "school" with some such variation from traditional classic lines as would create or stimulate the indigenous. I had not yet learned what New York was to teach me later — that necessity was the mother of art, and that pure new styles were formed not by any one's ingenuity or by the caprice of changing taste, but because human needs demanded them. Rejecting the art nou- veau, which later made its permanent home in Germany, I combined all the lines in which great buildings had ever been designed, from the Doric to the Georgian, in the hope of evolving a type which the world would recognize as distinctively Canadian, and to which I should give my name. In imagination I built castles, cathedrals and theaters, homes, hotels and offices. They were in the style to be known as Melburyesque, and would draw students from all parts of the architectural earth to Montreal. It was not an unworthy dream, and even if I could never have worked it out 1 might have made of it some- thing of which not wholly to be ashamed. But as early 4* THE CITY OF COMRADES at before I went to the Beaux Arts the curse of Canada — the curse, more or less, of all northern peoples— began to be laid upon me. In Paris I had some respite from it, but almost as soon as I had hung out my shingle at home I was suffering again from its cravings. I will not say that I put up no fight, but I put up no fight commensu- rate with the evil I had to face. The result was what I have told you, and for which I now had to suffer in my soul the most scorching form of recompense. The point I found it difficult to decide was as to whether or not I ever wanted to see Regina Barry again— or y\*ether I had it in me to go back and show myself to her in the state from which I had fallen more than three years before. In the end it was that possibility alone which enabled me to endure the real coming of the dawn. For it came— this new day which out of darkness might be bringing me a new life. As I lay with my face turned toward the west I got none of its first glories. Even on a cloudy morning, with a spattering of rain, I knew there must be splendors in the east, if no more than gray and lusterless splendors. Light to a gray worid is as magical as hope to a gray heart; and as I watched the lamps on the New Jersey heights grow wan, while the river unbared its bosom to the day, that thing came to me which makes disgrace and shame and humiliadon and every other ingredient of remorse a remedy rather than a poison. I myself was hardly aware of the fact till Lovey and I had crept out of our cubby-hole, because all round us men were going to work. Sleepers in the open generally rise with daylight, but we had kept longer than usual to our refuge because we didn't want to fare forth into the rain. As sooner or later it would come to a choice between 43 THE CITY OF COMRADES going out and being kicked out, we decided to move of our own accord. I must leave to your imagination the curious sensation of the down and out in having nothing to do but to get up, shake themselves, and walk away. On waking after each of these homeless nights it had seemed to me that the necessity for undressing to go to bed and dressing when one got up in the morning was the primary distinc- tion between being a man and being a mere animal. Not to have to undress just to dress again reduced one to the level of the horse. Stray dogs got up and went off to their vague leisure just as Lovey and I were doing. Not to wash, not to go to breakfast, not to have a duty when washing and breakfasting were done— knocked out from under one all the props that civilization had built up and deprived one of the right to call oneself a man. I think it was this last consideration that had most weight with me as Lovey and I stood gazing at the multi- farious activities of the scene. There were men in sight, busy with all kinds of occupations. They were like ants; they were like bees. They came and went and pulled and hauled and hammered and climbed and dug, and every man's eyes seemed bent on his task as if it were the only one in the world. "It means two or three dollars a day to 'em if they ain't," Lovey grunted, when I had pointed this fact out to him. "Don't suppose they'd work if they didn't 'ave to, do ye?" "I dare say they wouldn't. But my point is that they do work. It's Emerson who says that every man is at lazy as he dares to be, isn't it?" "Oh, anybody could say that." "And in spite of the fact that they'd rather be lazy, 44 THE CITY OF COMRADES they're all doing something. Look at them. Look at them in every direction to which your eyet can turn — droves of them, swarms of them, armies of them— every one bent on something into which he is putting a piece of himself!" "Well, they've got 'omes or boardin'-'ouses. It's easy enough to git a job when ye can give an address. But when ye carn't— " We were to test that within a minute or two. Fifteen or twenty brownies were digging in a ditch. Of all the forms of work in sight it seemed that which demanded the least in the r »y of special training. Approaching a fiercely mustachioed man of clearly d»- fined nationality, I said, "Say, boss, could you give my buddy and me a job?" Rolling toward me a pair of eyes that would have done credit to a bandit in an opera, he emitted sounds which I can best transcribe as, "Where d'livef" "That's the trouble," I answered, truthfully. "We don't live anywhere and we should like to." He looked us over. "Beat it," he commanded, nod- ding toward the central quarters of the city. "But, boss," I pleaded, "my buddy and I haven't got a quarter between us." He pointed with his thumb over his left shoulder. "Getta out." "We haven't got a nickel," I insisted; "we haven't apt a cent." * "Cristoforo, ca' da cop." As Cristoforo sprang from the ditch to look for a police* man, Lovey and I shuffled off again into the rain. We stood for a minute at the edge of one of the long, ■ordid avenues where a sordid life was surging up and 4S t THE CITY OF COMRADES down. Men, women, and children of all races and nearly all ranks were hurrjring to and fio, each bent on an errand. It was the fact that life provided an errand for each of them that suddenly struck me as the most wonderful thing in creation. There was no one so young or so old, no one so ignorant or so alien, that he was not going from point to point with a special purpose in view. Among the thousands and the tens of thousands who would in the course of the morning pass the spot on which we stood, there would p.obably not be one who hadn't dressed, washed, and breakfasted as a return for his daily rontri- bution to the common good. Never before and hardly ever since did I have such a sense of life's infinite and useful complexity. There was no height to which it didn't go up; there was no depth to which it didn't go down. No one was left out but the absolute wastrel like myself, who couldn't be taken in. Though it was not a cold day, the steadiness of die drizzle chilled me. The dampness of the pavements got through the worn soles of my boots, and I suppose it did the same with Levey's. The lack of food made the old man white, and that c ' drink set him to trembling. The fact that he hadn't shiived for the past day or two gave his sodden face a grisly look that was truly appalling. Though the pale-blue eyes were extinct, as if the spirit in them had been quenched, they were turned toward me with the piteous appeal I had sometimes seen in those of a blind dog. It was for me to take the lead, and yet I couldn't wholly see in what direction to take it- While I was pondering, Lovey made a variety of suggestions. "There doesn't seem to be nothink for it, sonny, but to go and repent for a day or two. I 'ate to do it; kind THE CITY OF COMRADES «/ deceivin' like, it ia; but thc/ll let ut dry ouneivet and give us a feed if we 'are a lenie of sin." I wondered if he had in mind anything better than what I had myself. "Where.*" He took the negative side first. "We couldn't go to the Saviour, because I've put it over on 'em twice this year already. And the 'Omeless Men won't do nothink for ye onless you make it up in menial work." "I won't try either of them," I said, briefly. "Don't blame jrou, sonny, not a bit. Kind o' makes a hypercrite of a man, it does. I 'ate to be a hypercrite, only when I carn't 'elp it." He went on to enumerate other agencies for the raising of the fallen, of most of which he had tested the hos- pitality during the past few years. I rejected them as he named them, one by one. To this rejection Lovey subscribed with the unreasoning dislike all outcast men feel for the hand stretched down to them from higher up. Nothing buf starvation would have forced him to any of these thresholds; and for me even starvation would not work the miracle. "What's the matter with the Down and Out?" I sprang on him, suddenly. He groaned. "(Mi, sonnyl It's just— just what I was afeared of." I turned and looked down into his poor, bleared, suf" fering old face. "Why?" "Because— because— oncet ye try that they'll— they'll never let ye go." "But suppose you don't want them to let you go?" 47 THE CITY OF COMRADES He backed awajr from me. If the dead ejres oouU waken to exprettion, they did it then. "Oh, wnnyl" He shook at if palsied. "Ye don't know 'em, my boy. I've summered and wintered 'em — by lookin' on. I've had pals of my own — " "And what are they doing now, those pals of your own?" "God knows; I don't. Yes, I do; some of 'em. I set 'em round, goin' to work as reg'lar as reg'Iar, and no more spunk in 'em than in a goldfish when ye shakes yer finger at their bowl." Afraid of exciting suspicion by standing still, we began drifting with the crowd. "Is there much that you can call spunk in you and me?" Again he lifted those piteous, drunken eyes. "We're fellas together, ain't we? We're buddies. I 'ear ye say to yerself when you was speakin' -co that Eyetalian." I have to confess that with his inflection something warm crept into my cold heart. You have to be as I was to know what the merest crumbs of trust and affec- tion mean. A dog as stray and homeless as myself might have been more to me; but since I had no dog . . . "Yes, Lovey," I answered, "we're buddies, all right. But for that very reason don't you think we ought to try to help each other up?" He stopped, to turn to me with hands crossed on hit breast in a spirit of petition. "But, sonny, you don't mean — you cam't mean — on — on the wagon i" "I mean on anything that '11 get us out of this hell of a hole." "Oh, well, if it's only that, I've— I've been in tighter places than this before — and — and look at me now. THE CITY OF COMRADES There's wayi. Ye don't haye to jump at nothink on- nat'rel. If ye'd only 'ave listened to me yetterday — but it ain't too late even now. What about to-night? Jutt two old ladies — no violence — nothink that 'd let you in for nothink dishonorable." "No, Lovey." We drifted on again. He spoke in a tone of bitur reproach. "Ye'd rather go to the Down and Out! It '11 be the down, all right, sonny; but there'll be no out to it. Ye'U be a prisoner. They'll keep at ye and at ye till yer soul won't be yer own. Now all these other places ye can put it over on 'em. Thejr're mostly ladies and parsons and greenhorns that never 'ad no experience. A little re- pentance and they'll fall for it every time. Besides" — he turned to me with another form of appeal — "ye're a Christian, ain't ye? A little repentance now and then 'U do ye good. It's like something laid by for a rainy day. I've tried it, so I know. Ye're young, sonny. Ye don't understand. And when it '11 tide ye over a time like this — they'll git ye a job, very likely — and ye can back- slide by and by when it's safe. Why, it's all as easy as easy." "It isn't as easy as easy, Lovey, because you say you don't like it yourself." "I like it better than the Down and Out, where they won't let ye backslide no more. Why, I was in at Stin- son's one day and there was a chap there — PoUins was his name, a plumber— just enj'yin' of himself like — ^nothink wrong — and come to find out he'd been one of their men. Well, what do ye think, sonny ? A fellow named Pyncheon blew in — awfiil 'ard drinker for a young 'and, he used t» be — and he sat down beside Rollins and pled with 'im 49 THE CITY OF COMRADES «nd plod with 'im, and-^well, ye don't lee RoUini round Stmton'i no more. I tell ye, tonny, ye carn't put notl>- ing over on 'em. They knows all the tricki and all the trade. Give me kind-'earted ladies; give me ministers of the gospel; give me the stool o' repenunce two or three tomes a month; but don't give me fellas that because they've knocked off the booze theirselves wants every one else to knock it off, too, and don't let it be a free country." We came to the comer to which I had been directing our seemingly aimless steps. It was a comer where the big red and green jars that had once been the symbols for medicmes within now stood as a sign for soda-water and ice-cream. "Let's go in here." Lovey hung back. "What's the use of that? That am't no saloon." "G)me on and let us try." Pushing open the screen door, I made him pass in be- fore me. We found ourselves in front of a white counter fitted up like a kind of bar. As a bar of any sort was better than none, Love/s face took on a leaden shade of bnghmess. In the way of a guardian all we could see at first was a T^ite-coated back bent behind the counter. When it straightened up it was topped by a friendly, boyish face. Lovey leaped back, pulling me by the arm. ''TTiat's that very young Pyncheon I was a-tellin' you of, he whispered, tragically; "him what got Rollins, the plumber, out of Stinson's. Let's 'ook it, sonnyl He won't do u? no good." But the boyish face had already begun to beam. "Hel-lo, old sportl Haven't seen you in a pair of blue moons. Put it therel" THE CITY OF COMRADES The welcome wat the mote ditconcerting because in the mirror behind Pyncheon I could lee mytelf in contrast to hit clean, young, manly figure. I have said I was shabby without being hideously so, but that was before I had slept a fourth night on the bare boards of a lumber-yard, to be drenched with rain in the morning. It was also before I had gone a fourth morning without shaving, and with nothing more thorough in the way of a wash than I could steal in a station lavatory. The want of food, the want of drink, to say nothing of the unspeakable an- guish within, had stamped me, moreover, with something woebegone and spectral which, now that I saw it reflected in the daylight, shook me to the soul. I never was so timid, apologetic, or shamefaced in my bfe as when I grasped the friendly hand stretched out to me across the counter. I had no smile to return to Pyn- cheon's. I had no courtesies to exchange. Not till that minute had I realized that I was outside the system of fellowship and manhood, and that even a handshake was a condescension. "Pyn," I faltered, hoarsely, "I want you to take me to the Down and Out. Will you f" "Sure I will!" He glanced at Lovey. "And I'll take old Lovikins, too." "Don't you be so fresh with your names, young man I" Lovey spoke up, tartly. "Tain't the first time I've seen you — " "And I hope it won't be the last," Pyn laughed. "That '11 depend on how polite ye're able to make yer- self." "Oh, you can count me in on politeness, old sport, so long as you come to the Down and Out." "I'll go to the Down and Out when I see fit. I ain't SI I THE CITY OF COMRADES goin' to be dragged there by the 'air of the 'ead. a« I ie« you drag poor Rolliiu, the plumber, a month or two ago." "Quit your kiddin', Lorey. How am I going to drag you by the 'air of the 'ead when you're ai bald as a door- knob I Say, you fellows," he went on, pulling one of the levers before him, "I'm going to start you off right now with a glass of this hot chocolate. The treat's on me. By the time you've swallowed it Milligan will be here, and I can get off long enough to take you over to Vandiver Street." Bedashed in a blob of whipped cream. "Here, old son, this is for you; and there's more where it came from." "I didn't come in 'ere for nothink of the kind," Lovey protested. "I didn't know we was comin' in 'ere at all. You take it, sonny." "Go ahead, Lovikins," Mr. Pyncheon insisted. "'£'• to 'ave a bigger one," he mimicked. "Awful good for the 'air of the 'ead. 'LI make it sprout like an apple- tree — I beg your pardon, happle-tree— in May." Before Pjmcheon had finished, the primitive in poor Lovey had overcome both pride and reluctance, and the glass of chocolate was pretty well drained. The sight of his sheer animal avidity warned me not to betray myself. While Pyncheon explained to Milligan and made his prep- arations for conducting us, I carried my chocolate to the less important part of the shop, given up to the sale of tooth-brushes and patent medicines, to consume it at ease and with dignity. Pyncheon having changed to a coat, in the buttonhole of which I noticed a little silver star, and a straw hat with a faint silver line in the hatband, we were ready to d^art. THE CITY OF COMRADES "m go with ye. loiinjr,'' IxKny explained; "but I am t •foin' to tuy. No Down and Out for mine." You wouldn't leaye me, Loyeyr I begged, a* I re- pUced the empty glatt on the counter. "I'm looking to you to help me to keep ftraight." J?^.*^'?'' "P " "**• '"^« » ihaking hand on my aim. « j' '.' 't* ***~ ^"*'" •" »'*'•«• "»« cheerfully, we don t have to itay no longer than we don't want to. There't no law by which they can keep ut ag'in* our will, there ain't." "No, Lovey. If we want to go we'll go— but we're buddiei, aren't we? And we'll itick by each other." "Say, you fellowil Quick march I I've only got half an hour to get there and back." Out in the street, Lovey and I hung behind our guide. He wat too briik and tmart and clean for ui to keep ttep with. Alone we could, at we phrased it, get by. With him the contrast called attention to the fact that we were broken and homeless men. j|You go ahead, Pyn— " I began. "Aw, cut that outr he returned, scornfully. "Wasn't la worse looker than you, two and a half years ago? Old Colonel Straight picked me up from a bench in Madi- •on Square— the very bench from which he'd been picked up himself— and dragged me down to Vandiver Street like a nurse '11 drag a boy that kicks like blazes every step of the way." As we were now walking three abreast, with Pyn in the middle, I asked the question that was most on my mind: I Was it hard, Pyn— cutting the booze out?" "Sure it was hard! What do you think? You're not on the way to a picnic For the first two weeks I fought like hell. If the other guys hadn't sat on my head— wel^ 53 THE CITY OF COMRADES jpou uid old Lovcjr WDuldn't have had no gbw of hot diocobte thit morning." "I tuppote the first two weeki are the worn." "And the beet. If you're really out to put the job through you find younelf toughening to it every day." "And you mean by being out to put the job through?" "Wanting to get the dumed thing under you lo as you can stand on it and stamp it down. Boose Ml make two kinds of repenters, and I guess you guys stand for both. Old Levey here" — he pinched my companion's arm — "he'll forsake his bad habits just long enough to get well fed up, a clean shirt on his back, and his nerves a bit quieted down. But he'll always be looking forward to the day when he'll be tempted again, and thinking of the good time he'll have when he falls." "If you'll mind yer own business, young Pyn— " Lovey began, irritably. "Then there's another kind," this experienced reformet went on, imperturbably, "what '11 have a reason for cut- ting the blasted thing out, like he'd cut out a cancer or anything else that 'II kill him. I've always known you was that kind. Slim, and I told you so nearly a yeat ago. "I seen ye," Lovey put in. "Was speakin' about it * only yesterday. Knew you was after no good. I warned ye, didn't I, Slim?" Curiosity prompted me to say, "What made you think I had a morive for getting over it?" "Looks. You can always tell what a man's made for by the kind of looker he is. As a looker you're some sweU. Lovikins here, now — " "If I can't do as well as the likes o' you, ye poor little •nipe of a bartender for babies — " 54 ^ i THE CITY OF COMRADES you bet you can'tr Pyn aakcd, tDod- "Wh« 'U naturedly. "I ain't » bettin' man, but I can showr' "Well, you show, and I'll lay fifty centi againit you. You'll be umpire, Slim, and hold the Kakc*. It that a tor "I don't 'ave no truck o* that kind," Lovey declared, loftily. "I'madoer, lam-^henlgeta-goin*. I don't brag beforehand — not like lome." I wai ttill curious, however, about myielf. "And what did you make out of my look*, I^?" He stopped, stood off, and eyed me. " Do you know what you're like now?" "I know I'm not like anjrthing human." "You're like a twenty-dollar bill that's been in every pawnshop, and every bar, and tvery old woman's stocking, and every old bum's pocket, and is covered with dirt and grease and microbes till you wouldn't hardly hold it in your hand; but it's still a twenty-dollar bill— that 'II buy twenty dollars' worth every time— and whenever you like you can get gold for it." "Thank you, Pyn," I returned, humbly, as we went on our way again. "That's the whitest thing that has ever been said to me." Before we reached Vandiver Street, Pyn had given u« two bin of information, both of which I waj, glad to receive. One was eqdrely personal, being a brief survey of hi* fall and rise. The son of a barber in one of the small towns near New York, he had gone to work with a drug- gist on leaving the high school. His type, as he described It, had been from the beginning that of the cheap sport. Cheap sports had been his companions, and before he is ITHE CITY OF COMRADES I wat twenty-one he had married a pretty manicure giri from his father*! establishment. He had married her while on a spree, and after the spree had repented. Re- penting chiefly because he wasn't earning enough to keep a wife, he threw the blame for his mistake on her. When a baby came he was annoyed; when a second baby came he was desperate; when a third baby promised to appear he was overwhelmed. Since the expenses of being a cheap sport couldn't be reduced, he saw no resource but flight to New York, leaving his wife to fend for herself and her children. Folly having made of him a hard drinker, remorse made of him a harder one. And since no young fellow of twenty- four is callous enough to take wife-desertion with an easy conscience, my own first talks with him had been filled with maudlin references to a kind of guilt I hadn't at the time understood. All I knew was that from bad he had gone to worse, and from worse he was on the way to the worst of all, when old Colonel Straight rescued him. The tale of that rescue unfolded some of the history of the Down and Out. As to that, Pyn laid the emphasis on the fact that the club was not a mission — that is, it was not the effort of the safe to help those who are in danger; it was the eflFort of those who are in danger to help themselves. Built up on unassisted effort, it was self- respecting. No bribes had ever been o£Fered it, and no persuasions but such as a man who has got out of hell can bring to bear on another who is still frying in the fire. Its action being not from the top downward, but from the bottom upward, it had a native impulse to expansion. Its inception had been an accident. Two men who had first met as Pyncheon and I had first met had lost tight of each other for several years. At a time when each S6 THE CITY OF COMRADES had worked hi. wlvation out they had come together br acodent on Broadway, and later had by another accident become responsible for a third. Finding him one night lying on the pavement of a lonely street, they had seem, mgly had no choice but to pick him up and cany him to a cheap but friendly hostelry which they knew would not refuse him. Here they had kept him till he had sobered up and taken the job they found for him. Watching over him for months, they finally had the pleasure of restoring hmi to hif wife and wseing a broken home put on its feet again. Ihis third man, in gratitude for what had been done for him, went after a fourth, and the fourth after a tfth and so the chain was flung out. By the time their number had mcreased to some twenty-five or thirty Providence offered them a dwelling-place. The dweUing-place, with the few apparently worthless articles It contamed, was all the club had ever accepted a« a gift Even that might have been declined had it not been for the fact that it was going begging. When old Miss Smedley died it was found that she had left her residence m Vandiver Place as a legacy to St. David's Church, across the way. She had left it, however, as an empty residence. As an empty residence it was in a meas- ure a white elephant on the hands of a legatee that had no immediate use for it. St David's Oiurch, you wiU remember, was not now the fashionable house of prayer it had been in its early days. Time was when Vandiver Place was the heart of exclusive New York. In the 'forties and 'fifties no sec- tion of the aty had been more select. In the 'sixties and seventies, when Doctor Grace was rector of St. David's It had become time-honoied. In the 'eighties and 'nineties the old &umhes bc^an to move up-town and the boarding- • 57 , THE CITY OF COMRADES houses to creep in; and in the early years of the twentieth century the residents ceded the ground entirely to the manufacturer of artificial flowers and the tailor of the ready-to-wear. In 191 1 the line of houses that made it a cul-de-sac was torn down and a broad thoroughfare cut through a congeries of slums, the whole being named Vandiver Street. Vandiver Place was gone; and with it went Miss Smedley. Rufus Legrand, who succeeded Doctor Grace as rector of St. David's, offered Miss Smedley's house as a home for the Down and Out; but it was Beady Lamont, a husky furniture-mover and ardent member of the club, who suggested this philanthropic opportunity to Rufus Legrand. "Say, reverent, my buddy's give in at last, on'y I haven't got no place to put him. But, say, reverent, there's that old house I helped to move the sticks out of two or three months ago. There's three beds left in it, and a couple of chairs. Me and him could bunk there for a few nights, while he got straightened out, and — " "But you'd have no bedclothes." "Say, reverent, we don't want no bedclothes. Sleepin' in the Park '11 learn you how to do without sheets." "My daughter, Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, could undoubt- edly supply you with some." "Say, reverent, that ain't our way. We don't pass the buck on no one. What we haven't £,-ot we do without till we can pay for it ourselves. But that old house ain't doin' nothing but sit on its haunches; and if I could just get Tiger into the next bed to mine at night — we don't want no bedclothes nor nothing but what we lay down in — and take him along with me when I go to work by day, so as to keep my search-lights on him, like — " 58 THE CITY OF COMRADES Rufus Legrand had already sufficiently weighed the proposal. "I'm sure I don't see why you shouldn't sleep in the old place as long as you like, Beady, if you can only make yourselves comfortable." "Say, reverent, now you're shouting." So another accident settled the fate of Miss Smedley's lifelong home; and before many weeks the Down and Out was in full possession. It was in full possession of the house with the refuse the heirs had not considered good enough to take away — three iron bedsteads that the servants had used; an equal number of humble worn-out mattresses; two tolerably solid wooden chairs, three that needed repairs, which were speedily given them; some crockery mote or less chipped and cracked; and a stained steel-engraving of Franklin in the salon of Marie Antoinette, True to its principles, the club accepted neither gifts of money nor contributions in kind. Its members were all graduates of the school of doing without. To those who came there a roof over the head was a luxury, while to have a friend to stand by them and care whether they went to the devil or not was little short of a miracle. But by the time Billy Pyncheon had been brought in by old Colonel Straight, gratitude, sacrifice, and enthusi- asm on the part of one or another of the members had adequately fitted up this house to which Lovey and I were on the way. It had become, too, the one institution of which the saloon-keepers of my acquaintance were afraid. We were all afraid of it. It had worked so many wonders among our pals that we had come to look on it as a home of the necromantic. Missions of any kind we knew how to cope with; but in the Down and Out there S9 THE CITY OF COMRADES wu a aoit of wizardry that tamed the wilden hearts among us, cast out devils, and raised the nearly dead. I myself for a year or more— ever since I had seen the tpell it had wrought on Pyn, for whom from the first I had felt a sympathy — had been haunted by the dread of it; and here I was at the door. The door when we got to it was something of a dis- appointment. It was at the head of a flight of old-time biownstone steps, and was just like any other door. About it was nothing of the magical or cabalistic Lovey and I had been half expecting. More impressive was the neat little man who opened to our ting. He was a wan, wistful, smiling little figure of sixty-odd, on whom all the ends of the world seemed to have come. He was like a man who has been dead and buried and has come to life again — but who shows he has been dead. If I had to look like that . . . But I took comfort in the thought of P)m. Pyn showed nothing. He was like one of the three holy men who went through Nebuchadnezzar's furnace — ^the smell rf fire had not passed on him. A heartier, healthier, merrier fellow it would have been difficult to find. He entered now with the air of authority which belongs to the member of a club. "Fellows had their breakfast, Spenderf Spender was all welcome, of the wistful, yearning kind. "The men at work is gone; but the guys under restraint is srill at table." "Mr. Christian not here yet?" "Never gets here before nine; and it's not half past seven yet." Pyn turned to me. "Say, do you want to go in and feed, or will you wash up first, or go to bed, or what?" 60 THE CITY OF COMRADES With thit larse liberty of choice I uked if we could do „ir"^ '^ ^^^ ^* ^" Spender who explained. That s the rule for new arrivali, unleu they've got to be put under restraint at once." "I don't want to be put under no lettraint," Lovey declared, indignantly. "TTiat 'U be all right," Spender repUed, kindly, "ua- leM there's vermin—" Lovey jumped. "See here, now! Don't you begin no such immodest talk to me." "There, there. Lovikins," Pyn broke in. "Spender don t mean no harm. All sorts have to come to a place hke this. But when we see a gentleman we treat him like a gentleman. All Spender wants to know is this, Is it eats for you first, or a bath?" ".^^ ^.*'°!I'* "'""* "° •'«'•'" ^""y declared, proudly. Ihen It 11 be eats. Quick march 1 I've got to beat It back to my job." Pyn's introduction of us to those already in the dining- room was simple. "This is Lovey. This is Slim. You guys 'U make 'em feel at home." Making us feel at home consisted in . loving along the table so as to give us room. In words there was no re- sponse to Pyn, who withdrew at once, nor was there more than a cursory mspection of us with the eyes. Whatever was kindly was in the atmosphere, and that was perceptible. As we sat before two empty places, one of our new companions rose, went to the dresser behind us, and brought us each a plate, a spoon, a knife, and a cup and •aucer. A big man went to the kitchen door and in a voice kke thunder called out, "Mousel" 6i THE CITY OF COMRADES By the time he had returned to his place a stumpy individual with a big red mustache and a limp appeared on the threshold. An explanation of the summons was given him when a third of our friends pointed at us with a spoonful of oatmeal porridge before he put it in his mouth. Mouse withdrew into the kitchen, coming back with two basins of porridge, which he placed, steaming hot, before us. Presently, too, he filled our cups with coffee. Bread and butter, sugar and milk, were all on the table. The meal went on in silence, except for the smacking of lips and the clinking of spoons on the crockeryware. Of our fellow-guests I can only say that they presented different phases of the forlorn. The man next to me was sallow, hatchet-faced, narrow-breasted, weak of physique, and looked as if he might have been a tailor. His hair was a shock of unkempt black curls, and his dark eyes the largest and longest and most luminous I ever saw in a man. In their nervous glance they made me think of a horse's eyes, especially when he rolled them toward me timidly. Opposite was a sandy, freckled-face type, whom I easily diagnosed as a Scotchman. Light hair, light eye- brows, and a heavy reddish mustache set off a face scored with a few deep wrinkles, and savage like that of a beast fretted with a sense of helplessness. The shaking hand that passed the bread to me was muscular, freckled, and covered with coarse, reddish hairs. I put him down as a gardener. At the head of the table was a huge, unwieldy fellow who looked as if he had all run to fat, but who, as I after- ward learned, was a mass of muscle and sinew, like a Japanese wrestler. He had bloated cheeks and bloated hands, and a voice so big and bass that when he spoke, 62 THE CITY OF COMRADES ai he did on going to the door to iiunmon Mouse, he al- most shook the dishes on the dresser. He proved to be, too, a pal of Beady Lamont's, and as a piano-mover by profession he frequented Beady's spheres. At the big man's right was a poor little whippersnapper, not more than five foot two, who looked as if a puff would blow him away; and opposite him a tall, spare, fine- looking Irishman, a hospital attendant, whose face would have been full of humor had it not been convulsed for the time being with a sense of mortal anguish. It was he who had brought us our dishes and took pains to see that our needs were supplied. No more than any of the others were we eager for con- versation. The fact that we were having good warm food served in a more or less regular way was enough to occupy all that was uppermost in our thoughts. Poor Lovey ate as he had drunk the chocolate half an hour before, with a greed that was abnost terrible. Once more I might have done the same had I not taken his example as a warning. Not that anything I did would have attracted attention in that particular gathering. Each man's gaze was turned inward. His soul's tragedy absorbed him to the exclusion of everything else. Reac- tion from the stupor of excess brought nothing but a sense of woe. There was woe on all faces. There would have been woe in all thoughts if conscious thought had not been outside the range of these drugged and stultified faculnes. What was more active than anything else was a blind fellow-feeling. They did little things for ene another. They did little watchful things for Lovey and me. They even quarreled over their kindnesses like children eager to make themselves usefuL 63 THE CITY OF COMRADES "You'll want to know whew the barth-ioom ie," th« timid tailor (aid to me a* we rote from the table. "Ill «how you." There was a marl from the whippeimapper acioM the way. "Aw, put your lid on, Headlightt. How long haye you been showin' barth-rooms in this here shebang?" He beckoned to me. "You come along o' me. Slim — " It was the Irishman who intervened to keep the peace. "Listen to Daisy now, will youf He's like a fox- terrier that owns the house and grounds and barks at every wan who goes by. ' Look now, Daisy I You take this ould gent up to the bath-room on the top floor; and you, Headlights, show Slim to the one on the second floor, and every wan o' you '11 have a bite at the cake." With this peaceable division of the honors we started off. I must describe the club as very humble. The rooms themselves, as was natural with an old New York resi- dence, did not lack dignity. Though too narrow for their height, they had admirable cornices and some exquisite ceiling medallions. It is probable, too, that in days when there were no skyscrapers in the neighborfiood the house was light enough, but now it wore a general air of dim- ness. The furnishings were just what you might have expected from the efforts of very poor men in giving of their small superfluity. There were plenty of plain wooden chairs, and a su£Bciency of tables to match them. In the two down-stairs sitting-rooms, which must once have been Miss Smedle/s front and back drawing-rooms, there were benches against the wall. A roll-top desk, which I learned was the official seat of Mr. Christian, was .so placed as to catch the light from Vandiver Stmt. A 64 THE CITY OF COMRADES plain, black, wooden croM between the two front win, dowi, and Franklin in the salon of Marie Antoinette in the place of honor over a fine old white marble mantel- piece, completed the two reception-rooms. The floor above was given over to the dormitoriea for outsiders, and contained little more than beds. They were small iron beds, made up without counterpanes. As every man made his own, the result would not have passed the inspection of a high-class chambermaid, but they satisfied those who lay down in them. Since out- siders came in, like Lovey and me, with little or nothing m the way of belongings, it was unnecessary to make further provision for their wardrobes than could be found in the existing closets and shelves. In the front bedroom, which I suppose must have been Miss Smedley's, there were nine small beds; in the room back of that there were seven; and in a small room over the kitchen, given up to the men positively under restraint, there were five. Twenty-one outsiders could thus be cared for at a time. On the third floor were the dormitories for club mem- ber*— men who had kept sober for three months and more, and who wore a star of a color denoting the variety of their achievements. On this floor, too, was a billiard, card, and smoking room, accessible to any one, even to outsiders, who had kept sober for three weeks. On the top floor of all were a few bedrooms, formerly those of Miss Smedley's servants, reserved for the occasional oc- cupancy of such grandees as had preserved their integrity for three years and more; and here, too, was the sacred place known as "the lounge," to which none were ad- mitted who didn't wear the gold or silver star representing sobriety for at least a year. The whole was, therefore, a carefully arranged hierar- THE CITY OF COMRADES Little Spender wore the gold ,tar. indicating . five yew.' fight with the devU; and Mou«,. the cook, a blue one, which meant that he had been victoriou. for th«e monA^ A^ <«her, m the dub when Lovey and I arrived ^ out.,de™ like ourwlve.. Outsider, gave their word to way a week, generally for the purpow! of wbering up, but beyond d^at nothing wa. a.ked of them. At the b;8i" mng of the .econd week they could either continue their novitiate or go. «n^^* ^"/"Tm"' 7 ■ ; «*''"' "" ^y Spender a. we .tood on the threshold of the bath-room before I pawed in. When the tale wa. ended, however, the Scotchman, who Had taken little or no part in our reception, pushed by me and entered. ' hi.''Id«iir "^^^ ' ''"^'" !" "•■''■ •» «P'»»«ion of h^. rudeness. There are my things"-he got down on all-four, to .how me a safety razor and a broken cup containing , bruMi and .having-.oap. hidden behind one c^rthe legs of the bath-tub-" and you'll oblige me by put- ting them back Daisy, the wee bye you saw at the table. IS doing the same by your chum. I make no doubt yout^own thing, have been held in your last rooming- andTltn I •'"d "dniitted that this wa. exactly the case and had thanked my friends for their courtesies, they withdrew, leaving me to my toilet. After the good meal the bath was a genuine luxu^r. It was a decent bath-room, kept by the men, as all the house was kept, in a kind of di^jy cleanliness. Qeanli- nes., I found was not only a principle of the club; it was one of the first indications that those who came in for jheker gave of a .urvival of self-ie.pect. Some of 66 THE CITY OF COMRADES their effom in th« way were imuring or pathetic, m the """t^i I '■ ^H"*^. *•" •"*»>'• ''"™»'' ""^ touching. While .having 1 had an inipiration that wai to have •wne effect on what happened to me afterward. I de- cided to let my muitache grow. A. it grew .trongly i„ «ny caje, a four day.' abaence of the raior had given^ry upper hp a deep walnut tinge, and, should I leave the dub after the week to which I had tacitly pledged my- •elf by coming there at all. I .hould look different from when I entered To look different wa, the fim of the obicure and violent longings of which my heart wa. full. M 'f,*''* ""«•« Po^ible thing to getting away from my old self. Not to be the .ame man at all a. the ^ who had exchanged those few strange sentences with Kegina Barry seemed to be the goal toward which I wa* wiUing to struggle at any cott of .acrifice. Having bathed and shaved. 1 was not an iU-looking fellow till It came to putting on my shirt again. Any man who has wont a shirt for forty-eight hour, in a city or on a tram know, what a horror it become, in the ex- posed spot, on the chest and about the wri.t.. I had had but one shirt for a week and more-and but the one •oft collar. You can see already, then, that in spite of *)me success in smaitening up my damp and threadbare iuit X left the bath-room looking abject. I was not, however, so abject as Lovey when I found him again m the front sittin-ioom down-stairs. In the back sitting-room our table companions were all arranged in a row against the wall. In spite of the fact that there were plenty of chairs, they sat huddled together on one bench; and though there was tobacco, as there were books papers, and magazines, they sought no occu- pation. When I say that they could have smoked and 67 li THE CITY OF COMRADES £dn't. th* wmch that had bMn givm to their nonnal Mate of mind will be apparent. Ooae up to one another they pijiaMl, the Scotchman agaimt the piano-mover, and the piano-mover againat the wee bye Daily, like lovebird* on the perch of a cage or newly captured ani- malt too terrified even to snap. Without comment cm any one'* part, Lovey named the front fitdng-room alone. "I fay, lonny," he began, fretfully, aa I entered, "thie ain't no place for you and me." I tried to buck him up. "Oh, well, it'i only for a week. We can ttand it for that long. They're vety civil to ut." "But they're watchin' of us already like so many catf." "Oh no, they're not. The/re only kind." "I don't want none o' that sort of kindness. What do ye think that two-foot-four of a Daisy say* to me when 'e offered me the loan of 'i* razor? 'Lovey,' says *e, 'I'm goin' to 'elp ye to knock off the booze. It 'U be terr'ble hard work iibr an old man like you.' 'To 'ell with you!' says I. 'Ye ain't goin' to 'elp me to do no attch thing, because knock it off is somethink I don't mean.' 'Well, what did you come in 'ere for?' says 'e. 'I come in 'ere,' I says to 'im, 'because my buddy cmne in 'ere; and wherever 'e goes I'll foller 'im.'" "Then that's understood, Lovey," I said, cheerfully. "If I go at the end of the week, you go; and if I stay, you stay. We'U be fellas together." He shook his head mournfully. "If you go at the end of the week, sonny, I go, too; but if you stay — well, I don't know. I've been in jails, but I 'ain't never been in no such place a* this— nobody THE CITY OF COMRADES wkh no tpimk. Look M 'on in then noif^-nothiiik but • bunch of timpt." "You won't leave me, Loveyr '*ne extinct-blue eyes were raited to mine. "No* »cnny; I won't leave ye— not for 'ardly aothink." CHAPTER ir 1D0NT know how we got the idea that before we went any fanher we should be interviewed by Andy Chrii- tian, but I suppose somebody must have told us. We had heard of him, of course. He was, in fact, the master wizard whose incantations Were wrecking our institutions. It was a surprise to us, therefore, to see, about nine o'clock, a brisk little elderly man blow in and blow past us — the metaphor is the most expressive I can use — with hardly more recognition than a nod. "Hello, fellows I" he called out, as he passed through the hall inid glanced in at Lovey and me in the sitting- Toom. "Hello, boys!" he said, casually, through the .second door, to the other group, after which he went on his way to talk domestic matters with Mouse in the kitchen. He seemed a mild-maimered man to have done all the diabolical work we had laid at his door. Neatly dressed in a summery black-and-white check, with a panama hat, he was like any other of the million business men who were on their way to New York offices that morning. It was only when he came back from the kitchen and was in conference with some of the men in the back parlor that I caught in him that look of dead and buried tragedy with which I was to grow so familiar in other members of the club. Superficially he was clean-shaven, round- featured, rubicund, and kindly, with a quirk about the 70 THE CITY OF COMRADES lip» and a smile in his twinkling gray eves that «»^*J always about to tell you the n^wfst^ot^ Hs ^Tnet hZni"''^ »«> «e. when he came into th^C «tt.ng-room, was that of having known us all our lives b^^rhrSbroZr- ''-' ""'^ ' '- "'^"- Let me seel Your name is — ?" „eUl!°°'''f, ^\^T^ "* *^°"8h he knew hi, name perf^tly well, only that for the second it had slipped^: Lovey went forward to the roll-top desk at which Mr tiauy. My name is Lovey, Your Honor." "lirr, 1 '^' "P* '^"^ '° '=«'='=«'' " 'ittle caper. ^^ Is^ that your first name or your second ?" It s my only name." wal^to" X?" '"" •"'' "'°*'-^^ "=-'• •>« y- «»-•* buirb^t! j:; '"^' """'"'^ "=""' " -'^ -'x-^y The head of the club was now writing in a ledger his eye foUowmg the movement of his pen. '^' I see that you're a man of decided opinions." d Jd.':,^''^?^,.^""' "°-^^ P"0-«." I-vey de- up. Before Lovey could protest that he wasn't „^Z to put up no fight the gentle voice went on "l^/^o! seem hke a respectable man, too." ^ 71 THE CITY OF COMRADES m "All that '11 be a great help to you. What's been your occupation?" •"Atter." As our host was less used to the silent "h" than I, it became necessary for me to say, "Hatter, sir." I suppose it was my voice. Christian looked up quick- ly, studying me with a long, kind, deep regard. Had I b:en walking two thousand years ago on the hills of Palestine and met Some One on the road, he might have looked at me like that. The glance fell. Lovey's interrogation continued. "And would you like that kind of job agai'* -if we could get it for you — ultimately?" "I don't want no job. Your Honor. I can look after myself. I didn't come in 'ere of my own free will — nor to pass the buck — nor nothink." There was an inflection of surprise, perhaps of dis- approval in the tone. "You didn't come in here of your own free will? I think it's the first time that's been said in the history of the club. May I ask how it happened ?" I couldn't help thinking that I ought to intervene. "He came in on my account, sir," I said, getting up and going forward to the desk. "He's trying to keep me straight." "That is, he'll keep straight if you do?" "That's it, sir, exactly." He continued to write, speaking without looking up at us. "Then I can't think of anything more to your credit, Mr. — Mr. Lovey — is that it?" "I don't want no mister. Your Honor — not now I don't." 72 THE CITY OF COMRADES "men a man takes so fine a stand as you're taking toward this young fellow he's a mister to me. I respe^ him and treat him with respect. I see that we're meant to understand each other and get on together." Poor Lovey had nothing to say. The prospect of TrTC- "l 1'" ^'"^ "^"""^ ^y ••« °^ heroism rendered him both proud and miserable at once. When the writing was finished the kind eyes were again lifted toward me. Though the inspection was so mild, It pierced me through and through. It stiU seemed to cover me as he said: "You nsedn't tell me your real name if you don't want to-but in general we prefer it. "I'll tell anything you ask me, sir. My name is Frank Melbury. In order to conceal nothing, I added, "As a matter offset, it's Francis Worsley Melbury Melbury: "^i,""' '* '" *••* shortened form I've dven you." Thanks. You're English?" of Mo"ntreS"'"*"- ^"^ ^""^'' " ^" ^'''"'* ^^"""y- "Married?" "No, sir. Single." "And you have a profession?" "Architect." YoAr" ^°" ^"'^^^ " *"' profession here in Newj I gave him the names of the offices in which from time 1 to time 1 had found employment. "And would you like to work at it again r 'I should, sir." "As a matter of fact, we have a number of architects, not exactly m the club, but friendly toward it. and oa intimate terms with us. I'll introduce you to some of • 73 THE CITY OF COMRADES them when — tthea you get on your feet. How M are you? Thirty?" "Thirty-one." For some two minutes he went on writing. "How long since you've been drinking?" "My last drink was three days ago." "And how long since you've been actually drunk?" "About a week." "And before that?" "It was pretty nearly all the time." "It's a great advantage! to you to come to us sober. It means that you know what you're doing and are to some extent counting the cost. Men will take any kind of vow when they're" — his glance traveled involuntarily to the back room — "when they're coming off a spree. The difficulty is to make them keep their promises when they've got over the worst of it. In your case — " "I've got a motive, sir." "Then so much the better." I turned to Lovey. "Lovey, would you mind stepping into the next room? There's something I want to speak about privately." "If it's to let me in for worse, sonny — " "No, it won't let you in for anything. It's only got to do with me." "Then I don't pry into no secrets," he said, as he moved away reluctantly; "only, when fellas is buddies together — " "I've a confession to make," I continued, when Lovey was out of earshot. "Last nighi I — " "Hold on I Is it necessary for you to tell me this or not?" I had to reflect. 74 THE CITY OF COMRADES "It's only neceisaty in that I want you to know the worst of me." "But I'm not sure that we need to know that. It often happens that a man does better in keeping his secrets m his own soul and shouldering the full weight of their responsibility. Isn't it enough for us to know of you what we see?" "I don't know that I can judge of that." "Then tell me this: What you were going to say— ia " '"^''""8 for which you could be arrested?" ','}*'' ""''''"* '"'■ ^^^'^^ ^ '•'»" ■>« arrested." "But it's an offense against the law?" I nodded. "And what renders you immune?" "The fact that— that the person most concerned ha»— has forgiven it." "Man or woman?" "Woman." His eyes wandered along the cornice as he thought the matter out. I saw then that they were wonderfully clear gray eyes, not so much beautiful as perfect— perfect m their finish as to edge and eyelash, but perfect most of all because of their expression of benignity. "I don't believe I should give that away," he said, at last; not now, at any rate. If you want to tell me Ifi^T . ™^"8e'l the subject abruptly by saying. Is that the only shirt you've got?" I told him I had two or three clean ones in my trunk, but that that ^as held by my last landlord. How much did you owe him?" I produced a soiled and crumpled bill. He looked it over. "We'U send and pay the bill, and get your trunk." 7S f\\ IM:: THE CITY OF COMRADES The genenxity almoM took my breath away. "Oh, but^-" "We should be only advancing the money," he ex- plained; "and we should look to you to pay us back when you can. It's quite a usual procedure with us, be- cause it happens in perhaps six of our cases out of ten. I don't have to point out to you," he continued, with a smile, "what I'm always obliged to underscore with chaps like those in there, that if you don't make good what we spend on your account the loss comes not on well-disposed charitable pbople who give of their abun- dance, but on poor men who steal from their own penury. The very breakfast you ate this morning was paid for in the main by fellows who are earning from twelve to twenty-five dollars a week, and have families to sup- port besides." I hung my head, trying to stammer out a promise of {flaking good. "You see those boys in there f There are five of them, •nd two will probably stick to us. That's about the pro- portion we keep permanently of all who come in. I don't know which two they will be — you never can tell. Perhaps it will be the piano-mover and the Scotchman; perhaps the man they call Headlights and the Irishman; perhaps the little chap and some other one of them. But whichever they are they'll chip in for the sake of the new ones we shall reclaim, and take on themselves the burden of the work." The thought that for the comforts I had enjoyed that moining I was dependent on the sacrifice of men who had hardly enough for their own children made me red- den with a shame I think he understood. "Their generosity is wonderful," he went on, quietly; 76 THE CITY OF COMRADES "and I tell it to liie you only . . — i became appreciate how wonderful it it. It'. th» (-.r* livng These feUows love to give. They love to have you take the httle they can offer. You never had a meal at your own father's table that was laid before you mo" ungrudgmgly th«. the one you ate this momi^J. ^^ men who provide ,t are doing humble work all over the ^r'^ T ***. country-because we're scattered p,«tty sntch of a „«,dle and every tap on a typewriter, an^ ^Z!^Tt*'^°^t' ""'' '^"y ''•8°f =• pick, and ;very nunute of the time by which they scrape together th^ penme, and the quarters and the dollars they send in pra;:r 'LV'"^"' '°^ ^"- ' -""^ ^^ ^^ -"at His glance was now that of inquiry HeiiSragZ^"" "" ""'' ^'" ' ""'--''• "-"y- "Well, it isn't giving information to a wise and loving Father as to what He had better do for us. It's in tr^w others. That isn't all of it. by any means! but it's a «artmg-po.„t. Spender tells me that that nice fellow Pyiicheon brought you in. Well, then, every glass^ soda-water Pyncheon draws is in its w^y a^ray^r for you. because the boy's heart is full of you. Praver i[ action-^nly it's kind action." ^ treZt'"/-'' '"'"' '"'" Ir'^' "^'^ "" "ff""" to control the tremor of my voice; "I think I understand you." You yoursdf will be praying all through this week. helnZ r? °" *° \"'^ ""• You'll be praying ^ helpmg that poor man Lovey to do the sanie. In U. 77 THE CITY OF COMRADES ;i; lit'! own purblind way^-of coune I undentand hit type and what you're trying to do for him — hell be prayingi too. Prayer it living— only, living in the right way." He taid, ■uddenly, "I suppose you rather dread the week." "Well, I do--rather— sir." "Then I'll tell you what will make it easier — what will make it pass quickly and turn it into a splendid memory." He nodded again toward the back room. "Chum up with these fellowb You wouldn't, of course, be condescending to them — " "It's for them to be condescending to me." He surprised me by saying: "Perhaps it is. You know best. But here we try to get on a broad, simple, human footinc; in which we don't make comparisons. But you get what I mean. The simplest, kindliest ap- proach is the best approach. Just make it a point to be white with them, as I'm sure they've been white with you." I said I had never been more touched in my life than by the small kindnesses of the past two hours. "That's the idea. If you keep on the watch to show the same sort of thing it will not only make the time pass, but it will brace you up mentally and spiritually. You see, they're only children. Fundamentally you're only a child yourself. We're all only children, Frank. Some one says that women grow up, but that> men never do. Well, I don't know about women, but I've had a good deal to do with men — and I've never found any- thing but boys. Now you can spoil boys by too much indulgence, but you can't spoil them by too much love." He stopped abruptly, because he saw what was hap- pening to n^e. THE CITY OF COMRADES The Mxt thine I hnew wm his ann acroM my ihouU den, which were shaking a* if I was in convulnon*. "That't all right, old boy," I heard him whisper m «y ear- "Ju« go up to the bath-room and lock the door and have it out. It '11 do you good. The fellows in there won't notice you, because lots of them go through the same thing themselves." Still with his arm aciou my shoulders he steered me toward the hall "There you are! You'll be better when you come down. We're just boys together, and there's nothing to be ashamed of. Only, when you see other fellows come in through the week — ^we have two or three new ones every day you'll bear with them, won't you? And help them to take a brace." He was still patting me tenderly on the back as with head bowed and shoulders heaving I began to stumble up-stain. CHAPTER r J^Y acquaintance with Ralph Coningfby wai the ■t^l hinge on which my deitiny turned. A hinge i« a imall thing ai compared with a door, and so wa« my friend«hip with Coningtby in proportion to the rest of my life; but it became iti cardinal point. I met him fint at the meeting of the club at which the Scotchman and the piano-mover presented themselves for membership. As to the five outsiders whom Lovey and I had found on arriving. Christian's prediction was verified. Three went out when their week was over and they had got sobered up. Two stayed behind to go on with the work of reform. At the end of another week each stood up with his next friend, as a bridegroom with his best man, and asked to be taken into fellowship. That was at the great weekly gathering, which took place every Saturday night. Among the hundred and fifty-odd men who had assembled in the two down-staira sitting-rooms it was not diflScult to single out Coningsby, since he was the only man I could see in whom there was nothing blasted or scorched or tragic. There was an- other there of whom this was true, but I didn't meet him till tovrard the end of the evening. I had now been some ten days withm the four walk of the club, not sobering up, as you know, but trying to find myself The figure of speech is a good one, for the teal Frank Melbury seemed to have been lost. Thisotbct 80 THE CITY OF COMRADES •elf, thit telf I wu uudout to get rid of, had left him in •ome bright and relatively innocent world, while it went roaming through a land of land and thorns. I had dii- dnctly the feeling of being in learch of my genuine identity. For this I sat through long hours of every day doing absolutely nothing— that is, it was absolutely nothing •o far as the eye could see; but inwardly the spirit was busy. I came, too, to understand that that was the tecret of the long, stupefied forenoons and afternoons on the part of my companions. They were stupefied only because sight couldn't follow the activity of their occu- pation. Beyond the senses so easily staggered by strong drink there was a man endeavoring to come forth and claim his own. In far, subliminal, unexplored regions of the personality that man was forever at work. I could ■ee him at work. He was at work when the flesh had reached the end of its short tether, and reeled back from its brief and helpless efforts to enjoy. He was at work when the sore and sodden body could do nothing but sit in lumbering idleness. He was at work when the glazed eye could hardly lift its stare from a spot on the floor. That was why tobacco no longer afl^orded solace, nor reading distraction, nor an exchange of anecdotes mental relaxation. I don't mean to say that we indulged in none of these pastimes, but we indulged in them slightly. On the one hand, they were pale in comparison with the raw excitement our appetites craved; and on the other, they offered nothing to the spirit which was, so to speak, aching and clamorous. Apart from the satisfaction we got from sure and regular food and sleep, our nearest ap- proach to comfort was in a kind of silent, tactual clinging together. None of us wanted to be really alone. We 8i (*NSI ond SO reST CHAUT Ne. 2) 1^1^ l: A ^^PPLED ||SA^C3E Inc .^^ "653 Eott Uain Strwt ' ^B^= ?????•'•'■■ '^ '''»* '■••W USA ^^2 ('16) *M - 0300 - Phon. ^iSB (716) 2U - »W - foK THE CITY OF COMRADES could sit for hours without exchanging more than a casual word or two, yrfien it frightened us to have no one else in the room. The sheer promiscuity of bed against bed enabled us to sleep without nightmares. The task of chumming up had, therefore, been an easy one. So httle was demanded. When a new-comer had been shown the ropes of the house there was not much more to do for him. One could only silently help him to hnd h,s lost identity as one was finding one's own. Ihats about all there is to it," Andrew aristiaa observed when I had said something of the sort to him. You can t push a man into the kingdom of heaven; he', got to chmb up to It of his own accord. There's no salva- tion except what one works out through one's own sweat and blood.^ He gave me one of his quick, semi-humotous glwices. I suppose you know what salvation is?" If ^'' T \ ^ •""* •'""'• » 8reat de,l about it all my life, but I was far from sure of what it entailed in either eltort or accomplishment. "Salvation is being normal. The intuitive old guys who coined language saw that plainly enough when they con- nected the idea with health. FundamentaUy health is salvation and salvation is health-only perfect health, health not only of the body, but of the mind. Did it ever stnke you that health and hoUness and wholeness arc all one word?" I said it never had. "Well, it's wonh thinking about. There's a lot in it. You II get a lot out of it. The holy man is not the hermit on his kne«i ,n the desert, or the saint in colored glan. or anything that we make to correspond to them. He's the fellow whos whole-who's sound in wind and limb and intelligence and sympathy and everything that makes' 82 THE CITY OF COMRADES power. When we say, 'O worship the J^rd in the beauty of hohness, we mean. O worship the Lord in the beauty of the all-round man, who's developed in every direction, and whose degree of holiness is just in proportion to that development. "That's a big thought, sir," I said. "I don't believe many people who speak the English language ever get hold of It. But how does it happen that one of the two words IS spe '"■*'' Andrew Chnstian had founded the club. I don't believe that he had ever been a colonel, but he looked like one; neither can I swear that his real name was Straight, though it doser to us. and fits us more exactly, than anything given by inheritance or baptism. Here was a man wkh a figure as straight as an arrow and a glance as straight as a sunbeam. What else could his name have been? With one leg slightly shorter than the other, as if he had been wounded m battle, a magnificent white mustache, a mag- nificent fleece of white haii-he had all the air not only of an old soldier, but of an old soldier in high command. You wouldn t think, to look at him," Coningsby whig- THE CITY OF COMRADES "No; he ought to be at the head of a regiment." j "But the odd thing I notice about thii club i> that a j man'» status and occupation in the world outside seem to > fall away from him as soon as he passes the door. They become irrelevant. The only thing that counts is what he is as a man; and even that doesn't count for everything." "What does count for everything?" I asked, in some curiosity. "That he's a man at all." "That's it exactly," I agreed, heartily. "I hadn't put % « to myself in that way; but I see that it's what I've been conscious of." "As an instance of that you can take the friendship between Straight and Christian. From the point of view of the outside world they're of types so diverse that you'd say that the diflference precluded friendship of any " kind. You know what Christian is; but the colonel is hardly what you'd call a man of education. Without being illiterate, he makes elementary grammatical mis- takes, and unusual ideas floor him. But to say that he ■ and Christian are like brothers hardly expresses it." I ^ pondered on this as the meeting, with Christian in the 1 'hair, came to order and the routine of business began. - When it grew uninteresting to people with no share in 1 1 the management of the club I got an opportunity to whis- j! per, "You settled in New York?" I "I'm with Sterling Barry; the junior of the four part- ners." The reply seemed to strip from me the few rags of respectability with which I had been trying to cover myself up. Had he gone on to say, "And I saw you break into his house and steal his daughter's trinkets," I should scarcely have felt myself more pitilessly exposed. 88 THE CITY OF COMRADES ml'Z^^r^T ' P"*' of '''>« the club had done for fessed .t more or less as I should have owned to a sifedl You've worked in New York tnny I,, k when there was a chance of speak^ '' ''«="' "«=»'"• »„ Jlfk- *■!"' "'""' '° f'"' '"covered myself as to be able Idd 1 .'"'"r.T "'""y ^='"°"^ employers. I didn^t add tha they had fired me one after another becaue of ^J^r:::^T'"'" ""- ' '"'■•'-'' '^ wouutkTthal "Ever thought of Barry's?" of mIT'' 1 * 1''"t" °f '""'xJoction to him from McArdle of Montreal; but I never presented it" ' rity. "Yes, perhaps it was. But vou see T a;a..u n M^rdle-s work, though I studied'undeThiL'lri w S afra.d of getung .„to the same old rut. I went to Prit"! «I,n i^ 'ke them-though they're not so severe as I too Bond, and he goes them one better " workTveTe^'Z ' *'"°"''' "''' >°" *° ^^ ' >»" of 7 ^ "* *"^ ''oing on my own; rather a big ordet- *9 i THE CITY OF COMRADES fer me, that it— in which I've had to be aa American M the deuce, and yet keep to the beat lines." "Like to, " I managed to whiiper back at wt heard Chriitian announce that two new men were now to be admitted to the club. I was interested in the ceremony, having by this time got on friendly terms with both the piano-mover and the Scotchman, and learned something of their history. With necessary divergences the general trend of these tale* was the same. Both were married men, both had chil- dren, in both cases "the home was broken up" — the phrase had become classic in the club; though in the one instance the wife had taken the children to her own peo- ple, and in the other the was doing her best to support them herself. Their names being called, there was a scraping of chairs, after which the two men lumbered forward, each accom- panied by his next friend. The office of next friend, as I came to learn, was one of such responsibility as to put a ttrain on anything like next friendship. The Scotch- man's next friend was a barber, who, as part of his return for the club's benefits to himself, had that afternoon cut the hair of all of us inmates — nineteen in number; while the piano-mover had as his sponsor the famous Beady Lamont. The latter pair moved forward like two ele- phants, their tread shaking the floor. I shall not describe this initiation further than to say that everything about it was simple, direct, and im- pressive. The four men being lined in front of Mr. Christian's desk, the spokesman for the authorities was old O)lonel Straight. "The difference between this club and every other dub," he said, in substance, "is that men goes to other 90 THE CITY OF COMRADES dubs to amuie theinelvef, >nd her. they come to fi-ht. Th.. club I. an anny. Any one who ic=n. it joins a corp^ You two men who wants to come in > th us 'ave got to remember that up to now you've bee., on your own and ^independent; and now you'll be entering a company. Up to now, If you worked you worked for yourself: if you loafed you loafed for yourself; if you was lounge hzards you was lounge lizards on your own account and no one elses; and if you got drunk no one but you- leavng out your wife and children; though why I leave them out God alone knowsl-but if you got drunk no ™.e but you had to suffer. Now it's going to be all dif- Ir«;.'/°!!r"l*"u^™"'L'^*''°"* ''""•"8 u., and we cant get drunk without hurting you. T'other way round-pvery b.t of fight we put up help. you. and every DU ot hght you put up helps us. "Now there's lots of things I could say to you this eve- ning; but the only one I want to jam right home is this: You and us look at this thing from different points of view. You come here hoping that we're going to help you to keep straight. That's all right. So we are; and well all be on the job from this night forward. You wont hnd us taking no vacation, and your next friends Here 11 worry you hke your own consciences. They'll never leave you alone the minute you ain't safe. You'll hear em promise to hunt for you if you go astray, and go down into the ditch with you and pull you out. There'll be no dive so deep that they wort go after you, and no kicks and curses that you can give 'em that they ^on't stand in order to haul you back. That's all gospel true. as you re going to find out if you go back on your promises. But that am t the way the rest of us-the hundred and •ihy of us that you see here to-night-looks at it at alL 91 THE CITY OF COMRADES What we tee ain't two men we're tumbling over each other to help; we >ee two men that's coming to help ui. And, oh, men, you'd better believe that we need your help I You look round and you tec thit elegant house — and the beds — and the grub — and everything decent and reg'Iar — and you think how swell we've got ourselves fixed. But 1 tell you, men, we're fighting for our life — the whole hun- dred and fifty of us! And another hundred and fifty that ain't herel And another hundred and fifty that's scat- tered to the four winds of the earth; we're fighting for our life; we're fighting with our back against the wall. We ain't out of danger because we've been a year or two years or five years in the club. We're never out of dan- ger. We need every ounce of support that any one can 11 . I bring to us; and here you fellows come bringing it I You're bringing it, Colin MacPherson, and you're bring- ing it, Tapley Toms; and there ain't a guy among us that isn't glad and grateful. If you go back on your own better selves you go back on us first of all; and if cither of you falls, you leave each one of us so much the weaker." That, with a funny story or two, was the gist of it; but delivered in a low, richly vibrating voice, audible in every comer of the room and addressed directly and earnestly to the two candidates, its effect was not unlike that of Whitfield's dying man preaching to djring men. All the scarred, haunted faces, behind each of which there lurked memories blacker than those of the madhouse, were turned toward the speaker raptly. Knowledge of their own hearts and knowledge of his gave the words a power and a value beyond anything they carried on the surface The red-hot experience of a hundred and fifty men wat poured molten into the minute, to give to the promises 9» THE CITY OF COMRADES At two pottulanu were pmendy called on to make a kind of iron vigor. Thote promiiea were limple. Colin MacPhenon and Tapley Tomi took the total-abitinence pledge for a week, after which they would be aiked to renew it for limilar periods till they felt strong enough to take it for a month. They would remain as residents of the club till morally reestablished, but they would look for work, in which the club would assist them, and send at least three-quarten of their earnings to their wives. As soon as they were •trong enough they vould set up homes for their families again, and try to atone for thi . 'ailure in the mean time. They would do their best to strengthen other it mbers of the club, and to live in peace with them. T religious question was shelved by asking each man to give his word to reconnect himself with the church in which he had been brought up. The promises exacted of the next friends were, as be- came veterans, more severe. They were to be guardians of the most zealous activity, and shrink from no insult or mjury in the exercise of their functions. If their charges fell irretrievably away, their brothers in the club would be sorry for them, even though the guilt would not be laid at their door. When some twenty or thirty menibers had renewed their vows for a third or fourth or fifth week, as the case happened to be, the meeting broke up for refreshments. It was during this finale to the evening that Coningsby brought up a man somewhat of his own type, and yet dif- ferent. He was different in that, though of the same rank and age, he was tall and dark, and carred himself with a slight stoop of the shoulders. An olive complexion touched off with well-rounded black eyebrows and a neat 93 THE CITY DF COMRADES h black mustache made one take him at first for a foteigner, while the dreaminess of the dark eyes was melancholy and introspective, if not quite despondent. "Melbury, I want you to know Doctor Cantyte, who holds the honorable office of physician in ordinary to the club." Once more I was in conversation with a man of ante- cedents similar to my own, and once more the breaking of the ice was that between men accustomed to the same order of associations. In this case we found them in Cantyre's tourist recollections of Montreal and Quebec, and his enjoyment of winter sports. CHAPTER FI 'THERE was nothing more than this to the meeting * that night, but early the next afternoon I was called to the telephone. As such a summons was rare in the ..« „''f"V.° *'"' ""strument in some trepidation. Hellol This is Frank Melbury." "This is Doctor Cantyre. You remember that we met last evemngr "Oh, rather!" "I'm motoring out in my runabout to see a patient who hves a few miles up the river, and I want you to come The invitation, which would mean nothing to you but a yes or a no, struck me almost speechless. There was hrst the pleasure of it. I have not laid stress on the fact that the weather was sickeningly hot, because it didn't enter into our considerations. We were too deeply con- cemed with other things to care much that the house was sofling; and yet stifling it was. But more important than that was the fact that any one in the world should want to show me this courtesy. Remember that I had been be- yond the teach of courtesies. A drink from some one who would expect me to give him a drink in return was the utmost I had known in this direction for months, and L might say for years. ^ Is it any wonder that in my reply I stammeied and stuttered and nearly sobbed? 9S THE CITY OF COMRADES l\ |i ;f "Oh, but, I say, I — I look too beattly for an expedition of— of that tort. I'm awfully sorry, but — but I — well, you know how it is." "Oh, get out I You've got to have the air. I'm your doctor. I'm not going to see you cooped up there day after day in weather like this. Besides, I'm bringing along a couple of dust-coats — the roads will be dusty part of the way — and we shall both be covered up. Expect me by half past two." As he put up the receiver without waiting for further protests, there was nothing for me but submission. "I've been 'ere as long as you 'ave," Lovey complained when I told him of my invitation, "and nobody don't ask me to go hout in no automobiles." "Oh, but they will." He shook his head. "Them swells '11 take you away, sonny. See if they don't." "Not from you, Lovey." He grabbed me by the arm. "Will you promise me that, Slim?" "Yes, Lovey; I promise you." "And we'll go on being buddies, even when the rich guys talks to you about all them swell things?" "Yes, Lovey. We're buddies for life." With this Mizpah between us he released my arm and I was able to go and make my preparations. In spite of the heat and the fact that on a windless day there was no dust to speak of, Cantyre was buttoned up in a dust-coat. It would have seemed the last word in tact if he hadn't gone further by pretending to be occu- pied in doing something to the steering-wheel while I bid my seedy blue serge in the long linen garment he 96 THE CITY OF COMRADES handed me out. As even an old golf-cap can look pretty decent, I was really like anybody else by the time I had snuggled myself in by his side. During the first mile or two of the way I could hardly listen to Cantyre, to say nothing of making conversation. In spasmodic sentences between his spells of attention to the traffic he told me of his patient and where she lived; but as it was nothing I was obliged to register in my mmd, I could give myself to the wonder of the occasion, in awe at the miracle which had restored me to something like my old place in the world at the very moment when I seemed farthest away from it. Here I was, with not a penny to my name and not two coats to my back, tooling along like a gentleman with a gentleman, and as a man with his friend. Moreover, here I was with a new revela- tion, a convincing revelation, of something I had long since ceased to believe— that in this world there was such a thing as active brotherly kindness. I came out of these thoughts to find that we were fol- lowing the avenue with part of which I had made myself so familiar ten days before. I began to ask myself if Cantyre had a motive in bringing mo this way. The houses were thinning out. Vacant lots became frequent. I noted the southern limit of my pacings up and down on that strange midnight. Cantyre slowed the pace perceptibly. My heart thumped. If he accused me of anything, I was resolved to confess all. As we passed one particular vacant lot, a tangle of nettle, fireweed, and blue succory, I noticed that Can- tyre's gaze roamed round about it, to the neglect of the machine. We had slowed down to perhaps ten mUes an hour. "Do you know whose house that is?" he asked, suddenly. 97 THE CITY OF COMRADES m I But I refused to betray myself before it was necestaiy. "Whose?" I riposted. "Sterling Barry, the architect's." The machine almost stopped. He looked the fa^ada up and down, saying, as he did so: "It's closed for the season. They left town a few days ago. Barry's bought the old Homblower place at Rosyth, Long Island." To my relief, we spea on again; but I was not long in learning the motive behind his interest. Chiefly for the sake of not seeming dumb, I said, a* we got into the country, "You and Ralph Coningsby at* by way of being great friends, aren't you?" "No," he replied, promptly. "I see him when I g* to the club; not very often elsewhere. I know his sister, Elsie Coningsby, better. Not that I know her very well. She happens to be ? great friend of — of a — of a great friend — or, rather, some one who was a great friend — of mine. That's all." So that was it! I said, after we had spun along some few miles more, "Your name is Stephen, isn't it?" "Yes. How did you know?" I hedged. "Oh, I must have heard some one call you that." "That's funny. Hardly any one does. They mostly say Cantyre — or just doctor." He added, after a minute or two, "You call me Stephen, and I'll call you Frank." Once more the swift march of happenings gave me a slight shock. "Oh, but we hardly know each other." "That would be true if there weren't friendships that outd- tance acquaintanceships." "Oh, if you look at it that way—" THE CITY OF COMRADES "That's the way it strike* me." "But, good HeavensI man, think of what-of what I ami His gaze was fixed on the stretch of road ahead of mm. "What's that got to do with it? It wouldn't make any difference to me if you were a murderer or a thief. I^How do you know I'm not?" I couldn't help asking. I dc:i t know that you're not; but I say it wouldn't make any difference to me if you were." The word I am tempted to use of myself at this un- expected offer of good-will is flabbergasted. I am not emotional; still less am I ser-imental; both in sentiment and emotion my tendency is to go slow. After a brief silence I said: "Look here! Do /ou go round making friends among the riffraff of mankind?" I don't go round making friends among people of any sort. I'm not the friendly type. I know lots of people, of course; but -but I don't get beyond just knowing them. "Is that because you don't want to?" "Not altogether. I'm a— I'm a lonesome sort of bloke. I never was a good mixer; and when you're not that, other fellows instinctively close up their ranks against you and shut you out. Not that that matters to me. I hardly ever see a lot with whom I should want to get in. You re— you're an exception." "And for Heaven's sake, why?" "Oh, for two or three reasons— which I'm not going to tell you. One of these days you may find out." We left the subject there and sped along in silence. This, then, was the man Regina Bany had turned 99 THE CITY OF COMRADES l^ Mm down; and, notwithstanding hit kindness to myself, I could understand her doing it. For a high-spirited giri ■uch as she evidently was he would have been too melaa- choly. "Very nice" was what she had called him, and very nir« he was; but he lacked the something thorough- ly masculine that means mote to women than to men. Men are used to the eternal-feminine streak in themselves and one another; ^jut women put up with it only when it is like a flaw in an emerald, noticeable to the expert, but to no one else. I asked him how he came to be what G>ningsby called physician in ordinary to the club. "By accident. Rufus Legrand asked me to go over and see what I could do for a bad case of D. T." "He's the rector of the church opposite, isn't he?" "Yes, and an awfully good sort. Only parson I know who thinks more of God than he does of a church. I shouldn't be surprised if one of these days he got the trot •pirit of religion." "What's that?" "What they're doing at the Down and Out." "Oh, but they skip religion there altogether." "They don't skip religion; Jiey only skip the word — and for a reason." "What reasonr "The reason that it's been so misapplied as to have become nearly unintelligible. If you told the men at the club that such and such a thing was religion the3r'd most of 'em kick like the deuce; but when they get the thing without explanation they take to it every time. But you were asking me about my connection with the club. It began four years ago, when they first got into Miss Smedley'* house. Fellow had the old-fashioned 100 THE CITY OF COMRADES honori-bad. At I'd been making dipwmania a ipecial- *''ii^' railroaded me in, and there I've itayed." When we drew up at the gate of an old yellow man- •lon jtanding m laige grounds Cantyre left me in the machme while he went in to visit his patient. The blue- green hills were just beginning to veil themselves in the diaphanous mauve of afternoon, and between them the nver with its varied life flowed silently and rapidly. It was strange to me to remember that a short tine ago I had been wishing myself under it, and that this very water would be washing the oo»y, moss-grown pile* of Greeley s Shp. CHAPTER FII li ! I' '? ii iii NO later than that evening my life took ftill another nep. A little before nine, just as I was about to go to bed — our hours at the club were eaily — Ralph Coningsby dropped in for a word with me. I happened to be at the foot of the stairs in the hall when Spender admitted him, and he refused to come farther inside. "Been dining with my wife's father and mother over the way," he said, in explanation of his dinner jacket and black tie, "and just ran across to say something while I was in the neighborhood. You said last night you'd come and see the Grace Mcinorial with me." "If you say so," I smiled, "I suppose I must have; but it's the first time to my knowledge that I ever heard of it." "Oh, that's the bit of work I told you about — the thing I'm doing on my own. It's over here at St. David's. You see, when Charlie Grace died he left a sum of money to build and endow this institution in memory of his father." I S'liilf d again. "I knc«7 I must have heard the name of Charlie Grace, but it seems to have slipped my memory. All the same — " "I'll tell you about him to-morrow. I merely want to say now that I'll look in about ten in the morning, and take you across the street — " 102 THE CITY OP COMRADES ^u^tri,^:^ '^ *" '^'^ » ^ »'^«— "I don't know about that, Coningiby. The fact >. Imnot- W,ll.hangitall! Can't youL? I havl't Where I m hkely to nin mto decent people." painted T* """ '?*° "^ °'" •"•* carpenter and painter.. Im not going to take no for anVnswer olJ chap Be.uJes. there', method in thi. ZdZTltt now don't buckl-for I'm going to put yo" onT jU " I could only naie vacantly. J- «"»• » JOD. "On a job?" 1 II tell you about that to-morrow, too. For a chap with your training it will be office-boy', work; but a. W« doing nothing else for the moment-" ^ wJr.lotTJ'" *° "^ ^" ^ •'"'"y ''«P* *" night. It w" ^« of r*^ °! T'' ''°"' *« «cited me; it wa. that of being gradually drawn into the .pher.^ in ^ oJh«htr"*!?^"".^'"y- ^-""iUrcena^ as to whether I wanted to do that or not. There was no hour of the day when 1 didn't think of her. andTetTw^ SwU'^^ I'JT "' *"*"'"""'" *^" *' ~"'^^" K I co^M 7 tH' *"** " '''•** had become of me. i^tL«"'h?vr;' hTj"mT? f fnT"^."^ *-'"« ''- u.^ .L "j '"6,™ see me I should have jumped at if were^ha l! I. ^"T" •"' "X '^th »>« eyes, "You were the man who came into my room and tried to rob me, I would have .hot myself. 193 !1 I! :< I I I 111 THE CITY OF COMRADES And yet I had to admit the fact that thi« danger wa* in the air. Ralph Coningtby'i sitter wat the Eltie of that tragic night; Cantyre wat the Stephen. I wat being offered work by Sterling Barry't partner, and might toon be doing it for Sterling Barry himtelf. The fatality that , brought about these unfoldings might go farther still, and before I knew it I might find myself in the precise situation that filled me with terror — and yet made me shiver with a kind of harsh delight. Before I could ileep I had to make a compromise with my courage. I would not shoot myself rather than meet her. I would meet her first, if it had to be. I would take that one draft of the joy I had put forever out of reach— and shoot myself afterward. But in the morning I was more self-confident. Having examined myself carefully in the cracked mirror in the bath-room, I found that my mustache, which had grown tolerably long and thick, changed ir>y appearance not a little. Moreover, food, rest, and oriety had smoothed away the unspeakable haggardness that had creased my forehead, hardened my mouth, and burnt into my eyes that woebegone desolation which I had noticed among my companions when I arrived at the club. It is no ex- aggeration to say that I was not only younger by ten years, but that I was changed in looks, as a landscape is changed when, after being swept by rains, it is bathed in sunshine. The one hope I built on all this was that, were I to meet Regina Barry face to face, she would not recognize me at a first glance, while I could keep her from getting a second. On the way across the street Coningsby told me some- thing of Charlie Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of % former rector of St. David's — an important 104 THE CITY OF COMRADES «P«.. d«ire of the widow. uTcl^.rli^c'^^Z he' ^^hT?' r • L- """"« »""'"" *»>« house would be -:?k !i.^" • *•" *""" mMsurements of each room with the di.pontion of the wall .pace, Durina tk ' mer .he could thu. consider wh^e wS, d hVvtVot when the time came in October WW 1040 Oothic rectory, we had th.. ]^^u e ^l j "»'""" .puriou. ,840 Gothic^hurchln fi"^? °'*Vr''^' morial had to be fitted in iLl" !i l l ^'"^ """ ^ ;„ n„ ^ ' " '^"^'^'°<"n. a gymnasium, bathl and so on, and open to those who were properly tnw^ of both atxes and all amx rv -l "F"'y enrolled, ^ ««es ana au ages. Of the committee in charge THE CITY OF COMRADES Mn. Cooingtby waa ippanmly the moving ipirit, dM j^ Mn. Grace wu lewrvins to hendf the pleaaun of 6ttia% the houM up. Before going innde we ditcuned the difficukie* of hv moni. a modem building with the effbitt of the eariy nineteenth century, and I had an opportunity to con*- mend Coningtby'* judgment. He had kept to the brownitone of the church and rectory, and had tuggeated their apirit while working on lober, well-proportioned linea. In the middle of thia I broke oiF to lay. "Look here, old chapl I hope you're not inventing thia job of youn juat for the aake of giving me aomething to do." Hia 'rank gaze convinced me. "Honett, I'm not. Mra. Grace ia particularly anxioua to have the meaiurementi lent down to her at Roiyth, and we're ao short-handed — " "Then that's all right. Let'a go in. and yon can •how me what I'm to do." As Coningsby had said, it waa office-boy's work, but it suited me. It was a matter of getting broken in again, and-^whether it came by accident or my friend's good-heartedness — an easy job in which there was no thinking or responsibility was the most effective means that could have been found of nursing me along. At the end of a week I was treated to the well-nigh incredible wonder of a check. Early on a Sunday morning I took it to Giristian, asking that it ahould be turned in toward my expenses at the club. Having read its amount, he held it in his fingers, twist- ing it and turning it. "You see, Frank," he said, after thinking for a minute, io6 THE CITY OF COMRADES **• primtiy object of the dub w not to be piid for whK It .pendt-though that ii an object-it', to help WW. to get on their feet. Of you nineteen chap, who •le in the houM at pre^nt twelve are regiUariy paying for their board «,d lodging, and that p«,fy well caS^ u. .long. If there', a deficit it'. cove«d by the bTck payment, of men who've gone out and who are making ■^■.n , " **"• ""* P«»«ng fof the minute-" But I ihould like to pay it, Mr." „,Zr M ~T' .''"? "'• * ''"*"'°" "' ''•'« " ««« Mgent. Now thi. ,m't uigent; we can extend your credit; wherea., the fim bit of bluff we've all got to put up when were puUing ourwive. together it in clothw." 1 .aid for about three week.. "Then keep thi. chfck," he pursued, handing it back tome, till you get a. much again. That will be enough Brother^all our fellow, go to hini-and he'U adviae you to the be.t advantage." The word, were accompanied by «uch a mile that I. WHO am not emotional, felt my eye. mart. ■:ii 5 if-.' CHAPTER 7111 THE summer passed with no more than two or three other incidents worth the jotting down. In the first place, the day arrived when I had to make tip my mind either to leave the club or to join it. Expecting some opposition from Lovey as to joining it, I was surprised to find him take the suggestion com- placently. "I've found out," he whispered to me, "that yer can jine this club — and fall. Yer can fall three times before -they'll turn ye out." "Oh, but you wouldn't want to fall in cold blood." "Well," he muttered, doubtfully, "I ain't partic'lar about the blood. Now my hadvice 'd be this: 'Ere we ait in July. That's all right; we can jine. Then in Haugust we can 'ave a wee little bit of a fall — ^just two or three days like. We can do the same in September; and the same in Hoctober. That '11 use up ourthree times, and we can come back under cover for the worst months of the winter. We can't fall no more after that; but in the spring we can try somethink else. There's always things." "And suppose I don't mean to fall?" He looked hurt. "Oh, if you can keep straight without me — " "But if I can't, Lovey? If I must keep straight and need you to help me?" ig8 THE CITY OF COMRADES «!„n„ ""'V^l'" ^ •=°«^'"«^. "another point of view? Suppose we did what you suggest, do you tWnk itwodd "nu r* "" *''"«' ™~ f'"""^ decently?" ^^Oh. .f you « going to .tart out t«atin' people de- to^S "'^ ''°'''"'* "*' ^« «« -Jo ^you and I He drew a deep sigh. But in the end we were both admitted at one of the Saturday^venmg meetings with, as usual.a large «theri„! offnends. and some bracing words from S rffght P^ TsaZ ZlT " tT '"■'"''' ="*«' ''"'^ Spender diS jome minutes of every lunchZulTo^rh^ JlrrK ' Tu^u" '^"""*' ^^«y ^'^•^ J°'' of washing X Whom the club had given a veritable new birth. was stil! dTnrri," "■""'''" •'="* "''^" P'^"^ while I tie ti;^ ^ the measurements at the memorial. By the time they were finished Coningsby had a new o. - ,«I As .t was the middle of July, heU a^LsTo «ke ht Ca^rr, '''°,''"'' •^''"''^'" *° ^J-" ^""■y for a month Carpenters, plasterers, painters, and plumber we«"Xt 109 THE CITY OF COMRADES hi work on the building, and they couldn't be left without oyersight. Would I undertake to give that — at a iea(OD- able salary? I had grown familiar with the work by this time, and had been able to throw into the furtherance of Coning** by's plans an enthusiasm largely sprung of gratitude. In addition I was getting back my self-confidence in pro- portion as I got back my self-respect. The fact, too, that in the new summer suit and straw hat to which the colonel's advice had helped me I could go about the streets without being ashamed of myself did something to restore my natural poise. I could see that by taking this work I should really be helping Coningsby. He needed the rest; his wife and babies undoubtedly needed the change. It was not easy for a man with so important a piece of work as this on hand to get any one satisfactorily to take his place. I could accept the offer, then, without the suspicion — which any man would hate — that it was being made to roe from motives of philanthropy. I was really being useful — more useful than in taking the measurements for Mrs. Grace, which any novice could have done — and making a creditable living for the first time in years. Then, too, I had a great deal of Cantyre's company. He spent most of the summer in town; chiefly because of his patients, but partly from a lack of incentive in going away. He explained that lack of incentive to me during one of the spins in his runabout to which he treated me on three or four evenings a week. Now and then I worked Lovey off on him for an outing, but he, Cantyre, was generally a little peevish after such occa- sions. It was not that he objected to giving Lovey or any one else the air; it was that he suspected me of not no THE CITY OF COMRADES •train of the jealousy of school^rls, ^Oh 'S"'T°"' ^°-"« ."y ■"=" ^-^ "^^ h™ °« of it. Oh, I II pull round in time," he said, in his iesiim»l Lfeless tone. "If you knew the reason-" '^ ' ««^ J'T *'"' """""' °f =°"™- My conscience never ceased to plague nje with the fac that, though I could «tum Regina B,rnr's trinkets, Cantyre's secret was a theft I couldn't ,et nd of. It was, indeed, partly to lead iZZ r " ''.'"^ " *° ""= °f •'■» °^ ''--<'.«<' that "I suppose it's about a girl." tot '°rnA"T'''r,"! *'"•* ^ *'"'"«''* •« ^=''' »°t going to respond to this challenge, when he said, "Yes." ^ Wouldn t she have you?" I asked, bluntly. ^ She said she would-and changed her mind." ^ So that you were actually engaged?" For about a month." do"°u?"'''^ ^°" '^°"'' "''"^ "y '''^''^ """"■■on^ .'.'S°' '*" y°" ''°"'* """J if I don't answer." nhJ^T T\*''f P~^"*° ^'" 8o on. Did she teU why she— why she broke it off?" ^ "Not— not exactly." "And haven't you found out?" thZ'5 ?"*"f ''^'.^he's her great friend, told me some- ?„r it I l^' ""^ *''*" ^"^ ^'^o J^i"''^ of women. fr^K *° *" ''°~"'' ^"^ °*'"« '^"'"'t «tisfied u^ less they were conquered." "And you took the wrong method r III THE CITY OF COMRADES if h i r\ 1 1 1 1 "So it seems." "Well, why don't you turn round now znd take the right one?" His dreamy, melancholy eyes slid toward me. "Do you see me doing that? I'm the kind of bloke that would like a woman to conquer him. If it comes to that, there are two kinds of men." He had told me so much that I felt it tight to give him a warning. "Since you say she's a friend of Elsie Coningsby's, I mayn't be able to help finding out who she is." "Oh, I shouldn't mind that — ^not with you. As a matter of fact, I should like to introduce you to her one of these days." I broke in more hastily than I intended, "No, no; don't do that — for God's sake!" He swung round in amazement. "Why — ^why, what's the matter?" I tried to recover myself. "Oh, nothingi Only, you must see for yourself that — ^that after what I've been through I'm not — not a lady's man." "Oh, get out!" was his only observation. We lapsed into one of our long silences, which was broken when we turned back toward town. "Look here, Frank," he said, suddenly, "you can't go on living down there in Vandiver Street. Besides, the club will be needing your bed for some one else." "I know," I said. "I've been thinking about it. I simply don't want to move.'' "You'll have to, though." "Yes, I suppose so." He went on to suggest a small apartment in the bachelor house he was living in himself. Now was the time to 113 THE CITY OF COMRADES rent, before men began coming back to town. He knew of a little suite of three rooms and a bath which ought to be within my means. As we passed the house we stopped and looked at it. I liked it and promised to turn the matter over in my mind. Next day I broached it to Lovey. The effea was what I expected. He grasped me by the arm, looking up at me with eyes the more eloquent from the fact that they were dead. "Y'ain't goin' to leave me, Slim?" "It wouldn't be leaving you, Lovey." "Y'ain't goin' to live in another 'ouse, where I sha'n't be seein' ye every day?" "You could get a room near." "'Twouldn't be the same thing— not noway, it wouldn't be. Oh, Sliml" With a gesture really dramatic he smote his chest with his two clenched fists, and drew a long, grating sigh. We were sitting on our beds, which were side by side in one of the dormitories. It was the nearest thing to privacy the club-house ever allowed us. "This '11 be the hend of me; and it 'U be the hend of you. Slim, if I ain't there to watch over you. You'll never keep straight without me, sonny." He was struck with a new idea, and, indeed, I had thought of it my- self. "Didn't ye say," he went on, as he leaned forward and tapped my knee, "that in them rooms there was one little dark room?" "Very little and very dark." "But it wouldn't be too little or too dark for me. Slim, not if I could be your valet, like. I could do everythink for you, just like a gentleman. My fatl . r was a valet, and he lamed me before he couldn't lam me nothink "3 !,<(=' THE CITY OF COMRADES else. I could keep your clothes so as you'd never need new ones, and 1 could mend and dam and cook your breakfasts— I'm a swell cook— I can bile tea and coffe* and heggs— many's the time I've done it—" "All right, Lovey," I interrupted. "It's a baisain. We're buddies." "No, Slim; we won't be buddies no mote. We'll call that off. We'll just be master and man. I'll know my place and I'll keep it. I sha'n't call you Slim, nor sonny—" "Oh yes, you must." He shook his head. "No; not after we've moved from the club. I'll call you Mr. Melbury and say sir to you; and you must call me Lovey, just as if it was my real name." He added, unexpectedly to me: "I suppose yt know it ain't my real name?" "Oh, what does it matter?" "It only matters like this: I ain't— I ain't—" He gft up in some agitation and went to one of the windows. After looking out for a second or two he turned half round toward me. "Ye ain't thinking me any better than I am, Slim, are you?" "I'm not thinking whether you're better or worse, Lovey. I just like you." "And I've took an awful fancy to you, Slim. Seems as if you was my whole family. But— but you're not, sonny. I've— I've got a family. They're dead to me and I'm dead to them; but they're my family. Did ve know that, Slimr "I didn't know it, and you needn't tell me." "But if I was awful bad, sonny? If I was wuss than anythink that 'd ever come into your 'ead?" "We won't talk about that. Perhaps there are things "4 THE CITY OF COMRADES *"J l^'*' *'" y°" "•'•*''' ^°"'*' ••'<"' that there's not much difference between us." "I 'ope there is, Slim. And she was terr'ble aggra- Tatin ; a drinkin' woman, besides. I didn't drink then — ardly not at all. It was after I was acquitted I begun that. And my two gells— well, bein' acquitted didn't make no difference to them; they'd seen. Only, they didn t swear that way in their hevidence. They swore she fell down the stairs she was found at the bottom of, her neck broken; and, bein' a drinkin' woman, the jury thought— But the two gells knew. And when I was let off they didn't 'ave no more to do with me— so I come over ere — " I rose and went to him, laying my hand on his shoulder. Dont, Lovey. That's enough. I don't care who you are or what you've done, we'll stick it out together The only thing is that we'll have to give up the booze." "For good and all. Slim r "Yes; for good and all." "It 'II be awful 'ard." "Yes, it will be; but the worst of that is over." He seized one of my hands in both of his. "Slim, if it's got to be a ch'ice between you and Hquof --well, I'm danged if— if I won't"- he made a great reso- lution— "give up the liquor— and so 'elp me!" So when I moved Lovey moved with me. Washing windows having become a lucrative profession, he in- sisted on taking no wages from me and on paying for his own food. In the matter of names we agreed on a com- promise. "Before company," as he expressed it, I was Mr. Melbury and sir; when we were alone together we reverted to the habits of Greeley's Slip and the Down and Out, and I became Slim and sonny, "S THE CITY OF COMRADES h I wai truly torry to leave the club, for its simple, brotherly wayi, wholesome and masculine, if never the most refined, had become curiously a part of me. I had liked the fellowship with rough men who were perhaps all the more human for being rough. For the first time in my life I had known something of genuine fraternity. I do not affirm that we lived together without disagree- ments or misunderstandings or that there were no minutes electric with the tension that makes for an all-round fight. But there was always some "wise guy," as we called him, to make peace among us; and on the whole we lived to- gether with a mutual courtesy that proved to me once for all that it is nothing external which makes a gentle- man. Finer gentlemen in the essentials of the word I never met than some of those who were just struggling up from the seemingly bottomless pit. Thus the summer of 1913 became for me a very happy one. There were reserves to that happiness, and there were fears; but the optimism most of us bring to the day's work enabled me to face them. Of Regina Barry I heard much from my friend Cantyre, and I made what I heard suffice me. He was always willing to talk of this girl, whom he never named; and little by little I formed an image in my heart, which would never be anywhere but in my heart as long as I could help it. As long as I could help it I should not see her, nor should she see me. As to that I was now quite positive. Nothing could be gained by my seeing her, while by her seeing me every- thing might be lost. If everything was lost in one way I was sure it would be lost in another. Because I have said little or nothing of the fight I was making you must not suppose that I was free from the necessity of making it. I was making 116 THE CITY OF COMRADES t^U !l*? ""' ""*"[•• /""" '^'* ^^ 'hen. if I hadn t had Lovey to think of, I .hould have yielded to that suggestion which had come to me as neatly as it had come to him of having a little fall. Falls were far from unknown among us. They were accepted a* an unhappy matter of course. Some of our steadiest mem- bers had made full use of the three time, the law of the club allowed them before finally settling down. I beheved that I could exercise this privileg^and come back. But not so with Loveyf Once he failed in this attempt, I knew he would be gone. As a matter of fact, he would have failed at any time after the first week if Whadn t been on my account; so I couldn't fail on his. When I would have done it eagerly, wildly, I was with- held by the old-fashioned motto of nobUsse oblige. And yet m proportion as I grew stronger I realized more clearly that my future was, as it were, balanced on the point of a pin Once I had met Regina Barry, and her eyes had sa^d, "You are the man who stole my gold- mesh purse, I knew it would be all up with me. She wo-ildn t have to say a worH. Her look would bring the accusation. Then if I was weak I should go ofl^ and get d:unk; I should dnnk till I drank myself to death If 1 was strong I should shoot myself. There was just one thing of which I was sure— I should never face that silent charge a second time. But as the weeks went by and nothing happened I began to be confident tha. nothing would. We reached the end of September and I never heard Regina Barry's name. Even Cantyre hadn't told me that, and didn't suppose that I knew it. I calculated the chances against our ever meeting. I built something, too, on the possi- 5 wouldn t knc 117 ; again. THE CITY OF COMRADES ') In thif I got encouragement from the fact that one day in Fifth Avenue I met my uncle Van Elttine. He didn't know me. He wouldn't have cut me for anything in the world; he wat too good-natured and kind; but he let his wandering gaze rest on me as on any passing stranger, and went on his way. I argued then that time, vicissitude, a hard life, and a mustache had worked an effective disguise. If my own uncle, who had known me all my life, could go by like that, how much more one to whom I could be nothing but a sinister shadow seen for three or four minutes in a rose^olored gloom. So I reasoned and became a little comforted. And then one day my arguments were put to the test. It was quite at the end of September. The memorial was now so nearly completed that Coningsby, who had returned to town, left it almost entirely to my charge. A new bit of work at Atlantic City having come his way, he was closely absorbed in it. Mrs. Grace had motored up once or twice to consult me as to papers, rugs, and other details of interior decoration. I found her a grave, beautiful woman who gave the impression of nourishing something that lasts longer than grief— a deep regret. Our intercourse was friendly but impersonal. Once she was accompanied by a young lady whose voice I recognized as they approached the room in which I was at work. It was a clear, bell-like, staccato voice, whose tones would have made my heart stop still had I heard it in heaven. Mrs. Grace entered the room, fol- lowed by a girl as Anglo-Saxon in type as her brother, only with a decision and precision in the manner which he had not. In my confusion I was uncertain as to whether or not there was an introduction, but I remember her saying: ii» THE CITY OF COMRADES "Oh, Mr. Melbuiy, Rdph i. » indebted to you for all Trk^rrrei"" "^ •"• " «" -'"^ '"»- ^■- ...l^n!""' !'""'"' m« «niP«rion.lly, .. her brother*. none of the mterett good people generally di.play in a brand that ha. been plucked from the burning. I. It poLible .he doe.n't know it?" I a.ked Cantyrc the next time I law him. ^ "Of course she doe.n't. That would be the Ian thmg Conrngsby would tell her. We never .peak of thew thing, outside the club. If a fellow like, to do it himself— well, that', hi. own affair." But early in October I came face to face with it all. 1 was standing at one of the upper windows, looking t„T T ^^'fr^ ^.'""' "•>•" ' '»- ' motor drive uj to the door. I knew it was Mrs. Grace's motor, having ^n It a number of times already. When the footman held open the door Mrs. Grace herself stepped out, to ^ followed by Miss Coningsby, who in turn was followed I strolled away from the window into the interior of the house. I was not so much calm as numb. There were details about which I had to speak to Mrs. Grace, but they all went out of my mind. They went out of mv nund as matters with which I had no more concern. A dying man might feel that way about the earthly things he IS leaving behind. I was, in fact, not so much like a dying man as like a man who in the full flush of vigor IS told that he must in a few minutes face the firing-squad. imened to the three voices as they floated up, first from 119 '\ THE CITY OF COMRADES die \amtr floor, then from the Kairway, then from th* floor on which I y 1 thifi I nerveleunett. m I waiting I They drifted nearer— Mrs. Grace'i gentle tctci, Eliie Cbnin(«by't filvery tinkle, and then the rich meaio, which by aiiociatiMi of idea* teemed to ihed round me a nwe-colored light. Mrs. Grace and MiM Coningsby came in together, the one in black, the other in white. Both bade me a friendly, impenonal good morning, while Mn. Grace proceeded at once to the quettion of rugi. Didn't I think that good aerviceable American rugi, with lome of those nice Orien- tal drugget! people used in lummer cottagei, would be better than anything more fragile and expeniive? I made such answers at I could, keeping my eyes on the door. Presently she appeared on the threshold, look- ing about with interest and curiosity in her great, dark eyes. Of the minute I retain no more than a vision in rough green English tweed, with a goldish-greenish motor- ing-veil round the head like a nimbus. She impressed me as at once more delicate and more strong than 1 re- membered hei^— eager, alert, independent. "This is to be the men's smoking-room," Miss Ojn- in,^by explained. "Wouldn't you know it?" Miss Barry said, lightly. "One of the nicest rooms in the house — I thi»'''. the very nicest. It's wonderful how well men do themselves, isn't it?" "Oh, but in this case it's Hilda." "It's your brother first of all. You'll see. It will be the snuggest comer of the whole place, and they won't let a woman look into it." She glanced at me— but casually. She glanced again —but casually again. As no one introduced me, a greet- 110 THE CITY OF COMRADES Grace fi„„hed her quettion. .bout the rugt and they The reply gave my name. "Ohl" «.d?!i'"'" ""'I',"' *'''■'' •" •""•">*'• ■">"'• how he ■nd t«ther were able to get awav." "Ohl" ' "Now we're going on to the day nursery—" But Regina Barry .aid: "Wait a minutel No, go ««. Ill overtake you. I'm-I'm perfealy .ure that that, the very man who-" She added, a. if7oS 1^ T^m'h'm "?;:\*'°"= "''"" «°'"8 ''-k to .peak tf hut.. Tell Hilda I'll be with her in an instant." on tw„n7,T ' "P""'"* *° "y^^'f the formula agreH on two or three month, before, that I would .ee her fir«^ and shoot my.elf afterward. CHAPTER IX h " OAVENT we met before?" n Regina Barry said this as she came into the room with her rapid, easy movement and took two or' three paces toward me, stopping as abruptly as she en- tered. I hung my head, crimsoning slowly. "Yes." "I thought so, though I didn't recognize you at first. I knew I had some association with you, but it was so vague — " "Of course." "Then I had no idea you were an architect." "How could you?" "You see, meeting you for so short a time — " "And practically in the dark — " "I don't remember that. But I had no chance to ask anything about you. I only hoped you'd come back." "Oh, I couldn't have done that." "Why not?" "I should think you'd understand." "I don't — considering that I asked you particularly." "I know you asked me particularly, but anything in life — or death — ^would have been easier than to obey you." "What did I do to frighten you so?" "Nothing but show me toe much mercy." 122 !!i: THE CITY OF COMRADES "Oh, I didn't think anythin . of tnat." "SS" • °^ f' '""'^'' "f '^' forvvenes.?" Of the cnme, of course." I stepped back from her in amaz«.,«„, - ..X°" ''"'n t think anything of—" «w"y /'^'f"V°"« the same myself." ^ rouf You've often done—" that f ;.e"twiV''' f''""''"'- ^"^ P'*-« •'-'t -PPose she gave wl^in „, ■ ''\°"'y ^'«" "' embarrassment heHtftLra^d?uSttr;t^Lrs:o^' ?^i great eyes, of which the hght made one dou fd as Jo the color, glowed feverishly, and the long scarlet U^ jou want me to be absolutely frank?" we kl;':'up"?""' '""'""^' '''''"'* -' Why shouldn't mZgagimetr^' ^" *"" ^^'^^^ ''' ''-^en off cited A„-? I'^'" =• Iittle-well, perhaps a little ex- THE CITY OF COMRADES '\ did — it's only been because it was part of the hours right after — " There was another of those smiles that were amusingly apologetic as well as amusingly provocative. "You're — you're not married, are you?" "No." "Nor engaged?" "No." "Everbeenr "No." "Then you can't imagine what it is to have been en- gaged and nearly married — and then to find yourself free again. Everything associated with the minute comes to be imprinted on your memory. That's why I've thought of it, though I didn't for the minute recognize you as the man." "And now that you have recognized me — " "I hope you'll do as I asked you before, and come and see us again." She added, as she was about to turn away, "How's Annette?" I had been puzzled hitherto; I was now bewildered. "You mean Annette Van Elstine? Did you know she was my cousin?" "Of course! Didn't she bring you?" "Bring me?" I stammered. "Bring me — ^where?" "Why, to our house 1" "When?" "The time we're talking about — ^when you upset Mrs. Sillinger's coffee and broke the cup." It is difiScult to say whether I was relieved or not. I could only falter, "I — I don't believe I'm the man." She came back two or three steps toward me. "Why, of course you're the man! Isn't your name Melburyr 134 THE CITY OF COMRADES What's your name?" "Frank." ~w ,h., A«„„ did ^ htajS" ii' ""f"'^' ;p,-^>. did ,.„ ^ ...litn .Si'^r;* I' Don't you know?" '■I haven't the remotest idea." Look at me again " is^hat I see yo. btott. 111'^ ^iX^J' Z ^^yta; It"' "''' '^"'"^ ''-^- "-"--^t ,S 'He's married now " iaum^sint^to^rrL^.^^^ — to tVmT' '"'" '"'""' '"^ ="«="■" -''-'«<• half round diiTou m^r ^ '"°" """ ' '"^'"*' •>« -hat on earth I drew myself up for real inspection. *-ant you thmk?" She shook her head. '\ THE CITY OF COMRADES "I must say you seemed inordinately penitent over a broken cup, even if Mrs. Sillinger was so cross. She said you spilled the coffee all over her dress; but you didn't." "You mean Jack." "Oh yes! What a bother! I shall always get you mixed up in the future." "I hope not — for his sake." "Now don't tease me. Tell me where we met." "If 1 do—" She brightened, the smile of the scarlet lips growing vividly brilliant. "I know. It was at the Millings', at larrytown." "I'm afraid not." "Then it was at the Wynfords', at Old Westbury? They always have so many people there — " "Think again." "What's the good of thinking when, if I could remem- ber you, I should do it right away?" "It seems extraordinary to me that you can have forgotten." "You seem very sure of the impression you made on me." "I am." "And I've forgotten all about itl" "You haven't forgotten the impression; you've only forgotten me." "Oh, Mr. Melbury, tell me! Please! I've got to run off and overtake Mrs. Grace; sxtd I can't do it unless 1 know." You will admit that my duty at this juncture requii«d some considering. In the end I said: "I sha'n't tell you to-day. I may do it later. In any case, I've given you 126 'THE CITY OF COMRADES know ,],„ wlien y„„'„ re,„,„|,„^ , ''"'S crept mto a house at midnieht Th,. tr,J.f • . TJiat night I put the question up to Lovey !t, i5' ^ l::,i If';*! ■i flJ THE CITY OF COMRADES "Lovey, do I look the same as I did four or five tnontlM "You looks just as good to me, sonny." "Yes, but suppose you hadn't seen me in the mean while, and had come on me all of a sudden, would you know right off that it was me?" "Slim, if I was blind and deaf and dumb, and couldn't see nothink nor 'ear nothink nor feel nothink, I'd know it was you if you come 'arf a mile from where I was." Since this intuitiveness was of no help to me, I worked round to the subject when, later in the evening, I had gone in to smoke a good-night pipe with Cantyre. lie had a neat little comer suite which gave one a cheery view of the traffic in Madison Avenue north and south by a mere shifting of the eyes. I sat in the pro- jectirg semicircle that commanded this because, after my own outlook into an airshaft, I enjoyed the twinkling of the lights. To me the real Ville Lumiere is New York. It scatters lights with the prodigal richness with which the heaven scatters stars. It strings them in long lines; it banks them in towering facades; it flings them in hand- fuls up into the darkness; it writes them on the sky. Twilight offers you a special beauty because, wherever you are in the city, it brings out for you in one window or another that first wan, primrose-colored beacon— in some ways more beautiful than the evening star. Be- hind the star you don't know what there is, while be- hind the light there is a palpitating history. Then as you look down from some high perch other histories light their lamps, till within half an hour the whole town is ablaze with them— a light for every life-tale— as in pious places there is one for every shrine. Those who wet« looking at ours saw nothing but a 128 THE CITY OF COMRADES Ba.^e bronzetloXd ^^^''"^^^P""^'^ 8™tesques and haX„a„s:°?\rd"7!r^^^""^ unexpected?; I knew ;h t alTthi^ /"T' "" °" '"^ dazzle any o'n^I cojiZ^l^iZ'^.':-^:^ fo.V° own enjoyment. "* '°^ "'» 129 f! 1 i -f THE CITY OF COMRADES I sat, however, with my back to it all, astride of a •mall chair, my pipe in my mouth, looking down on the lights and traffic. Breaking a long silence, I said, as casually as I could do it: "I met Sterling Barry's daughter the other day- Miss Regina Barry, her name is, isn't it?" Vague, restless movements preceded the laconic re- sponse, "Where?" "She came to the memorial with Mrs. Grace." Hearing him strike a match, I knew he was making an effort at sang-froid by lighting a cigarette. "Did you — did you — think hei^pretty?" "Pretty wouldn't be the word." "Beautiful?" "Nor beautiful." "What then?" "No word that I know would be adequate. You might •ay fascinating if it hadnt been vulgarized; and chic would be worse." "She's tremendously animated — and vivid." "She has the most living eyes and mouth I've ever seen in a human being. I've never seen a face so aglow with mind, emotion, and color. She's all flame, but a flame like that of the burning bush, afire from a force within." He spoke bitterly. "And people talk about that being conquered!" To lead him further I said, "Has any one talked of it?" "Didn't you know?" "How should I know? You— you've never told me." "Well, I'm— I'm telling you now." My sympathy was quite genuine. 130 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Tl anks, old boy. I can »rr T mu.t have gone with you " " **• '""' ''"'' «' te|°Vy:i'£-tSL>''*'-<'»^-cei„ thatloV-UTnSoroZ-r^^ "" •>«-' -» to her world "any" mo«; a^d I'd "T" ' '°"'* ''^'°"« back into it." ' " ^ *• "'••« not try to get yol'^o 'rhe°""' ^ ' •"'«" "^ '- ^'- «oing to take ^^tt^ ,tt rxS: r'^^''. -» v° --" •eenyou?" «"«tnatf The first time she'd ever teiitXt^S'""---"-^- X^^^^^^^^^^^ ^Ho2iSai.:;ir;teLti:n„^^^^^ ^^ women in New York. I'm told "he is ^' °'*''" ^'"='«'« ^^^One of the very smartest. She ..uld do anything for -med^o 17, hZz::^:\ irr'^ "='"^-" ^^ so I went on in another ve^ .y.Il.am Grace Memorial was now practically ,-adv forfum.sh.ng. Mrs. Grace was about to r^v barklo iZ^^i^rV "tT^' *'■" "^''- Coningsby and 1 were going through the rooms one day with an ev» •"wrthetr"'''' ''^^ '^^ overlookedUen he.=^d^ I replied that as far as any further need of my service, was concerned I might knock off work ther^Tnd T.^ thanLng h.m for all his help through the summer in oTlt w 1 r*"' °"' "^ '^°"^^ '"^^ yo" to come you and I understand each other: we sneat tl,. / -guage both professionally .ni 'so^llir^terZ sav t^J • u^'' "°* ^"""^ "P *° °"' ««'e Place- talk ,t over? My wife told me to ask you." 133 "\ THE CITY OF COMRADES Knowing th»t Coningiby had been iware of the Kate «f my wardrobe a few monthi earlier, I bluihed to the rooti of my hair a« I put the quettion: What ihall 1 wear? Tailf— or a dinner jacket and black tie> "Oh, a dinner jacket. There'll be juit ourclvei. But when I went I found not only my host and hoitew, but Regina Barry to make the party iquare. The Coningsbys lived on the top floor of an apartment- house on the summit of the ridge between the west side of the Park and the Hudson. Below them lay a pict- uresque tumble of roofs running down to the nver, be- yond which the abrupt New Jersey heights drew a long straight line against the horizon. Sunset and moonset were the special beauties of the site, with the swift and ceaseless current to add life and mystery to the outlook. The apartment differed from Cantyre's m that its simplicity would have been bare had it not produced an impression of containing just enough. The walls of the drawing-room were of a pale-gold ocher against which every spot of color told for its full value. On this back- ground the green of chairs, the rose of lamp-shades, the mahogany of tables, and the satinwood of cabinets pleased and rested the eye. There were no pictures m the room but a portrait of Mrs. Coningsby, which one of the great artists of the day had painted for her as a gift. In its richness of copper-colored hair and diaphanous jade-green draperies the room got all the decoration it required. I had heard Regina Barry's voice on entering, and knew that I was up against my fate. That is to say, the re- volver lay ready in my desk. Knowing that such a meet- ing as this must occur some time, I was in earnest as to using the weapon on the day when her eyes accused me. As I took off my overcoat and hat and laid them on a 134 1 di^ THE CITY OF COMRADES but I wondor,/ 1. . . ""'' '"'""«d Coningsby; Dut I wondered how even he had caueht this At,I,»» and .mpr..o„ed her in , flat on the west fde of New Yo"k a comer of the fireplace armchair by y dossing in a bright ros^lJeT Wh T 11^"' o«":jartr;atro!d' -r- - ''"'«-t\l.« id fo..eo*faflal7flowf;" "'" '"''«'°""'' -*'> 'l-^ Ittd^re^irtj'''',ty tS "^"^ "^'''"-^'^ fi« in them seemed not"xac!lv to h "" "° '"^ ^^^ Have been hidden beh.^'^' '; ^ JrfilmT °"'k ''"u- V° one couM get nothing ^.^rit:lZtt^t » THE CITY OF COMRADES baffle me she couldn't have done it more effectively; but, as I learned later, she meant nothing of the kind. Her greeting, as far as I could judge of it, was precisely that which she would have accorded to any other diner-out. During the exchange of commonplaces that ensued there were two things I noticed with curiosity and un- easiness. She wore the string of pearls I had seen once before — ^had had in my pocket, as a matter of fact — and the long diamond bar-pin. As to her rings I could not be sure, having on the night when I meant to steal them noticed nothing but their number. But the pearls and the diamonds arrested my attention — and my question- ings. Was she wearing them on purpose? Was she hold- ing them up as silent reminders between her and me? Was I to understand from merely looking at them the charge her eyes refused to convey? I had no means of seeking an answer to these questions, because Coningsby came in and the process of being wel- comed had to be gone through again. Moreover, the commonplaces which, when carried on & deux, might have led to something more personal remained as common- places and no more when tossed about d quatre. On our going in to dinner the same tone was main- tained, and I learned nothing from any interchange of looks. There was, in fact, no interchange of looks. Miss Barry talked to her right and to her left, but rarely across the table. When it became necessary to speak a word directly to me she did it with so hasty a glance that it might easily not have oeen a glance at all. The burning eyes that had watched me so intently on our first meeting, and studied me with so much laughing curiosity on our second, kept themselves hidden. Since it was on them that I had reckoned to tell me what I was so eager to 136 THE CITV OF COMRADES Well, have you thought of it?" ^' andT/es"' st h" dTtTo T'"'^ T^" *° "" "> absent and rather drea" sT '"'«"'^'' ""''-d'y-only but n,ore on th^ sptrentalt': "" "*"" '^'^^''^^ «^'' Thought of what?" Oh, thati I'm sorry to say I've been t^ I, There was no mistaking the sincerity of her tone -'"- to her as a possibility that the man who wrote thos" words IS the one she is now asked to meet at dinner When I found the opportunity I put the question ^ About you? You mean about— " The Down and Out." "Lord, nol What would be the good of that?" 139 • ( ' THE CITY OF COMRADES "The only good would be that-that I shouldn't be ■ailine under false colors. •'F^lse colors be hanged! We've all got a nght to the privacy of our private lives. You don't go nosing into any one else's soul; why should any one else go nosing rZ yours? Why, if I were to tell my wife all I could tell her about myself I should be ashamed to come home. I knew this argument, and yet when I came to apply it to my attitude toward Regina Barry I was not satisfied. I 'S CHAPTER XI A FEW days later I was surprised to receive a note from Annette van Elstine. It ran: Dear Frank, — I hare Just heard that you are m New York ^-that you have been here some time. Why did you never come to see me 7 It was not kind. And didn't you know that your mother has been heartbroken over your disappearance? Jerry and Jack knew you were somewhere in this country, but they've kept your mother in the dark. What does it all mean? Come to tea with me — just me — on Friday afternoon at five, and tell me all about it. Your affecrionate Annbttb. As this was the first bit of connection with my own family since Jerry had practically kicked me down h! ' steps, I was deeply perturbed by it. I am not without natural aiFection, and yet I seemed to have died to the old life as completely as Lovey to that with his daughters. I had never forgotten Jerry's words: "And now get out. Don't let any of us ever see your face or hear your name again." The very fact that he was justified had roused the fool- ish remnant of my pride. I had loved my mother; I had reverenced my father; though my brothers were indifferent to me, I had felt a genuine tenderness for my sisters. But since that night on Jerry's steps it had been to me as if I had put myself »4» ft Id '' f '1 ¥1 I m 'I THE CITY OF COMRADES on <«e side of a flood and left them on the other, and that there was no magic skiff that would cany me back whence I came. I cannot say that I grieved for them; and it was the last of my thoughts that they would grieve for me. I accepted the condition that we were dead to each other, and tried to bury memory. And now came this first stirring of resurrection. It hurt me. I didn't want it. It was like the return of life to a frozen limb. Numbness was preferable to anguish. "Lovey," t said, as the old man hung about me when I was undressing that night, "how would you feel if one of your daughters — " He raised himself from the task of pulling off my boots, which to humor him I allowed him to perform, and looked at me in terror. "They ain't — they ain't after me?" "No, no I But suppose they were-^wouldn't you like to see them?" He dropped the boot he held in his hand. "Y' ain't goin' to 'ave them 'unted up for me. Slim?" "I don't know anything about them, Lovey. That isn't my point at all. But suppose— just suppose— you could see them again; would you do it?" He shook his bald head. "They're dead to me. I'm dead to them. If we was to sec each other now 'twouldn't be nothink but diggin' up a corpse." "Nothink but diggin' up a corpse," I repeated to myself as I turned east from Fifth Avenue, leaving the brown trees of the Park behind me, and took the few steps necessary to reach my uncle Van Elstine's door. He had married my mother's sister, and during the lifetime of my aunt the families had been fairly intimate. Of late 142 THE CITY OF COMRADES fBMi they had drifted apart, a* familie* wffl, thou^ touch-and-go relation! were itill maintained. I have to admit that while waiting for Annette in the Iibraiy up-jtairs I wai nervous. I was coming back to that family hfe in which I should have interests, affec- tocms, cares, responsibilities. For the past three yean I bad had no one to think of but myself; and if in that freedom there were heartaches, there were no complexities. Though It was not yet dark, the curtains were drawn and the room was lighted not only by a shaded lamp, but by the flicker of a fire. When Annette, wearing a tea- gown, appeared at last in the doorway she stood for a second to examine me. "Why, Jack!" she exclaimed, then. "I didn't know you were in New York. Have you brought Frank with your "I am Frank," I laughed, going forward to oflfer my hand. "1 didn't know Jack and I were so much alike. But you re the second person who has said it within a few days. "It's your mustache, I think," she explained as we shook hands. "I never saw you wear one before." "I never did." "Do sit down. They'll bring tea in a minute. I'm so glad to see you. But if it's not a rude question, teU me why you've been here aU this time and never let me know." It would be difficult to define the conditions which made Annette at the age of thirty-three what Cantyre styled one of the smartest women in New York, but the ^ mnute you saw her you felt that it was so. My uncle Van Elstine was only comfortably off; their house was not large; though they entertained a good deal, their 1*3 THE CITY OF COMRADES manner of Uving wa» not ihowy. But my aunt Van EUtine had ertabliihed the tradition— wme women have the art of doing it— that whatever the had and did and •aid wai "the thing," and Annette, at her only child and heirsu, had kept it up. . . . u j A« far as I could underatand the matter, which had been explained to me once or twice, my aunt wai ex- clusive. In the rush of the newly come and the rise of the newly rich, which marked the last quarter of die nineteenth century in New York, she and a few like- minded friends had made it their business to pick and choose and form what might literally be called mtMe. By 1913, however, the elite was not only formed but founded on a rock as firm as the granite of Manhattan, and Annette's picking and choosing could be ori another principle. Hers was that more civilized American ten- dency to know every one worth knowing, which is still largely confined, so they tell me, to Washington and New York. Where her mother had withdrawn Annette went forward. Her flair for the important or the soon to be important was unerring. Hers was one of the few draw- ing-rooms through which every one interesting, both domestic and foreign, was boi>nd at some time to pass. Being frankly and unrestrainedly curious, she kept in touch with the small as well as with the gr^at, with the young as well as with the old, maintaining an enormous correspondence, and getting out of her correspondents every ounce of entertainment they could yield her. On her side she repaid them by often lending them a helping hand. , The warmth of her greeting now was due not to the fact that I was her cousin, but to her belief that I had- been up to something. It was always those who had 144 THE CITY OF COMRADES been up to tomething with whom the was most eager to come heart to heart. Without temptations of her own, as far as I could ever see, she got from the indiscretions of others the same sort of pleasure that a scientist finds m ttudymg the wrigglings of microbes under a microscope. Havmg some inkling of this, I answered her questions not untruthfully, but with reservations, saying that I had not come to see her because I had been down on my luck. ' "And how did you come to be down on your luck?" "Can't you guess?" "You don't look it now." "I've been doing better lately. I've made two or three friends who've given me a hand." Carrying the attack m her direction, I asked, "How did yon hear that I was in New York r e« mat "Hilda Grace told me. She said you'd been working on that manorial of hers. She thought it awfully strange —you won't think me rude in repeating it?— that a man like you should be only in a secondary position." "If she knew how glad I was to get that—" She changed the subject abruptly. "When did you last hear from home?" I thought it sufficient to say: "Not for a long time. I may as well admit that nowadays I never hear from home at all." II And, if it's not a rude question, why don't you?" "Partly, I suppose, because I don't write." "So I understood from Jack. But, Frank dear, do you think it kindr I broke in with the question, the answer to which I had really come to get, "When did you last see Jack?" About eighteen months ago; just before he »4S was :l| THE CITY OF COMRADES married. He knew you were lomewhere about, but he wam't confidential on the subject." "No; he wouldn't be. Did he leem all right?" "Quite; and awfully in love with Mary Sweet. What'e .he like, really?" I described my new sister-in-law as I remembered her, going on to say: "I suppose you gave Jack a good time. Did you — did you take him about anywhere?^' "Let me see. I took him to— where was it? I took him to the Wynfords'— and— and— oh, yes!— to the Bartys'. And it's too funny! I really think Regina fell in love with him at first sight. For a month or two she quesrioned me about him evety time we met. Then all of a sudden she stopped. If she was struck by the thunderbolt, as the French put it— well, all I can say is that it serves her right." ''Serves her right— what for?" "Oh, the way she's carried on. It's disgraceful. Do you know her? Her father is an architect, like you." Annette's round, dusky face, which had no beauty but a quick, dimpling play of expression, was one that easily betrayed her ruling passion of curiosity. It was now so alight with anticipauon that I tried to be more than ever casual. "I've— I've just met her." "Wherer . "Once at the memorial, when she came with Mrs. Grace; and a few nights ago I dined with her at the Coningsbys'." , t i. » "I wonder she didn't take you for Jack. To this I was not obliged to make a response for the reason that, the man having arrived with the tea, Annette had to give her attention to the placing of the tray, 146 THE CITY OF COMRADES When I had taken a cup of tea from her hand I created • diversion w,th the que«,o«. "What did you mean by «^ ^»y »"« earned on was disgraceful f" Why, the way the gets engaged and disengaged. It'. betti three time, in a. many years, and goodness know, now many more experiments—" ••I suppose she's trying to iind the right man." It s pretty hard on those she takes up and puts down Setoe'nY^ ''''" *" '"" " ^'" ^' ^'^'^ "^^ ^^Isn't it better to get left than to many the wrong "The very day I took Jack to we her she'd broken off her engagement to Jim Hunter. I didn't know it at the JTA aC""' ^° °' *'"*' '^='y» '"*" ''«''°« « came out U 1 had known it and told Jack—" •]WelI, what then?" "Oh, I don't say anything. They were awfully taken with each other. But I'm glad he was saved. If he hadn t gone straight back to Montreal he might now be in the place of poor Stephen Cantyre." "I see a good deal of Canty te." " "So I understand." "Who told you?" ^ 'Elsie Coningsby." "You seem to have got a good deal of information about me all of a sudden." "Because you've dropped right into the little circle m which we all know one another with a kind of rf Xge;."'"'""'"^' ^'" ^""^ " "^'^ '^ ^°"8-- "But any one could see that Cantyre would never make a husband for a high-spirited girl like Miss Barry." 147 ') THE CITY OF COMRADES "How do you know the'i hifh-ipinted, if «'• not • lude queftion?" "(Ml, one can tell." ^^ "You've leen her only twice. You mutt have noticed her very particularly." . , , j • - .. "I've noticed Cantyre very particulariy; and jun ai he wouldn't make her the right kind of hu.band the wouldn't make him the right kmd of wife. When Annette said anything in which there wa. a necial motive a ieriea of concentric shadows Hed over her face like ripples from the spot where a ttone is thrown into a pool* *« • * > j "Well, I'm glad you don't like her, if K wn t a rude "What'has my liking her or not liking her got to do with it?" • jf "Nothing but the question of your own safety, u she notices how much you're like Jack— " ^ "If she was going to notice that," I said, boldly, she would have done it already." .,..__ „i^. "And so much the worse for you if she ha»-unlM» you're put on your guard." ... * "If you mean put on my guard againtt the danger of being Cantyre's successor in a similar expenence— "That was my idea." ^ "WeU, I can give you all the reassurance you need, Annette. In the first place, I've got no money- The relevance of her interrupaon did not come to me till neatly a year later. . . , ;,. "Frank dear, I mutt ask you, whde i think o» rt, didn't you know that your mother was very, very lur All the blood in my body seemed to rush back to my heart and to rtay there. We talked no mote of Regina 148 THE CITY OF COMRADES Biny, nor of anything but tt«rk fimdamentd realitic In an inatant they became aa much the etsentiaU of my •howed henelf much better mfoimed ,. to my career than ahe pretended to be, pving me to underitand that the day on which f di.appeared my mother had received a kind of death-blow. She wa. of the type to leave the ninety and nine in the wilderaea. to go after that which wai lost; and in her mability to do «o the had been leized, ao Annette told me, with a mortal pining away. With her decline my father was declining also, and all because ot me. "I've been the most awful rotter, Annette," I groaned. ai I staggered to my feet. " You know that, don't you ?" Yes, Frank, I do know it. That's why I've been so glad to get hold of you at last, and ask you to-to redeem yourself." "Redeem myself by going back?" She looked up at me and nodded. ''Oh, but how can I r CHAPTER XII 'M MY question was answered next evening by Beady Lamont. . Greatly to Lovey's disgust, 1 made it a point to attend every Saturday meeting at the club. ^ "Them low fellas ain't fit company for you, Slun, he would protest. "What's the use of cuttin' out the boore and bein' rich if you don't 'old yer 'ead above the likes o' that?" "They've been awfully white with us, Lovey. "They wasn't no whiter with us than they'd be with anybody else; and don't three out o' every five give 'em the blue Peter?" But though we had this discussion once a week, he always accompanied me to Vandiver Street, showing hi« disapproval when he got there in sitting by himself and refusing to respond to advances. I have to confess that I needed the fellowship of men who had been through the same mill as myself, in order to keep up the fight. Again let me repeat it, I am giving you but a faint idea of the struggle I had to make. No evU habit relinquishes its hold easily, and the one to which I had given myself over is perhaps the most te- nacious of all. It would be wearisome if I were to keep telling you how near 1 came at times to courting the old disaster, and how close the shave by which I sheered away; but I never felt safer than a bUnd man walkmg ISO THE CITY OF COMRADES iriHf °K "'"[•. **°." *•"" °"« I *»'* the blue ^JT "y '?""«»*°»':' though on each occasion I juggled myself ,„to putting it back again. I juggled myself as I d.d on the mottling when I ga^d at the b«w^ green water flowing beneath Greeley's Slip. I s"d t^ what I didn't do tcMlay I would still be'free to do t" morrow, thus t.dmg myself over the worst minutes, tf only by a process of postponement. talT nf T"* "^ •"*'"'" " *•>' ''"'' I h"«J so many tafe, of heroic resistance that I grew ashamed of my penods of weakness. What Pyn and Mouse and t"e Scotchman and the piano-mover and Beady Lamont could do, I told myself. I also rould do. MorLer „Tw tu'rHe^r '%'\' rv''"" °"^ °f '•'- «g, jolly face was all a quiver of good- His voice was one of those husky chuckles of which Je very gutgl.^ make you laugh. To make you Taugh was h.s pnncple function in the club. On thf, evening he began his talk with a string of those amusing, di,! com^ected anecdotes which used to be a feature of^;fter^ dmner speeches somewhat as a boy will splash about Li V ^u" ^' '"«^"* *° '"^"'- B"t when he swam It was with vigor. tin"'^i!r ""T °^^°" ""*•«" 8"y» ■■" P^l'aWy hit- Ir ■?!«' ^i'PV''" V'^"« *° "'='^' <^°^ »" over \% ™ Th« . f»™l>e»- Say. ain't families the deuce? You may run like a hare, or climb like a squirrel, or light trJ^:i.e.".*!:r»»l^°- '-"^ ■« ^e at your heeV • somethin' fierce. You 11 IS3 can never get away from i^^ m THE CITY OF COMRADES them; they'll never let you get away from them. Be- cause" — his voice fell to a tone of solemnity — "because no matter how fast you sprint, or how high you climb, or how graceful you can dodge — you carries your family with you. You can no more turn your back on it than you can on your own stummick. You may refuse to pervide for it, you may treat it cruel, you may leave it to look out for itself; but you can never git away from knowin' in your heart that if you're a bum husband or father or son you're considerable more bum as a man. That's why the family is after us. Can't shake 'em ofiFI Got 'em where they won't be shook off. God A'mighty Hisself put 'em there, and, oh, boys, listen to me and I'll tell you why." He made dabs at his wrists as though to turn up his sleeves, like a man warming to his work. Taking a step or twu forward he braced his left hand on his barrel- shaped hip, while his gigantic forefinger was pointed dramatically toward his audience. "Say, did any of you married guys ever wish to God you was single again? Sure you did! Was any of you chaps with two or three little kids to feed ever sorry for the day when he heard the first of his young ones cry? Surest thing you knowl Did any of us with a father and a mother, with brothers and sisters, too, very likely, ever kick because we hadn't been bom an orphan and an only child? You bet your sweet life we did! The drinkin' man don't want no hangers-on. He wants to be free. Life ain't worth a burnt match to him when he's got other people to think of, and a home to keep up, and can't spend every penny on hisself. Some of us here to-night has cursed our wives; some of us has beat our children; some of us has cut out father and mother as if they'd IS4 THE CITY OF COMRADES ^"'Jr """•"' '■°' "* «d ^ could cast off fmm there, and care andZlH;^/ "« 8'v« "» Wndnes. that fi,. thc^'^h^ u^itrT^/': .f ;r-.;''-« *"'•"« bv and hv ♦„ » J another feeling— one that druv lu it yet 'II do"t before the „. f'^"" ^''^ ''='^^"'* '1°°« boys, what's it aU S Eve'V " ^"" '* °«- »«' J.in' ot else it's iuSu™tX"'tL'rnd^ tdT 5:^ yo-^SYn'dtl^rei^tf^^^ ^'"htt ""S^wT^dlP"^— was th:i„r' itzzr.z-^'^'r' *° ^'"^ « mother. Them thiZi. T 1 "'^ "^ f"*"" and But I'll speaker „r* 1°° '*""'* *° ''•= *'°^^"i out. ha, been done t^« L mt^K"^ ''^"'^'''"^ ''°"« '""^ ■"« -that she'd likeTe toSh •'""'" u" "'"•=''' ^^^ »>er to say. I've Icnol the d^fe wheLTw t "^"^ ''''' "^ quit of my family as a do. ^K •"? r . "" ""^^ *° •>« hi«tail. Ihada^fe 2* 7u°'*''r'""" ««<* *° my GodI but I thr^Jht^r' ' *'"r "''''''^^'" ^-d. O nowhere without tW^r T " \'^^ ^ ^°"''>«'* «° couldn't take a dnJk ^.J °"l ' *° ''' ^'^ '«='"• =""» I f- -y«SLy"a':fd:?^:jrj^,; "s,:- "-V" P ison of my life Tht-J^ • l ^ . ^ "^^ ^as the '^1 1 ; t'i THE CITY OF COMRADES down durin' the day and they buried in the ashe.. That'd leave me free again. Not to have no home— not to have to ante up for no one but myself— was the only thing I ever prayed for. And by gum, but my prayer was answered I One night 1 come home and found the house empty. My wife had decamped, and left a note that nm somethin* like this: 'Dear Beady,' says she, I cant stand this life no more,' says. she. 'If it was only me I wouldn't mind; but I can't see my children kicked and beat and starved and hated, not by no one. And then she signed her name. , . j u » u,^ "Well, say, boys, most of you has heard what hap- pened to me after that. I sure had one grand time while it lasted— and it lasted just about six months. I saw a man oncet— we was movin' a party from Harlem to the Bronx— fall down a flight of stairs with a sofa on his back, and he sure did get some pace on. Well, my Pa«:e "« just about as quick-and as dead easy as he struck the landin' at the bottom I struck the gutter. Now you know the rest of my story, because some of you guys has had a hand in it. . . . tt. u t k-^ "But what I want to tell you is this: That when 1 be- gun to come to again, as you might say, the fim thii« 1 wondered about was the wife and the kids. I couldnt get 'em out of my mind, nohow. What did I ever have 'em for? I asked myself. Why in hell did I ever get mar- ried? Nobody never druv me into it. I did it of my own accord. I went hangin' after the giri, who had a Kood place in the kitchen department of a big store, and I never let her have no peace till she said shed many me, and did it. Why had I been such a crazy fool? There was days and days, sittin' right m there m that back room, when I asked myself that; and at last I got 156 THE CITY OF COMRADES go on wishin' no such thine- for IV„ » • •' "^'J"" « y°" God A't^uu. ■ j ^' "^ ' •" 8om' to te I you what God^A n,.ghty .aid to me right there in that back settin'- -a his big chest exp^^ded ' '" ^" *""'"' P~^«' ?ou£ hat'LthTn'''r° "" '"' '""^ ^"""^ "'«>"' ifldidn'tlTgocJ^y" SoT-i"? r ^''r '""' '- I » u go crazy, ao 1 make beautiful wnrl/l<> ,-j 157 "^ i:> I * I*!; ■ ,fi! !^ : ii THE CITY OF COMRADES you a wife and three fine youngMen. Now get out and get after thern. Cut out Uvin* for yourself and live for them. You mutt low your life to find it; and the quick- est way to lose your Ufe is not to think about your beastly cravings at all. ^ • »» . i. "Well, by gumi boys, if I didn't take God A mighty at His word. I says to myself, I'll prove this thing or bust— and it I was to bust there'd be some explosion. When you fellows had kept me here long enough to let me be pretty nigh sure of myself I went and looked up the wife, and— well, there! I needn't say no more. Some of you dubs has been up to my little place and you know that Whatever spoke to me that day in that back room is in my little tenement in the Bronx if He ever was any- where—and that brings me at last to my p'lnt. "I'm speakin' to you blue-star men because youve showed pretty weU by this time the stufiF you're made of. As long as you was in danger of sUppin' back I woiUdn t say this to you at aU. But, say, you've weathered the worst of it, so it's time for me to speak. "Hasanyofyouawife? Then go back to her. Have you kids? Then go back to 'em. Have you a fadier or a mother? Then for God's sake let them know that you're doin' well. Go to 'em-^rite to em-call em up on the 'phone-send 'em a telegraph— but Jont let 'em be without the peace o' mind that '11 come from knowin' that you're on your two feet. One of the most mysterious things in this awful mysterious hfe is the way somebody is always lovin' somebody. Here in these two rooms is a hundred and sixty-three by actual count of the wediest and most gol-damed boobs that the country can turn out. As we look at each other we can t help askin if any one in their tarnation senses could care for the is8 THE CITY OF COMRADES foSTui t!l' ■^'^ ^" '°'r"y "°°™»' ""^ of •» you can foot up to eight or ten that '11 have lu in th«r hLZ a. if we wa. gold-headed cherub^ ' •"'"' " ,-j /^'. ^J''. I? *'" y°" •omethin- confidential like nim to learn Hes ready to command a atmy or to TevenTf ''""• ^"* *'"'* °"« *»>'"« I'" ^ Ranged tnats love. I ve thought about it and thought about .t-and It gets me every time. 1 don't know what itT. or where .t comes from, or how they brew the^dV™^^' thmg m hearts like yours and mine. All! know 1 Sat .t . ther^and that this old world goes rou„d"^V I'm bu t.n' into it all the time, and it S o' tu^s me hy mak^'me'^hok ' iTl' " " '"" °' « ^''^ ^^^^^ co^e^^hfrS!..?;-- .hmy with « when you know how to see it- But I'll not say no more. You'd laff. You're laffln' ,♦ »d I don't bUme you. All I've wa^Jdlo" do iHoT^ some of you boys wise If th,^'. . ui *^ * J-ows any oneJinX wJ^lftW; fonTThrm-thJ: Iwniht?'' ^" -^'^ '^"" ^'^ '^ « - 'a- ^d so I did it. Before going to bed I wrote a lone letter to my father, giving him such details of my Wsto^ toTow tT *ru^"" =" ' *''-8''t he wo.Ir«k^ or^r; f hmted that if he or my mother would cax^ for a visit from me I could go home for a few day. »S9 ^jT^ ILL THE CITY OF COMRADES Then 1 wtited. In a i»wk I tot my nidy. It read: Mt »ia» F«Aint,— I tm glaa to receive your letter, b« JSLthuit ehouirever h.ve been nece-ary for you to wnte jr^M you ihould be doing weU no one could be mote th»nk- M for than 1. I have pven your mcewpe to your mother. SKl.hewuheimetOienJyoufcerlove. » «?»••<»" ""y^ to add, however, that no mettatn can withdraw the iWoM vou have thruit mto her heart— and mme. yni WT. «« y^^ affectionate father. Edwasb Miuinnr. . Il J CHAPTER Xin AFTER that my work took m. to Atlantic Cky, ^th Repn. Barry, each of which, with one exception, took me by aurpiite. ttrongly to come with him to call on Mr.. Bany and her daughter that in the end I yielded. I found Mn. Barty a charming invalid lady, keeping to the background and allowing her daughter to take aU the reflex action of their liking for Jack. Mr.. Bamr had .een him only once but had pre.erved the mer.,oIJ ofthe pleasure which the meeting had given her. She that .he thought Jack dilFerent from other men. Perl hap, he was, though I could never see it. Perhap. .he thought I wa.. myself, though she didn't say «, t^Zrll dbLTLT' *?' "'• ^« fo"°''«« by an invitation to dmner. and not long after that Amiette placed me next •o dia Cantyre when he msisted on my joining a pany he gave at a theater. Two or th«e other meedngs we,^ acadental. and If I say that in all of them Miss Barxy henelf made the advances it is only to emphasize ^ nervousness. I had no right to be meeting her; I had Aat-weU, that the didn't dislike me. The revolver i6i 11 THE CITY OF COMRADES WM ttill in my detk and I b«tM» to aA myielf if it wWt my duty to m«ke um of it. True, ihe had not acci-ied me with her eye*, but the waa in aome waya dome worae. What waa to be the end of it f I welcomed the work at Atlantic City, then, for more reaaona than one. It took me away from New York; it kept me out of danger. Cantyre havmg confided to me the fact that hia hopea were not dead, it left the field free to him. Never for a moment did he auipect that m my heart there waa anything that could interfere with him; nor did he go much at dream that in hera • • • It is curioui that in proportion as the craving for dnnk diminished its place waa taken by another craving for what I knew I couldn't have. There was every reason why I couldn't have it, why I could never have it. Atlai- tic City offered me, therefore, the readiest meana of flight. When that should be over I was planning a still further retirement. Srerling Barry was in California, directing the first stages of the erection of a block of university buildings in which he took great pride. Coningsby him- self had suggested that when the Atlantic City job was finished there would be an opening for me there if I cared to make a bid for it. I did so care, and he prom- ised to speak for me. Once I reached the Pacific, I was resolved not to come back for years, and perhaps never to come back at all. „ . r j It is lucky for me that I am temperamentally indmed to look forward. The retrospective view in my case would very soon have led me back to Greeley s Slip, but I was rarely inclined to dwell on it. Once when I was crossing the Atlantic as a smaU boy our steamer had run on the rock* at Cape Gear. To enable us to get off her before she slipped back into the water and went down, i62 THE CITY OF COMRADES dS? ?n'!r '**''*?• **" l^**" *" "• '«»» ^ top of the d^and up them we had to cUmb. Thi. * did in . my mother and ...ter. would hardly have had tJ,. n vr ™n. «/*'*"*• "^ ". "••- *'"y «'"'«• •« th- - - Sut fe"a° """*• •"•• " "'"''* ^~'' *•>- «- - - «ot to look ahead of the day. and at Atla,,... (Jit. ll day., even m November, were bearable enou«I,. I ' t^M 7'"y^''""f«».'»«noiy; they dulled pain. „ wail of thlT ^-''^ ""•'^ T '° ^°'^ »• the piecing wad of the bagpipe, mete, the Highlander to fight. I hthr'rT J ^"""uf'"" """ ' '^ of timelLne... In their roll and tumble and cra.h I could hear the b^akM"'" '*"""'" '■" '''"■^'' "«»« P« the «,L of breaker, forever mto .peech. Sir X?h«' •r*"'"'*; ""'* ^ "" "8" ~ have it thr« w;r ""ttered to me; but the sen.e that there wa. a gay compan.on.hip in the world from which I wa. excluded got .lightly on my nerve,. Cantyre who came down to spend a weekend with me whenev . h^ wa. both wmdy and foggy, with a da.h of drizzle in the the half-finished buildmg I rtood for a minute to get the puff, of wet wind m my face. The light, along the Board 163 '■ «' « cross-purposes, ing my conviction of what it was to be. It s very kind of Mrs. Barry," I began, vaguely You see she hkes you," she broke in, impulSdy If you had any one belonging to you in this coS JrC" t^ ^" '^^'' ="^"»y '""«n„l. mother^ and when Annette told her—" mooier is. "What did Annette tell her?" shIS^k'' t ^^' ^'- ^'"""-y' I'-" »° «o"y that I should be the one to bring the news." If Its bad news," I said, encouragingly, "I'd rather i^" to share it with me than a'ny'.^; else '^^t. hom^lSw"'"""^' ""''" ^°" "'"" »"^'""'« '-- ?o sLrm^heTd."" ""^"* """'• ^" ' ^"•^ "o -» to 'iStf t7ytu.>"'' *'''"*''*• ^' *°" »«' *»« <"^« 167 Is (i T THE CITY OF COMRADES In my excitement I clutched her by the hand, but I think she was hardly aware of the act any mote than L "But what is it?" "It's— it's about your father." "He's not— he's not— dead?" She fell back again into her comer of the chair, with- drawing her hand. I, too, fell back into my comer, staring out through the wind-shield. Knowing that by not say- ing no she was really saying yes, I was obliged not only to get possession of the fact, but to control my sense of it. I may say at once that it was the first sudden shock of my life. Every other trial had come to me by degrees — I had mote or less seen it on the wa> and had been ready to meft it. This was something I had hardly ever thought of. iTiat it might happen some time had been vaguely in the back of my mind, of course; but I had never considered it as an event of the day and hour. Now that it had occurred, my mental heaven* seemed to fall. I have told you so little of my family life that you hard- ly realize the degree to which my father was its ceiiter and support. My memory cannot go back to the time when he was not an important man, not only in the esti- mation of his children, but in that of the entire country. One of the youngest of that group of men who in the 'sixties and 'seventies took the scattered colonies of Great Britain lying north of the border of the United States and welded them into a gigantic, prosperous whole, he had outlived all but the sturdiest of his contemporaries With Macdonald, Mount Stephen, Strathcona and a few others he had had the vision of a new white man's empire stretching from the Atlantic to the Pacific and from the i68 THE CITY OF COMRADES era he had never 1« .t go. That there were evil time, m well a, good ones is a matter of history; but howeveTdarIt for ,Tc:";7 '"'"'■ "'1°"' °^^^- wh^rveHon for a fraction of an mstant hi» belief in ultimate success In helpmg to build up the vast financial system of the or^'el "t """'""^ *''"" "" "° <'~^. - Europe hi J^ \''''r """"y ™"''' t'*' borrowed at wh^c^ iJt r l""''- /t"' "^" '^»y'' -''- the proTp « was so hopeless and the treasury so empty that he wm oW.g«l to pledge everything he possess^, „d afte' Aat to use nothmg but his honor and his iame Se wona. Me had begun to reap his reward ii«i- ,. my memory of him opens. Of L dayTof struggle 1 knew only by hearsay. By the time I was five he waa ouTthe r" "'T"'""''''' '^"'*''' honored through ^etht^^'rc' T^t '" """^ «"'''■"' -«» °- of «ie eight or ten Canadian baronets created by the Oueen cut cTeanV f '""'' =""' "''^°'«"^' -'h'thin. d ": S«. "•** • o ''°™" "°* ^^"^ dejection, but from mean?™ Spartan in theirs. Though with our added means our manner of living increased in dignity, it gained Sh" rY °^''""'y= ="•• "-y -"e th sSs o wSn™ '"' ' ^•^" ''■"''^' *° ^"''""^ ^•^ ^°^ erilf/i""'"",'*''' ^^J" "° """* *=« experimentally, cov- enng their tracks and returning to right ways before their digreuions could be noticed. I was invariably c"ught coming in for some dramaric moments with m^fatft ^.ch increased m tension with the y.ars. I have oS " 169 I , !: THE CITY OF COMRADES w>ndeRd what hit own youth could have been that ho had »o little mercy on what was at first not much worse than high spirits and boisterousness. Though I am far from blaming any one but myself for my ultimately going wrong, I have sometimes thought that a gentler handling might have led me aright when sheer repression only made me obstinate. That centler handling my mother would have given me had not my father felt that it was weak. This knowledge only added to my per- versity, the result being a state of continuous rebellion on my part and permanent displeasure on his. "You're getting in worse and worse with the old man,' my brother Jack warned me a few months before I left Montreal for good. "I heard him telling mother that if you didn't turn over a new leaf he'd cut you out of his wUL" , , The information that he had so cut me out was the last form of appeal he ever made to me. I didn't believe he meant it otherwise than as a bluff— a stroke of the pen could have reinstated me; but merely as a bluff it angered me. It implied that I might be induced to do for money what I hadn't done for love or duty, and I was foolish enough to consider it part of my manhood to prove that any one who so judged me was mistaken. In that phase of my misguided life there was a kind of crazy, Cordelia-like attempt to show my father that it was not because of his money that I cared for him— or •didn't care for him; but all I succeeded in doing was to rouse the resentment of a man who had hardly ever been defied. . , , , , But I had repented of that kind of bravado long before I had repented of anything else. My letter to him in October had been quite sincere. To be 170 THE CITY OF COMRADES eut out of hit will had never meant anything to me but the loss of hit affection. I was sony for that lots, somer than any words I have could tell you. But when he wrote to me, in answer to my October letter, I knew from his tone that I had definitely killed whatever had once existed between him and me, and that all that was left for me was to bury it. I had been trjing to bury it for the past eight weeks, and I do not deny that the effort was a bitter one. You must understand that I had now c«m,e in for a set of emotions that had not belonged to me before I went to the Down and Out. I can explain it only on ike ground that months of abstinence from anything that could inHame the senses or disturb the poise of the mind had induced a sanity of judgment to which I had been a stranger. In this new light I was really a prodigal son— not from any hope of a ring on my hand or the fatted calf, but genuinely from affection for the parents I had wronged. To have this impulse to arise and go to my father thrown back on itself was the hardest thing in my ex- penence. Somehow I had kept the conviction that if ever I repented that door would be open to my retum. It had not really occurred to me that they wouldn't say 'f 5T\?* " ""^^ ^''" ^ **'°"''l •»»ke merry and be glad. That my brothers might refuse to join in the chorus was a possibility. That my sister might not be over-enthusiastic in doing so I should be able to under- stand. But that my father and mother . . . Through- selt. Well, if I ve thrust a sword into your hearts, old dears, you've jolly well thrust one into mine; and so we're quits." 171 j- i ! ■ i:. I THECITY OF COMRAPES "Wlien did it hapf-m?" wm the fiwt quetdon I wm •ufficiently maiter of myielf to a«k. "Annette heard yetterday. I think it wa« the day befoie." "Do you know if— if he'd be«> ill?" "He hatn't teen well for a lor.g time, Annette saya— • not for two or three years; but t -i end wa»--well, it was heart failure. He wa» in i! tnotoi— going home. When the car drove up to the ' lor they found him—" It was the picture thus presented that made me put my hand to my forehead and bow my head. I was think- ing of him seated in his comer of the car, stately, unbend- ing, unpardoning, dead. I was thinking of thf plight of my poor little mother when the man she had for to many years worshiped and obeyed was no longer there to give her his commands. I was thinking of the com- motion in the family, of the stir of interest throughout the community. A prince and a great man would have fallen in Israel, and all our Canadian centers would be aquiver with the news. Jerry and Jack would cable to my sister in England, as well as to our uncles and aunts in that country and in the United States. There were cousins and friends who wouldn't be forgotten. I alone was left out. , . . ,. t That was, however, more than I could believe. It was more, too, than I was willing to allow Regina Barry to suppose. . "There must be a telegram for me at my rooms m New York," I managed to stammer, though I fear my tone lacked conviction. To this she said nothing. She had, in fact, as Cantyre informed me later, already ascertained that up to the hour of her departure from New York there was none. 172 THE CITY OF COMRADES «pet.t.on of the meager infonnation m".. Barrv h.d rven me. though I learned in addition tha tht Le«1 aHr«^E^^H°^rttht"S"^''•r^^^^^^^^^^^ w ner tone m .aymg she wa« turpriged that I had «. Ln omiller::;^: LTenUot " "" ^'"""'^ ^'-- ' "'«' and made It with some success . . ' w» nse, I acquitted my mother and my iister of any share in itie'ri icod" "'• ""J r ''" -- *''" -"d-« 4rTei;tt:nV„tit^^ under tha«- nf I,-, . xt *'"*'» ""<• "»<> now come -wo^^s-to^-zc;^--^ Jei^ in^stt ^"""^^""y '"-«"«d. but he would do as Je^ insisted. Jerty-who as Sir Gerald Melbury would now cut a great swath as head of the family-Jer^^ wouM be my father over again. He would be my i Aero;;; »73 THE CITY OF COMRADES ■lain, only on a Mnaller icale. My father wat tyrannical by instinct; Jeny would be to by imitation. My father believed hi* word to be law because he didn't know how to do anything else; Jerry would believe hit word to be law in order to be like my father. My father wouldn't forgive me because I had outraged his affections; Jerry wouldn't forgive me because my father hadn't done it first. As far as he could bring it about, my future would be locked and sealed with my father's death, not because he, Jerry, would be so shoclEed at my way of life, but because the laws of the Medes and Persians alter not. Nothing remained for me, then, but to grin and bear it, and bide my time. That I had friends of my own was to me a source of that kind of consolation which is largely pride. Cantyre and the Coningsbys, Regina Barry and her mother — came closer to me now than any one with whom I had ties of blood. "Our relatives," George Sand writes somewhere, "are the friends given us by Nature; our friends are the relatives given us by God." As relatives given me by God I regarded Lovey and Christian and Colonel Straight and Pyn and Beady Lamont and all that band of humble, helpful pals to whom I was knit in the bonds of the "robust love" which was the atmosphere of brave old Walt Whitman's City of Friends. There was no pose among them, nor con- demnation, nor severity. Forgiveness was exercised there till seventy times seven. They forbore one another in love, and endeavored to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace to a degree of which Some One would have said that He had not found the like, no, not in Israel. My family were all of Israel, and of the strictest sect. They fasted twke in the week, so to speak; in theory, if 174 THE CITY OF COMRADES not in practice, they gtve tithei of dl that they po.MM«J ; thqr could «ncerdy thank God that they weVe ^ «.ch men a. compo.«l the Down and Out; «,d yetTw" P«c«ely among thoae who «„ote their b«a.t. Li A^Wt tir.r"^ " \" "'J "" *'"'' 'y" ""»» '•«v.n that I found the .y„,pathy that raiaed me to my feet and bade kept poor old Lovey near me. that I took him down to ilhi T t'l' "'? ""'^^ """• »"«• ">»<«« Wm dine with me. and told h.m of my bereavement. "NnL ' """r ' "i' "''•' •'"'^"« » melancholy face. oSZy" ' r '"''T' "'" *^«y' "«'«» h've been an old. aged man, I expect." I told him my father's age. Too bad you didn't know in time for the funeral. Ye'd ve sjt? ^"t'^ u '"'* '^'^ "^-^ ""derground, wouldn't A« •! ; u "'" / r* '" '°'"' «°°'' ''«'«fit <:l"b, like, that II take care of the expense, of burial. Awful dear chSh;^^' ' '""■"'' '"'" ''™'^ »'" " P'« •» »-e rin!?/" " ^!l """r"^ ^r *•■" *•"■» was the case he con- mued: And as for goin' off sudden-well, it's awful ard on relations when a old, ancient man '11 lay round '1 wh ' .'r" "•"*". '•' *''"^'» ~">«- I've knowS 2 when you'd swear they hung on a-purpose, just to P te them as 'ad to take care of 'em. I 'ad ; grand! father o me own-well, you'd think that old man just old thing when he got silly, like. Take the pepper, he would and pour t into the molasses-jug. and eve^ng ^ n ^y^^\f^ •>« was for us young ones, es- peaally one day when he dressed all up in 'is Sunday m MKaoCOfY HKHUTION IBT OMIT (ANSI and ISO TEST CHABT No. 2) lis |2J 12.2 12.0 i ii 1.8 isij^i^ jd 1653 e«t Main StrMt RochHtar, N^m York U60S USA (716) 482 - 0300 - Phon. (716) 28a- 5989 - fm 7HE CITY OF COMRADES <]odiet and went out m the (tieet without 'it pastt. I don't tuppoM yer guv'iior ever did the like o' thsti Slim. Don't eeem m if old peopk on due tide 'ad them playful waya." In this lort of reminifcence die ereniag went by, and in the momins I received a note that did much to com- fort me. It waa no mote than die convendonal letter of condolence from Mrt. Barry, but it waa tactfully couched. / "A loM like youn," ihe wrote, "painful aa it it at all timet, becomet tragically to when the tupport one findt in family tiet it too far away to luttain one. I have often found in my own experience that lonelinett added a mote poignant element to giief. I with you would remember, dear Mr. Melbury, that you have fiiendt at thia Christmat-time quite near you. Run in and tee nt whenever you feel the need of a friendly word. We are leading a life here abtolutdy without engagementt, and you will cheer ui up more than we can cheer you. If on Chrittmat Eve you would care to look in between four and five you would find ut herc^ and we could pvc you a cup of tea." Needleti to tay all through the day of Chrittmat Eve my thoughtt were with the gathering in our houae on the dopet of Mount Royal. I saw in fancy every detail of the lugubrious pomp through which Christians contradict thrir Saviour in his affirmation that there is no death. S theee would be the mauive accompaniment to the few aobt wdling up from hearta in which they would be mepretiible. Though ahut out in penon, in ipirit I wu there, atanding in the ahrouded room, witneating my nwthet'a fareweU kisa, watching the lid placed on the coffin, marching with my brothers, kneeling in the church, hearing the doda fall in the grave. At the very moment when Mra. Barry handed me a cup of tea I waa saying to myself, "Now it is all over, and they are coming back to die darkened, empty house." I was not cheerful as a companion, and appatendy no one expected me to be so. We can scarcely be said to have talked; we merely kept each other company. It waa Miss Barry hersdf who suggested, when we liad finished tea, that she and I ahould take a walk. The weather had grown dear, bright, and windhaa. M along the promenade there was Christmas in the shops and in the air. It was not like any Christmas I had ever known before, with the blare, the l^hts, the gay, homeless people, and the thundering of breakers under starlight; but aome essential of the andent festival was present diere, and it reached me. It reached me with a yeaning to have something bdonging to me that I could daim M my own— something to which I should bdong and that wouldn't cast me off— something that would love me, something that I should love, with a love different from that with which even the City of Friends could sup- ^y me. But out on the crowded, stany sea-front we neither walked nor talked. We sauntered and kept silent. On my side, I had the feeling that there was so much to say diat I could «ay noduag; on her^ I divined that tfaeie 177 f THE CITY OF COMRADES was the same. I will not affinn that in view of all the dtctmutances I could be anything but uneasy; and yet I wai ecstatic. This wonderful creature was beside me, comforting me, liking to be with me I But if ohe knew exactly who I was . . . I was swept by an intense longing that she should be t(Jd. It was a longing I was never free from, though it didn't often snze me so imperiously as to-night. It seized mc^ the more imperiously owing to the fact that I could see her moving farther and farther away from any recollection and realization coming through herself. I had hoped that both would occur t' her without my being obliged to say in so many words, '^ am the man who tried a few months ago to steal your jewelry." But if ever the shadow of this suggestion crossed her mind, it didn't cross it now. From the beginning the face and figure of that man had been blurred behind the memory of my brother Jack. Recent events had fixed me, just as she saw me, definitely in conditions in which sneak-thieving is imimaginable. I was the son of Sir Edward Melbury, Baronec, of Montreal and Ottawa, a man who would rank among the notables of the continent. Though a son in disfavor, I was still a son, and moreover I was exercising an honorable craft with some credit. I might propose to her, I might marry her, I might live my whole life with her, and the chances were that she would never connect me with the man she had seen for a few hurried minutes on pulling the rose-colored hangings aside. For this very reason it seemed to me I must tell her before our friendship went any further. It was an ad- ditional reason that I began to think that the infonna- tion would >« a shock to her. How I got that impression 178 THE CITY OF COMRADES I can acarcdy tdl you; the way* in which it wai coo- yesred to me were so trifling, so infinitesimal. For example, I asked her one day what she meant by her oft-repeated statement that I was different from other men. "Our men," she explained, promptly, "have no life apart from their businesses and professions. Business and profession are stamped all over them. They are in their clothes, their faces, the tones of their voices. You'd know Ralph Coningsby was an architect, and Stephen Cantyre a doctor, and Rufus Legrand a clergyman, the minute you heard them speak. Now you wouldn't know what you were. You might be anything — anything a gentleman can be, that is. I've heard some one say that Oxford is a town in a university, and Cambridge a university in a town. In just the same way my father, for instance, is a man in an architect. You're an archi- tect in a man. With you the man is the bigger. With us he's the smaller. It isn't merely business before pleasure; it's business before human nature; and some- how I've a preference for seeing human nature put first." There was little in this to say what I have just hinted at. There was barely sufficient to let me see that she was putring me above most of her men acquaintances, in a place in which I had no right to be. Though it was as far as she ever went, it was far enough to create my suspicion and to make me feel that the earliest con- fession would not come too soon. When we got down to the less frequented end of the Board Walk the moment seemed to have arrived. The crowd had thinned out to occasional groups of stragglers or lovers grang two and two. Only here and there one 179 THE CITY OF COMRADES came on a fhop; <»ly here and tIie?B on a hotel. One tot an opportunity to lee the ttan, and to hear the ocean at loirething more than a drumbeat to the blare. By a timultaneou* movement we pauaed by the raO, to look down on the dim, white, moving line of breakers. It was one of those instant* when between two people drawn closely to each other something leaps. Had there been nothing imperative to keep u* apart I should have seized her in my arms; she would have nestled there. I had distinctly the knowledge that she would have re- sponded to anything — and that the initiative was mine. As a rocket that bursts into cascades of fire suddenly goes out, so suddenly the moment passed, leaving us with a sense of coldness, primarily due to me. Somewhat desperately I began: "Do you know what has made the difficulties between me and my family?" She was gazing off toward the dark horizon. "Vaguely." "Do you know that for years I gave them a great deal of trouble?" "Vaguely." "Do you know that—" "Do you know," she interrupted, quietly, "that I used to have a brother?" The question so took me by surprise that I answered, blankly, "No." "Yes, I had. He was nearly ten years older than I, ' which would make him about your age. He was — he was wild." "And is he — is he dead?" "He shot himself— about five yean ago. It was a ter- iible story, and I don't want to tell it to you. I only want to say that my mother feels that if— if father hadn't tSo THE CITY OF COMRADES htm to hard on him— if he'd played him along sendy>— he might eatily have been raved. It** what Mr. Chriniaa — ^le'i had great experience in that tort ." "No; be;.u« I'U mike you Jock the door. I tmt •.Min' to '«ve ye 'vn no huniecy on my iccount. Sowe tettled it-not that I wii to lock him m, but A«t he WM to guarantee me .fMnn being mxiouf; and I fuppoee Chrirtianirould tay that another bit of victoty waa icored. II ill CHAPTER Xr A FEW dayi later I learned that my hther had «ital>> J~y luhed a imaU tnut fund for my benefit, and that tte mcome wat to be paid to me qua-teriy. He had thui, after all, recognized me aa hi* aon, though not oo the footing of hi* other aoni. Each of hia other aooa would have— But I won't go into that It ia enough to lay that for every doUar I should receive Jerry and Jack would have twenty or thirty, and ao would n:y aiateri. Even in my mother's life inteiest I was not to have a share when she no longer needed it Among the many sins I have to confess, that of being •peoally mercenary is not one. I make this affirmation m order that you may not condemn me too severely when I say that for days I labored under a sense of outrage. Mine was the sute of mind common among evil-doera who object to paying the penalty of which thej' have had fair warning. My father had told me with his own mouth that on account of certain ind;dgences which I had refused to give up he had cut me 6B altogether. I had chosen to take my own way and to brave the conse- quences; and now when the latter pr -ed to be not so bada* I had been bidden to expect I was indignant jj^^l '"'°"**^ Andrew Christian of the bequest I added that I had practicaUy made up my mind to refuse «t. He gave me that look which always seemed about to teU you a good joke. U 185 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Why do you think he left you anything)" "I euppoee he wanted to feel that if the wone came to the wont I shouldn't be quite pennilcM." "But why should he want to feel that?" "Well, hang it all, air, when everything it taid and done I was hit toni" < "You were hii ion, and he— he cared for you." "He cared for me to— to that extent." "And coniidering your attitude toward him, could you expect him to care for you more?" I iaid, unwillingly, "No, I tuppow not." "Could you expect him to care for you at much?" "I— I'd given up thinking he cared for me at all." "And this shows he did. In spite of all you made him suffer— and, what was probably worse in his eyes, made your mother suffer- he loved you still. I know you're not thinking of the money, Frank." "No, I'm not; and that's perfectly sincere." "You're thinking of his affection for you} and now you're assured of it. The amount of money he left you is secondary. That, and the way in which he left it to you, were determined by something else." I looked at him hard as I said, "And what was that?" His look as he answered me was frank, straight, and fearless. "The fact that he didn't trust you." I suppose he must have seen how I winced, for he went on at once: "That's about the bitterest pill fellows like us have to swallow. In addition to everything else that we bring on ourselves we forfeit other people's confidence. There's the nigger in the woodpile, even when we buck up. Your father was fwid of you, Frank; but he was afraid that if he did for you all he would have done if you'd gone l86 THE CITY OF COMRADES •»M*tk would only iena you to the deviL Doa't yoa th« fdlT* "^ ■• *^ " ««» reluctance I .dnmt«l "It takef ye.«, Frank, old boy. for men who've been where you and I have been to build up a life which givee • leajonable prom.« of making r>od. In «ven or eight month, you ve done .plendidly. I don't know that weV. It t the club that's been game." rve. lUiaythatforjou. Only don't imagine for a moment that your fight ia over." "Oh no, lir; I don't." "It'a perfectly true that if you retiit the devU wiU tt« from you; but he can ihow a marvelou. power of «o.nii^^ back. Some of your toughen tuulet lie ahead. Wow I ni only reminding you of that to show you that your father ha. perhap, done the very wi.e.t thing for you. A lanje part of your .afety lie. in the necSaity for your workmg. If you weren't ab.olutely obUged to do « m order to live like a re.pectable man the^^no ?in§ et.Vt." """"^ *"""""""• '^ "^ I nodded slowly. ••n'** t'\ ^^}^ y"" '*"' pointing « out to me." But, Frank, old fellow, that', not the chief thing I w«, you to «e. What will give you more .ati.fa^on than anythmg elM ,. the knowledge that what ha. been .n u-^?" ^V '^" '^°"' ^ 'o'^'- Your father ha. Accept th.. g,ft graciously. Enjoy it and nake the be« «it. Your hfe with hunira't ova." 187 »«M|MNwi»«,ii^M|^ the superaaturaL It **r«»i8|«^«Kli|»«|2ii^ ^ th«n, "This, thy hmimimmmkmiitkmr^ and they were 8^:-^ ,x..... ,J^^ 1 || f i rt|„ | j|^ - Mary and Mattha miiK^*.,*, known whenLaianaw back to the hmmmMt^kmV' Butthat was not my oalr ifwirf, Aough of what f recoved m adJ«,on I fia«Mlia!,-;, clement of happine.^ tince to my mother at leatt it vat happinett to know that I wa. betide her. The joy in heaven over one tinner that repenteth wat on her face from the day I appeared, and never left it up to that moment when we took our latt look at her dear tmiUng featuret. When the lawyer came to read ui her will I found, to my amazement, that the had left me everything the poiteiied. ' A !l 711 ■''^ J*"" ^ ""^ *•■" ^'"■^'' I had town at Andy Chnttian t tuggettion. Since with a good grace I had accepted my father', will, the lett of the family could hardly do otherwise with regard to my mother".. She eft a note saying that, had my father lived a few month, longer, he would have teen that I had re^ablished my- .elf tufficently to be allowed to share equally with the rest of the family ■„ what he had to leave; but, at it wa. too late for that, she wat endeavoring to right the seem- ing injustice-which he had not meant as an injustice^- as far as lay in her power. These words from her pen being much more emphatic than any I could remr.nber from her lips, my brothers and sisters, whatever they felt inwardly, could only give their assent to them. What my mother possessed included not only the per- 198 THE CITY OF ^^JUDES land, and to my two .!«?«?„ I *° ""^ *'«" '" Eng- b««c for my wi^IThriTor tr *''°"*'' '""'"» '"• motL^rd\r„:^r;;:i*'.rrH ts"-'" -^ l^her with the trusted ^alh: " ytytth^a;: i^Lr'^^lTi; Sh s: '"°r ^'-^ '"« •- fc,_ '-"■■iiorx ai Kalph Conmgsby. I could tk.... II'cK::." *"^'"' "-'^ '"" '-^ ^ -' fidentially, I rather think I do." Fair men blush easily, but I tried to ignore the fact that I was doing it as I said, "That's quite a common delusion at one stage of the game; but suppose she were to find that she was mistaken?" The answer shelved the question, though she did it disconcertingly: "Oh, well, in the case she's thinking of I don't believe she will." I was so eager for data that I pushed the inquiry indiscreetly. "What makes /ou so sure?" "One can tell. It isn't a thing one can put into words. You know by a kind of intuition." "Know what?" "That a certain kind of person can never have had any but a certain kind of standard." She gave me another of those quietly mischievous glances. "I'll tell you what she said to me one day not long ago. She said she'd only known one man in her life — known him well, that is — of whom she was sure that he was a thoroughbred to the "But you admitted at the beginning that that kind of conviction is a danger." "It would be a danger if her friends couldn't bear her out in believing it to be justified." 202 THE CITY OF COMRADES Unable to face any mote of this subtle flattery, I wai obliged to let the subject drop. The lunch was like any other lunch. As an unimpor- tant person at a gathering where every one knew every one else more or less intimately, I was to some extent at liberty to follow my own thoughts, which were not al- together happy ones. For telling what I had to tell, the necessity had grown urgent. What was lacking, what had always seemed to , e lacking, was the positive opportunity. This I resolved to seek; but suddenly I found it before me. This was toward the middle of the afternoon, when the party had broken up. It had broken up imperceptibly by dissolving into groups that strolled about the lawns and descended the long flights of steps leading to the beach below. As I had not been seated near Miss Barry at table, it was no more than civil for me to approach her when the party was on the veranda and the lawn. Our right to privacy was recognized at once by a with- drawal of the rest of the company. It was probably as- sumed that I was to be the fourth in the series of experi- ments of which Jim Hunter and Stephen Cantyre had been the second and the third; and, though my fellow- guests might be sorry for me, they would not intervene to protect me. Considering it sufficient to make their adieux to Mrs. Barry, they left us undisturbed in a nook of one of the verandas. Here we were out of sight of any of the avenues and pathways to the house, and Mrs. Barry was sufficiently in sympathy with our desire to be alone not to send any one in search of us. On the lawn robins were hopping, and along the edge of shorn grass the last foxgloves made upright lines of color against the olive- s' |1 n THE CITY OF COMRADES (Teen scrub-oak. Far down through the trees one caught the silvery glinting of water. The sounds of voices and motor wheels having died away. Miss Barry said, languidly: "I think they must be all gone. They'll say I'm terribly rude to keep myself out of sight. But it's lovely here, isn't it? And this is such a cozy spot in which to smoke and have coffee. I read here, too, and — Oh, dear, what's happening?" It was then that the little accident which was to play so large a part in my life occurred. She had leaned for- ward from her wicker chair to set her empty coffee-cup on the table. As she did so the string of pearls which she wore at the opening of her simple white dress loosened itself and slipped like a tiny snake to the floor of the veranda. From a corresponding chair on the other side of the table I sprang up and stooped. When I raised my- self with the pearls in my right hand I slipped them into my pocket. Between the fingers cf my left hand I held a lighted cigar. Bareheaded, I was wearing white flannels and tennis shoes. Now that the moment had come, I felt extraordinarily cool — as cool as on the night when I had slipped this string of pearls into my pocke*- before. I looked down and smiled at her. Leaning back in her chair, she looked up and smiled at me. I shall always see her like that — in white with a slash of silk of the red of her lips somewhere about her waist, and a ribbon of the same round her dashing Panama hat. Her feet in little brown shoes were crossed. With an elbow on the arm of hei chair, she held a small red fan out from her person, though she wasn't actively using it. "What does that mean?" she asked, idly, at last. 204 i' .. THE CITY OF COMRADES "Doesn't it remind you of anjrthing?" "No— of nothing." "Didn't you ever see any one put these peails into his pocket before?" "Why, nol" She added, as if an idea had begun to dawn in the back of her memory, "Not in that way." "Oh, I remember. You didn't see him put them in at all. You only saw him take them out." The smile remained on her features, but something puzzlH gave it faint new curves. "Why—" "It was like this, wasn't it?" I drew out the pearls and threw them on the table. She bent forward slightly, still smiling, like a person watching with bewildered intensity a conjurer's trick. '•Why—" "Only your gold-mesh purse was with them— and your diamond bar-pin — and your rings." "Why— who, who on earth could have told you?" I, too, continued to smile, consciously wondering if I should be as calm as this in the hour of death. "Who do you think?" "It wasn't Elsie Coningsby?" "No. She was in the house, but — " "How did you know that?" She uttered a mystified laugh. "She mas there! It was one of the nights she stayed with me when papa and mamma were down here superintending some changes before we could move in. But I never told her anything about it." II Why didn't you— when she was right t i the spot?" "Oh, because." The smile disappeared. She stopped looking up at me to turn her eyes toward the foxgloves and scrub-oak. 205 'ii M THE CITY OF COMRADES I f "Yet? BecauM»-^at?" "Because I ptomited — that man — I wouldn't." "Why should you have made him such a promise?" "Oh, I don't know. Just at the time I was — I was •orty for him." "And aren't you sorry for him still?" She looked up at me again with one of her bright challenges. "Look here! Do you know himf" "Tell me first what I asked you. Aren't you sorry for him still?" "I dare say I am. I don't know." "What did you — ^what did you — think of him at the time?" "I thought he was — terrible." "Terrible — in what way?" "I don't know that I can tell you in what way. It was so awful to think that a man who had had some advantages should have sunk to that. If he'd been a real burglar — I mean a professional criminal — I should have been afraid of him; but I shouldn't have had that sensa- tion of something meant for better things that had been debased." "Didn't he tell you he was hungry?" The smile came back — faintly. "You seem to know all about it, don't you? It's the strangest thing I ever knew. No one in this world could have told you but himself. Yes, he did say he was hungry; but then, a man who'd been what he mus;: have been shouldn't have got into that condition. He'd stolen into our pantry, poor creature, and drunk the cooking-wine. He told me that — " Without rising, her figure became alert with a new impulse. "Oh, I seel 206 11! H 11 THE CITY OF COMRADES You do know him. He waa an Engluhman. I rencm- ber that." I placed myself fully before her. "No, he waan't an Englishman." "He spoke like one." "So do I, for the matter of that." "Then he was a Canadian. Was he?" "He was a Canadian." "Oh, then that accounts for it. But you did purde me at first. But how did you come to meet himf Was it at that Down and Out Qub that papa and Mr. Christian are so interested in? You go to it, too, don't you? I think Stephen Cantyre said you did." "Yes, I go to it, too." She grew pensive, resting her chin on a hand, with her elbow on the arm of the chair. "I suppose it's all right; but I never can understand how men can be so merciful to one other's vices. It looks as if they recognized the seed of them within them- selves." "Probably that's the reason." "Women don't feel like that about one another." "They haven't the same cause." "I hope he's doing bettei^-that man— and pickine up again." * "^ "He is." She asked, m quite another tone, "You're not going back to New York to-morrow, are you?" "I'm not sure — yet." "Hilda said she was going to try to persuade you and the Grahams to stay till Tuesday. If you can stay, mamma and I were planning — " 207 I THE CITY OF COMRADES * I put tnyielf directly in front of her, no more th^ a finr feet away, my hands in the pocketi of my jacket. "Look at me again. Look at me welL Tty to i»- cM—" Slowly, very slowly, she struggled to her feet. The color went out of her lips and the light from her eye* as she backed away from me in a kind of terror. "What — what — are you trying to make me — to make me understand?" "ThinkI How should I know all that I've been •aying if—" "If the man himself didn't tell you. But he did." "No, he didn't. No one had to tell me." She reached the veranda rail, which she clutched with one hand, while the other, clenched, was pressed against her breast. "You don't mean — " "Yes, I do mean—" "Oh, you can't?" "Why can't L" "Because — because it isn't — it isn't possible! You" ^^he seemed to be shivering — "you could never have — " "But I did." She gasped brokenly. "You? You?" I nodded. "Yes— L" I tried to tell her, but I suppose I did it badly. Put into a few bald words the tale was not merely sordid, it was low. I could give it no softening touch, no saving grace. It was more beastly than I had ever imagined it. Fortunately she didn't listen with attention. The means were indifferent to her when she knew the end. For the minute, at any rate, she saw me not as I stood there, clean and in white, but as I had been a year b*- "208 _ THE CITY OF COMRADES fbte, ditty and in ragt. But the taw more than that. With every word I uttered she saw the ideal she had formed broken into ahivers, like a shattered looking- glass. She interrupted my piepottetoui «ory to gasp, "I can't believe itl" "But it's true." "Then you mustn't mind if— if I put you to a test. Did you — did you write anything while you were there?" "I printed something— in the same kind of letters you've seen at the bottom of architects' plans." "And how did you come to do it?" I recounted the circumstance, at which she 'nodded her head in verification. "So that was how you knew the words you repeated to me a few months ago?" "That was how. I said there were men in the world different from any you'd seen yet; and I told you to wait." She made a tremendous effort to become again the daring mistress of herself which she generally was. She smiled, too. nervously, and with a kind of sickening, ghastly whiteness. "Funny, isn't it? There ate men in the world differ- ent from any I'd seen before that time. I've— I've waited — and found out." Rcfore I could utter a rejoinder to this she said, quite courteously, "Will you excuse me?" I bowed. With no further explanation she marched down the le|)gth of the veranda — canying herself proudly, placing her dainty feet daintily, walking with that care which a »09 THE CITY OF COMRADES ,1' i people ihow when they are not ceRain of their ability to walk straight — and entered the house. I didn't know why she had gone; but I knew the worst was over. Though I felt humiliation to the core of the heart's core, I also felt relief. With a foot dangling, I sat sidewise on the veranda rail and waited. Glancing at my watch, I saw it was not yet four, and I had lived through years since I had climbed the hill at one. My sensations were comparable only to those of the man who has been on trial for hi* life and is waiting for the verdict. I waited nervously, and yet humbly. Now that it was all over, it seemed to me that the bitterness of death was past. Whatever else I should have to go through in life, nothing could equal the past quarter of an hour. The sensations I hadn't had while making my con- fession began to come to me by degrees. Looking back over the chasm I had crossed, I was amazed to think I had had the nerve for it. I trembled reminiscently; the cold sweat broke out on my forehead. It was terrible to think that at that very minute she was in there weigh- ing the evidence, against me and in my favor. Mechanically I relighted the cigar that had gone out. Against me and in my favorl I was not blind to the fact that in my favor there was something. I had gone down, but I had also struggled up again; and you can make an appeal for the man who has done that. She was long in coming back. I glanced at my watch, and it was nearly half past four. Her weighing of the evidence had taken her half an hour, and it was evidently not over yet. Well, juries were often slow in coming to a verdict; and doubtless she was balancing the extenuat- THE CITY OF COMRADES ing cireumnuce that I had ttruggled up acaimt the main fact that I had gone down. What (he conndered her ideal had during the pa«t few weeki been gradually trantferring itself from her mind to my own. She wouldn't marry a man ihe couldn't truit; she wouldn't marry a man who hadn't what she called spirit; she wouldn't marry a milksop. But she had well-defined— and yet indefinable— conceptions as to how far in spirit a man should go, and of the difference between being a milksop and a man of honor. She might find it hard to admit that the pendulum of human impulse that swung far in one direction might swing equally far in the other; and therein would lie my danger. But I must soon know. It was ten minutes of five. The jury had been out more than three-quarters of an hour. A new quality was being transmuted into the at- mosphere. It was as if the lightest, flimsiest veil had been flung across the sun. In the distant glinting of the sea, which had been silver, there came a tremulous shade of gold. The foxgloves bowed themselves like men at prayer. The robins betook themselves to the branches. From unseen depths of the scrub-oak there was an occa- sional luscious trill, as the time for the singing of birds wasn't over yet. ' Round me there was silence. I might have been sitting at the door of an empty house. I listened intently for the sound of returning footsteps, but none came. At a quarter past five a chill about the heart began to strike me. I had been waiting more than an hour. Could it be possible that . . . ? It would be the last degree of insult. Whatever she did, she wouldn't subject me »o that. It would be worse 1.1 m I" THE CITY OF COMRADES than her glove acroti the face. It wai out of the q ^estion. I couldn't bear to think of it. Rather than think of it, I went over the probabilitiei that (he would come back with the smile of forgivenesi. It would doubtless be a tearful smile, for tears were surely the cause of her delay. When she had controlled them, when she was able to speak and bid me be of good comfort, I should hear the tap of her high heels coming down the uncarpeted stair- way. No red Indian ever listened for the tread of a maid's moccasins on forest moss so intently as I for that staccato click. But only the birds rewarded me, and the cries of boyt who had come to bathe on the beach below. There wai more gold in the light; more trilling in the branches; a more pungent scent from the trees, the flowers, and the grass; and that was all. It was half past five; it was a quarter to six; it was six. At six o'clock I knew. My hat was lying on a chair near by. I picked it up— and went. I went, not by the avenue and the path, but down the queei, rickety flights of steps that led from one jutting rock to another over the face of the cliiF, till I re?rhed th« beach. It was a broad, whitish, sandy beach, with a quietly lapping tide almost at the full. Full tide was marked a few feet farther up by a long, wavy line of sea- weed and other jetsam. It was the delicious hour for bathing. As far as one could see in either direction there were heads bobbing in the water and people scrambling in and out. Shrill cries of women and children, hoarse shouts of men, mingled with the piping of birds overhead. Farther out than the bathers there were rowboats, and beyond tha 212 THE CITY OF COMRADES Mwboiu tails. In the middle of the Sound a steamer or two trailed a laiy flag of (moke. Far, far to the louth and the wett a haze like that round a volcano hung over New York. I should return there next day to face new conditions. I only wished to God that it could be that night. The new conditions were, briefly, three: I could use the I revolver still lying in my desk; or I could begin to drink again; or, like the bull wounded in the ring, I could seek shelter in the dumb sympathy of the Down and Out. The last seemed to me the least attractive. I had climbed that hill, and found it led only to a precipice that I had fallen over. Neither did the first possibility charm me especially. Apart from the horror of it, it was too brief, too sudden, too conclusive. I wanted the gradual, the prolonged. It was the second course to which my mind turned with the nearest approach to satisfaction. Christian had told me that some of my severest tussles lay ahead, and now I had come to the one in which I should go under. In that the flesh at least would get its hour of compensa- tion, when all was said and done. At the foot of Mrs. Grace's steps I paused to recall Christian's words of a few days previously: "In love and truth together there's a power which, if we have the patience to wait for its working out, will solve all difficulties and meet all needs." I had tried that — love and truth together! — and at the result I could only laugh. My immediate fear was lest Mrs. Grace and the Gra- hams would be on the veranda, vaguely expecting to offer me their congratulations. When half-way up the steps I heard voices and knew that they were there. So be it I *«3 THE CITY OF COMRADES r i1 M ■ i| If ! j " 1 1' I bad faced worse things in my life; and now I could face that. But as I advanced up the lawn I saw them moving about and talking with animation. As soon as Mrs. Grace caught sight of me she hurried down the steps, meeting me as I passed among the flower-beds. She held a newspaper marked Extra in her hand, and seemed to have forgotten that I had love-affairs. "Have you seen this? Colt, the chauffeur, was at the station and brought it back. It's just come down from New York." Glad of anything that would distract attention from myself, I took the paper in my hand and pretended to be reading it. All I got was the vague information that some one had been assassinated — some man and his mor- ganatic wife. What did it matter to me? What did it matter to any one? Of all that was printed there, only five syllables took possession of my memory — and that because they were meaningless, "Gavrilo Prinzipl" I was repeating them to myself as I handed the paper back, and we exchanged comments of which I have no recollection. More comments were passed with the Grahams, and then, blindly, drunkenly, I made my way to my room. There I found nothing to do less classic than to sit at the open window, to look over at the red-and-yellow house on the opposite hill. It was my intention to think the matter out, but my brain seemed to have stopped work- ing. Nothing came to me but those barbaric sounds, that kept repeating themselves with a kind of hiss: "Gavrilo Prinzipl Gavrilo Prinzipl" From my stupefied scanning of the paper I hadn't grasped the fact that a name utteriy unknown that mors- 214 THE CITY OF COMRADES ing wag being flashed round the woiM at a speed more rapid than that of the earth roun ; the sun. Still less did I suspect that it was to becon i in its way the most sinister name in history. I kept -eneating it .nly as you repeat senseless things in the minutes ut.'ore you go to •leep. "GavtiloPrinzipl Gaviilo Ptinzipl GavriloPtinzipP' CHAPTER xrn I'!: I illl T CAME back as Major Melbury, of one of the Canadian * regiments. It was in November, 1916, that I was invalided home to Canada lamed and wearing a disfiguring black patch over what had been my left eye. There were other differences of which I can hardly tell you in so many words, but which must transpire as I go on. Bnefly, they summed themselves up in the fact that I had gone away one man and I was coming back another. My old self had not only been melted down in the crucible, but it had been stamped with a new image and superscription. It was of a new value and a new currency, and, I think I may venture to add, of that new coinage minted in the civil strife of mankind. The day of my sailing from Liverpool was exactly two years four months and three weeks from that on which I had last seen Regina Barry; and because it was so I must tell you at once of an incident that occurred at the minute when I stepped on board. Having come up the long gangway easily enough, I found that at the top, where passengers and their friends congregate, my difficulties began. When my left eye had been shot out the right had suf- fered m sympathy, and also from shock to the retina. For a while I had been blind. Rest and care in the hos- pital my sister, Mabel Rideover, maintained at Taplow 216 THE CITY OF COMRADES the sight ofmy right eye; and now r myself had, however, my trouble was only with perspective, crowded on one another as they do in I would dodge that which was far aw to bump into objects quite near me. r.^1 ^ tT""* °" '''''' ^ ''="' ' "'""" °' *^° of bewilder- ment. There were so many men more helpless than I that whatever care there was to give was naturally be- stowed on them. Moreover, most of those who thronged the top of the gangway had too many anxieties of their bZ/H-r*'? * f-T'" ^^° ^* '^""^ ^^-^ only half blmd didn't know which way to turn. But I did tum-at a venture. The venture took me "rusher" ' """r ''""'"^ =■ ''^'''y '" ''- =•""»• -horn i crushed agamst the nearest cabin wall. The woman protested; the baby screamed. I was about, in the re" vSm / t""^ ^""^^ ""^ ^y '^^ ="™- An almost in- visible guide began to pilot me through the crowd. AH 1 caught sight of was a Canadian nurse's uniform It .s one of the results of the war that men, who are often reduced to the mere shreds of human nature, grow mam the able-bodied ones. along slightly m advance. "You caught me right in the nick ot time. I can see pretty well with my good eye, cote'bne^rsT" '''"='"^"- '''''' *^" ■"' ^''« ^•" nnvT,!,*''""^'' "^""^'^^ '"'*'' °*«' thoughts, I was sur- pnsed that my rescuer didn't respond to my civility, for another result of the war is the ease with which the men and women who have been engaged in it get on term, of m\ 1. il THE CITY OF COMRADES natural acquaintanceship. When ardficial barriers are removed, it is extraordinary how quickly we go back to primitive human simplicity. Social and sex considera- tions have thus been minimized to a degree which, it seems to me, will make it difficult ever to re-establish them in their old first place. They say it was an advance in civilization when we ceased to see each other as pri- marily males and females and knew we were men and women. Porsibly the war will lead us a step farther still and reveal us as children of one family. That a niir^e shouldn't have a friendly word for a partly incapacitated man struck me, therefore, as odd, though my mind would not have dwelt on the circumstance if she hadn't released my arm as abruptly as she had taken it. Having helped me to reach a comparatively empty quarter of the deck, she had counted, apparently, on the slowness and awkwardness of my movements to slip away before I could turn round. When I managed this feat she was already some yards down the length of the deck, hurrying back toward the crowd from which we had emerged. I saw then that she was too little to be tail and too tall to be considered little. Moreover, she carried herself proudly, placing her dainty feet daintily, and walking with that care which people display when they are not certain of their ability to walk straight. Reaching one of the entrances, she went in, exactly as I had seen a woman pass through a doorway two years four months and three weeks before. I was sure it was she— and yet I told myself it couldn't be. I told myself it couldn't be, for the reason that I had been deceived so frequently before that I had grown distrustful of my senses. All through the intervening time I had been getting glimpses of a slight figure hei*> 218 THE CITY OF COMRADES of an alert movement there, of the poise of a head, of the wave of a hand— that for an instant would make my heart stop beating; but in the end it had meant nothing but the stirring of old memories. In this case I could _ have been convinced if the coincidence had not put too great a strain on all the probabilities. I was to learn later that there was no coincidence; but I must tell my story in its right order. The right order takes me back to my return to New York, after my week-end at Mrs. Grace's, on the morning of June 29, 1914. During the two or three hours of jogging down the length of Long Island in the train I tried to keep out of my mind all thoughts but one; having deposited my bags at my rooms, I should go to Stinson's. With regard to this intention I was clearly aware of a threefold blend of reaction. First, there was the pity of it. I could take a detached view of this downfall, just as if I hid heard of it in con- necrion with Beady Lamont or old Colonel Straight. Though I should be only a man dropped in the ranks, while they would have been leaders, the grief of my com- rades over my collapse would be no less sincere. But by tearing my mind away from that aspect of the case I reverted to the satisfaction at being in the gutter, of which the memories had never ceased to haunt me. I cannot expect to make you, who have always lived on the upper levels, understand this temptation; I can only tell you that for men who have once been outside the moral law there is a recurrent tugging at the senses to get there again. I once knew an Englishman who had lived in the interior of Australia and had "gone black." On his return to make his home in England he was seized 219 THE CITY OF COMRADES with so consuming a nostalgia for his black wives and black children that in the end he went back to them. Something like this was the call I was always hearing — the call of Circe to go down. But I knew, too, that there was method in this mad- ness. I was deliberately starting out to earn the wages of sin; and the wages of sin would be death. I must repeat that going to Stinson's«would be no more than a slow, convenient process of committing suicide. It would be committing suicide in a way for which Regina Barry would not have to feel herself responsible, as she would A ere I to use the revolver. Having brought so much on her, I war unwilling to bring more, even though my heart was hot against her. My heart was hot against her— and yet I had to admit that she had been within her rights. When all was \aid that could be said in my favor, I had deceived her. I had let her go on for the best part of a year believing me to be what i was not, when during much of the time I could see that such a belief was growing perilous to her happiness. I had been a coward. I should have said from the first moment— the moment when she took me for my brother Jack— "I am a crook." Then all would have been open and aboveboard between us; but as it was there was only one way out. Any other way— any way that would have allowed me to go on living longer than the time it would take drink to kill me— would have been unbearable. The checkmate to these musings came when my eyes fell upon Lovey. He was at the door of the apartment, not only to welcome me, but to give me ocular demon- stration that he had kept the faith while I had been away. It was the first time since the beginning of our associa- 220 THE CITY OF COMRADES tion that I had left him for forty-eight hours; and that he was on his honor during those two days was no secret between us. The radiant triumph of his greeting struck into me like a stab. For Lovey now was almost as completely reconstructed as I. I use the qualifying "almost" only because the longer standing of his habits and the harder conditions of his life had burnt the past more indelibly into him. Of either of us one could say, as the Florentines are re- ported to have said of Dante, "There goes a man who has been in hell"; but the marks of the experience had been laid more brutally on my companion than on me. Otherwise he showed cheering signs of resuscitation. Neat, even at the worst of times, he was now habitually scrubbed and shaved, and as elegant as Colonel Straight's establishment could turn him out. He had, in fact, for the hours he had free from washing windows, metamor- phosed himself into the typical, self-respecting English valet, with a pride in his work sprung chiefly of devotion. And for me he made a home. I mean by that that he was always there — something living to greet me, to move about in the dingy little apartment. As I am too gre- garious, I may say too affectionate, to live contentedly alone, it meant much to me to have some one else within the walla I called mine, even if actual companionship was limited. But whatever it was, I was about to destroy it. I could scarcely look him in the eyes; I could hardly say a word to him. While unpacking my suit-case he said, timorously, "Y'ain". sick, Slim?" I began to change the suit I had been wearing for one that would attract less attention at Stinson's. 221 K li'i^- THE CITY OF COMRADES "No, Lovey; I'm all right. I'm juit— I'm JHtt goiii( out." And I went out. I went out without bidding the poor old fellow good-by, though I knew it was the last the anxious pale-blue eyes would see of me in that phase of comradeship. When next we met I should probably be drunk, and he would have come to get drunk in my company. It would then be a question as to which of us would hold out the longer. And that was the thought that after an hour or two turned me back. I could throw my own life away, but I couldn't throw away his. However reckless I might be on my own account, I couldn't be so when I held another man's fate in my hand. Even so, I didn't go back at once. Half-way to San- son's — I was on foot — I came to a sudden halt. It was as if the sense of responsibility toward Lovey wouldn't allow me to go any farther. I said to my- self that I must think the matter out — that I must find and would find additional justification for my course before going on. To do that I turned into a chance hotel. I like the wide hospitality of American hotels, where any tired or lonesome wayfarer can enter and sit down. I have never been a clubman. Clubs ate too elective and selective for my affinities; they are too threshed and winnowed and refined. I have never in spirit had any desire to belong to a chosen few, since not only in heart, but in tastes and temperament, I belong to the unchosen many. I enjoy, therefore, the freedom and promiscuity of the lobby, where every Tom, Dick, and Hariy has the same right as I. Annoyed by the fact that a halt had been called in my THE CITY OF COMRADES errand i f self-dettniction, I began to aik myself why. The only answer that came to me was that this old man, this old reprobate, if one chose to c: . him so, cared for me. He had been giving me an affection that prompted him to the most vital sacrifice, to the most difficult kind of self-control. Then suddenly that truth came back to me which Andrew Christian had pointed out a few months earlier, and which in the mean time had grown dim, that any true love is of God. I was startled. I was awed. In saying these things I am trying only to tell you what happened in my inner self; and possibly when a man's inner self has plumbed the depths like mine it means more to him to get a bit of insight than it does to you who have always been on the level. In any case this question rose within me: Was it possible that out of this old man, this drunkard, this murderer, cast off by his children, cast out by men, some feeble stream was welling up toward me from that pure and holy fountain that is God? Was it possible that this strayed creature had, through what he was giving me — me I — been finding his way back to the universal heart? If ever a human being had been dwelling in love he had been dwelling in it for a year and more; and there were the words, distilled out of the consciousness of the ages, and written for all time, "He that dwelleth in love dwelleth in God." Was it God that this poor, purblind old fellow had all unconsciously been bringing me, shedding round us, keeping us straight, making us strong, making us prosperous, helping us to light our way upward? I went back. But on the way I had another prompting — one that 233 ii: Itl THE CITY OF COMRADES took me into the office of a touritt company to coniult time-tablei and buy tickeu. "Lovey," I said, when I got home, "we mu« both begin packing for all we're worth. We're leaving for Montreal to-night." "Coin* to see your people. Slim, and stay in that swell hotel?" "Not just now, Lovey. Later, perhaps. First of ail we're going for a month into the woods north of the Ottawa." His jaw dropped. "Into the woods?" "Yes, old sport. You'll like it." "Oh no, I won't. Slim. I never was in no woods in my life — except London and New York. There's one thing I never could abide, -jnd that's trees." "You won't say that v ! ^.-n you've seen real trees. We'll shoot and fish and camp out — " "Camp out? In a tent, like? Oh, I couldn't, sonny I I'd ketch me death!" "Thf^n if you do we'll come back; only, we've got to go now." "Why have we? It's awful nice here in New York; and I don't pay no attention to people that says it's too hot." I made the appeal which I knew he would not resist. Laying my hand on his shoulder, I said: "Because, old man, I'm — I'm in trouble. I want to get away where — where I sha'n't see — some one — again — and I need you." "It ain't that girl. Slim? She — she haven't turned you down?" The words took me so much by surpri.^e that I hadn t time to get angry. All I could feel was a foolish, nervous kind of coolness. THE CITY OF COMRADES "Lovey, what I want you to know I'll tell you; and at pre»ent I'm telling you thii: I've got to get out; I've got to get out quick; and I need you to buck me up. No one can buck me up like you." "Oh, if it's that!" He would have followed me then to places more dreadful than the Canadian woods. "Will you take all your suits— or only just them new summer things?" I CHAPTER xrm ii n ■Ii I 'T^HUS it happened that when war broke out I wai *■ deep in the wildetneii. For more than a month I had had no contact with the outside world, not a letter, not a newspaper. I had escaped from New York with- out leaving an address, since Cantyre was absent. I had meant to write to him to have my letters forwarded, but I never had. Could I have guessed that war was to i>egin and to last so long I might have r.cted differently; but the name of Gavrilo Prinzip was still meaningless. All sportsmen in my part of Canada know Jack Hiller's, just as frequenters of the Adirondacks know Paul Smith's. From Jack Hiller's we struck farther in, to the rude camp where I had spent many a happy holiday when I was a lad. Two guides, an Indian and a half-breed, did the heavy work; and some long-forgotten, atavistic sporting strain in Lovey allowed him, groaningly and discontent- edly, to enjoy himself. But if I expected to find peace I saw I was mistaken. The distance I had put between myself and the house dominating Long Island Sound was only geographical. In spirit I was always back on that veranda, living through again the minutes of the long waiting. So the solitude was no solitude for me. And then one day the half-breed's canoe shot over the waters of the lake, bring- ing supplies from Jack Hiller's, with the news that the world had gone to war. 226 THE CITY OF COMRADES I wonder how many hundreds of thouiandt of men and women there are to whom the war came ai a bleticd opportunity to get away from uieleunesi or heartache. Stranded, purpoieleii, ipiritleu, futile, tired, empty, with something broken in the life or seemingly at an end, they suddenly found themselves called on to put forth energies they never knew they had, to meet needs they had never heard of. "Son of man, can these dry bones live?" one might have been asking oneself a few years previously; and all at once there were multitudes, multitudes in the valley of decision, energized into newness of being. Among them I was only one humble, stupid individual; but the summons was like that which came to the dust when it was bidden to be Adam and a man. I have no intention of telling you in detail what hap- pened to me between that August morning in 1914 and the day I stepped on board the boat at Liverpool more than two years later. There is no need. You know the out- lines of that tale already. My case hardly differed ex- ternally from any other of the millions of cases you have heard about. The machine of war does not vary in its working much more than any other machine, except for the drama played in each man's soul. And of that I can say nothing. I don't know why — but I cannot. Day and night I think of what I saw and heard and did in those two years, but some other lan- guage must be coined before I can begin to speak of it. In this I am not singular; it is a rule to which I know few, if any, exceptions. I have heard returned soldiers on the lecture platform, telling part of the truth, and nothing but the truth, but never the whole truth nor the most vital truth. I have talked with some of them 227 w li'l THE CITY OF COMRADES when the lecturet were over, and a. flan in the eye ha* •aid, "This is for public consumption; but you and I know that the realities are not to be put into words." One little incident I must give you, however, before I revert to what happened on the boat. Having in that early August made my way to Ottawa with Lovey, and decided that I must respond at once to the country's call, I expected a struggle with him, or something bitter in the way of protest. But in this I was mistaken. He, too, had been thinking the matter over, and, hard as it would be for him to see me do it, that quiet valor which practically no Englishman is without raised him at once to the level of his part. ^ "All right. Slim. It's yer dooty to go, and mine to give ye up. We won't say no more about that." "Thanks, Lovey, for making it so easy for me. I'll never forget it as long as I live. Now there's only one thing—" "If it's about me goin' straight, sonny, while ye'm away, I'll swear to God not to look so much as on the •ame side o' the street as a drop o' liquor till He bring* ye back to me." "Then I believe He will bring me back, old fellow." " Sure He'll bring ye back. Ye'U be 'ome before Christ- , mas; and. Slim, if it isn't goin' to cost ye too much money, won't ye 'old on to them rooms so as I can keep our little place together, like, and 'ave it all clean and nice for you — ?" Having consented to this, I was able to make further provision for the old man when Cantyre joined me for a day or two in Montreal to bid me good-by. Love/s hero- ism was the sort of thing to draw out Cantyre's sentimen- tal vein of approvaL 328 THE CITY OF COMRADES "III take him and look after him, Frank. He'll valet me till you come back. I've always wanted a man to do diat sort of thing, and only haven't had one because I thought it would look like putting on side. But now that he drops down to me out of heaven, as you might say, ^11 take him as a souvenir of you." N CHAPTER XIX ALL these interests had seemed far away from me ^ during the two and a half years over there; but in proportion as I drew near Liverpool that morning they reformed themselves in the mists of the near future, as old memories come back with certain scents and scenes. Not till the damp, smoky haze of the great port was clos- ing in round me did I realize that my more active part in the vast cosmic episode was at an end, and that I had come to t)ie hour I had so often longed for — and was going home. I was going home; and yet, for the minute, at any rate, I was not glad. There is always something painful in the taking up again of forsaken ties, however much we once loved them. It was like a repetition of the effort with which I had renewed my relations with my people. The actual has a way of seizing us in its tentacles and making us feel that it is the only life we ever truly led. There was a time when I seemed to forget that I had ever been anywhere but in the trenches. During the month or two that I was blind I got so used to the condition as to find it strange that I had ever seen. And always, in face of the fierce intensity of the present, the life in New York was remote, shadowy, and dim, as they say the life in prison becomes from its very monotony to those 35 i: I ll '■ i THE CITY OF COMRADES •pan from Hilda Grace, who never wrote to me — no one knew that Regina Barry and I had meant anything to each other. If Cantyre had spoken of her, it would have been on his own account; but confidential as he was in private talk, his letters were never more than a few terse lines. So I had rather bitterly imagined her as going on with the testing of other men, as she had tested Jim Hunter, Cantyre, and m —trying them and finding them wanting. In ungenerous moments I went so far as to hope that Nemesis might overtake her in some tre- mendous passion in which she herself would be tried and toRFed aside. It was, however, the second day out before I actually came face to face with her. Her absence from the deck had been part of the mystery. Having swung into the Mersey, we remained there all Sunday night — it was a Sunday we had gone on board — and much of Monday. Accepting as necessary the secrecy which in war-time enshrouds an Atlantic voyage, the passengers had made themselves as comfortable as the conditions permitted, and taken air and exercise by promenading the decks. There could have been no better opportunity for finding familiar faces, but, apart from one or two distant ac- quaintances, I saw none. The three nurses' uniforms I had noted already were continually about; but I never found the fourth. And then on Tuesday, after we had lost sight of the Irish coast, there was another queer little incident. As I could walk but little, I had been reading in the music- room. Tired of doing that and eager to continue my search for the missing uniform, I had limped to the door- way, screened by a heavy portiere, leading out toward the companionway. But while I stood turning up the 2';6 THE CITY OF COMRADES collar of my overcoat the pordire wa* (uddenly pulled atide, and we were before each other, with a luggestion of a limilar occurrence three and a half yean before. The very diiferences in my appearance — the mustache, the patch over my lefc eye, the military coat — must have helped to recall the earlier occasion by the indirect means of contrast. As for her, she was what she had seemed to me then — two great flaming eyes. They were tired eye» now, haunted, tragic perhaps, and I saw later that when you caught them off their guard they were pensive, if not mournful. They were, indeed, all I could see of her, for the rest of her features were hidden by the veil over the lower part of the face which women occasionally copy from the Turkish lady's yashmak. A small black cap, held by a jade-green pin, and a long, shapeless black ulster or coat completed a costume quite unliLc; the uni- form for which I had been looking. I can only describe that encounter as the meeting of two transmigrated souls. She had gone as far in her direction as I in mine; but I couldn't tell at a glance in what direction she had gone. It was what struck me dumb. When Paolo and Francesca met in space they had nothing to say to each other except with the eyes. In some such case as that we found ourselves. The pressure of topics was too great to allow of immediate selection. She seemed to wait for me to utter the first word, and as I was at a loss she dropped the portiere behind her, inclined her head, and passed on into the saloon. Though it was my place to follow her, I couldn't, for the minute, take so obvious a course. I was not only too mystified by what I had heard of her, but too con- fused as to our standing toward each other. I couldn't' 237 THE CJTY OF COMRADES begin with .•."How do you dor u if we had parted on the <»dina(y,iaci4 ttcmi, while anything more dramatic would Itsve been abaurd. Hobbling along the deck, I took r^uge .in the tmoking-room in order to reflect. Reflection wa» not ea»y. Over it» calm fielda emotion •pread iik« water through a broken dike. For two and a half y^v* the .emotional had been so stemmed and banked. and, ^wnmed in me that I had thought it under coptipl forever. I had had enough to do in giving orders or carrying them out. But, now that the reprised had broken it( bounds again, the tide swept everything away with it. . . Not that I knew just what I was experiencing; on the contrary, I couldn't have disentangled the element of anger fnvp.that of curiosity, nor that of curiosity from that of joy. All I could say for certain was that never in ray life had 1 been so anxious to keep free; never had I so mu<:h needed concentration and single-mindedness. The task to which I had vowed my undivided energy and heart demanded a genuine celibacy of the will; and now of all the women in the world . . . I wa; working on this train of thought when I became aware that people were running along the deck. Glan- cing about me at the same moment, I saw I was alone in the smoking-room. A whistle blew, piercingly, alarm- ingly. By the time I had struggled to my feet the ship changed her course so sharply as to throw me against a chair. I knew what it was, of co'irse. We had been talking of the possibility ever since ■; left the Mersey. How- ever much we tried to keep the mind away from the sub- ject, it came back to it, as a mischievous boy makes suaight for the thing forbidden him. 139 THE CITY OF COMRADES My fint thoii|)it wm lor the (id in the yashmak. I nutt find her. lee the had a life-belt, and take her to her boat. Before I had Krambled to the door, however, it flew open, apparently of iti own accord, while a wild nor'wetter positively blew the young lady in. It also blew away anything like Paolo-and-France*ca sentiiiieiit. "Oh, here you aret" she exclaimed, breathlessly. "I've been hunting for you everywhere. They say we've aighted a periscope. Take this and put it on." Of the two life-belts she carried she flung one to me, beginning to fasten the other about herself. "But the one you've brought me must belong to some one else," I objected, as I aided her. " I've got one of my own in my cabin. I'll just run down — " She brushed this aside. "No; this is yours. I went and got it." "You — " I began in astonishment. "I'm a nurse — or a kind of one," she said, hastily. "That's what I'm here for." "But you knew where my cabin was?" "I found out. Oh, hurry— please!" She helped me as a medieval lady might have helped her lord to buckle on his sword; and presently we were out on deck. As we had twice already drilled in the unsightly things, we had lost the sense of the grotesque appearance pre- sented by ourselves and our fellow-travelers. Besides, we were too eager to descry the periscope to have any more thought of ourselves than a wild duck of how it looks when skimming away from a sniper. Indeed, it was chiefly of a hunted wild duck that our zigzagging boat reminded me. 339 ^;i THE CITY OF COMRADES It WM a niUen day, with that acudding of low, (ray douda which kwka ai if the heavena wen haatening to lome Annafeddon of their own. The aea had hardly got over the fwell left by one gale when it wai being lathed into fury by another. The Atsiniboia pitched and rolled and tore through the watert like a moniter goaded by in- numerable ttingt. I ihould have found it next to im- ponible to itniggle along the deck had my protectren not Kood by and ateadied me. There wat a kind of fooliih pretense at the chivalroua in my tone at I taid, "I'll jutt tee you to your boat before going over to mine." "We're in the tame boat," the antwered, briefly. "Do come along." I thought of my forty-eight hourt of unfruitful search for her. "But I didn't tee you at Number Seven when we diilled yesterday." "I'm there now," she said, with the same brevity. Feeling, apparently, that some explanation was needed, the went on: "I've — I mean they — they've changed me. Miss Prynne has let me have — or rather she's taken — That is," she finished, in confusion, "we're all nuiaes together — and we've — ^we've exchanged." In spite of some inward observations, I spared her any other comment than to say, "How jolly I" as if the ex- change had been the most matter-of-course thing in the world. I spoke just now of riding tempests and zephyrs, and something like that it was to plow along at every ounce of steam, with cross seas, head seas, seas abeam, and seas abaft, as each new zigzag caught them. On the roaring of the wind and the plunge and thunder of the 240 THE CITY OF COMRADES waves one rote into tegioM of tumultuouf play where life and death were the ttaket. I aaw no lipit of fear, and •till leu of panic; nor, to far ai the eye could read, any- thing more than a (porting excitement. One would have laid that our peril wai accepted a« being all in the game, part of the day's work. By the end of 1916 Atlantic travelers had come to take the submarine for granted, just as the statesmen of Plantagenet and Tudor timet took the headsman's block as one of the natural risks of going into politics. But we looked instinctively for a periscope. It is not an easy thing for any one to see, and for me it was more difficult than for most. I saw none; or I saw a hundred. With the imperfect vision of my one eye the crests of the billows bristled with moving four-inch pipes; and then suddenly all would disappear and I saw nothing but the waves curling upward into coronets of foam with veils of trailing lace. Not that I was worse off in this respect than my fellow- travelers. As they ran for their boats they would pause, take a hurried look at the seas, exclaiming, "There it is!" and then, more doubtfully, "No, no!" all in one breath. The "No, no!" was generally uttered in a tone of disap- pointment, since to cross the ocean and sight no sub- marine would have been like journeying through Egypt and missing the pyramids. And yet our danger was apparent. Only a fortnight before the Kamouraika, sister ship to the Assiniboia, had been sent to the bottom in these very waters, with great loss of life. Of the tragedy the papers had given us realistic pictures that were fresh in all our minds. There was a preliminary scene on board not unlike the one ■vt were enacting. W« saw later a shell bursting on the 341 i.i,. 'll THE CITY OF COMRADES Jeck, lotnewhere amidihipi. We taw the pauengert and crew taking to the boats with thells kicking up geyien among them as they tried to get away. We saw the great ship sticking as straight up out of the water as a Cleo- patra's Needle, befoij going slowly down. We saw the U-boat herself lying on the water like a crocodile, some four thousand yards away; we saw Queenstown as a morgue. All this was as vividly in our minds as a re- hearsal to the actors of a play; and yet we were probably no more nervous than the company on a first night when the curtain is going up. The word went round that it was the fate of the Kam- ouraska, with the futility of her surrender as a means of saving the passengers' lives, that prompted our cap> tain to flight and fight. Our wireless calls were undoubt.<> edly going up and down the Irish coast and out into the ocean. Within an hour or two, if we could hold out so long, destroyers would be rushing to our rescue. We had nothing to be terribly afraid of with mote than an imaginative fear. That imaginative fear was quickened by the seemingly maddened acdon of our ship. I can best describe her as a leviathan gone insane. If insanity were to overtake a whale it would probably splash the deep in some such frenzy as this — so many angles out of the course one way — then a violent heeling over — so many angles out of the course another way — an3rway, anywhere, anything — to get out of that straight, staid line from port to port which makes an ocean-going ship a liner. I admit that in this wild, erratic dashing there was something that alanned us, and something, too, that made us laugh. It was the comic side of madness, in which you can hardly see the terrible because of the grotesque. 342 THE CITY OF COMRADES By the time we reached life-boat No. 7 there wen many signs that neither officers nor passengers were going to take more chances than they were obliged to. At No. 5 on one side of us a young officer was on top, peeling <^ the tarpaulin covering. At No. 9 on the other side some of the crew were already moimted, examining sup- plies and oars. At our own boat, cranks were being fitted to the davits to swing the boat outward. All along the line similar preparations were in progress, while men and women — luckily we had no children on board — carry- ing such wraps and hand-bags as they might reasonably take, stood in groups, waiting for what was to happen next. Our view of the sea was largely cut off here by the bulk of the life-boats, though wherever tbere was a chink there was also a cluster of heads. So many saw peri- scopes — and so many didn't see them — that it became a mild joke. In general we surmised that if a U-boat was cruising round us at all she had only been porpoising — sticking up her periscope for a second or two to get a look round, and withdrawing it before it could be seen by any eye not dn that very spot. The girl in the yashmak and I arrived so late on the scene that there were no places left by the rail, and we were obliged to content ourselves with second-hand in- formation as to what was taking place. Our excitement had, therefore, a lack of point, like that of the small boy behind the line of grown-up people watching a procession. We fell back in the end into a kind of alcove, where, being partially protected from wind and tumult, we could speak to each other without shouting. I took the opportunity to thank her for her kindness to ne when I came on board on Sunday; but with my openinr 243 THE CITY OF COMRADES words the air of Francesca meeting Paolo in space came over her again. I understood her to say that her help on Sunday was a little thing, that she would have given it to any one. "Of course," I agreed, "you would have given it to any one; but in this case you gave it to me. You must allow me to thank you before anything happens that might— that might make gratitude too late." As I think of her now I can see that she was mistress of herself in the way that a letter-perfect actress is mis- tress of herself, repeating words th« have been learned to fit a certain situation. She had foreseen that I would say something of the kind; she had foreseen that when I did she might be a prey to troublesome emotions; and so had fortified herself in advance by a studied set of phrases. "I'm so little of a nurse that I should be ashamed not to do for a soldier the few small things in my power." If she had never made me suffer anything, and if the moment had not been one that might conceivably end our relations forever, I should probably not have uttered the words that came to me next. "Was it only because I'm a soldiei^?" She interrupted skilfully. "Only because you're a sol- dier? Isn't a soldier the most splendid man in the world —especially at a time like this?" BangI It was one of our two guns. As a merchantman, not built to withstand the concussion of cannon, the Assini- boia shuddered. With an involuntary start my companion caught me by the sleeve. The impulse to seize her hand and draw it fently within my ann was irresistible. Had I reflected. ll / THE CITY OF COMRADES I might not have done thit, since tny dominant detira was to keep stripped and unencumbered foi the race. She allowed me to retain her hand just long enough to show that she was not mortally oiFended, after which she gently disengaged herself. To cover the constraint that both of us felt I went on to wonder if our shot had taken effect. A young man who had gone to find out came back with the news that the lookout, having spied the pin furrow of the periscope, the shot had been fired at a venture. As far as could be observed it had done nothing but send up a waterspout. On receiving this information I went on with our interrupted personalities. "Ever since Sunday I've wondered what had become of you; but then I've been looking for the uniform." "I always intended taking that off when I got on board. You see, I never was a nurse in any but an amateur sense, and so — " It was my opportunity to spring the surprise I had been holding in reserve ever since my talk with the Consolatrice in the dock at Liverpool. "When did you last see Mabel?" She spoke with a sharp, sudden mezzo cry that might have been caused by pain. "Who told you that?" "Who told me what?" Bang! It was our second gun, and thou^ the girl in the yash- mak started again, she did not seize my arm. To hold the drama at its instant of suspense, I pretended to be more interested in the effect of the shot than in anything else in the world, as in other circumstances I should have been. I turned to this one and that one, inviting their HS 11 Hi THE CITY OF COMRADES guesset, notins all the while that over Regma Ban/f eyet there spread the surface fire that a flaming sunset casts on troubled water. She harked back to the subject as socm as it was clear that we had missed our aim again. "Lady Rideover promised me she'd never tell you." Her tone having become accusatory, I broke in on it with studied nonchalance. "And she never did. To the best of my recollection she never mentioned your name to me. But is there any- thing wrong in my knowing that jou and she are friends?" G)lor mounted to her brows where the yashmak couldn't conceal it, though she ignored the question. "And I'm sure it wasn't your sister Evelyn." "Why shouldn't it have been?" "Because she promised me, too. I should be frightfully hurt if I thought she—" " i'hen I'll relieve your mind by assuring you that she didn't. But to me the curious thing is that you shouldn't have wanted me to know." She ignored this, too, a furrow of perplexity deepening between her brows. "It isn't possible that Lady Rideover or Evelyn, with- out telling you in words, should have allowed you to sus- pect — "Not any more than they allowed me to suspect that I was being nursed by a houri out of paradise." She hastened to make a correction. "Oh, I never acted as nurse to you! It was that Miss Farfcy." "But you were at Taplow when I was there, and ii and out of my room." The pecdiiar Kght in her eyes, paitly of amazement, )>artly of incredulity, reminded me of a poor trapped 346 THE CITY OF COMRADES lady I had once teen in the priioner't dock while a witnett recounted the secreu of her life with remarkable exact- nets of detail. "But you couldn't tee met" the began, helpleuly. "No, but I could hear." "And you didn't hear me. If I went into your room, which I didn't often do—" I launched a theory that was purely inspiration. "Oh, I know. If you came into my room you didn't make a sound. You arranged that with Mabel. But haven't you heard that the blind develop an extra sense?" "Not as quickly at that— or with that precision." She brightened with a new thought. " If your extra sense told you I was there, why didn't you speak to me?" "Suppose I said that I respected your incognita? If you didn't want to speak to me it must have been for a reason. I couldn't ignore that." Wiir-r-r! Z-z-2! P^FI A shell from the submarine struck the water somewhere near us, though all we saw was a column of white spume on the port side of the ship, while we were on the star- board. She ignored even this. Standing erect, with her hands in the pockets of her ulster, with no feature to betray her but her eyes, she surmised, calmly, "Some of the other nurses or one of the patients must have given you a hint." 'None of them ever pronounced your name in my hearing." "Then I give up guessing!" the said, with a touch of impatience. "Which is what I can't do." "But what have you to guess at?" 247 i'' i|-.jt.il THE CITY OF COMRADES 'At what you've done it — at what you're doing it — for." She may have smiled behind the yashmak as she said, "What difference does it make to you?" "I dare say it doesn't make any— except that I seem to be the person benefited." "In time of war the soldier— the man who does the thing — ^is the person benefited." "Oh no; there's the cause." "But surely, if we've learned anything during the past two years, it's that what the soldier does for the cause can't compare with what the cause does for the sol- dier." I saw my opportunity and was quick to use it. "So that out of what you've been doing for me even you have got something." She turned this neatly. "I've got a great deal — out of what I've been doing for every one. Not that it's been much. I merely mean that, whatever it's been, it's brought me in far more than I've ever given out." The swing of the boat was so abrupt as almost to make her heel over. Up and down the deck such passengers as were clinging to nothing were flung this way and that, with some laughing and a few involuntary cries. Miss Barry having braced me in a comer of the alcove because of my game leg, I kept my footing steadily, but the girl herself was thrown square into my arms. Not more than a second later another Whir-r-r! Z-z-z! warned us that another shell was on the way; but before we had time to be afraid a soft P-fFI told us that this, too, had struck the water. The waterspout, this time on the starboard side, not only spattered us with spray, but made it clear that only the sharp shifting of the course 24.8 J:; THE CITY OF COMRADES had saved us from a hole in our bow. That within the next few minutes our enemy would get us somewhere was a little more than probable. Then from every cluster of heads came the cry, "Oh, lookl" There she was — a blue-gray streak, only a little darker than the blue-gray waters. The change in our course revealed her as she lay on the surface to shell us, since she was too far away to send us a torpedo. We forgot every- thing — Regina Barry and I forgot each other — to gaze. My arms relaxed their hold on the girl because there was no longer a mind to direct them; the girl took command of herself because it was only thus that she could observe the most baleful and fascinating monster in the world. For it was as a monster, baleful and fascinating, that we regarded her. She was not a thing planned by men's brains and built in a shipyard. She was an abnormal, unscrupulous, venomous water beast, with a special en- mity toward man. She had about her the horror of the trackless, the deep, the solitary, the lonesome, the devil- ish. Few of us had ever got a glimpse of her before. It was like Saint George's first sight of the dragon that wasted men and cities, and called forth his hatred and his sword. I think that sheer hatred was the cause of our banging away at her with our two guns. We could hardly expect to hit her. She must have been out of our range, and our only hope was in getting out of hers. As far as we could judge she was lying still and shelling us at her ease. Splash I Splash! Splash 1 The screech- ing things went all round us; but by some miracle they were only spectacular. Viewed as a spectacle, there was a terrific beauty in it 17 349 3 . Ld ,; f' :i \\ THE CITY OF COMRADES all. Nature and man were raging together, ferociouity, magnificently, without coMcience, without quarter, with- out remorse. Hell had uniealed iti tpringi even in ui who itood watchful and inactive. There wa» a sense of abhorrent glory Jn, the knowledge that there were no Umits to which we would not go. That there were no limits to which our enemy would not go with us was stimu- lating, quickening, like the flicker of the whip to the racer. AV out and above us were all the elements of which ^ man is most accustomed to be afraid, but which, now that -^ we were among them, inspired an appalling glee. It was amazing how quickly we got used to it, just as, I am told, a man after a night or two gets used to being in the deathJiouse. To be shelled on a stormy, lonely ocean came within a few minutes to being a matter of course. Had we had time to reflect and look backward, it would have seemed strange to think that we had made voyages across the Atlantic in which we had not been shelled. Then all of a sudden there was a noise like that in a house when it is struck by lightning. It was as if all creation had burst into sound, as if there were nothing anywhere that was not a concomitant of an ear-splitting, soul-splitting crash. It was over us; it was round us; it was everywhere; it might have been within us. In our own persons we seemed to be rent by it. From the port side a blast of smoke rose an<1 poisoned the dark air. A few shrieks, half suppressed by the shriekers, ran the length of the deck, and a few male exclamations of astonishment and awe. For the most part, however, we stood PtiM and soundless, as I believe we should have held ourselves had it proved to be the Judgment Day. i^ » u Our immediate impression was that aU the aft of the 350 THE CITY OF COMRADES •hip had been carried away. Had the begtm to tettla ■tem foremott on the initant we should not have been ■urprised. We could hardly believe that the long, nar> row perspective of the deck, with its groups dotting the length of it, could remain unshattered and afloat. We were sure the decks below must have been blown into air and water. For the hundredth part of a second the Assiniboia ap- peared to stop still in her course, like a creature with its death-wound. She seemed stricken, stunned. But she gave another lurch, another swing to her huge person; and when the second shell came on, taking the range of that which had struck her, it plowed the waves astern. All seemed to be over in the space of between two breaths. By the time we could get our wits together sufficiently to ask what had happened she was once more driving onward. It was splendid. It was sublime. It thnlled one with pride in pluck and seamanship. One could have hugged the brave old leviathan by the neck. A British seaman, running down the deck on some er- rand, cried, as he passed us: "Got the old bucket aft, just above the water-line. But, Lor* I she don't mind it I Didn't do no 'arm. On'y killed Sammy Smelt, a steerage cabin-boy." But it was a beginning. Nothing could save us now but speed and the captain's skill. The young officer who had helped to strip the covering oflF No. 5 strolled by us, smoking a cigarette. "We're showing her a pretty clean pair of heels," he said, coolly, by way of dealing out encouragement. "Ship's carpenter's begun plugging up the hole. That won't hurt us so long as we don't get another." 2SI i THE CITY OF COMRADES "What about the cabin-boy?" some one called out. He shrugged his shoulders, saying, merely, "Doctor attending to the wounded." It was strange to be tearing through the seas, with that erratic course of the crazed leviathan, when at any second death might strike us from the air. I had often been under shell-fire, of course; but on land there was generally some dugout, some abri, in which one could seek shelter. What impressed me here was the vast exposure of it all. We could only stand with the heaven over us, ready to take to the boats, if need be, or equally ready to be blown into bits like little Sammy Smelt. Among the people on the deck the quiet waiting which the traditions of the race have made second nature con- tinued. We might have been passengers gathered at the entrance to a railway track. If a scared look haunted some faces, it was not more than might have been oc- casioned by the extreme lateness of a train. The shells were still splashing, th$.ship was still driving onward under every pound of steam, when I looked again at the girl in the yashmak. It must not be under- stood that I had looked away from her for long. The period of our extreme peril did not in reality cover more than a few minutes. Like the crisis of a fever, it was slow in coming, but it passed quickly, though we needed some time to realize the fact. But when I looked again at Regina Barry I found her as little disturbed as a woman could possibly have been in that special situation. Not to be hurled again into my arms, she held now to the hand-rail tliat nms along cabin walls; but she watched me rather than the ocean. I was her charge and the ocean was not. The blue-gray streak that had held her attention for a while was visible THE CITY OF COMRADES «ily whci the tumingt of the thip threw it into view; otherwiie we had nothing to lee on the narboaid lide except an infinitude of billow* with curling white creiu. To resume something like the customary attitude of human beings toward each other I said, as casually as I could manage, "You came over here just after I did, didn't youf" Having purposely framed my sentence in just those words, it was some satisfaction to get the result I was playing for. It took all the aplom' — a rather shy aplomb — of which she was mistress to answer in a way that wouldn't underscore my meaning. "Possibly; but I don't remember when you came over." Having given the date of my sailing, I added, "And you left with Evelyn a little more than three weeks later?" "Since you know everything, you naturally know that." She took on the old air of being at once smiling and defiant as she asked, "And has the fact any special . significance?" "That's what I want to find out." Before she could protest that there was no such significance I put the question, "How did you come to know her?" "Is she so tenibly difficult to know?" "Not in the least; only, you'd never seen her in your life at the time when"— I gathered all my innermost strength together to bring the words out — "at the time when I talked to you last." _ She, too, gathered her innermost strength together, (isiig to the reference gallantly. "Oh, well, a good many things have happened since then." 253 THE CITY OF COMRADES Before (mng further I wat obliged to pauae and reckoB how much I dared. Of the many teniitive points in my history, we were touching on the moit leniitive. I was fully aware that since the sleeping dog was sleeping it might be better to let him lie. Once he was roused, there might be a new set of perils to deal with, perils we could avoid by softly stepping round them. That Paolo should go one way in space and Francesca another seemed to be decreed by inevitable fate; so why interfere with the process? I should probably not have interfered with it had the circumstances not raised us above the sphere of our or> dinary interests. The roar of the wind, the tumult of the sea, the plunging of the ship, the indescribable whin- ing of shells, the knowledge of danger — were as the or- chestra which lifts the duet to emotional planes that dialogue alone could never attain to. Though our words might be commonplace, every syllable was charged with tones and overtones and undertones of meaning to be seiaed by something more subtle than intelligence. Pru- dence might have said, "Let everything alone," but that urging of the being which escapes the leash of prudence drove me on to speak. "Do you remember when I talked to you last?" She answered with the detachment of a witness under compulsion to tell the truth. The personal was as far as possible eliminated from her voice. "Perfectly." "We — ^we seemed to— to break off in the middle of a conversation." "Which you never gave me any further opportunity of going on with." The statement took my breath away. For some secondi 3S4 THE CITY OF COMRADES I could only itare at her m ■ truthful man ftat«t when h» heari himicif given the lie diren. "Did you— did you— want to goon wi it ri man- aged to itammer at Ian. "What do you think f "I— I didn't think that. I waited nearly rw > ' oun." "And if you'd only waited a few minutei i. u; I leaned down toward her, breaking in i . U>-r .... h with a seme of what I might have lost: ' veothir. would have been different? You were gonj; to s ^ th « '' She took time to raise her hands and a l|ist i.u . nsh- mak, giving me the clue to her reason for v in ,t It was putting on a vizor before going into battle. Knov ing that she would be thrown into some difficult s.'i l' ■ ;. as, she had taken this method of being as far as possible screened against embarrassment. She was successful in that. Apart from the shifting surface fire of her eyes and the slightest possible tremor m her voice I saw no rift in the barricade of her com- posure. "No; that isn't what I was going to say. I don't know how things would have been. I suppose they would have been as — as they are now." "But we could have talked them over." "If you'd waited." "I should have waited forever if I'd known." "Or if," she went on, with the same serenity, "you hadn't disappeared next day without leaving an address. I tried to find you— as Well as I could, that is— without seeming to hunt you down." I exnlained that when I left New York on that last Monday in June, 1914, 1 had not expected to be gone for more than a few <*eel»-just the time to recover from THE CITY OF COMRADES die first effects of the blow i thought her scorn had dealt to me. "It was curious, though," I went on, "that that name, Gavrilo Prinzip, should have hammered itself in on my brain. I recall it now as about the only thing I could think of. I didn't know what it meant, and I was far from supposing it the touchstone of human destinies that it afterward proved to be; but in some unreasoning way it held me. It was like the meaningless catch of a tune with v/hich you can't go on, till all at once you see it finishes in — " "In a trumpet-call. Yes, I know. You had to follow it. So had I. I don't think there's much more than that to be said." The blue-gray streak was again on the starboard side, but comfortingly far astern. Though we were still within her range, we were getting the benefit of distance. At the same time some one called our attenion to a blotch of black smoke, far down on the eastern Iiorizon. A destroyer was coming to our aid. I went back to the point we had partially forsaken. "How long did you expect me to wait that afternoon?" She looked down at the deck, answering with a per- ceptible infusion of the bitter in her tone. "I didn't fix a time. I wasn't sitting with my watch in my hand." "But I was." "Evidently." "Why didn't you come down?" "I came down as soon as I could." "What kept you?" She raised her eyes tor a fleeting glance — lowering them again. At the same time her voice sank, too, 356 THE CITY OF COMRADES •o that in the fury of sound about us she was no motr than audible. "The thing you told me." "And that kept you — in what way?" "In the way of making everything— different." "How much does that mean— different?" "It means a „Dod deal." "Can't you tell me exactly?" •"»*^""** **" ^°^ exactly; but it was something like this." She fixed her eyes on me steadily. "When they first opened the Subway in New York I came up out of a station one winter afternoon just as the lights were- lit, and instead of going to the right, as I should have done, I turned to the left. When I had walked about fifteen minutes I was dazed. Though I was in a part of New York I knew perfectly well, I couldn't recognize anything. It was all a confusion of lights. I couldn't tell which of the streets ran north and south, or which were east and west, or what the buildings were that I'd been used to seeing all my life. In the end some one took me into a drug.«tore and made me sit down till I had time to reorientate myself." "But you did it in the end?" "That time — yes." "And this time? The time we're talking about?" Whir-r-rl Z-z-z! P-ffI Bang I Whir-r-rl Z-z-z I P-ffI Bang I From the port side there came something like a feeble cheer— a chorus of rough male voices and high female screams, timid and yet glad. A new swing of our crazed leviathan disclosed the natoa, aS7 THE CITY OF COMRADES R for this wavering, victorious cry. There were two more blobs of smoke on the horizon, and from different points on the Irish coast three huge birds were flying like mes- sengers from some god. Moreover, the blob of smoke . we had first seen now had a considerable stretch of the ocean behind her, and in front a parting of the spray like two white plumes as she tore in our direction. "She sure is some little ripper!" came a dry Yankee voice in the group about life-boat No. j. "Thirty-five knots if it's one." "Them 'planes 'II overtake her, though, and be on the •pot as soon as she is." "Gosh I I'd like to see Fritzie then!" "J'ever see a kingfisher sweep down on a gudgeon?" "Gee-whiz! I-ook at Fritzie! Goin' to submerge!" And sure enough, as we stared, the blue-gray streak began to sink behind the waves, becoming to the imag- ination even more a giant deep-sea repule after it had gone. Almost simultaneously our leviathan calmed down, resuming her straight course. It was done apparently with the wordless, unexplained inconsequence with which a runaway horse will suddenly fall into a peaceful trot. There was no stopping to salute the destroyers and 'planes that were hastening to our help or to exchange confi- dences with them as to our common enemy. There was neither hail nor farewell as we forged again toward the open sea. Danger being considered past, the groups broke up, intermingling with sighs of relief. The Consolatrice and her friend came to exchange a few words with us, and Miss Prynne returned from the boat to which she had good-naturedly exchanged. While I thanked her for 258 THE CITY OF COMRADES this kindness, as if It had been done for myself, I saw Miss Barry trying to slip off. By stepping out of my comer and assuming a limp lamer than my actual disability warranted I was able to intercept her. "I wonder," I made bold to ask, "if you could give me a hand back to the music-room i" The yashmak was not so impervious but that I could detect behind it the scarlet glimmer of her smile. "Oh, I think you could get there by yourself. Try." "I can manage the deck," I said, in the tones of a boy feigning an indir; '/tion to stay away from school, "but I'm afraid of iht steps of the companionway." "How would you have managed if I hadn't been here?" she asked, as she allowed me to lean ever so lightlv on her arm. The steps of the companionway presenting a more real di£Bculty than I had expected, I could say nothing till with her aid I had lowered myself safely down. Postponing the pleasure of thanking her, I reverted t» the topic the last attack had interrupted. "I want to hear about your reorientation. You were able to put the streets in their proper place again, and to seejNew York as it was; but in my case — " She put out her hand with that air which there is no gainsaying. "I'm rather tired. I think I must go to my cabin and have a rest." She added, however, not very coherently: "The way things happen is in general the best way — if we know how to use it." Somewhat desperately, because of her determination to go, I burst out, "And do you think all this has been the best way?" as9 !« THE CITY OF COMRADES "You must see for yourself that it's been a very good way. We've been able to do— to do the things we've both done." But the admission in the use of the first personal plural pronoun seemed suddenly to alarm her. She took refuge again in her need of rest. "I really must be oflF. If we don't meet again before we leave the boat—" "Oh, but we shall!" "I'm very often confined to my cabin." "Not when you want to be out of it." "Very well, then; I very often don't leave my cabin." I was holding the hand she had extended to say good- by, but she slipped it away and was -oing. "Then tell me this— just this," I begged. "How is it diat we're both on the same ship? That didn't happen by accident?" Whether she refused to answer my question or whether It didn't reach her I couldn't tell. All I got in response was a long, oblique regard— the fleeing farewell look of Beatrice Cenci— as she carried her secrets and mysteries away with her. CHAPTER XXI 00 my celibacy of the will was threatened. I mean e it. 270 THE CITY OF COMRADES I thought I had espoused it. I had considered my&elf bone of its bone and flesh of its flesh. During my months of fighting it had been a satisfaction to think of myself as at liberty to make any sacrifice of limb or life, and leave no heart to bewail me, no eye to shed a tear, and no care to spring up behind me. My family would be content to say, " Poor old Frar.!:, he did his duty I" Further than that, I should bring no regret to any heart but Lovey's; and of him I was persuaded that if I went he wouldn't wait long after me. Moreover, I had guarded against any too great misfortune overtaking him by providing for him in my will. I must own, furthermore, to another misgiving: ^ was not too sure of myself from the point of view of i ■- A failing. Things had happened in the trenches — ^they had dosed me with brandy, whisky, rum, any restorative that came handy, on a number of occasions — and there had been something within me as ready to be waked as a tiger to the taste of blood. I can say truthfully enough that I had never yielded to the desire of my own deliberate act; but I must also say truthfully that I was by no means . sure that one day I might not do so. We had talked often enough, as men with men, of what we called a moral . moratorium — and the talk haunted me with all manner of suggestions. The ban on what is commonly called sin was to be lilted for the period of the war; and we who had to deny ourselves so much were not to deny ourselves anything that came easily within our grasp. It seemed ; an alluring condition, and one which, without waiting for the license of supreme war councils or the permission of the Church, each of us was tempted to inaugurate for himself. In a situation in which that which is bom of the flesh is a7i THE CITY OF COMRADES £auiitingly before one's eyes, and millions of men are thrown together as flesh and little more, appetite has its mnuth wide open. That man was strong indeed who could ignore this yearning of the body; and that man was not I. So again the consciousness of freedom was like a reserve (iind to a corporation. It was something on which to fall back if everything else was swept away. I didn't want to go to the devil; but if I went no one would suffer but myself, as no one would suffer but myself if a German sniper were to blow the top off' my head. Mind you, I am not saying that I came back morally weakened from the war; I only came back with a sense that one man's life or death — one man's ruin or salvation — was of no more account than the fate of a roadside bit of jewel-weed amid the infinite seed-time and harvest of the year. I was inured to loss of all kinds on a stupendous scale. I had seen thousands blown to pieces beside me, and my mind had not turned aside to regret them; thousands would see me blown to pieces with the same indifference :s to whether I lived or died. Callousness as to the life and death of others induces callousness as lo one's own; and compared to life and death, what is the control of a mere appetite? No; I was not morally weakened; but I was morally benumbed. There was a kind of moral moratorium in my consciousness. I repeat that I wasn't practically making use of it; but I was in a period of sus- pense in which I admitted to myself that it might depend on circumstances whether I made use of it or not. And if I did, and if I was married. . . . From the sheer possibility my mind turned in dismay. To the celibacy made urgent by a purpose I added the celibacy necessitated by a curse. As the one counseled 273 THE CITY OF COMRADES me not to involve myself with anybody else, so the other warned me not to involve anybody else with me. Through warning and counsel I had kept myself in something like a state of serenity till now. It was a state of serenity with just one dominating im- pulse — ^to get back among the comrades with whom I had already found shelter. Whatever I had that could be called a homing instinct was bound for the house in Vandiver Street. There had been times when I thought I had outlived that phase, times when what seemed like a new and higher companionship, with a new and higher place in the world and in men's esteen- \alf persuaded me that I was so little the waster in fact id the criminal in possibility that the Down and Out v no more to me than a sloughed skin to the creature that has thrown it off. But I always waked from this pleasant fancy to see myself as in essentials the same gaunt, tattered, hungry fellow who had come with his buddy to beg a meal and a bed of the Poor Brothers of the Order of Pity, who never refused any homeless, besotted man. No matter what battles I fought, what medals I won, what banquets I was asked to sit down at, my place was among them; and among them I hoped to do my work. They were all American citizens, with as much weight, when it came to the franchise, as the moneyed potentates of Wall Street. As being not only my brethren, but a nucleus of public opinion as well, I had had no other vision before me for my return than that of sharing their humble refreshments and talk, together with that blind, desperate, devoted fraternity which made a city of refuge of the home that had once been Miss Smedley's. And since coming on board that vision was threatened by another — one in which I saw myself moving amid com- 473 m it tttE CITY OF COAiRADES pliment* and flowers and polite conTcntions, in all the entanglii.g convolutions of the s.lken net. Whether it woold be with or without love was, in my state of mind, beside the mark. Love had ceased to be, for the time being, at any rate, the ruling factor in a man's decisions about himself. There was a moratorium of love, let there be one of morals or not. "I've got to," had been the reply to love made by twenty millions of men all over the world, either under compulsion or of their own free will; and women had accepted the answer valiantly. The difficulty in my case sprang of choice. "I've got to" wasn't imperative enough. Or if imperative, it wa« imperative on both sides equally. It' I llJti CHAPTER XXII y^ro then a word was said which, though solving no r» problems, opened up a new line of suggestion. I have spoken of Regina Barry as another transmigrated joul. I have said that I could not tell at a glance in what direction her spirit hau traveled; nor could I after some days of intercourse. As much as she had been frank and open in the other period of our acquaintance, she had now become mysteiy to me—elusive, tantalizing, sealed. By the end of a few days I began to perceive that she came near me only, as I might say, officially. If there was danger or storm or darkness — ^we sailed without I-ghts — she was within reach of me. She was within reach of me many a time if I wanted no more than a book that had fallen or a rug that had been left elsewhere on the deck. It was strange how hovering and protective her presence could be for the moment of need, and how far withdrawn the minute I could get along alone. And f?r withdrawn the transmigrated spirit seemed to me at all times. Do what I would to traverse the dis- tance, I found her as remote as ever. Do what I would to break down her defenses or transcend them, they still rose between us, impalpable, impregnable, and all but indiscernible. She had traveled away from me as I had traveled away from her; and yet now that we met in space there was some indefinable bond between us. It was in right of that bond that I asked her one day why she was going home. 27S 'i-t 'I THE CITY OF COMRADES "Oh, for all lortf of reawM." She added, "One of them if on account of father." "Isn';hewell?" "Yes, he's well enough. That isn't it." As she did not explain, I refrained from asking further, not because I didn't want to know, but because I knew she would tell me. It was our usual trysting-place, the deck rail, though not now that which ran along the side of the ship, but the one across the portion of the upper deck toward the bow, allowing us to look down on the pit in which the few steerage passengers took the air. They were standing about in helpless, idle groups, some ten or twelve oddly clad, oddly hatted men, with three or four of their women, and a white staring baby, whose fingers, as it hung over its mother's shoulder, dangled like bits of string. We were in the Gulf Stream, so that the day was com- paratively mild. A north wind not too violent blew away the possibility of fog and sent an occasional shaft of sun- shine through the rifts in the great gray clouds. The swell left over from the gale of the past few days tossed the ship's nose into the air with a long, slow, rhythmic heave, slightly to port, and gave to good sailors like our- selves that pleasant sensation of swinging which a bird must get on a tree. Wind and water were fraught with the nameless peace- ful intimations of the New World after the turmoil of the Old one. It is difficult to say how one seizes them, but they come with the Gulf Stream. I have always noticed that half-way over there is a change in the aura, the atmosphere. It throws a breath of balsam on the wind, and flashes on the waves that gleam which Cabot, Jacque* Cartier, and the Pilgrims saw when they sighted land. 276 THE CITY OF COMRADES It if that wonderful seme of going wettward which, I •uppote, it primal to the initinct. Going eaitward, one it going back to beginningi, to thirds lived, to thingi over and done with. Going westwai ' all is hope. It is the onward reach, the upward grasp, ':e endless striving. It is the lifting of the hands, the straining of the power to achieve, the yearning of the inner man. The thing ' that is finished is left behind, and the thing to be wrestled with and done is in front of one. The very sun goes before one with a iiplendid gesture of beckoning — on to work, on to self-deni;il, on to triumph and success — and when it sets it sets with a promise of a morrow. We had already begun to feel that; and on my part in a spirit of compunction. I was going, as far as lay within my small powers, to turn the west back upon the east again, to reverse nature by making the stream flow toward its source. I was far from insensible to the pity of it, for I had seen the effect on my own country. I had seen my own country — that baby giant, whose very existence as a country antedated but little the yar when I was born — I had seen it pause in its work, in its play, in its task of self-development — listen — shiver — thrill — throw down the ax, the spade, the hammer, the pick — go up from the field, the factory, and the mine-- and offer itself willingly. It was to me as if that was fuir.Iled which was spoken by the prophet: "I heard the voice of the Lord, saying, Whom shall I send, and who will go for us? Then said I, Here am I; send me." I had seen that first flotilla of i.nirty-one ships sail down the St. Lawrence, out into the ocean, and over to the shores of England, as the first great gift of men which the New World had ever made to the Old, as some return 277 I. J' I ll THE CITY OF COMRADES for all the Old had poured out upon the New. I had leen it, for I was on it. We went gaily, ai hop-picken go to a bean-featt. We knew it was war, but the word had no meaning for ui. What it meant we found out at Ypret, at Vimy, at Leni. But when I think of my country now I think of her no longer at a baby giant. She hat become a girl widow — valiant, dry-eyed, high-souled, ready to go on with the interrupted work and do bigger work — but a widow all the lame. And the (word that had pierced one heart I was bringing to pierce another. I was sorry; but sorrow didn't keep me, couldn't keep me from being terribly in earnest. And in on these thoughtt Regina Barry broke as if she had been following them. "Look at the waves where the sun catches them. Aren't they like flashing steel? It's just as if all the drowned hands at the bottom of the sea were holding up swords to the people of America, begging them to go and fight." I looked at her, stairtled. "You feel that way?" She looked at me, indignant. "Certainly. How else could I feel?" "Oh, I didn't know. Americans feel so many different ways." " Because they don't know. I'm going back " — she gave a light, deprecating laugh — "I'm going back to tell them." I was still more startled. "Tell whom?" "Any one I know. Every one knows some one. I don't mean to say that I'm a Joan of Are; but I shall do what I can." "And how shall you begin?" "I'll begin with father and with—" THE CITY OF COMRADES She stopped at the lecond name, though to me the fact Jid not become ligniiicant till afterward. "That'i what I meant," ihe resumed, "when I said I was going back on hi* account." "You raeanf "He doesn't see why we should be in it. He's tike so many Americans; he hasn't emerged from the eighteen- hundreds. He still thinks of the New World as if it was a new creation that had nothing to do with the Old. He doesn't see that there's only one world and one race of men, wherever they are and whatever they do. To him Americans are like souls that get over to paradise. They're safe and can afford to dwell safely. They're no longer concerned with the sorrows and struggles of the people left on earth." It was to get light on my own way that I : .:ed, "And what are you going to say to convince him?" "I don't know yet. I shall say what the moment •uggests." "And you're sure it will suggest something?" Her great eyes burned like coals as she turned them on me in protest at the question. "Suggest something? You might as well ask if the air suggests something. It suggests that I breathe it; but I don't have to think of it beforehand, when the whole world is full of it." "Full of what?" She considered the question, finding in it all I meant to put there. "I don't know," she answered at last. "That is, I don't know in any sense that would go into a few words. There's so much of it. The minute you try to express it from any one point of view you find you're inadequate." 479 THE CITY OF COMRADES I was still seeking light. "But when you try to do it from several points of view —correlating themf "Even then — " She paused, reflecting, shaking her head as she went on again, as if to shake away a con- sciousness of the impossible. "I don't try. There's no use in trying. It's so immense — so far beyond me. It's grown so, too. When it first began I could more or less compass it — or, I thought I could. Now it's become like nature — or God — or any of the colossal infinite concep- tions — it means different things to dilFerent minds." "That is, we can only take of it what we take of the ocean^ach a few drops — no one able to take all?" "Something like that. And we can only give a few drops — ^just what we've got the measure to take up — some a little more, some a little less — but no one more than a little as compared to the whole. That's why I'm not going to try to explain." "Then how are you going to make them understand?" "I'll tell them — I'll do what I can to show them — that the greatest movement of all time is going on — and America is taking no national part in it. I'll try to make them see that it isn't just to avenge the few American lives lost through the U-boats, or to free Belgium, or to put down autocracy, or to do any one or two or three of the things that have been set before us. It isn't even the whole of them, just taken as so many human mo- tives." "But you'll have to tell them what it is, won't you? It won't do just to put before them what it isn't." "But how can I? How can any one? It would be like trying to tell them what nature is. It's a universal composite, made up of everything; but you couldn't go 280 'llir THE CITY OF COMRADES about the country explaining it in lectures. The nearest I could come to it would be in saying that it's the great dramatic conflict between good and evil to which human nature has been working up ever since it committed its first sin; but the words in which to do that have been so hard worked and are so terribly worn that they've be- come a kind of ditty. It seems to me best just to talk to them simply — and let them construct the monster out of the bones I lay before them. They'll do it. The pub- lic is not very quick, but when it gets going it's pretty instinctive." "Oh, then you're going to tackle the public?" "I'm going to tackle any one to whom I can get access." "You spoke just now of lectures." "I'll speak of anything that will help me to get the message across. That's why I mention father and — " Again she hesitated at a name, going on with an elision: — " first of all. They are simply the first I shall be able to talk to. As a matter of fact, not many as yet have been over there and come back to America — so that there's a good deal of curiosity still unsatisfied — and so one will get a chance. You must have noticed already how dear- ly Americans, especially the women, like to be talked to. We're talked to so much by experts on all subjects that we should burst with knowledge if our minds weren't like those swimming-tanks with fresh water running in and out of them all the time." "So you're really going to make it a kind of business?" She spread her hands apart, palms outward. "What else can I do? I assure you it isn't any desire for publicity or that sort of thing. I'm just — I'm just driven on. It's like what some one says in the Bible — I've taken to reading the Bible lately — it seems the only U 281 I I, THE CItY OF COMRADES thing big enough in spirit to go *ith the big tinte* — but some one says there: 'Woe unto me, if I preach not the gospel r Well, it's the same way with me. Woe unto me if I don't do this thing! It's taken possession of me; I can't do anything else; and so I'm going back — " I was expressing but one of the host of thoughts that crowded on me as I said: "You've got the tremendous advantage of being an American. You can say what you like. If I were — " She stood off and surveyed me. "You don't need to say anything. You speak for yourself. One has only to look at you." I smiled ruefully. "I know I'm pretty well battered up." "Oh, it isn't that." "What is it, then?" "Oh, I don't know. It's just-^t's just everything. You're a type. I'm not speaking of you personally, but of a lot — hundreds — thousands — I've seen — young fellows who make me think of some other words in the Bible." "What are they?" "They're in Isaiah, I think. Everybody knows them." She recited in a smooth, rich voice that gave new beauty to'the familiar passage: "'Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows: ... He was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray; we have turned every one to his own way; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.'" Her voice rose — and fell again. "'He was oppressed, and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a shetp before her shearers aSa THE CITY OF COMRADES u dumb, so he openeth iK« Miss Farley-" Miss Farley! Oh, good God!" 3^"'^^°'' ^'"^ I ^''°^f She was very pretty." «r J ^ ^^ whether she was pretty or not?" ^^^ And you were always joking with her and thanking **0f course I thanked her. What else could I do ?" You needn't have kissed her hand. I caught voi> domg that one day when I was tidying up in your room." Did you? Veryhkely. When a man is as helples. as X was his gratitude often becomes maudlin." 20 297 THE CITY OF COMRADES "I don't know that you need call it that. He simply falls in love with the pretty nurse who takes care of him. It was happening all the time in the hospitals. But for me — right there in your room — ^and shut out from every- thing—" "But that wasn't my fault. If I'd known you were there—" "It was your fault at Atlantic City — and afterward— when I'd let you see — far more than a girl should ever let any man see." "But you know how impossible it was for me then — till I'd told you who I was." "I know it now. I didn't know it before half an hour ago. And the time when you told me that — that thing — at Rosyth — I had no idea whether or not you meant . . . And when you blame me for not coming down-stairs quicker than I did — " "1 haven't blamed you, Regina." "You can't imagine what it was to be all at sea not merely as to what you felt, but actually as to what you were — and had been. When you pulled the pearls out of your pocket — and said you were ♦hat man — " There were two or three minutes during which she stood with face averted, and I had to give her time to regain her self-control. "You see," she went on, her rich mezzo just noticeably tremulous — "you see, I'd always thought about l.im — a girl naturally would, finding him in her room like that — but I'd thought of him as . . . And I'd been thinking of you, too. I'd been thinking of you as the very opposite ^' ^^ "Didn't expect to see you so badly mauled," was his sorrowful comment after the first demonstra ionT "| knew you were wounded, of course, and that you had been bhnd Regina wrote me that f...„ Taplow! But I didn't look for your being so— " off h°^s;m;:tt:"'''' ' '""''"'^' •" ^"^ ^°" *° ^•"•' Having asked me a few professional questions in refer- ence to the ways m which I had been wounded, he 'aid- Well, now that we ve got hold of you again we mean to feed you up and take care of you. You're going to ^ my patient, Frank. For the present, at an/ rate, we^ t^ W a"d ; ""'' °" '""^^ '""' ' ^h' II b; Ible to keep a daily eye on you. Lovey here has vour apartment as clean as an operating -';oom. See^ou there later. Just now I've got to go back t„ Z Regina. And by the way" -'his habku^Jly mou™f^° repression brightened as a lowering day lights up wht the sun bursts through the masses of drifting do^r by the way, I shall have something to tell you by and by. The most wonderful thing has happened, Frank- somethmgyou and I used to talk about before 'you'tnt It downward and pulling it hard, which betrayed all .ortf common, every-day happiness. His whole face asked me 308 THE CITY OF COMRADES to rejoice with him, and, t \ough I ..mJln't do that, I couldn't do the other thing. It was on my lips to say, 'Yku iii't have her because I m going to take her away from you." But the words died before they were formed. The very thought died in my mmd. Whatever I did, I shouldn't be able to do it that way; and so I let him go. "Do you know what he meant. Slim— when he said them things — the doctor?" This was Lovey's question as he sat beside me in the taxicab and we drove up-town. As I made no answer, he mumbled, mysteriously: "I do. I 'aven't valeted 'im for nothink." I still made no answer, and the mumble ceased. As yet I had noticed him only as the returned traveler notices the faithful old dog that greets him by lifting his eyes adoringly and wagging his tail. I saw now that the mtervenmg two and a half years had aged him. He had grown white and waxy; his thin gray hair was thinner. A trembling, like that of a delicately poised leaf on a day when there is little wind, shook his hands, and the left comer of his lower lip had the pathetic quiver of a child's when it is about to sag in a great weeping. As I had paid him so little attention on the dock, I picked up the hand resting on his knee and pressed it. He responded with a long, harsh breath which, starting as a sigh of comfort, became something inarticulately emotional. "Oh, Slim I I've got ye back, 'aven't I?" "Seems like it, Lovey." I laughed without feeling mirthful. * "Ye look awful, don't ye?" "I suppose I do." 309 TH£ CITY OF COMRADES "But it don't make no difference to me, it don't. I'd rather 'ave ye all chawed up like this than not 'ave ve at all." "Thank you, Lovey." "Them wars is awful things. Why don't they stop 'em?" He continued, without waiting for an explana- tion: "It's all along o' them blamed Germans. The cheek o' them—to go and fight Englishmen! There was a German in the 'at-shop in the Edgeware Road used to 'ang round me somethin' fierce; and now I believe he wasn't nothink but a-spyin' on me. Don't you think he was. Slim?" "I think very likely." "Makes my blood run cold, it does, the times I've took 'im into a little tea-shop in Great Hatfield Street— and me a-treatin' on 'im, like. If I 'adn't 'ad luck I might be lookin' like you by this time. Ain't it awful to be one- eyed, sonny?" "Oh, I'm getting used to it." "Used to it till you looks in the glass, I expect. Get a fright when ye do that, don't you? But it's all right. Slim. It wouldn't matter to me if you was a worse looker than /are. I wouldn't turn ye down, neither, not if it was for all the doctors in the world. Not but what he's been very attentive to me while you was away. I don't mike no complaint about that. Bit finicky about socks and 'andkerchiefs always the same color — and ye couldn't see 'is socks most o' the time— only when he pulled up his trouser leg apurpose— but a good spender and not TJOkm' 'is nose into my affairs. I'll say all that for 'im; but if he was to ask my 'and in marriage, like, and I could get you. Slim — all bunged up as y'are now and every- thing !— well, I know what I'd say." 310 THE CITY OF COMRADES Too miserable to reje« this bit of sympathy, I said, merely, "Unfortunately, Lovey, every one may not be of your opinion." "I d'n' know about that," he protested. "Seems to me everybody would be if you could make 'em under- stand, like." There was nothing oflFensive in this, coming a^ it did from a deep affection, but, as it had gone far enough, I turned my attention to the streets. There was a quality in them not to be apprehended by the sense of sight. It defied at first my limited powers of analysis. Something to which I was accustomed was not there; and something was there to which I was not accustomed. That to which I was not accustomed struck me soon as shimmering, shining, radiant. That it was not an outward radiance goes without saying. New York on that November day was as dreary and bleak a port as one could easily land at. A leaden sky cloaked the streets in a leaden, lifeless atmosphere. The tops of steeples and the roofs of the tall buildings were wreathed in a leaden mist. Patches of befouled snow on the ground, with the drifts of paper, rags, and refuse to which the New York eye is so inured that it doesn't see them, lent to the side- streets through which we clattered an air of being so hope- lessly sunk in dirt that it is no use trying to be any other way. Drays rumbled, motor-trucks honked, ferry-boats shrieked, tram-cars clanked, trains overhead crashed with a noise like that of the shell that had struck the Assiniboia, while our taxicab creaked and squeaked and spluttered like an old man putting on a speed he has long outlived. On the pavements a strange, strange motley of men and women— Hebrew, Slavic, Mongolian, negro, negroid — ■?" ' !l. 1 ■,■■ THE CITY OF COMRADES carried on trades as outlandish as themselves. Here and there an outlandish child shivered its way to an out- landish school. Only now and then one saw a Caucasian face, either clean, alert, superior, or brutalized and re» pulsive beyond anything to be seen among the yearning, industrious aliens. And yet to me all was lit by an inner light of which I couldn't at first see the lamp. I caught the rays without detecting the source that emitted them. In and through and above this squalid New York, with its tumult, its filth, its seeming indiflPerence to the individual, there was a celesrial property bom of the kingdom of heaven. It shone in the sky; it quivered in the air; it lay restfully on the hoary graveyards nestling at th^ feet of prodigious cubes, like eld at the base of Time. All faces glowed with it; all tasks translated it; all the clamor of feet and wheels and whistles sang it like a song. The name of it came to me with a cry of joy and a pang of grief simultaneousljr. It was peace. I was in a country that was not at war. I had forgotten the experience. I had forgotten the sensation it produces. I had forgotten that there was a world in which men and women were free to go and come without let or hindiance. And here were people doing it. The day's work claimed them, and nothing beyond the day's work. To earn a living was an end in itself. The living earned, a man could enjoy it. The money he made he could spend; the house he built he could occupy; the motor he bought he could ride in; the wife he married he could abide with; the children he begot he could bring up. He could go on in this routine till he sickened and died and was buried in it. There was no terrific overruling 312 THE CITY OF COMRADES motive to which all other motives had become sub- sidiary, and into which they merged. In the countries I had been living in war was the sky overhead and the ground beneath the feet. One dreamed it at night, and one woke to it in the morning. It made everything its adjunct, every one its slave. Duty, wealth, love, devotion, had no other object on which to pour themselves out. It commanded, absorbed, monop- olized. ^ There was no home it didn't visit, no pocket It didn't rifle, no face it didn't haunt, no heart it didn't search and sift and strengthen and wrench upward— the process was always a hard, dragging, compulsive one- till the most wilful had become submissive and the most selfish had given all. Prayer was war; worship was war; art, science, philosophy, sport were war. Noth- ing else walked in the streets or labored in the fields or bought and sold in the shops. It was the next Universal after God. And here, after God, a man was his own Universal. With no standard to which everything had to be referred he seemed unutterably care-free. Care-free was not a term I should have used of New York, of America, in the old days; but it was now the only one tnat applied. The people I saw going by on the sidewalks had nothing but themselves and their families to think of. Their only struggle was the struggle for food and shelter. Safe peo- pie, happy people, dwelling in an Eden out of the reach of cannon and gas and bomb! "I came not to bring peace, but a sword I" Sacrilegiously, perhaps, I was applying those words to myself as we jolted homeward. But I was applying them mth a query. I was asking if it could possibly be worth TOiIe. All at once my mission became unreal, fantastic. 21 ,u I THE CITY OF COMRADES li To begin with, it was beyond my powers. Among thcK hundreds of thousands of strangers I knew but a handful. Even on that handful I should make no impression. I could see at a glance, from the few words I had exchanged with people on the dock, that each man's cup was full. You couldn't pour another drop into it. I had subcon- sciously taken it for granted that my friends would be, as it were, waiting for me; and already it was evident that in their minds there would not be a vacant spot. I had not the will-power to force myself in on so much hurry an^j preoccupation. Then I wasn't interested in it any more. I had preten- tiously thought of myself as dedicated to a cause, and now the cause had dissolved into nothing on this leaden, over- charged air. It would be ridiculous to wean these people away from their work, even if I could play like the Pied Piper and have them follow me. I didn't want to do it. I wanted to marry the woman I loved, and settle down quietly, industriously, to spend my days in an office and my nights at home, like the countless human ants that were running to and fro. My celibacy of the will was gone. My consecration was gone. Where these austeri- ties had been there was now only that yearning of what- ever it is that draws a man toward a woman, and I asked nothing but the freedom to enjoy. I was determined to enjoy. The resolve came over me with this first glimpse of New York. It came over me in a tide of desire which was all the fiercer for its long repression. It may have been the demand of the flesh for compensation. That which had not merely been denied, but brutalized and , broken, rose with the appetite of a starving beast. So, thirdly, I was not fit for any high undertaking. It was not my real self that had made these vows; it was 314 THE CITY OF COMRADES a phantasm self evoked by the vast emotions of a strife m which the passions raged on a scale that lifted the human temporarily out of itself. But now that the strife had been left behind, the human fell bade into the same old rut. In the same old rut I found myself. I had reverted to what I had been before there was a war at all. My car- nal instincts were as strong as ever; as strong as ever was my longing for Regina Barry as my wife. It was stronger than ever, smce I meant to get her by hook or by crook, if I couldn't do it by the methods which colloquially we call straight. It was, however, the difficulties of hook and crook that oppressed me. The straight line was in this case that of least resistance. I grew more convinced of it as the day advanced. There was everything to make my return to the old quarters a moment of depression. The quarters them- selves, which had seemed palatial after the Down and Out, were modest to the point of being squalid. As Cantyre had said, Lovey had kept them as clean as an oper.--ing-room, but cleanliness couldn't relieve their dingy shabbiness or make up for the absence of daylight. Moreover, Cantyre's own proximity was trying to me. There was only the elbow of a corridor between his rooms and mme. He would resume the old chumming habits of running in and out, while I was sharpening a knife to stab him in the back. And in the processes of unpacking Lovey got on my nerves. He got on my nerves as a sweet, old, fussy mother gets on those of a wayward son during the hours he IS compeUed to stay at home. Dogging me about from one room to another, his affection was like a draught 31S •I I I is ^"'1 il i I if < :i i M THE CITY OF COMRADES of milk held out to a man whose l!ps are parched for brandy. It was a relief, therefore, when the telephone rang and Annette van Elstine asked me to come and have tea with her. I knew that Annette was not craving to see me merely as her cousin; and as my cousin I could have waited patiently for the pleasure of seeing her; but with her scent for drama and her insatiable curiosity she would raise the issues of which I wanted to talk even if I got no good from it. I found her as little changed as if Time had not passed nor War dropped his bomb on the world. Annette's smartness, as I have already told you, was difficult to define. It was not in looks or dress or manner of living or gifts of intellect. If I could ascribe it to a cause I should put it down as authority of position com- bined with the possession of a great many personal secrets. She knew your intimate history for the reason that she asked you intimate questions. Authority of position enabled her to do this — or at least she acted as if it did — with the right of a cross-examiner to probe the truth in court. She could convey the impression that her inter- est in your affairs was an honor — as if a queen were to put her royal finger in your family pie — so that quite artlessly you unlocked your heart to her. Other people's unlocked hearts were ber kingdom, since, as far as I could see, she had nothing in her own. Also, as far as I could see, she wore the same tea-gown I had always seen her in; she sat in the same chair in front of the same fire; she had before her the same tea equipage; she might have been pouring the same tea. The transition from the necessary questions as to my personal experiences and wounds to that of the exact 316 jl THE CITY OF COMRADES relations between Mri. Hartlepool and Gen. Lord Bir- kenhead was an easy one. Disi.ppointed that I had spent two years at the front an 1 had heard nothing of the delicate situation between ti.ese distinguished persons, of which an amazing mass of contradictory detail had reached certain circles in New York, she turned the con- versation on what was really the matter in hand. "So you came over on the same boat as Regina?" Unable to deny this statement, I admitted its truth. The dusky ripples played over Annette's round features, giving them a somber vivacity. "Did she tell you anything?" "Yes; a good many things." "Anything special, I mean?" "Everything she said was special, as far as I can re- member." She tried another avenue. •j You've gone back to your old quarters, haven't you?" Yes; I kept them all the time I was away. Stupid I suppose; but when I left New York I didn't expect to be gone for more than a few weeks." "Stephen Cantyre is in that house, isn't he?" "On the same floor with me." ,'T°"'" *^* ^ Sreat deal of liim, won't vou?" "I did when I was there before." "Was he on the dock to meet Regina?" "He was on the dock, either to meet her or to meet me. As a matter of fact, he met us both." "Did he say anything about her?" I'Yes; he said he had to go and speak to her." "Only to speak to her?" "What more could he do— right there on the dock?" 'Oh, then you do know?" 317 :li n\ ii THE CITY OF COMRADES "Know what?" "What do you tuppoief Can't you guesi?" "I didn't know you wanted me to gueis. I thought you meant to tell me." " I can't tell you what I don't know myself — officially." "Do you know it in any other way?" " I know it by (igns and tokens." "One can infer a lot from them." "That's just what I've done. It wasn't till I heard that you'd come over in the same boat with her — " The rest of the sentence was conveyed by a look which invited me to 4(0 on "You thought i might be able to corroborate the signs and tokens?" "Or contradict them — if it's not a rude thing to say." I wriggled away from the frontal attack. "Why should it be rude?" "Oh, well, I'm the last person in the world to go poking into other people's business." "Exactly." "Only people do like to tell me things." "I can quite understand that — when they've any- thing to tell." "Which is what I thought you might have." "How could I have anything to tell when I've just spent two years in trenches and hospitals?" "You haven't been in trenches and hospitals during the last ten days. Oh, don't say anything if you don't want to. I'm not in the It^ast curious." "Of course you're not. No one would ever think so." "I've only been — well, just a little afraid." "What were you afraid of?" 318 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Of the situation. I that you took the boat "No. iuppose it wasn't an accident hat sF accident. : was on?" to wasn I do with it?" ''Just that much— that you did it on purpose." "So that you were afraid on my account?" "No; on hers. You see, she's been so terribly talked about that now that it's beginning again—" "Oh, it's beginning again, is it?" She said, mysteriously, "Stephen Cantyre it rather a goose, you know." "In what way?" "In the way of dropping hints when he'd much better keep still. He's so crazy about her—" "It's a pity for him to be dropping hints if he isn't sure." "Oh, he must be sure enough! After the way she treated him before, he'd never expose himself to the same thing the second time. It isn't that he's not sure. It's just the way he does it— confiding in every one, but only saying that he hopes." "If he only hopes, it doesn't bind any one but himself." "It isn't a question of binding; it's one of the situa- tion. If she's let him hope— the second time— she's bound. If it was only the first time— or if she hadn't made such an insane reputation for herself— don't you see? — the whole thing is in that." "I should think the whole thing was in whether or not she was in love with him." "Well, it isn't. If she was as much in love with some- body else as Juliet she couldn't throw over Stephen Cantyre now. She'd have to be put under restraint if she did— shut up in some sort of ward. The community wouldn't stand for it." 319 >* 1 ' ;. 1 \ if: ■ If THE CITY OF COMRADES "It might be a nine dayi' wonder, of coune." "It would be one of thow nine dayi' wonder* that latt all your life. ShVd be done for." Shr went on in another key. " But, of course, her father and mother wouldn't let her. They're delighted. He'» very well off— and a good fellow, who'll give her everything ihe wants." "But what good will that do if she doesn't care for himr Her animation went into the eclipse that always came over her when she touched the heart of things. "What makes you think she doesn't — if it's not a rude question ?" "The fact that she turned him down before." She broke in with that directness which she never hesitated to make use of when the time came. "You don't think she cares anything about you?" I considered two or three ways of meeting this, the one I adopted being to put on a rather inane smile. "What if she did?" "She'd just have to get over it, that's all. You, too!" "Why?" "I needn't tell you why. You must see for yourself. Or, rather, I've told you already. There are ways in which an engagement is more important than a marriage — any engagement; and when it's a second engagement to the same man — If she'd been married to him, and couldn't get along, why, no one would think the worse of her if she got a divorce and married some one else. She would have given him a try; she would have done her best. But just to take him up and put him down, and take him up and put him down again, without trying him at all — my dear Frank, it isn't donel" "But suppose we did it?" 320 THE CITY OF COMRADES "In that case it might be the world well Ion for love- out the world would be loit; and you needn't be under any miiconception about it. Penonally I'd Rand by any one through almost anything; I have ttood by Regina in the past when lots of other women have given her the cold shoulder because of her—" Call it anything you like. Most of us have other names for it. All I want to say now is that I wouldn't stand by her in this; nor by you, either. If you had come to me when you were in your other troubles— three or four years ago— you'd have found me just the same as if you'd been keeping straight. Any one can go to the bad. There isn't a family that hasn't some one who'i done it. But this would be the kind of thing— Frank, old boy, I'm telling you right now, so that you'll know where you stand with me. I'd have to be the first to cut you both." To this there were several retorts I could have made, any of them quite crushing to Annette; but I was think- ing of the practical difficulties before us. The role of unscrupulous coquette was the last in which Regina would care to appear; that of cad was equally distasteful to me. Had it been possible to make one plunge and be over with it, it would have been different; as it was, the preliminaries— the facing of all the people who would have to be faced— the explaining all the things that would have to be explained— couldn't but be devilish. I was just beginning, "Why should you assume that we are thinking of any such thing — ?" But before I could finish the sentence the door opened gently and a maid's voice announced, "Mrs. Barry." Of all the people in the world, this lady was the laic I wanted to meet at that moment. Knovring how i 321 THE CITY OF COMRADES rmust have figured in her eyes in the past, I was planning for the future to figure in a worse light still. I had thrown her kindness back in her face and never given her an explanation. She must have known that my seeming . flight from Long Island after that last Sunday in June, 1914, had left her daughter unhappy; and the reason had remained a mystery. She gave me the first glance as she entered, and only the second to our hostess. The awful severity of those who are temperamentally gentle and unjudging was in the very coldness of her eye. She was a charming, delicate, semi-invalid woman who seemed to have been spun, like the clothes she wore, out of the least durable materials in life. Regina had the same traits, but harder, stronger, and more lasting. It was difficult to think of the latter as an invalid; while you couldn't see the mother as anything else. Prettily old-fashioned, she seemed not to have changed her style of dressing since the eighteen-seventies. The small bonnet might have dated from the epoch of pro- fessional beauties when Mrs. Langtry was a girl. The long fur peUsse with loose hanging sleeves was of no period at all. I think she wore a train. In her own house she habitually did, and she seemed to have just flung on the pelisse and driven down the Avenue in her motor. She greeted me politely, without enthusiasm, but with due regard to the fact that I was a wounded hero home from the wars. Talking of the invasion of Rumania, she showed herself much more alive to America's international duty than any of the few men I had met since my landing. "I wish we could get my husband and Stephen to see things that way," she continued, sweetly, over her tea- 322 THE CITY OF COMRADES cup. "They're so pacifist, both of them. My husband feels that we've nothing to do with it, and Stephen is opposed to war on any ground. You must talk to him, Mr.— or captain, isn't it? Oh, major? You must talk to him. Major Melbuiy. He'll listen to you." She turned to Annette. " You know, Annette, I just ran in to share our good news with you. Regina and Stephen— they've made it up again— and they're so happy I" An oblique glance included me. She was getting the satis- faction that women receive from a certain kind of revenge. "Poor darlingi You don't know how hard she's tried, Annette. People haven't understood her. All she's wanted was to be sure of herself— and now she is. She's really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn't know it. That is, she knew it; and yet— But I'm sure you see it. You're one of the few who've never been unkind to her. She wanted me to tell you. She'll be so glad to have you know it, too, Major Melbury. Perhaps she told you on the boat. I think she said she did. I don't quite remember. There's been so much to say in the last few hours. There always is at such a time, don't you think? ... No; they're not going to an- nounce an engagement. It would only make more talk, after all the talk there's been. One of these days they'll be married— without saying anything about it. And, oh!— I know you'll be interested, Annette, though it may bore Major Melbury— Stephen has bought that very nice house— the Endshigh Jarrotts lived in it for a little while ^n Park Avenue near Sixty-sixth Street. Ralph Con- ingsby is going to remodel it for them, and I'm sure it will be awfully attractive. That's where they'll live." It was my opportunity. I could have shouted out there and then and made a scene. i ;i ii'; I THE CITY OF COMRADES Do you think me a coward for not doing it? Do you think me a fool? All kinds of speeches were hot within me— and I kept them back. More correctly, I didn't keep them back; I simply couldn't utter them. I couldn't give pain to this sweet lady sipping her tea so contentedly; I couldn't give pain to Annette. Aimette was enjoying the situa- tion in which we found ourselves; the sweet lady had got compensation for months, for years, of wondering and unhappiness in those seemingly artless words, "She's really been in love with Stephen all these years, only she didn't know it." I knew they were spoken for my bene- fit. Between the lines, between the syllables, they said, "And if you think she was ever in love with you you're wrong." Whether the sweet lady believed her own statements or not made little difference. It would gratify her all her life to remember that she had had the chance of making them. So I came away, following the line of least resistance, because I didn't see what else I could do. I didn't see what else I could do when Cantyre came into my bedroom late that night. I knew he would be dining at the Banys', and that he would come looking me up after his return. To avoid him I had the choice between staying out and going to bed. My physical condition kept me from staying out very late, and so I took the other alternative. It made no difference, however, since he waked Lovey by pound- ing on the door, and insisted on coming in. Dropping into the arm-chair beside my bed, with no light but that which streamed in behind hun from the sitting-room, he took me on my weak side by banning to talk about the war. 3U THE errv of comrades I have Mid that my mission had become unreal and fantattic, but that was only in relation to my personal fitness for the task. That the war was a holy war. to be fought to a holy end, remained the alpha and omeca of my conv.ct.ons. And to Cantyre war of any kind was pk.nly unholy war, pnxluctive of unholy reactions. What I felt as he talked may best be expressed by Levey's words next morning when he betrayed the fact that he had been hstening. "Didn't it get yer goat. Slim, the way the doctor went on last night?" It did get my goat, and I restrained myself only because I had been warned in London to be patient with Ameri- cans.^^ You must treat them as wise parents treat their sons, I had been told. "Help them to see for themselves —and when they do that you can trust them." So the best I could do was to help Cantyre to see for himself; and to make any headway in that I had to pretend to be tolerant. "No one contends that war is the ideal method for •ettlmg human difficulties," I admitted; "but as long as hmnan society stands on certain planks in its platform there 11 be no other way." Il^en isn't this the time to take another way?" No; because you've got to change your bases of eastence first. You can't change your efl^ects without hrst changing your causes, any more than you can eraft an apple on an oak." "But even without removing the cause you ian still sometimes nip the effect." "Which is what in the present instance we tried to do, and didnt succeed in. All the trend of education aurmg th.rty years has been in the dire«ion of eliminat- 325 THE CITY OF COMRADES ing war, while still keeping the principle* that make for war as part of the foundation of our life. We created a system of international law; we set up a Hague Tribunal; many of us had come to the conclusion that no great war could ever again take place; but the law by which human beings prefer as yet to live outwitted us and brought war upon us whether we would or not. So long as you keep the causes you must have the effects." "Then let us do away with the causes." "Yes! Let us. Only, to do that in time for the present situation we should have begun five hundred years ago. You can't put out the fire the ages have kindled as you'd blow out a candle. When you've spent centuries in pre- paring your mine, and fixed a time fuse to make it ex- plode, you've nothing to do but to let it go off. This war wasn't made overnight. The world has been getting ready for it as long as there have been human beings to look askance at one another. Now we've got it — ^with all its horrors, but also with all its compensations." "Compensations for the lives it has ruined?" "In the lives it has saved — yes. You'll never get -ts meaning unless you see it as a great regenerative process." "Do you mean to tell me that we can only be regen- erated by fire and sword and rapine?" "Not at all I We're regenerated by courage and honor and sacrifice and the sense that every man gets — every Tommy, every poilu, every bluejacket — that he personally is essential to man's big fight in his struggle upward. It's one of the queer things of the whole business that out of the greatest wrong human beings can inflict on one an- other — to go to war with them — there can come the high- est benefits to every individual who gets himself ready to :receive them. It makes one believe in an intelligence 326 THE CITY OF COMRADES compelling the race toward good, however much we may be determmed to go the other way." He tuned his voice to a new key now'trire •:-" '""''"*' '"^^^^ ="«' ■•*-' "^^ ^^-p. nSci^^^^r"''^^"--— ''-^~ «!?''' I* ^ 'i'""''^'''* "'°™i"8- It's all-it's all come nght. I used to thmk it never would, sometimes. And X^~^T' ^f'' "'••^y'-''"' then I'd say to myself that God would never have made me feel as I did unless He meam somethmg to come of it. Religion keeps telline you to trust; and I did trust^n and off." ^ Agam I had an opportunity; but again such words as rose in me choked themselves back in my threat. I could have told hm, that she was ready to come to me If 1 Lfted a finger. I knew I should have to tell him sometime, and it occurred to me that it might as well tZT -7'" *''" Z"'^' *''='* f""''' «"«• "°t the in- i„ aTv'^ °' 'I "'"' *^' !""=""""' " """^ *h» 'Mention m any degree that made it compulsory. fakerSlyti;' ""^ ""'"' ^"^ ' "''' "°^''^' '^ »- -- "It's a wonderful thing to be happy, Frank. I've "oTof uV'""':,'''/" "'Z" "y ''f'=- I'*" " pusillanimous sort of bloke, and there's the truth. I wasn't happy at home, or at school or at college, or in any of the hos- PJtals where I worked; and I never made any friends. You must know I've been queer when I say that women have always looked at me as if I was outside of their Kuge. Hie/ve never made up to me in the way they 327 H ^'^ THE CITY OF COMRADES do to moit fellows with a bit of money and not defonned. Regina — there I I've said her name — she was the very first who ever took the trouble to be more than just decently civil." I managed to stammer the words, "What did she do?" "Oh, nothing very much — not at first. She seemed to think— she used to say it-rthat I was different from most men. That's what she appeared to be on the look- out for. All the other chaps she knew were so much alike, and I — Well, that's how it began. She wanted the unusual — and I turned up. After a while she thought I wasn't unusual enough — said it in so many words — But you know that story. I've told you too many time* already." "And now?" "She thinks shell marry me." He brought out the statement in a voice all awe and amazement. "She only thinks?" "Oh, she will. She wouldn't say anything about it if she didn't mean — " "And — and you're going to — to let her?" "Let her? Why, man, you might as well ask me if I'd let God forgive my sins if He said He'd do it." "God could forgive your sins and not be any the worse off Himself." , He sprang forward in his chair, grabbing at the bed- clothes. "Frank, I swear to you it will be the same with her. She'll never be sorry. I'll never let her. She'll be like God to me. I'll make my whole life worship and service." "If that's what she wants." "It's what every woman wants, so they say. They 328 THE CITY OF COMRADES jutt ask to be loved; and when you love them enough—" He uttered a Uttle thrill laugh, in which there was a touch of the hysterical that was always somewhere about him. "God I Frank, it's wonderfuH Even you who know her can't imagine what it means to a lonely bloke like me." I pumped myself up to a great effort "Suppose"— I had to moisten my Ups before going on — 'suppose she was to play you the same trick she played you before?" "She wouldn't." In spite of his evident conviction, I pressed the question. "But if she did?" He threw off in a tone that seemed fcareless: "In that case there'd be just one thing for me to do. I'd leave her everything I possess— I'm doing that as it is— and, weU, you can guess the rest. I— I couldn't go through all that again. The first time— well, I just puUed it off: but the second — " It was the old stoiy. They aU seemed to have the second time on the brain. I, too, was getting it on the brain. It was like a trip-hammer pounding in my head. I forced myself, however, to make some foolish, semi- jovial speech in which there was no congratulauon, beg- png him, then, for the love of Heaven, to dear out, as 1 wanted to go to sleep. CHAPTER XXV y, No record of the next few week* exists for me. I suppose I must have done things — little things. I must have gone in and out, and eaten my meals, and ful- filled Lovey's orders — for, lacking volition of my own, I was entirely at his command. But the recollection of it all has passed from me. I remember reading in some one's reminiscences of prison life that the weeks of noli- tary confinement went by; but the released prisoner could not say how. Nothing remained with him, ap- parently, but a big, black blur; and of these first weeks in New York it was all that stayed with me. I know that Christmas came and went, and that I •pent the festival at Atlantic City. I did this in a wild hope, which I knew was idiotic when I formed it. I told Lovey what I was about to do; I knew he, in the course of his valeting, which he still kept up, would tell Cantyre; I guessed that Cantyre would tell Regina; and I hoped — it never really amounted to hoping, I only dreamed — that Regina might find the moment a favorable one for slipping away and joining me. Then we should actually do the thing so impossible to plan. But, of course, nothing came of it; and I returned to New York more unsatisfied than I had gone away. The sense of being unsatisfied sent me at last to Sterling Barry's door. You will observe that I had not talked with Regina since our last night on board ship. On the morning of 330 i THE CITY OF COMRADES landing her quick movemenu, a« compared with my ilow, lumbering onei, enabled her to elude me. Since our landing my will had been positively paralyzed. Thoie words of hers, "Oh, Frank, I hope you won't make meP' were always in my memory; but the very sense that I could use the power held me back from doing it. I meant to use it; but as each minute came round when I might have taken a step toward that end I seemed to fall back- ward, like the men who went out with swords and staves to take the Christ. But two days after my return from Atlantic City I came to the conclusion that I could wait no loager. I could go and call on her at least. For the family it would mean no more than that I had come to offer my congratula- tions. For her — but I could tell that only by being face to face with her. The old manseivant recognized me on coming to the door. He was sorry that Miss Barry had gone to tea with Miss van Elstine, and was sure his mistress would be sorry, too. Moreover, they had all heard of my prowess in battle, and were proud of me. So I drove round in my taxi to Annette's. The maid would have ushered me straight up to the library, but I preferred to send in my card. As I was being conducted up-stairs a minute later I had the privilege of hearing a few words which I am sure Annette intended for my ear. "Well, I don't mind this once, Regina; but I can't have it going on. . . . Yes, I know it's an accident; but it's an accident that mustn't continue to happen. The very fact that he's my cousin obliges me to be ths mote careful. It wouldn't be fair to your father and motlier if I were to let you come her 33 « THE CITY OF COMRADES "But, Annette, thii once ii all I'm aaking for." "And all I mean to grant." I could tell by Annette'i voice that the was retre a t in g to another room, so that by the time I entered Regina stood there alone. Before I knew what I was doing I held both her hands in mine and was kissing them. It is an odd fact that on raising my eyes I saw her fea!:ures for the first time since that summer afternoon at Rosyth. On board ship she had always worn the yash- mak; and on the dock she had been too far away to allow of my seeing more than that she was there. The face I saw now was not like Annette's, untouched by the passage of time and suiFering and world agony. You might have said that in its shadows and lines and intensities the whole history of the epoch was expressed. It was one of those twentieth-century faces— they are women's faces, as a rule — on which the heroic in our time has stamped itself in lineaments which neither paint nor marble could reproduce. It flashed on me that the transmigrated soul had traveled farther than I had sus- pected. I don't know wnat we said to each other at first. They were no more than broken things, not to be oet down by the pen. When I came to the consciousness of my actual words I was saying, "I'm going to make you, Regina; I'm going make you." She responded like a child who recognizes power, but has no questionings as to right and wrong. "Are you, Frank f How?" "In any way that suggests itself." I added, helplessly, "I don't know how." "I'll do whatever you tell me," she said, simply and ■u'jmissively. THE CITY OF COMRADES "Then will you juM walk «way with me Mine iftei^ noon — and be married — without saying anything to any one?" "If you fay go." "When ihall we do it?" "V/henever you like." "Next week?" "If that suits you." ' "Would it suit you?" She bent her head and was silent. I repeated the question with more insistence. "Would it suit you, Regina?" "Theie's no question of suiting me. I've got myself where I can't be"— she smiled, a twitching, nervous smile — "where I can't be suited." "Do you mean that you'd come with me— ^en you wouldn't want to?" "Something like that." "Why should you?" "I've told you that. I've— I've let you see it— in what I've been doing for the past two years." "So that I'm absolutely master?" "That's it." I turned away from her, walking to the other end of the long room. When I came back she was standing as I had left her, humbly, with eyes downcast, like a slave- girl put up for sale. I paused in front of her. "Do you know that your abandonment of will putr us both in an extraordinary position?" "Yes." She went on presently, "But I know, too, that where you're concerned my will-power has left me." "But that isn't like you." 333 THE CITY OF COMRADES She shook her head. "No, it iin't. Generally my will u nther ittoog. But in thi* ca»e— You lee— I'd— I'd waited lo long— and I'd never believed that you— that you cared anything — and now that I know you do— well, Wt finipiy made me helpleti. I've— I've no will at all." "So that I mutt have enough for twof "1 fuppote la" "And if I— if I carry you off— and make every one un- happy — and put you in a position where you'd be — where you'd be done foi— that^s what Annette calls it— the ttsponsibility would be all mine?" "I should never reproach you." "In words." "Nor in thought — if I could help it" "But you mightn't be able to help it* To this there was no reply. I took another turn to the end of the room. My freedom of action was terrifying. Since I could do with her what I liked, I was afraid to do anything. I came back and said so. The old Regina woke as she murmuxed, "If you're afiraiH to do anything— do nothing." "And what would you do?" "I should let things take their course." "Let things take their course — and many him?" "If things took their course that way." "Do you mean that they mightn't take thar course that way?" "I'm not mairied to him yet There are— there are difficulties." I caught her by the ann. "0^what kind ?" "Of opinion chiefly — but of very vital opinion." . "Do you mean about the war?" 334 Itt THE CITY OF COMRADES ^ She Mid with a fbic* lika that of a nipptMMd ciyi "He waiMf me not to have anything mora to do with iti And I— I can't itop— not while it'» going on. I — I mutt be doing tomething. It's one of the reatom why I could many him— that he'i a doctor— and I could take him over there—where they need him io much." "And he won't gof" "He doeen't lay that enctly; but he doem't want to. He thinks it'i all wrong— that when it cornea to brutality, one tide ii at bad at the other." "Oh, he'll get over that— if you intiit; and dm yoaH marry him." "Perhapa ao-if I haven't alraady manied you." "What maket you think you may haw married mef "You laid you'd make me." And in the end, when Annette came back, «• left it at that, with eveiything up in the air. CSAPTER XXri tmitii' MORE weeks 'followed, of which my lecotd it chiefly in the drama of public events. Vast as these were at the time, they seem even vaster in the retrospect. As my memory goes back to them they are like prodigious portents in the sky, awful to look at and still more awful to think about. A time win come when we shall find it amazing merely to have lived through such happenings. Before the invaders the Rumanian towns were going down like houses built of blocks. In her attitude to Rumania, Russia was a mystery — a husband who sees his wife fighting for her life and doing hardly anything to help her. The rumors, true or false, that reached us might have been torn from some stupendous, improbable romance — a feeble Czar, a beautiful and traitorous Czar- ina, a corrupt nobility, an aimy betrayed, a people seeth- ing in dreams and furies and ignorance. Washington, having gone so far as to ask the Allied nations their peace conditions, had received them — restitution, reparation, and future security. Then late in that month of January, 191 7, there came to people like me an unexpected shock. Before the Senate President Wilson delivered the speech of which the tag that ran electrically round the world was peace without victory. I mention these things because they are the only way- mirks of a time during which my private life seemed 336 M THE CITY OF COMRADES to be drearily and hopelessly at a ttandsdlL The dead- lock of the nations reacted on myself. Mentally I was at grips with destiny, but nothing made any progress. I was exactly where I had started, as regards R^na^ as regards Cantyre, as regards Annette, as regards the father and mother Barry. Outwardly I was on friendly terms with them aU, and on no more than friendly terms with any one. The Barrys invited me to dinner, and'l went. Cantyre made up a theater party— he was fond of this form of recreation— and I went r ^ that. Annette asked me to a Swiday lunch at which Cantyre and Regina were guests. The force of organized life held us together as a cohesive group; the operation of conventional good manners kept us to courtesies. That any one was happy I do not be- lieve; but life threw its mask even on unhappiness. I got in, of course, an occasional word with Regina, which, nevertheless, didn't help me. As far as I could observe, she lived and moved in a kind of hypnotic state, from which nothing I knew how to say could wake her. She was always waiting for me to give the word, and I,was afraid to give it. If there was hypnotism, it affected us both, since I was as deeply in the trance as she. Now and then, however, she came out of it with some bnef remark which gave me a lead and perhaps made me hope. One such occasion was at the theater. Cantyre had not put me next to her, but there was an entr'acte when I found his place empty and slipped into it. "And how are events taking their course?" I asked, with a semblance of speaking cheerily. "I'm waiting to see." "Still?" "StilL" »7 '\ - THE CITY OF COMRADES "And how long is that to go on?" "TBI events have shaped their course in a way that will tell me what to do." "How shall you know that?" "How does the twig know when the current takes it from the spot where it has been caught and carries it down-stream?" "Oh, but you've got intelligence." "Any intelligence I've got implores me to keep on waiting." "So that you're liot going to be married right away?" "I shall not be married till I see it's the obvious thing to do." "Not even to me?" "That's different. I've already told you—" "That if I give the word— But don't you see I can't give it?" "Exactly. You're wairing for the sign as much as I am." "What sign?" "We shall recognize it when the time comes." "Where will it come from?" "Right up out of life; I don't know where, nor how." "Who'U give it to usr She had only time, as Cantyre returned to his seat, to send me a long, slantwise look, with the underscored words, "You know!" Another time was in the regrouping of guests, after Annette's luncheon. Finding myself beside her at a win- dow, I asked the plain question, "Are you engaged to Cantyre?" "I'm just where I was when I told you about it oix board ship. He hasn't asked me to be moie definite." 338 :!'! THE CITY OF COMRADES "Is he just where he was?" "I think he is, in that— in that he espectt me to marry him." "And you leave him under that impression?" "I don't know what else to do— till I get the sign." "You're still looking for that?" "Yes. Aren't you?" "Not that I'm aware of." "Oh, but you are, whether you're aware of it or not." "And suppose he urges you before the sign comes?" "I shall still wait." "And suppose I urged you?" "I'd take that as the sign." And after the guests went I stayed behind and told the whole story to Annette. So long as there were no clandestine meetings under her roof, she was as detached and sympathetic and non-committal as a chorus in a Greek play. "Why don't you give her the sign, if it's not a rude question?" she asked, while a marvelous succession of ripples circled over her duskiness. "Because I'm afraid to. Think what it would mean to Cantyre, who's been so white with me all these years." "As well as to every one concerned, including herself and you. I'm glad you've enough common sense to feel that. See here, Frank," she went on, kindly, "you've got to pull yourself out of this state of mind. It's doing you no good. When you ought to be at work for your country, which needs you desperately, you're sulking over a love-affair. Buck up! Be a sport! Be a man! There are lots of nice girls in New York. I'll find you some one." But at that I ran away. 339 CHAPTER XXVn lil' Ih-I ..:5i I WITHIN a few days I saw the correctness of Annette's summing up. A medieval legend tells of an angel being sent to Satan with the message that God meant to take from the devil all the temptations with which he had seduced man- kind. To this Satan resigned himself because he couldn't help it, begging of the angel that he should be left with just one — and that the least important. "Which?" asked the angel. "Depression," said Satan. The angel con- sidered the request, found that depression cut but slight figure as a sin, and went back to heaven, leaving it behind him. "Good I" laughed Satan, as the celestial vision faded out. "In this one gift I've secured the ^ole bag of tricks." And that is what I was to find. I was depressed on leaving Europe. I grew more de- pressed because of the experience on board ship. In New York I was still more depressed. There was a month in which all things worked together for evil; and then I came to the place at which Satan had desired to have me. I have not said that during all this time I made no attempt to look up my old friends at the Down and Out or, beyond an occasional argument with Cantyre, to ful- fil the mission with which I had been intrusted. Ralph Coningsby had come and offered me work, and I had 340 THE CITY QF COMRADES tefused it. Ev«i the mareh of public events, with the introduction of U^es. submarine warfare and the break- ing off of diplomatic relations between Germany and the United States hadn't roused me. I marked the slow rise of the impulse toward war in the breasts of the Ameri- can people, as passionless and as irresistible as an incoming tide, but It seemed to have nothing to do with me. I was out of It, flung aside by a fate that had made sport of me 1 was so far from the current of whatever could be called life that I grew apathetic. Though I hadn't seen Regina for weeks, I sat down under the impalpable obstacles be- tween us, making no effort to overcome them. I ate and drank and slept and brooded on the futility of living, and let the doing so fill my time. Lovey was worried, and dogged me round till there were minutes when I •»"J^ "2'*'e sprung on him and choked him. Then came the afternoon when I decided that Satan must nave his way. There is a hotel in New York of which I had many recollections because I had frequented its barroom in the days before I went altogether down. It is a somewhat expensive-lookmg barroom, with heavy mahogany, gilded cornices, and frescoes of hunting-scenes on the wall. Hanging over the bar at any time during the day or night can be seen all the types that are commonly known as sporting, from the dashing to the cheap. They might have been the/ same as on that day when I turned my back upon the place five years previously, ihey hung m the same attitudes; they called for the same dnnks; they used the same profanities, though with some novelty in the slang. With my limp, my black patch, and my general haggardness, I felt like a ghost »eturmng among them. 341 I THE CITY OF COMRADES Timidly I approached a barman at leiaare and asked for a cocktail of a brand for which I used to have a liking. I carried it off to a table placed inconspicuously behind the door leading to and from the hotel. Putting it on the table, I stared at its amber reflections. I had come back to the same old place at last. It was curious; but there I was. All my struggling, all my wan- dering, all my up-hill work, all my days and nights in the trenches, all my suffering, all my love — everything had combined together to land me just here, where, so to speak, I had begun. It was the old story of dragging up the cliff, only to fall over the precipice. It seemed to be my fate. There was no escaping it. I might not take more than that one drink during that afternoon; but I knew it would be a beginning. I should come back again; and I should come back again after that. Another type of man would do nothing of the kind; but I was my own type. Very deliberately I said good-by to the world I had known for the past three years and more. I said good- by to work, to ambition, to salvation, to country, to love. Back, far back in my mind I was saying the same delib- erate good-by to God. I shouldn't rest now till every- thing was gone. The glass was still untasted on the table. I was taking my time. The farewells on which I was engaged couldn't be hurried. The fate in store for me would wait. Then the door behind which I sat began to open. It opened slowly, timidly, stealthily, as if the person entering was afraid to come in. The action stirred the curiosity, and I watched. Before I saw a face I saw a hand. Rather, I saw four fingers from the knuckles to the nails, as if some one was 34a 41 THE CITY OF COMRADES weadying himself by the sheer force of holding on. They were old, thin, twisted fingers, and I knew at a glance I had seen them before. The door continued to open, stealthily, timidly, slowly; and then, looking like a spirit rather than a man— a neat, respectable spirit wealing a silver star in his but- tonhole, with trembling hands and a woeful quiver to the comer of his lower lip— Lovey stood in the bartoom. He stood as if he had never been in any such place before. He was like a visitant from some other sphere- dazed, diaphanous, unearthly. He didn't look at the table behind the door. His gaze was far off. I could see it scanning the backs of the hangers across the bar. Then it went over the tables one by one, traveling nearer and nearer. Just before the dim eyes reached me I said: "Hello, drink?" ^°"^ '"^ *" ^°^' "^^ '" ^°" '"''' *** There seemed to be an interval between hearing my voice and actually seeing me— an interval during which a frosty, unnatural color, as if snow were suddenly to take fire, flared in his waxlike cheek. But he came to the table and dropped into a round-backed chair. "Oh, Slim!" Leaning on the table, he covered his face with his hand. I tried putting up a bluff. "What's the matter, Lovey i Haven't got a headache, ha"e you?" He raised those pitiful, dead blue eyes. "No, but I've *°*?,n """*^*"' S'm— a 'eartache I won't never get over." Vfhy, why—" I began to rally him. "It's just what I was afeared of— for days and days 1 ve been afeared of it. Been a-watchin' of you, I 'ave." 343 THE CITY OF COMRADES Hare wat another tmumigrated loiil that had travded fanher than I knew. It wa« in pun curiosity a* to the chanBBii wrought in him that I said: "I should think you would have been glad, Lovey. When I wat here before you uied to want to have u* both go back." The extinct eye* were raited on me. "Thete timet ain't them timet. Everythin't differ^ ent. I 'aven't itayed where I wat in them dayt, not any more nor you. Oh, to think, to think 1" "To think what?" "That you thould 'ave come back to this — and me bclievin' the war 'ad done ye good— lifted you up, like. Not but what you wat the best man ever lived before the "Oh no, Lovey. No one knows what I was better than yourself." "You was good even then, sonny — even in them awful old days. Goodness ain't just in doin' certain things; it's in being certain things. I don't 'ardly know what it is; but 1 can tell it when I see it. And I seen it in you. Slim — right from the first. Me and God A'mighty seen it together. That's why He pulled you up out o' what you was — and made you rich — iv.d dressed you in swell do'es — and sent you to the war — and made you a 'ero — and stuck you all over with medals — and brought you 'ome again to me. And if you'd only waited — " "Well, if I'd only waited— what?" "You'd 'a' got somethink better still. You'd 'a' got it pretty soon." "What should I have got?" "I ain't a-goin' to tell ye. If you'd come 'ome with me you'd see." Before I could follow up this dark hint he continued: "God A'mighty don't play no tricks on 344 THE CITY OF COMRADES Hit children. Lookatmel All He', give me. Kep' me well while you wa» away— and 'elped me to knock off the booze when it wai mortal 'ard to do it— and pervided me with a good 'ome, thank* to you, Slim I— and work— and waget— and a very nice man to work for, all except bein' a bit stuck on 'isself— and let me off washin' windows, which was never a trade for an eddicated man like me— and brought you back to me, which was the best thing of all — and just because I waited." "What do you mean by waiting?" "I mean waitin' for Him. That's somethink I've found out smce you went away, sonny. It's a tip as Beady Lament give me. You've got to wait patient-like for Him; and if you do He'll come to you." "I don't know what you're talking about." "Of course you don't. That's why I'm a-tellin' of you. It was like this: When you went away it was some- think fierce for me— nothink but that empty flat— and everythin' speakin' to me o' you, like— yer do'es and yer boots and yer books and yer pipes, and the chairs you used to sit on, and the bed you used to sleep in— and everythink like that— till I thought I was goin' crazy. Man/s the time I wanted to come and do just what you're a-doin' of now--but I'd think o' the promise I give you before ye went— and I'd 'ang on a bit more. And then God A'mighty Hisself come and spoke to me, just as He did to Beady Lament that time he told us about when we was in the blue stars." "And what did God Almighty sayP' "He come in the middle o' the night, and woke me up out of a sound sleep — " "How did you know it was He?" "C*, I knowed. Ye couldn't 'elp knowjn'." ? 23 345 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Did you hear HU voice f" "Ye didn't 'ave to 'ear. It jutt went all over ye, like. I litt up in bed, and everything wai dark and light at the tame time, and something awful comfortin' like iweepin' through and through me. Ye couldn't 'ardly say it was 'earin' or seein' or feelin' or nothink. It was just under- standin', like — but you knowed it was theie." "But you haven't told me what He said." "That's what I'm a-comin' to. He says: 'Lovey,' says He, 'you've put up a good fight, and now ye're over the worst of it. But I'm with ye all the time,' says He; 'only I can't give ye everythin' to oncet. All ye can take is what ye've made yerself fit to receive,' says He; 'be- cause there was a good many years in yer life when ye wasn't fit to receive nothink. But just you wait, and you'll see 'ow good I'll be to you by degrees,' says He. 'You go on fightin' in your way, just as that young fella. Slim, is fightin' in his way, and I'll do you both good, and bring you back to each other,' says He. And, oh, sonny. He's kep' His word — all but right up till now, when you've been goin' about that sad-like — and not wantin' to be 'ome. And now this I" "But that's not God, Lovey; that's me." "I don't see much difference. The most ways I gets a'old o' God, as you might say, is through the nice thijigs people does for me — and the nice people theirselves — especially men — I don't 'old with women — and more particular you, Slim — ^you that was more to me than my own children ever was — than my ow6 life — yes, sonny, than my own life. I ain't a-goin' to live very my own lite. 1 ain't a-goin "What makes you think sof" "I 'appen to know," he replied, briefly, you can tell." 346 very long now — " 'There's ways THE CITY OF COMRADES "Whit way»r "Smellin', for one thing. Ye can tmeU death jiut aa ^ a. ye can imell flowen. or the fn^' o' tuh, or anr other imell; and it', a .ign ye'll never be mittook in." _ His aicetic profile wa« thrown up, with a long miff through hi. dehcat^ quivering nostril.. "I can «mell it now^ «.d h; went on eagerly: "But what I'm tellin' you i. that If I could die to .ave you from what ye'« beginnin' to do thi, day, Slim, I'd do it cheerful. I know^ you wa. bent on it before ye knowed it yerself. I've been »-watch|n on ye, and foUerin' you about when ye didn't iee me. "How did you know?" T v^ "".'* •*'" ^' '"''-«<« n° mo" than I could tell you I knowed It wa. God. It don't matter 'ow you know tiling, a. long a. you know them, does it?" "Perhap. not." ^ "I've just been a-Iivin' in yer skin ever since ye come ome, «,nny. It was as if all yer thoughts passed through my mind, and all yer feelin's through my 'eart. I ain't much of a and at love-that kind of female love, I mean -not now, I am t; but I know that when ye're young it kind o' ketches you—" / 8 •<• .. "Stop, Lovey," I said, wamingly. "All right. Slim, I'll «op. I don't need to go on. All I want to say is that you don't know-you couldn't know -the fancy I ve took to you-and I used to think that you kind o' 'ad a fancy for me, like." "So I have." The mild eyes searched me. There was a violent trem- bliilg of the lower lip. "Do you mean that. Slim?" Before I could answer he 347 iiir THE CITY OF COMRADES addad. proudly: "I don't need to '«ve "» <^ -y^ they've got • fancy for me when they 'iven't." "Oh, but it'i true!" Two thivering h»ndi were etretched out toward me in dramatic appcaL "Oh, then leave that there drmk alone and come •ome alone o' me." HU eye* fell on the glaw. "'Ow many o' them thingt 'ave ye 'adr ^ "None yet; this i« the firtt; and I haven t tarted it. He straightened himtelf up, ipcaking with what I can only call a kind of exaltation. "Then God A'mighty has sent me to you m time. It'i Him— and except Him 'tain't no one nor nothink. Slim, if you put* yer Up* to that gla** now yell be *mnm in Hi* face ju*t a* much a* if it wa» Him and not me a* wa* a-pleadin* with ye." "It i*n't a *in to take a cocktail." ^ "Not for every one, I don't luppoae. It wouldn t be for the doctor; and it wouldn't be for Mr. Coningsby; but 'ti* for me, and 'ti* for you. There'* take-it-and- leave-it people in the world, and there'* take-it-and-be- damned; and you and me belongs to the last. Oh, Slim, don't be mad wi' mel Ain't ye a silver-star man in the Down and Out? Ain't I yer next friend— yer real next ftiend, that U— a great deal more than that young Pyn, with 'is impotent tongue, what stood up with youf Come 'ome along o' me, and VH show you somethm good." It wa* the dark hmt agam. "What are you driving at, Lovey? What i* there at home?" Hi* reply might have been paraphraaed from a wntuig he had never heard of. 348 THE CITY OF COMRADES "There'i things ahead of you. Slim, dift ent from what you're expectin' of. Wait." I confeei to being startled. You must see i i i.s in an overwrought condition, reacting from thr tr ,i<>n«fon strain, first of fighting, then of blindness, iu.\ r -.lly „t emotional stress. I do not pretend that r : r thi^ .:ny other man who comes back from the jaws . ' he infer . ! brazier in Flanders I was my normal *■ li I „ji, ,-.,,iU up and easily down, euily excited and n.ily unpi .seH. The mere cast of Lovey's two brief sentvnce ^.l, iscl me. "\Vhat things?" I asked, with that mixture oi ■ i .liility and rejection with which one puts questions to a trance medium. ^ "I'll not tell ye; I'll show ye; only ye must come ome. As if m illustration of his words, he added, "Ye must begin to wait right now." "But why wait?" "Because God A'mighty can't give us everything to oncet. Didn't I say He told me that Hisself ? We ain't fit to receive more 'n a little at a time, just like babies. That s another tip as Beady give me. And Mr. Christian he p'mted out to me oncet that wait is one of the frequent- est words in the Bible. See here! Beady writ this for me." Fumbling in an inside pocket, he drew forth a carefully folded bit of paper, saying, as he did so: "It was one of the times when I was awful low in my mind because you was away. I don't 'old with them low fellas at thf Down and Out— not as a reg'lar thing, I don't— but now and then when I just couldn't seem to get along without you I'd go down to one of the meetin's. Then oncM Beady sits beside me and begins a-kiddin' o' me, callin' me old son and everything like that. But by 'n' 349 THE CITY OF COMRADES i4t 4 if'! Ji' (it by he sees I wasn't in no such humor, and we starts in to talk serious-like. And then — ^well, I don't 'ardly know 'ow I come to let it out — but Beady he sees just 'ow it was with me, and he bucks me up and writes me this. He ain't as bad as you'd think he'd be, that Beady. It's good words out of the Bible, and there's a reg'lar tip in em. The shaky hands unfolded the bit of foolscap on which was scrawled in a laborious script: "Wait on the Lprd; wait, I say, on the Lord." Beneath this counsel from one psalm were the verses from another: "I waited patiently for the Lord; and he inclined unto me, and heard my cry. He brought me up also out of an horrible pit, out of the miry day, and set my feet upon a rock, and established my goings." I suppose you will call m> impulse by some modem psychological name, and for aught I know you may be right. But the words were not without their effect on me. They came to me with the mystery of a message emanating from the days before Time, and from spheres which have no need of the sun to rise or of the moon to give brightness or of the light of any candle. That it was carried to me by this tottering old man whom I had known in such different conditions only added to the awe. I struggled to feet that were as shaky as Lovey's hands, carried my little white ticket to the bookkeeper, paid for my drink, which I had left untoudied, and flingirg an "All right, Lovey; I'm your manF' to him, hobbled out into the lobby of the hotel. My immediate sensation was that which you have known when the black cloud of troubles that envelopeJ you on waking has been instantly dispelled on your get- 3SO THE CITY OF COMRADES ting out of bed. The troubles may still be there; but you know your competence to live and work and deal with them. ^"^ What I felt chiefly. I think, was that the old temptation would neve- master me again. I had been face to face ^th It. and hadn t submitted to its spell. Something had been healed m me; something had been outgrown A simple old man with no eloquence but that of his affection had led ,me as another might be led by a With this sense of release came a sense of energy I was given badk to my mission; my mission was given back to me. That which for lack of a more humble Term 1 can only call the spirit of consecration took hold of me again and made me its own. The aims for which the war was being fought were my aims; I had no others. When these objectives were won my life, it seemed to me, would be over. It would melt away i„ that victory Z dawn mto sunnse. It would not be lost; it would only be absorbed— a spark in the blaze of noonday And as for love-well, after all. there was the mora- tonum of love. My lot in this respect-if it was to be my lot-would be no harder than that of millions of other men the wide world over. Love was no longer the first . ' """.' considerations, not any more than the earn- ing of a living could be the first. It might be a higher thmg for her-a higher thing for m^to give it up. ^ Turning these things over in my mind and wondering vaguely what might be awaiting me at the apartment! I said nothing to Lovey as we trundled homeward in a taxicab; .nor did Lovey say anything to me. Xt was only when we got out of the lift and he had turned the key in our own door that he said, with sudden 3SI M THE CITY OF COMRADES ■energy: "Slim, I'll be yet servant right down to the very ground." "Oh no, you won't be, Lovey," I returned, deprecat- ingly. "We're fella* together. We're buddies. We'll be buddies as long as we live." He slapped his leg with a cackle that was, as nearly as his old lungs could make it, a heartfelt, mirthful laugh. "There! Didn't I tell you? That's what I've been a-waitin' for; and the Lord has give it to me at last. He can't do much more for me now — not till He takes me 'ome, like." He raised his sharp profile and sniffed. "I smell it, Slim— a kind o' stuffy smell it is now— but I ain't mistook in it. And now, Slim," he went on, trium- phantly, as he threw the door open and entered before me to turn on the lights — "and now. Slim, what you're a-waitin' for is — is waitin' 'ere for you." 1 knew it couldn't be Regina that Lovey was caging in these overheated rooms, since she wouldn't be sitting in the dark. ia>i«aaM Pl-I CHAPTER XXFIH TT was not Regina Barry who was waiting for me. but * It was the next best thing. Lovey stood off and pointed to it as it lay, white and oblong, on the sitting-room table. ''Give it to me with 'er own 'and." he said, mysteriously. Druv up to . c door and asked the janitor to call me down. Tola n;e to tell you that it wouldn't be at 'alf past four, as she says in the note, but at five, and 'oped you wouldn't keep 'er waitin'." I held it in my hand, turning it over. I felt sure of what was m it, but I didn't know whether I was sorry or glad. Of course I should be glad from one point of view; but the pomts of view were so many. It would be all oirer now with the mission, for which my enthusiasm had so suddenly revived. When we had done this thing we should be discredited and ostracized by the people we knew best, and for some time to come. I stood fingering the thing, feeling as I had felt now and then when we had given up a trench or a vantage- pomt we had been holding against odds. Wise as it might be to yield, it was. nevertheless, a pity, and only left ground that would have to be regained. There was moral strength, toe. in the mere fact of holding. Not to hold any longer was a sign of weakness, however good the reason. I broke the seal slowly, saying, as I did so, "Did she »«y where r* 353 II ., THE CITY OF COMRADES "No, Slim; she didn't say nowhere." "Only that I was not to keep her waiting." He thought again. "Punctual was 'er word." She needn't, however, have said that. Of course I should be punctual. All mi^t depend on my being on the spot at the moment when the clock struck. I stQl hesitated at drawing out the sheet. As a matter of fact I was wondering if she had received the sign she had talked about, and if so, what it was. After all, it was an unimportant note. Dear Frank, — Mother has allowed me to ask Doctor Feltring — a Udy--who retreated with the Serbian Army into Albania, to speak at our hp"se at half-past four to-morrow afternoon. Will you comet V^e shall all be glad to see you. Yours, Recina. That was all. I should have felt a certain relief that nothing was irrevocably settled had there not been in the envelope another page. On it were written the words: "Are you trying the indirect method? If so, I think you will find it unwise." If I read this once I must have read it twenty times, trying to fathom its meaning. I could only think that she was gently charging me with my apathy. The indirect method was the inactive method. I had let weeks go by not only without saying the word which she had told me she would obey, but without making any attempt to get speech with her. And yet it seemed to me that any other woman in the world might have resented this but Regina. It was a kind of resentment unlike her. She was too proud, too intense. Even in the hypnotic state induced by the knowledge, after years of doubt, that we cared for each 3S4 THE CITY OF COMRADES other, she had kept Ijer power of resistance. She would come with me if I made her, but she hoped I wouldn't make her. That hope made it difficult for me to impose myself on any one at once so willing and so reluctant. Of what, from different angles, each of us owed to Can- tyre— not to mention any one else— she was as sensitively aware as I was. I could hardly believe, therefore, that she was reproach- ing me; and yet what else did she mean? I tried to learn that on the following day, but found access to her difficult. Since she was hostess to the speaker of the afternoon as well as to some sixty or eighty guests, mostly ladies, this was scarcely strange. I was limited, therefore, to the two or three seconds during which I was placing in her hands a cup of tea. Even then there was a subject as to which I more press- mgly desired information. "I see Stephen isn't here." She couldn't keep out of her eyes what I read as a kind of crossfire, expressive of contradictory emotions. "He wouldn't come." "Why not?" "He didn't like the subject." "Because it was medicine?" "Because it was war." "But if this country goes in?" "He doesn't believe it will. He thinks the breaking off of our relations with Germany wiU do all for which we can be called on. We'll never fight, he says. Even if we declare war he's sure it will only be in name." I was not so much interested in Cantyre's opinions as in the way in which she would take them. "And you?" 3SS THE CITY OF COMRADES r^ "Oil, I think he's only kicking against the pricks. H* can't think like that." I gave her a look which I tried to make significant. '"You mean that he's taking the indirect method?" She gazed off to the other side of the room. "Oh, that isn't the indirect method." "What does the indirect method involve?" But here Mrs. Endsleigh Jarrott butted in — I have no other term for it — ^with a question, which she asked as if her life depended on the answer, "Regina, didn't you think the action of that English nurse in going over the mountains with the band of little Serbian boys the most heroic thing you ever heard of?" So I came away without having learned what it was I was doing, but not less determined to find out. I resolved to try Cantyre. My meetings with him had become not exactly rare, but certainly infrequent. I had hardly noticed the decline of our intimacy while it was going on; I only came to a sudden realization of it when I said to myself I would look in on him that night. It occurred to me in the first place that I had not looked in on him of my own accord since I had come home. I had gone round the elbow of the corridor once or t?yice when he had invited me, but never of my own initiative. Then it struck me that it was some rime 'since he himself had come knocking at my door. "Lovey, when was the doctor last in here?" He was in the "kitchingette" and came to the thresh- old slowly. When he did so there was that scared look on his face I had seen on the previous afternoon. "I don't rightly know, Slim." "Isn't it more than a week ago?" He considered. "It might be." 3S6 •ailJts THE CITY OF COMRADES "Do you know any reaton why he docin't come?" He seemed to be defending hinwelf asain*t an ac- ciuation. I'Why, Sliml 'Ow «h'd I know?" "u^""'.'"'" "* '*'"' '"^"^ day— in and out «rf hit room Wrth his boots and things." "He don't 'ardly ever speak to me." "And don't you ever speak to him?" He fidgeted nervously. "Oh, I passes the time o' day. like, and tells him if his pants need pressin' and IMe thmgs like that." "Does he ever say anything about me?" "Not lately he don't." "Have you any idea why not?" "I might 'ave a hidea. Slim; but what's servants' gossip, after all?" As he had me there I dropped the subject, stealing round to Cantyre's quarters about elevea that night. To my knock, which was timid and self-conscious, he responded with a low "Come in" that lacked the hearti- ness to which he had accustomed me. As usual at this hour, he was in an elaborate dressing-gown, and also as usual the room was heavy with the scent of flowers. He was not lounging in an arm-chair, but sitting at his desk with his back to me. Writing checks. j'Oh, it's you!" he said, without turning his head. "Thought I'd drop in on you." He went on writing. "Do you want to sit down?" "Not if you're busy." "Got some bills to pay." 'Gh, then I'll come another time." Having gone in for one bit of information, I went out with another. Cantyre knew. 357 til? THE CITY OF COMRADES I wu not only «orry for hi* knowing, I wa» turprited «t it. Duting the two months we had been in New York both Regina and I had been notably discreet. We had beoi di'creet for the reasons that all the strings were in our own hands, and it depended solely on ourselves as to which we pulled. We alone were the responsible parties. That poor Cantyre shouldn't have to suffer before we knew wt-tthet we meant to make him suffer or not had beeh a :natter of concern to us both. Ifheknew, itwa^ hercfore, not from me; and neither was it from Regi >. i here remained Annette, but she was as safe as our i'lves. Further than Annette I couldn't think of any one. I should have been more absorbed by this question ftad I not waked tq new elements in the world drama, as one wakes to a sudden change in the weather. My sur- prise came not from any knowledge of new facts, but from the revival of my own faculty for putting two and two together. There had been a month in which depression had produced a kind of mental hibernation. When at the end of February I emerged from it the New World in particular had moved immeasurably far forward. Now that I came to notice it, I saw a change as per- ceptible as that in the wind in the whole American national position. As silently as the wind shifts to a new point of the compass a hundred millions of people had shifted their point of view. They were moving it onward day by day, with a rapidity of which they themselves were unconscious. The titanic facts were to the undercurrent of events but as the volcano to the fire at the heart of the earth. The heart of all human life being now ablaze, there was Jiere and there a stupendous outburst which was but a 358 THE CITY OF COMFIADES •ymptom of the raging Bame beneath. TTiere wag the U-boat blockade of Great Britain, endangering all the maritime nations of the world. There wai the American diplomatic break with Germany. There was the guard- ing of the German ships interned in American ports. V"? r" *•" *°'P«« of an American steamer off the SciUy Isles. There was Mr. Wilson's invitation to the neutral nations to join him in the breach with the Oerman Emperor. And then on the 26th the President went in person before Congress to ask authority to use armed force to protect American rights. These, I say, wer. but volcanic incidena. The im- pressive thing to me was the transformation of a people by a process as subtle as enchantment. Two months earlier they had been neutral, and sitting tight on their neutrality. The war was three thousand niiles away. It had been brewed in the cursed vendettas of nations of some of which the every-day American hardly knew the names. It was tragic for those peoples; but they whose lives were poisoned by no hereditary venom were not caHed on to take part. Zebulun and Naphtah from sheer geographical position might be ob- liged to hazard their lives to the death; but Asher could abide in his ports, and Gilead beyond Jordan. That had been the kind of reasoning I heard as late as the time of my arrival. On my return to New York in November, I found a nation holding its judgments and energies in suspense. What by the end of February interested me most was the spectacle of this same people urging forward, surging upward, striving, straining toward a goal which every one knew it would take strength and sacrifice to reach- Between this approach to war and that of any of the 359 m THE CITY OF COMRADES other great powen there wm thw difference: They had taken the inevitable ftep while in the grip of a great ttreM. They iprang to dieir armt overnight. They had no more choice than a man whote house it on fire ai to whether or not he will extinguiih it. Out of the bed of their luxurious existence they were called as if by con- flagration. Whether they would lose their lives or es- cape with them was a question they had no time to consider. They went up to the top notch of the heroic in an instant, not knowing the danger they were facing or the courage they displayed. Here, on the other hand, was a people who saw every- thing from a long way off. For nearly three years their souls had been sickened with the tale of blood. Gilead might abide beyond Jordan and Asher in his ports, but no atrocious detail had been spared them. They knew, therefore, just what they were doing, exactly what was before them. I can hardly say that they made their choice; they grew toward it. They grew toward it calm- ly, deliberately, clear-sightedly; and for this very reason with an incomparable bravery. If I were an American citizen instead of the American citizen's blood-brother, I might not say this; I might not have been aware of it. In any family the outsider can see that which escapes the observation of the daughter or the son. I heard no bom American comment on this splendid, tranquil, leis- urely readjustment of the spirit to a new, herculean task; perhaps no bom American noticed it; but to me as an onlooker, interested and yet detached, it was one of the most grand ose movements of an epoch in which the repetition of the grandiose bewilders the sense of proportion, as on the first days in the Selkirks or the Alps. 360 THE CITY OP COMRADES mlL7Z "-Jjl" *^ ^ '"'"' *••« ^•«^»« ^" •«Jdre..ing meeting. They weie women', club meeting., and I learned trom Annette that .he wa. .peaking with .uccew. Annette obwrved of her, uiing the word I had u^d my- •elf. Ever ,mce .he came home .he', been like a girl walkmg w her .leep. Now .he', waked and i. like her it niT ^"""*\^"'7 •"? ""'y- °' P»" of it. I thought It no harni to a.k, "To what do you attribute it?" But Annette refu.ed to lend her,elf to my game. I attnbute it to her getting over the long ttrain. It', natural that you people who've been over there .hould be dazed or jumpy or .omething. She', been dazed." And what do you think I've been?" "Oh, you've been the .ame," .he lauithed; "but then, you're alway. queer." « mcD, 24 itaocon (BwuTioN tbi chart (ANSI ond ISO TEST CHART No. 2) 121 IB 1^ 2.2 2.0 1^ 1^ 1^ A APPLIED IIVHGE Ine 1G5J East Main StraM Roch«ter, N«. York 14609 US* (716) 482 - 0300 - 'hone (716) 2Ba-59B9-Fo» CBAPTER XXIX Jl* H^S./.: nSB^'ii' ' K THE newi with regard to Regina acted on me at a twofold itiniulus. In the first place, it sent me back at last to the Down and Out. If she had waked, I, too, would wake; and since she was actively pleading the great cause, I would do the same. I didp't go to a meeting, but dropped in during a forenoon. The house was even humbler and dingier than I remembered it, but as scrupulously neat and clean. In the back sitting-room were half a doaen men, all of the type to which I had once belonged and with whom I felt a sympathy so overwhehning as to sur- prise myself. Perhaps because I had seen so much of what could be made of human material even when it was destined to be no more than cannon fodder in the end, I was sorry to see this waste. With one exception I placed them as all under thirty. They were good-looking fellows in the main, who would respond amazingly to drill. After that impetus to the inner self, of which the Down and Out had the secret, plenty of work, a regular life, food, water, and sleep would renew them as the earth is renewed by spring. No missionary ever longed to bring a half-dozen promising pagans into the Christian fold more ardently than I to see these five or six poor wastrels transformed into fight- ing-men. , For the minute there was no (*cial there but Uttie 362 THE CITY OF COMJIADES 5p«^er, whose bUfs in Jife was in opening the Pown and Uut door. Having ;ed me across the empty front sitting- loom, he said, as I stood in the gap of the folding^oo«: Say. brother,! This is Slim. Come in here four or « himTowT '"" " '"" ^^ " '"y "^ y""' ^^ '~k I did feel enormously tall, in spite of the high studding of the room, as well as enormously big in my ample mUi- tary overcoat. To the six who sat in that worful out- ward idleness, of wh.ch I knew the imier secret .Preoccu- pation, I must have been an atonishing apparition. Only a very commanding presence could summon these men from the desolate land into which their spirits were wan- denng; but for once in my life I did it. All eyes wet« Jixed on me; every jaw dropped in a kind of awe. Knowing the habits and needs of such a stupor, I mere- ly threw off my overcoat, entered, and sat down. Any greeting I made was general and offhand. Apart from that I sat and said nothing. ruL"* ^^ ">;! n^Wng because I knew it was what they hked. They liked the companionship, as babies and dogs like companionship, though their aching minds could not have responded to talk. There was no embarrass- ment m this sUence, no expectation. It was a stupefied pleasure to them to stare at the uniform, to speculate mchoately as to the patch on my eye; and that little was enough. Nobody read; nobody smoked. I neither smoked nor read; I only sat as in a Quaker meeting, waiting for the nrst movement of the spirit. It came when a husky voice, that seemed to travel from across a gulf, said, without any particular reason, 1 m Spud. 363 \ I THE CITY OF COMRADES I turned to my right, to see a good-looking, brown- %yed fellow, of perhaps twenty-eight, trying to reach me, a.1 It were, with his pathetic, despairing gaze. I knew what was behind this self-introduction. The lost identity was trying to find itself; the man who was worthy of something was doing his utmost to get out of the abyss by reaching up his hands < -> the man who had got out. "All right. Spud," I said, heartily. "Put it therel We're going to be friends." Silc ." .or another five minutes was broken when a high ■voice .ecited in a sort of litany, "I'm Jimmy McKeever, traveler for Grubbe & Oates, gents' furnishers." Sharp-faced, wiry, catlike, agile, tough as wire, I could see this fellow creeping out into the darkness of No Man's Land, and creeping back with information of the enemy. I broke in on the litany to say: "Good for you, Jimmy, old boy! Glad to know you. Let's shake hands." He sprang from his seat on the outskirts of the group, but before he could reach me a great, brawny paw was stretched forward by a blue-eyed young Hercules sitting nearer me, which grasped my fingers as if in a vise. There was then a scramble of handshaking, each of the bunch asserting his claim for recognition, like very small chil- dren. The older man alone held aloof, sitting by himself, scowling, hard-faced, cross-legged, kicking out a big foot with a rapid, nervous rhythm. It was he who, when the handshaking was over, snarled out the question, "What's the matter with your eye?" I told them the story of how I lost it. I told it as simply as I could, while working in a fair share of the strong color which I hoped would arrest their attention. 364 THE CITY OF COMRADES teaman. IthJmJu ^''y *° a boy and a boy « what we nlvXte'a^Tbe-S "L^l °" °' WehaveseenV™u.hdlgrheTorofma: ""*" °' ''"• I I: THE GITY OF COMRADES plane ctQl — a plane on which the miglity works that an now wrought in war will become feasible in peace. We are not on that plane yet; but if the advance of the human race means anything we shall get there. It may take a thousand years; it may take more; it may take less; but in the mean time we must seize our blessings at we may. So these fellows listened to my tale as raptly as if a trumpet were sounding in their ears. Tt was like a sum- mons to them to come out of stupefaction. They asked questions not only as to my own experiences, but as to the causes and purposes of the war in general. I do not affirm that they were the most intelligent questions that could be asked; but for men in their condition they were astonishing. That they were not of necessity to be easy converts I could see when the cid chap sitting apart asked again, in his bitter voice, "Did you ever kill a fellow-creetur that had the same right to iive as yourself?" As we discussed that aspect of the subject, too, I found it difficult to restrain my audience from the free fight for which at the Down and Out there was always an in- clination. I accomplished this, however, and as I rose to go the brawny Hercules sidled shyly up to me with the words: "Say! I'm a Canuck. Peterfield, Ontario, is where I hail from. Why ain't I in this here war?" He was my first recruit. A few weeks later he was in uniform in Montreal. My object in telling you about him is to point out the fact that I made a beginning, and that from the beginning the sympathy of the City of Comrades upheld me. Little by little that movement by which the whole of America was being shaken out of its 366 THE CITY OF COMRADES ChZ- *'"•!.'" '" ". "'•'" *''* *'■'"* ^m'^." Andrew thl .i , ^««" "It'"* with the men one day. "One of the great mistakes .nan impatience makes is in mrin« to hurnr the meth< by which the divine mind counte"? trir"" '"°" .^' '"^8" *" « « "°t for us to know the times or the seasons that the Father hath put mto His own power. Things that take place in thd! own way generally take place in His. And the oveT rulwg force of His way. when we let it alone. woS «n>ply. naturally, and as a matterofcou.se. is ;nrof ^e extraordmary features of history." reasoTtht'r"" TT'^ ^^ '^''^ 'I"'" ^""J^ f"' the reason that I saw that he. too. was one of the Americans one I had seen smce my return was more changed in this f^ni '' ' "^"'°" °f °*'''' ">« f'on, drink. I found a man marvelously broadened, heightened, illu' mmed. almost transfigured by a larger set of purposes. But he spoke so calmly 1 f f »• "We shall go into this thing the mote thoroughly when our people as a whole are convinced of its necessity how a Lt *«?*• B"t even there you can see how a great puipose « changing them almost against their own will. It isn't many months ago that th^ 367 ' THE CITY OF COMRADES **^.'**u P'^M«" «» the tlocan. 'He kept ui out of war. Had it not been for that slogan it't doubtful whether or not he would have been elected. AU politics apart, we can tay that, had he not been elected, it't doubtful whether any other candidate could carry with him a united Congress when we come to the moment of decisiwi. Were the President not to have a united Con- gress, behind him. there would be no united people. As It is we're aU foiiging forward together, President, Con- gress, and people, as surely as winter foiges forward into spring; and when the minute arrives—" He broke off with a smile I can only call exalted. With a hasty pressure of my hand he was off to some other fel- low with some other needful word. CHAPTER XXX tA\ r"?*f '" '?."'"« y°" »" *•"■» " to show you why airect method. Though my curiosity as to what she meant was keen enough, the P'essure of otherl„tere,ts ^tTaclc" nToT '° ""'• ,™' " »° "y- - -" » fT™.?. the current of great events personal con- cerns became relauvely unimportant. They had to w^k B,.J7 "^'^ u' ';=""""y *° ^««P them waiting But toward the middle of March I met her one iay in Frfth Avenue. Even from a distance I could see that hlr To mlr% ?^"' •"""*« « was the old one yIXT^" "' "^''"""ion was: "How well you Ck\ You re almost as you were before the war." from 2 '''* "T"""" °^ ' P'"'8 at seeing her so far from pmmg away, I endeavored to play up. « ubk; hi. ,nn. wm outttretched m Um, act of taking off hii overeoat "Naehing much; that meant •omething. What the deuce do you mean by the indirect method?" i haven't tpoken of an indiiect method." "No; but file hwr yh, I «ee." "Then if you tee, tell me what it i«." .fe.' ^u-*t't *l" '"•""• '" °^ *»^'"8 off hi. coat, «Aer which he hung .t up •« a clo.et. doing the .ame with hi. hat. The mmute'. delay allowed time for the ttorm-clouds to gather on hu face, and all the passion, of a gloomy-heaned nature to concenttate in « hot, thun- aery silence. "Is this a bit of bluff, Frank?" "Bluff be hangedl I'm ready to .peak out frankly." llie Monn-cloud. ww« torn with » flaA like a nreak of lightning. "Then why didn't you come to me like a mu inttead of sending that sneaking old beast—" "Kold on, Stephen. What sneaking old beatt have I "He woul. I't have comt unless you had aet him on mt You needn't teU me that." I'What the deuce are you ta'king about?" You know what I'm talking about. There hasn't been a day since you came back that I haven't had a nmt. He was not a man to whom anger came easily: he began to choke, to strangle with the effort to get hi. indignation out. "I'd have given him the toe of mv ' I! ij i 1 I ■MHIimilH i THE CITY OF COMRADES boot long ago if-if-jf-JT'—tlie wordi poiitively ihi'vi. ered on hit lipt— "if— if—if I hadn't wanted to lee how far you'd go; and, by God I I've— I've had enough of itf' "Enough of what, Stephenr I endeavoied to atk, quietly. He knocked hii knuckle* on the table with a foite that almost made them bleed. "My name it Canty re— do you understand?" "Yet, I undentaqd. But tell me, what it it you've had enough of?" "I've had enough of your damned diplomatic tlynett ia letting that^ld reptile on mel" I am not quick tempered. The tolerar.,.e bom of a too painful knowledge of my own shortcomings oblige* me to be slow to wrath. But when anger does get hold of me it works a change like that of a powerful chemical agent suddenly infused into the blood. I turned and ttrode out. A few timet in the trenche* I had been the victim of this rage to kill— and I had killed. ^ How many I killed at one time or another I now couldn't tell you. I taw too red to keep the count All I know is that I have ttuck my bayonet into heart after heart, and have dashed out brains with the butt end of my rifle. It is all red before me still— a great splash of blood on the memory. But I had got the habit. In a rage like this to kill some one had become an instinct. I could not have be- lieved that the impulse would have pursued me into dvil life; but there it was. Having flung open the door of my apartment, I marched straight for the "kitchingette." Lovey was seated on a stool beside the tiny gas-range, polishing one of my boots. The boot was like a boxing-glove ra his left hand, while 37a THE CITY OF COMRADES m.'l^il' ''™* •'"'*"«'*^ " •"■• "Kht. looking «p « m. w.th the p„«,u. .pp.^ of . «bbit pl.adii*f^£ d.S ::f.TJ'„l"" "-^ ^- -'^. Hi™. b« it bled-his arm. began tc relr^b" V.";"^:^^^^^^^^ tempt to defend himself. "* "" »*- caJJo" ?•"" "°" ""*" "^«'" ^ •>«"««'«»• "Speak. dra^ld^MmTo'ELt' "'"*^ '^ "• ''• «>"" -«« ,„,Now are you gomg to spea^? Or .hall I ,°:^yo, "You'd kick me out, Slim?" •^;Srr;o°i;.5r°'" •"'''''-'''-• ^ Ue brush and the boot fell with a dull clatter to the "Then I'd better go." ■ng for before he spied an old gnarled stick i^ I comer Sn^-^m" " '" ''"'' '^ '-"^^ ^ -/«- The By the time I had foUow^l him I was beginning to re- THE CITY OF COMRADES tent. I had not really meant to have him go, but I was not ready as yet to call him back. What Cantyre must have thought of me, what Regina must have thought of me, in egging so poor a creature on to say what I wouldn't say myself, roused me as to a more intense degree I used to be roused on hearing of Belgian women treated with the last indignities, and Canadian soldiers crucified. Had I stopped to consider I would have seen that Regina didn't believe it, and that Cantyre believed it only as far as jt gave an outlet to his complicated inward suiFerings; but I didn't stop to consider. Perhaps I, too, was seek- ing an outlet for something repressed. At any rate, I let the poor old fellow go. "What about your things?" I asked, before he had reached the door. He turned with a certain dignity. "I sha'n't want no things." He added, however, "Ye do mean me to get out, Slimr I didn't — but I didn't want to tell him so. Fury had cooled down without leavine me ready to retract what I had said. I meant to go after him — when he had got as far as the lift — biit I meant, too, that he should take those few bleeding steps of anguish. He took them — not to the lift, but out into the vesti- bule. Then I heard a faint moan; then a sound as if sometl^nf broke; and then a soft tumbling to the floor. tVhen I got out he was lying all >n a little huddled, senseless heap, with a cut on his forehead wliere he had struck the key or the door-knob as he Tell. It was more than an hour before Cantyre got him back to consciousness; but it was early nioming before he spol^e. yffi had stayed with him through the night, as ■ ' 374 '■ '" THE CITY OF COMRADES .urprbe to us ''''' "'"'"* '^'^ «•»« »« a what I didh't .ay. ""^ever, that he guetsed at wa'iuHgt « mv woh' v''"' °"* °^ *""■'' '"«« «•« fanher th!„ the JiTt"^ W," J'T ""« '° '" ''™ 6«t now." "'"""f*- J-wt wanted to scare him. Sorry But Love/s account was different. come back, won't you?" "^ we same. You will wie?hf XrUn^'S^'" ^"" T' *'" - ''-• thi. hu.do„.rw?^\ru:^-^^^^^^^^^^ of JWhars up. Slimr he asled. feebly. "I ain't sick, a Sf ':71^>'''' '°''' ^"'" »°* -J^' you've only had »„ir l'^"' ^ ^"*"'- S«"'««' me right, didn't if?" »«» just a-fnghtenm- of Slim. like. Kind o' fooUsh. I 37S THE CITY OF COMRADES WM. Said I was goin' to leave him. Didn't mean to go no farther nor the lift." "I didn't mean to let you go, Lovey," I groaned, humbly. "Of course you didn't! 'Ow 'uld ye get along without me, I'd like to know ? Didn't I keep ye straight all them weeks at the Down and Out?" "You did, Lovey." "And 'aven't I saved ye lots o' times since?" "You have, old man." "I wouldn't leave ye, not for nothink, Slim. We're buddies as long as \*e live, ain't we? Didn't ye say that to me yerself ?" "I did, and I'll say it again." "Well then, what's the use o' talkin'? You mustn't mind me, sonny. I may get into a bad temper and speak 'arsh to you; but I don't mean nothink by it. I wouldn't leave ye, not for — The voice trailed away, and presently he was asleep or unconscious again, I couldn't be sure which. Neither could I be sure whether he believed this ver- sion of the tale or whether he concocted it to comfort me. At any rate, it served its purpose in that it eased the situation outwardly, enabling Cantyre and me to face each other without too much self-consciousness. As a matter of fact, self-consciousness had hardly em- barrassed us through the night. There had been too much to think about and to do. The minute I had got Lovey into the living-room and on the couch I had run for Cantyre, and he had run back with me. In the stress of watching the old man's struggle between life and death wk felt toward our personal relations what one feels of an exciting play after returning to realities. We were i76 ij; THE CITY OF COMRADES back on the old terms; we called each other Stephen and Frank. Only now and then, when for a half-hour there was nothing to do but to sit by the bed and watch, did our minds revert to the actual between us. That is, mine reverted to it, and I suppose his did the same. How he thought of it I cannot tell you; but to me it seemed infinitely trifling. Here was a dying man whose half-lighted spirit was standing on the threshold of a fully lighted world. One might have said that the radiance of the life on which he was entering already shone in the tenderness that began to dawn in the delicate old face. It was a face growing younger, as for two or three years it had grown more spiritual. I saw that now and did justice to it as something big. It was on the level of big things; and love-afl^airs between men and women were only on the level of the small. And all over the worid big things of the same sort were takmg place, some in the sharp flash of an instant, and some as the slow result of years. I had seen so much of it with my own eyes that I could call up vision after vision as I sat alone in the gray morning, watching the soft, sweet pall settle on the old man's countenance, while Cantyre took his bath. Queerly, out of the unrecorded, or out of what I didn't suppose I had recorded, there flashed a succession of pic- tures, all of them of the big, the splendid, the worth while. They came inconsequently, without connection with each other, without connection that I could see with the mo- ment I was living through, beyond the fact that they were all on the scale of the big. There was the recollection of a khaki-clad figure lying face downward on a hillside. I approached him from be- low, catching sight first of the soles of the huge boot* 25 377 THE CITY OF COMRADES on which he would never wilk again. Coming nearer, 1 •aw his armt outstretched above his head and his nailt dug into the earth. He was bleeding from the ears. But when I bent over him to see if he was still alive he said, almost roughly: "Leave me alone! I can get along all nght. Jepb- son's over there." I left him alone because there was nothmg I could do for him, but when I went to Jephson he was lying on his back, his knees drawn up, and his face twisted into the strangest, most agonized, most heavenly and ecstatic smile you can imagine on a human face. Then there was a young fellow running at the head of his platoon, a slim young fellow with flaxen hair and a face like a bright angel's, who had been a crack sprinter at McGill. He was long after my time, of course; but I had known his family, and since being in the neighbor- hood of Ypres I had seen him from time to time. He was not made for a soldier, but a brave young soldier he had become, surmounting fear, repulsion, and all that was hideous to a sensitive soul like his, and establishing those relations with his men that are dearer in many ways than ties of blood. The picture I retain, and which came back to me now, is of his running while his men followed him. It was so common a sight that ^ would hardly have watched it if it had been any one but him. Ana then, for no reason evident to me, just as if it was part of the order of the day, he threw up his arms, tottered on a few steps, and went tumbling in the mud, face downward. With the rapidity of a cinema the scene changed to something else I had witnessed. It was the day I got my dose of shrapnel in the foot. Lying near me was a colonel named Blenkins. Farther off there lay a set- 378 THE CITY OF COMRADES eeant in hi« regiment named Day. Day had for Blenkin* the kind of admiration that often exists between man and officer for which there is no other name than wor- ship. Slowly pamfully. dying, the non-com. dragged _ himself over the scarred ground and laid his head on the dying colonel , heart. Painfully, slowly, the dying col- onel s hand stole across the dying non-com.'s breast; and in this embrace they slept. Other memories of the sam: sort came back to me. disconnected, having no reference to Lovey, or Cantyre. or Regma, or the present, beyond the fact that they came out of the great life of which comradeship was a token and the watchwords rang with generosity. It was tKe world of the moment. Such things as I had been recalling had happened that very night; they had happened that very morning; they would happen through that day, and through the next day and the next— till their purpose was accomplished. What that purpose was to be- But that I was to learn a little I T''"u- Vu 'T ' ''"'* '"^'" ^ 8ot a light on the out- look which has been sufficient for me to walk by; but of It 1 will tell you when the time comes. For in the mean time the tide was rising. As Lovey lay smiling himself into heaven the national spirit wm mounting and mounting, quietly, tensely, with excite- ment held in leash till the day of the Lord was very near at hand. "^ All through March events had developed rapidly. On the hrst day of that month the government had revealed Germany s attempt to stir up Mexico and Japan against the United States. A few days later Germany herself had admitted the instigarion. A few days later still 379 r r THE CITY OF COMRADES Aiittria had given hrr approval to unlimited submarine warfare. A few days later still Nicholas was deposed in Petrograd. The country was marching; the v irld was marching; the heart was marching. It was difficult for the mind to keep up with the immensity of such hap- penings or to appraise them at their value. I do not assert that I so appraised them; I only beg you to under- stand that what I wanted and Cantyre wanted and Regina wanted, each of us for himself and herself, became curiously insignificai\t. Not that we were working with the same ends in view. By no means! Cantyre was still opposed to war as war, and bitterly opposed to war if it involved the United States. That he was kicking against the pricks,^ as Regina asserted, I couldn't see; but that he was feeling the whole situadon intensely was quite evident. The result, however, was the same when it came to balancing personal interests against the public weal. The public weal might mean one thing to him and an- other thing to me, but to us both it overrode private icsentment. There was a moratorium of resentment. We might revive it again; but for the moment it vanished out of sight. CHAPTER XXXI I call it famous because it was 3 n.„ r , "re. In all the club's h s o^Tere hadT?' J'''*"- meeting for any other DuroosTth^n t . '"''" » up to the cutting out of drt Ott, "r *''r°""8« and we were all afire ' ""•• ''="' ""fi*-* "«. , ' It r ^ 1 p 1 1 iM 1 L THE CITY OF COMRADES Our fellowi came from all over New York and the lub- urbi, wa»hed up, brushed up, and in their Sunday clothes. A few were men of education, but mostly we were of the type generally classed as hard-working. In age we ran from the seventies down to the twenties, with •» prepon- derance of chaps between twenty-five and forty. What I gathered from remarks before the meeting came to order was a dogged submission to leadership. " If you was to put it up to us guys to decide the whole thing by ourselves," Beady Lamont said to me as we stood together, "we'd vote ag'in' it. Why? Because we're over here— mindirf our own business— with our kids to take care of— and our business to keep up— and we ain't got no call to interfere in what's no concern of ours. Them fellows over in Europe never could keep still, and they dunno how. But"— he made one of his oratorical gestures with his big left hand— "but if the President says the word— well, we're behind him. He's the coun- try, and when the country speaks there's no Amur'can who ain't ready to give all." Perhaps he had said something similar to Andrew Christian, because it was that point of being ready to give all which, when he spoke, Christian took as his text. I am not giving you an account of the whole meeting; I mean only to report a little of what Christian said, and its e£Fect upon Cantyre. Cantyre had come because Re- gina had insisted; but he sat with the atmosphere of hot, thundery silence wrapping hjm round. "To be ready to give all is what the world is sum- moned to," Christian declared, when he had been asked to say a few words, "and, oh, boys, 1 beg you to beUeve that it's timel The call hasn't come a minute too soon, 384 THE CITY OF COMRADES and we tha'n't be a minute too toon in getting ready to obey it." "Some of ut 'ain't got much to give," a voice came from the bacic sitting-room. "We've all got everything there ii, if we only under- •tood it," Christian answered, promptly; "but whatever we have, it's something we hold dear." "If we hold it dear," another voice objected, "why should we be asked to give it up?" " Because we haven't known how to use it. Think of all you've had in your own life, Tom, and what you've done with it." I didn't know what Tom had had in his life, but the retort evidently gave him something to turn over in his mind. "There never was a time in the history of the world," Christian went on, "when the abundance of blessing was more lavishly poured out upon mankind. In every country in both hemispheres we've had the treasures of the earth, the sea, and the air positively heaped upon us. Food, clothing, comfort, security, speed— have become the commonplaces of existence. The children of to-day grow up to a use of trains and motors and telephones and airplanes that would have seemed miraculous as short a time ago as when I was a lad. The standard of living has been so quickly raised that the poor have been living in a luxury unknown to the rich of two or three generations ago. The Atlantic has got to be so narrow that we count the time of our crossing it by hours. The globe has become so small that young people go round it for a honeymoon. People whose parents found it difficult to keep one house have two or three, and even more. There is money everywhere — private fortunes that 3«J ip THE CITY OF COMRADES would have ttaggered the imagination of Solomon and the Queen of Sheba and Auguitui and Charlemagne all combined. Amusements are to numerous that they pall on us. In lots of the restaurants of New York you can order a meal for yourself alone, and feel that neither Napoleon nor Queen Victoria nor the Czar codd possibly have sat down to a better one." "Some could," one of our objectors declared, with all sorts of implications in his tone. "Oh, I'm not saying there are no inequalities or that there is just distribution of all this blessing. In fact, my point is that there is not. All I'm asserting is that the blessing is there, and that the very windows of heaven have been opened on the world in order to pour it out." " I never saw none of it," a thin, sour fellow put in, laconic- .y. "But, Juleps, that's what .^'m coming to. The bless- ing was there, and some of us wouldn't try to get what belonged to us, and others of us collared too much, and we treated it very much as children treat pennies in a scramble. We did far worse than that. We rifled, we stole, we gobbled, we guzzled, we strutted, we bragged; the fellow that was up kicked the fellow that was down to keep him down; the fellow that had plenty sneaked and twisted and cringed and cadged in order to get more; and we've all worked together to create the world that's been hardly fit to live in, that every one of us has known. Now, boys, isn't that so? Speak out frankly." Since in that crowd there could not be two opinions as to the world being hardly fit to live in, there was a general murmur of assent. "Now wealth is a great good thing; and what I mean 384 THE CITY OF COMRADES by wealth i* the general storehouie, free to uf all, which we call the earth and the atmoiphere round it. I don't have to tell you that it't a ir-irehouie crammed in every crack and cranny with the t -igj you and I need for our enjoyment. And it isn't a storehouie such as you and I would fill, which has got only what we could put into it; it's always producing more. Production is its law. It'a never idle. It's incessantly working. The more we take out of it the more it yields. I don't say that we can't exhaust it in spots by taxing it too much; of course we can. Greed will exhaust anything, just as it's exhaust- ing, under our very eyes, our forests, our fif Heries, and our farms. But in general there's nothing that will re- spond to good treatment more surely than the earth, nor give us back n bigger interest on the labor we put into it." "That's so," came from some one who had perhap* been a farmer. "And so," Christian went on, "we've had a world that's given us everything in even greater abundance than we could use. We've had food to waste; we've had clothes for every shade of temperature; we've had coal for our furnaces, and iron for our buildings, and steel for our ships, and gasolene for our automobiles. We've had every invention that could help us to save time, to save worry, to save labor, to save life. Childhood has been made more healthy; old age more vigorous. That a race of young men and young women has been growing up among us of whom we can say without much exaggeration that humanity is becoming godlike, any one can see who goes round our schools and colleges." He took a step forward, throwing open his palms in a gesture of demand. "But, fellows, what good has all this prodigious plenty 38S p THE CITY OF COMRADES ^bcen doinc \ul Hu it made u« any better f Have wa become any more thankful that we all had enough and to spare f Have we been any more eager to tee that when we had too much the next man had a sufficiency? Have we rejoiced in this plenitude as the common delight of every one? Have we seen it as the manifesntion of the God who expresses Himself in all good things, and Who has given us, as one of the apostles says, all things richly to enjoy? Has it brought us any nearer Him? Has it given us any ncreased sympathy with Him? Or have we made it minister to our very lowest qualities, to our appetites, to our ineolence, to our extravagance, to our aheer pride that all this was ours, to wallow in, to waste, and to despise? "You know we have done the last. There isn't a man among us who hasn't done it to a greater or less degree. There is hardly i man in New York who hasn't lived in the lust of the purely material. You may go through the world and only find a rarefied creature here and there who hasn't reveled and rioted and been silly and vain and arrogant to the fullest extent that he dared." The wee bye Daisy was sitting in the front row, look- ing up at the speaker raptly. "I haven't, Mr. Christian," he declared, virtuously. "Then, Daisy, you're the rarefied creature I said was an exception. Most of us have," he went r.n when the roar of laughter subsided. "If we haven't in one way we have in another. And what has been the result? Covetousness, hatred, class rivalry, capital and labor bit- ternesses, war. And now we've come to a place where by a queer and ironical judgment upon us the struggle for possession is going to take from us all that we pos- •ess." 386 THE CITY OF COMRADES H« thruft hi* hand* into hit trauftn pocketa aiMl> •poke casually, confidentially. "For, boys, that'i what I'm coming to. All the good thing! we have arc going to be taken away from ut. Since we don't know how to uie them, and won't learn, we've got to give them back." "Oh, I don't believe that, Mr. Chriitian," a comroon- •enie voice cried out in a tone of expoitulation. "Peter, you'll lee. You'll only have to live a few monthi longer to find yourielf like every one else in America, lacking the simple essentials you've alwaya. taken as a matter of course. It isn't luxuries alone that you'll be called on to give up; it will be the common necessaries of evcry-day life. The great summons is com- ing to us, not merely from our government, not merely frc m the terrified and stricken nations of mankind, but from God above — to give everything back to Him. I don't say that we shall starve or that we shall freeze; but we may easily be cold and hungry and dn en to a cheese- paring economy we never xpcc^ed to practise. The light will be taken from our lampr:, the work from our fingers, the money from our pockets. We shall be searched to the very soul. There's nothing we sha'n't have to surrender. At the very least wc must give tithes of all that we possess, signifying our willingness to give more." "Some of us 'ain't got nothing." It was the bitter cry of the dispossessed. "Yes, Billy; we've all got life; and life, too, we shall have to offer up. There are some of you chaps sitting here that in all human probability will be called on to do it." "You won't, Mr. Christian. You're too old." "Fm too old, Spud, but my two boys are not; and. «»7 THE CITY OF COMRADES they're getting ready now. Whether it's harder or easier to let them go rather than for me to go myself I leave to any of you guys that have kids." "Perhaps it won't be as bad as what you think." "Jimmy, I'm only reasoning from what I see in the world already. When the human race is being trodden in the wine-press we in America can't expect to be spared. If any of you want to know what's happening to the kind of world we've made for ourselves let him read the eigh- teenth chapter of the book of the Revelation. That chap- ter might be written of Europe as it is at this minute. Babylon the great i^ fallen, is fallen. The kings of the earth stand off from her, crying, Alas I alas! that great city Babylon, for in one hour is her judgment comet The merchants of the earth weep and mourn over her, for no man buyeth their merchandise any more, saying, Alas! alas! that great city, which was clothed in fine linen and purple and scarlet, and decked with gold and precious stones and pearls, for in one hour so great riches is come to naught. And every shipmaster, and all the company in ships, and sailors, and as many as trade by sea, cast dust on their heads and ciy over her, Alas I alas I that great city wherein were made rich all that had ships in the sea by reason of her costliness 1 for in one hour she is made desolate." "But that ain't us." "No, Headlights, that's not us. I agree with you that there's a difference. America is not in the same boat with Europe — not quite — but very nearly. Per- haps because our crimes are not so black we've been given the chance to do what we have to do more of our own free act. From Europe what she had has been taken away violently, whether she would or no. We have the 38S ' in THE CITY OF COMRADES chance to come before the throne of God and offer it back of our own free will. You see the difference! And, oh, boys, I want you to do it — " "It ain't for us, Mr. Christian, to decide that." "Oh yes, it is, Beady! It's for each of us to offer will- ingly in his own heart. Not just to the government— not just to the country— not just to France or Belgium or any other nation that's in a tight place— but to that blessed and heavenly Father Who's giving us this won- derful chance to put everything into His hands again, and get it all back for redistribution. Don't you see? That's It— the redistribution! A better world has to come out of this— a juster world— a happier world— a cleaner world. And in that reconstruction we Americans have the chance to take the lead because we're doing it of our own accord. Every other country has some ax to grind; but we have none. We've none except just to be in the big mov- nent of all mankind upward and forward But the difference between us an^ every other country —unless It's the British Empire-is that we do it man by man, each stepping out of the ranks in his turn as if he was the only one and everything depended on his act It s up to you. Beady; it's up to me; it's up to each American singly." •|Why ain't it up to every European singly?" • " T-L^' ^''^y''^^ J"*' beginning to understand that it IS. The Englishman, the Frenchman, the Italian, they're beginning to see that the democracy we talk so much about isn't merely a question of the vote— that it isn't primarily a question of the vote at all— it's one of self- pjvemment in the widest and yet the most personal sense. The great summons is not to mankind in nations; it's to mankind as individuals. It's to Tom and Jimmy and 389 THE CITY OF COMRADES Peter and Headlights and Daisy and eirery one who has a name. It's the individual who makes the country, who forms the army, who becomes the redemptive element. In proportion as the individual cleanses himself from the national sin the national sin is wiped out. So it's by Englishmen and Englishwomen that England will renew itself—" I think it v-as my old friend, the Irish hospital attend- ant, who called out, "What's England's national sin?" " The question brought the speaker to a halt. He seemed to reflect. "What's England's national sin?" he repeated. "I should say — mind you, I'm not sitting in judgment on any one or any people — but we've all got to clean our ;stables, even if it takes the labors of Hercules to accom- plish it— I should say England's national vice— the vice that's been eating the heart out of her body, and the ■spirit out of her heart — is sensuality." "What's the matter with France?" "I'm not an international physician with a specialty for diagnosis," Christian laughed; "but in my opinion France has been corroded through and through with sordidness. She's been too petty, too narrow, too mean, too selfish — " "Say, boss, tell us about my country." "You mean, Italy, Tony? Haven't you got to get rid of your superstition, and all the degrading things juper- stition brings with it? I want you to understand that we're talking of national errors, not of national virtues." "Have we got a national error in the United States?" "What do you think, Tapley? Isn't it as plain as the nose on your face? Isn't it written all over the country, on every page of every newspaper you pick up?" 390 THE CITY OF COMRADES '"iVhatf What is itf" came from teveral voice* at once. "DishonestyP' he cried, loudly. "We Americans have got our good pomts, but of them honesty is the very smallest. If any one called us a nation of sharpers he wouldn't be very far wrong. Our notion of competiti n IS to get the better of the other fellow, by foul means if It can't ae done by fair. That's the case in private life, and when it comes to public— well, did you ever hear of anythmg that we ever undertook as a people that didn't have to be investigated before very long? You can hardly read a daily paper in which the investigation of some public trust isn't going on. Dishonesty is stamped deep, deep into the American character as it is to-day; and for that very reason, if for no other, we've got to give everything back. If we don't it will be taken from us by main force; and we're not of the type to wait for that." He seemed to gather himself together. His face, al- ways benignant, began to glow with an inward light. "But, boys, what I want you to understand is that we can make this act of offering as a great act of faith Every good gift and every perfect gift cometh down! We can take our good gifts and our perfe^.; gifts and hand them up I We can anticipate their being taken from us by giving them. We can give them as men who know whence they have been received, and where they will be if i>'"l,*''"" '"'' """""* ^'■'"'e'nK'y nor of necessity, as the Bible tells us, for God loveth a cheerful giver. Now is the rime for us to test that love— every man for him- self. The appeal is to the individual. Give, and it shall be given unto you; good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over, shall men give into your bosom, according to the measure that ye mete. For this 391 THE CITY OF COMRADES giving isn't to men, it's to God; it isn't a portion, it't all; it isn't limited to material things, it includes our love and our life. It's the great summons; it's the weat surrender. And— boys— my dear old boys who've Been saved from other things— we've all been saved for this— for something we never expected, but which isn't hard to do when you look at it in the right way— to hand our- selves back, in body, mind, and possessions, to Him from whom we came, that He may make a new use of us and begin all over again." And the first thing I saw when he stopped was Cantyre springing forward to grisp him by the hand. CHAPTER XXXII "XXrHEN I got cut the streets were already buzzing V V with a rumor that no extra had as yet proclaimed. The House of Representatives had followed the Senate in voting for war, and the President was about to sign the declaration. But I forgot this on arriving at the flat, for Lovey was propped up in bed, with his thin nose in the air, making little sniffs. "I smell it. Slim," he smiled, as I entered. "Kind of a coffee smell it is now, with a dash o' bacon and heggs." "That smell is always round this flat, Lovey," I said, trying to be casual. "It's all the breakfasts you and I have eaten — " "Oh no. Slim. You can't be mistook in this; and be- sides — " He made a sign to the man nurse who for the past week or two Cantyre had sent in from one of his hospitals. ^'You clear out, d'ye 'ear? 1 want to talk to my budny, private-like." The mail strolled out to the living-room, whispering to me as he passed: "There's a change in him. I don't think he'll last through the night." "G)me and sit 'ere, sonny," Lovey commanded as soon as we wetc alone. "I've got somethin' special-like to tell ye. Did ye know," he went on, when I was seated beside the bed, "as I'd seen Lizzy— and she 'adn't her neck broke at all. She was lovely." 26 393 THE CITY OF COMRADES "Where?" I asked, to humor him. "Right 'ere— right beside that there chair that you're a-sittin' in." "When?" "Oh, on and off— pretty near all the time now." "You mean that she cotneS and go«s?" "No; not just comin' and goin'. She's — she's kind o 'ere all the time, only sometimes I ain't lookin'." His face became alight. "There she is now— and a great long street be'ind 'er. No, it ain't a street; it's just all lovely-like, and Lizxy with 'er neck as straight as a walkin'-stick— and not' a drinkin'-woman no more she don't look— it's kind o' beautiful like. Slim, only— only I can't make ye understand." Sighing fretfully over his inability to explain, he lapsed into that st'.te of which I never was sure whether it was sleep or unconsciousness. The coma lasted for a great part of the night. Sending the nurse to lie down, I sat and watched, chiefly because I had too much on my mind and in my heart to want to go to bed. Every two or three hours Cantyre stole in, in his dressing-gown, finding nothing be could do. Once or twice I was tempted to ask him what he thought of Christian's talk, but, fearing to break the spell it might have wrought in him, I refrained. He himself didn't mention it, nor did he seem to know that I had observed his impulsive, shaking hands. On one of the occasions wiien he was with me Lovey opened his eyes suddenly, beginning to murmur some- thing we couldn't understsnd. "What is it, old chap?" Cantyre questioned, bending over him and listening. But Lovey was already articulating brokenly. It took 394 THE CITY OF COMRADES two or thrM repetition., or attempt* at repetition, lor Cantyre to be in a position to interpret. "What's he trying to say?" I inquired. Cantyre pretended to arrange the bottles on the table beside the bed so as not to have to look at me. "He says, or he's doing his best to say, 'I didn't say nothmk but what was for everybody's good.'" It was on my lips to retort, "Perhaps he didn't." I left that, however, for Cantyre, who went back to nis rooms without comment. He returned in the small hours of the morning, and once more we sat, one on one side of the bed and the other on the other, in what was practically silence. All X could say of it was that it had become a sympathetic silence. Why it was sympathetic I didn't know: but the unclassified perceptions told me that it was. When Lovey opened his eyes again it was with the air of not having been asleep or otherwise away from us. Isavedye, Slim, didn't I?" "Yes, Lovey, old man, you did." .'.'1^^''',""'^''^ '° ^^ y°" ''""''^ '''eP straight too?" Yes, Lovey." "Ye'd never 'a' done it if it 'adn't been for me?" "No, Lovey," "And I'd never 'a' gone away from ye. Slim. I was ^«"/7f"''"^'"^"'"' °^ y""- ^ '^•'•"'t mean no 'arm at all, I didn't." "I know, Lovey." He fixed his glazing eyes upon me as he said, "I told ye my name wasn't Lovey, didn't I?" "No, but that doesn't matter." "No, that doesn't matter now. We're fellas together, ■o what's the dilF? ... I don't care where we sleeps to- 395 THE CITY OF COMRADES night, io long a* you're there, lonny. . . . Greeley's Slip it good enough for mine, if I can snuggle up to you, like. ... Ye don't mind, do yef" I put my arm round his shoulder, raising him. "No, Lovey, I don't mind. Just snuggle up." "'Old me 'and, sonny." I took his hand in mine as his head rested on mj shoulder. He gave a long, restful sigh. "Lizzy says it's an awful nice place where she is, and — " I felt him slipping down in bed; but Cantyre, who knew more of such cases than I did, caught him gently round the loins and lowered him. -u- rt .' jH liiaKjE^ 1 ■ ^ ■fiS|? -V -, iii :^« I ■ 1 .-^^M ' - ! ' CHAPTER XXXlll /^N coming back the next afternoon from lelecting >-^ the spot for Lovey's grave there was a man in khaki on the train. When I got out at the Grand Central I saw another. In Fifth Avenue I saw another and another. They seemed to spring out of the ground, giving a new aspect to the streets. In the streets that shining thing I had noticed on landing was no longer to be seen. Silver peace had faded out, while in its place there was coming — coming by degrees— but coming— that spirit of strong resolve which is iron and gold. Or perhaps I had better say that peace had taken refuge in my ding>- little flat, where Lovey was lying on his bed in his Sunday clothes, with hands folded on his breast. Peace was in every line of the fragile figure; in the face there was peace satisfied — peace content — gentle, abiding, eternal. Two days later a little company of us stood by his grave while Rufus Legrand read the ever-stirring words of the earth to earth. It was the old comradeship which Lovey himself would have liked— the fellowship of men who had fought the same fight as he, and were hoping to be faithful unto death like him — Christian, Straight, little Spender, Beady, Pyn, the wee bye Daisy, and one or two others. Cantyre alone had none of the dark memories — and yet the bright and blessed memories — that held the rest of us together; but Cantyre had his place. 397 THE CITY OF COMRADES We had driven out tide by lide in the tame motor, M what the undertaker called chief moumeri. I don't remember that we uttered a word to each other till we got out at the grave. It was Cantyre who said, then: "I want you to dnve back with me, Frank. There's somewhere I should like to take you." Reassured by his use of my name, I merely nodded, wondering what he meant. 1 didn't ask, however; nor did I ask when we were back in the motor again and on our way to town. I got my first hint as we began to descend the long avenue m which Sterling Barry had his house. As I expected, we stopped at the door. The vacant lot was still vacant, and among its dead stalks of burdock and succory April was bringing the first shades of soft green. I thought of Lovey, of course; of our tramp round Columbus Circle; of my midnight adventure right on this spot. It was like going back to another life; it was as this life must have seemed to Lovey and his Lizzy reunited in that worid where her neck was as straight as a walking- adck, and everything was lovely-like. Cantyre spoke low, as if he could hardly speak at all. "I asked Regina to be in. She'll be expecting us." And she was. She was expecting us in that kind of agitation which hides itself under a pretense of being more than usually cool. In sympathy with Lovey s memory, I suppose, she was dressed in black, which made a foil for her vivid lips and eyes. Out of the latter she was unable to keep a shade of feverish brightness that belied the nonchalance of her greeting. She talked about Lovey, about the funeral, about the weather, about the declaration of war, about the men m 398 THE CITY OF COMRADES khaki who widi itich lurpriting promptnett had b«tim to appear in the street*. She talked rapidly, anxiously, against time, as it were, and busied herself pouring tea. Suspecting, doubtless, that Cantyre had something special to say, she was ttying to fight him off from it as long as possible. I had taken a seat; he remained standing, his back to the fire. His look was abstracted, thundery, morose. Right in the middle of what Regina was saying about the seizure of the German ships he dropped with the re- mark, "You two know what Lovey told me — what he's been telling me ever since you both came home." Neither of us had a word to say. We could only stare. You could hear the mantel-piece clock ticking before he went on again. "Well, I'm not going to give you up, Regina," he de- clared, aggressively, then. One of her hands was on the handle of the teapot; one was in the act of taking up a cup. If coloring was ever transmuted into flame, her coloring was at that moment. There was a dramatic intensity in her quiet- ness. "Have I asked you to, Stephen?" "No; but—" "Have I?" I demanded. "No; but—" "If Lovey did it it was without any knowledge of mine," I continued. "I practically killed him, God for- give me, for doing itl" "You're both off the track," Cantyre broke in. "You don't know what I — what I want to say." "Very well, then, Stephen. Tell us," Regina said, tranquilly. 399 yaiii^. i H'' H' IB msw* '* - ^Bmc 1 THE CITY OF COMRAIES He ipoke itammeriiigly. "It**— it's— ju*t d><*: Thi* II no time — for— foiv-love." We ttared again, waiting for him to go on. "It'i what-'what Giriitian told ui two or three niithti ago. We're in a world where— .rhere love and mamate are no longer the burning quettioni. They're too small. Don't you »eef" We continued to ftare, but we agreed with him. "So— io," he faltered, "I want you— I want you both — to — to put it all off." "The moratorium of loveF" I iuggeited. "The moratorium ,of everything," he took up, "but what — what Christian put before u<. I tee that now more plainly than I ever saw anything in my life. We've got to give everything up — and get it back — different. We shall be different, too— and things that we're strug- gling over now will be settled fnr r^_ I suppow, without our taking them into our own hands at all. That's how I look at it, if you two will agree." "I agree, Stephen," Regina said, with the same tran- quillity. "And I, too, old chap." "I'm — I'm going iver," he stumbled on, "with the first medical unit from Columbia — " "Oh, Stephen! How splendid!" He contradicted her. "No, it isn't. I'm not doing it from any splendid motives whatever. I'm going just to —to try and get out of myself. Don't you see— you two? You must see. I'm — I'm sunk in myself; I've never been anything else. That's what's been the matter with me. That's why I never made any friends. That's why you, Frank, have never really cared a straw about me— in spite of all the ways I've made up to you; and why 400 THE CITY OF COMRADES you, Regina, can hardly ttand me. But, by God I you're both going to I" With this flash of excitement I sprang up, laying my band on his arm. "We care for you already, old man." "That's not the point. I've — I've got to care for my- self. I've got to find some sort of self-respect." But Regina, too, sprang up, joining us where we stood on the hearth-rug. She didn't touch him; she only stood before him with hands clasped in front of her. "Stephen dear, you're not doing any more heart- searching than Frank and I are doing; or than every true American is doing all through the country. What you ■ay Mr. Christian told you the other night is more or less consciously in everybody's soul. We know we're called to the judgment seat; and at the judgment seat yre stand. That's all there is to it. Marriage and giving in m.-irtiage for people like us must wait. It's become un- important. There are pi,>ple — younger than we are for the most part — to whom it comes first. But for us, with our experience — each of us — you with yours, Frank with his, I with mine — well, we have other work to do. We must see this great thing through before we can give our attention to ourselves. And we shall see it through, sha'n't we, by doing as you say? We must give every- thing up — and wait. Then we shall probably find our difficulties solved for us. I often think that patience — the power to wait and be confident — is the most stupen- dous force in the world." And with few more words than this we left her. I went first, giving them a little time alone togeth But I hadn't gone very far before, on accidentally turning round, I saw Cantyre coming down the steps. 401 CHAPTER XXXIV IT was just a year later that a secret but profound mis- giving in my heart began to be dispelled. I call it secret because it was unacknowledged by my- self. It would never, I believe, have come to me of its own accord; it was suggested from without, and even so I didn't harbor it consciously. It was only with the news of Seicheprey, of which the details began to come in tow- ard the end of April, 1918, that I knew that in the wheat of my hopes and confidences there had been tares of anxiety and fear. I had seen too many of those strapping, splendid fel- lows not to be confident and hopeful. But I had also read too much of the folly of pitting green boys, how- ever magnificently built, against the seasoned troops of long campaigns, not to have a lurking dread as to the test. I never voiced the question, not even to niy own heart; yet Satan, the manufacturer of fear, had not failed to formulate it to my subconsciousness. What if this noble America, so strong, so generous, so ready to respond to that call which Christian had uttered, so eager to pour out its all, with both hands, gladly, gaily— what if now, before the guns of a ruthless and unconquerable foe, she should meet the disaster that would bring her to the dust? What if those beloved boys, all inew and muscle as they were, should go down as I had seen -ny fellow-country- men go down, in heaps that showed the impotence of 402 THE CITY OF COMRADES ▼alor? T !i!<.> ^vltnessed so much sacrifice — sacrifice by mistake, sacrifice b} ack of skill, sacrifice by lack of knowled.'e .hat coul; have been obtained — that when I looked ac tl::ff ''>ds my heart sank at moments when it should have been most buoyant. Then came Seicheprey, and I knew. Then came the Mame, the Ourcq, the Vesle; and I was satisfied. For the cause had absorbed me again, heart and soul and mind. I was being sent all over the country, and sometimes into Canada, to speak for it. In this way I came to be in a small town in the Middle West — Mendoza happened to be its name — when, picking up a paper, I saw that a hospital had been bombed. The next edition reported that two doctors and three or four nurses had been killed. The next told us their names. Among the names was . . . And so he did give his all. I didn't write to Regina; Regina didn't write to me. She was busy, as I was busy; but somewhere in the dis- tance and the silence between us there was a place where our spirits met. And when we met in person we still didn't speak of it. It was too deep, too sacred, too complicated and strange to go readily into words. It was easier and more natural ' to talk of something else. That was at Rosyth, on Long Island, at the end of June. Hearing that I had returnsd to New York for a rest, Hilda Grace asked me down for the week-end, just as she had asked me exactly four years before. On this occasion she made no attempt to sound me; she mentioned Regina only to say that she was at the ted-and-yellow house on the opposite hill for a little rest 403 m THE CITY OF COMI . S on her part. By disappearing after lunch on Sunday she gave me to understand that I was free. I went to the old Homblower house by the way I had taken when I had last come away from it— down Mrs. Grace's steps to the beach— along the shore— and up the steps to the lawn where the foxgloves bordered the scrub- I went back to the veranda where I had waited and sat down in one of the same chairs. Taking out a ag- arette, I lighted it and began to smoke. Perhaps some one had seen me from a wmdow, for in a little while there was the click of high heels on the bare steps of the stairway. Then out on the veranda came a figure too little to be tall and too tall to be considered little, carrying herself proudly, placing her damty feet daintily, but advancing toward me instead of gomg away. She was dres ed in white, with a scarlet band about her waist and another about her dashing Panama, of the same shade as her lips. In the opening at the neck she wore a string of pearls. Lower down, the opemng was fastened by a diamond bar-pin. In her hand she earned a gold-mesh purse, which she threw carelessly on a table as she passed. She met me as any hostess meets a man who comes to make a call. We talked of the topics of the day, beginning with the weather. From the weather we passed to the war, and to all our anxieties and humiliations through the spring. We could do this, however, with a ray of cheerfulness, because the Chateau-Thierry sahent was beginning to be wiped out. . j v> "But why do things have to happen the way they dor I asked her. "If we're going to win] why couldn't we feave won from the first? What', the use of all this back- 4Mti ■» tiM. «iliHr*iit*l>«*»'»ll»t MICHAEL O'HALLORAN, IUih newiboy, living in Northern Indiana. He adopts a deserted little girl, a cripple. He also a»- lumes tlie responuibility of leading the entire rural oommunity U|^ ward and onward, LADDIE. Illiutrated by Herman PfeUer. This is a bright, cheery tale ivith the acenn laid In Indiana. TlM •tory is told by Little Sister, the youngest member of a large family, but it is concerned not so tiiuch with childish doings as with ttie tova affaiia of older members of the family. Chief among them is that of Laddie and the Princess, an English girl who has come to live ia the neighborhood and about whose family there hangs a mystery. THE HARVESTER. lUustrated by W. L. Jacobs. "The Harvester," la > man of the woods and fields, and if tha book had nothing in it but the splendid figjrr of this man it would be notable. But when the Girl comes to his " Medicine Woods." there begins a romance of the rarest idyllic quality. , FRECKLES . lUustrated. Freckles is a nameless waif when the tale opens,' but the way la which he Ukes hold of lif e ; the nature friendships he forms in the great Limberlost Swamp ; the manner in which everyone who meet* hhn succumbs to the charm of his engaging personality ; and bia love-story with " The Angel " are full of real sentiment. A GIRL OF THE LIMBERLOST. .Illustrated. The story of a girl of the Michigan woods ; a buoyant, loveable type of the self-reliant American. Her philosophy Is one of love and kindness towards all things ; her hope is never dimmed. And by the sheer beauty of her soul, and the purity of her vision, she wins from, barren and unpromising surroundings those rewards of high courage. AT THE FOOT OF THE RAINBOW. Illustrations in ^lors. ' The scene of this charming love story is laid in Central Indiana. The story is one of devoted friendship, and tender self-sacrificing love. The novel is brimful of the most beautiful word painting o( nature, and its pathos and tender sentiment will endear it to alL ' THE SONG OF THE CARDINAL. Profusely illustrated. j A love ideal of the ffl"1'"p' bird and hia mate, toid with deUcaty a nd humor. New York Grosset & DuNLAP, Publishers, BOOTH TARKINGTON'S NOVELS WW >» IM« xwiwi tw>» imtM. name iwtt * Pn^n- t M»t SEVENTEEN. Illuatrated by Arthur William Brown. No one but the creator of Penrod could hare portrayed the immortal youn^ people of this story. Ita humor is irre- sistible and reminiscent of the time when the reader waa . Seventeen. PENROD. mustrated by Gordon Grant. This is a picture of a boy's heart, full of the lovable, hu- morous, tragic things which are locked secrets to most older folks. It is a finished, exquisite work. PENROD AND SAM. Illustrated by Worth Brehm. Like " Penrod " and " Seventeen," this book conb^ns some remarkable phases of real boyhood and some of the best stories of juvenile prankishness that have ever been written. THE TURMOIL. Illustrated by C. E. Chambers. Bibbs Sheridan is a dreamy, imaginative youth, who re- volts against his father's plans for him to be a servitor of big business. The love of a fine girl turns Bibb's life from failure to success. THE GENTLEMAN FROM INDIANA. Frontispiece. A story of love and politics, — ^more especially a picture of • country editor's life in Indisiu, but the charm of the book Imb in the love interest. THE FLIRT. Illustrated by CSarence F. Underwood. The " FUrt," the younger of two sistera, breaks one g^rl'a engagement, drives one man to suicide, causes the mimler of another, leads another to lose his fortune, and in the end marries a stupid and unpromising suitor, leaving the really worthy one to marry her sister. Mk far Complele /nt lU rf G. & D. Populaf CopsirighleJ F lcUoa Gkossbt & DuNLAP, Publishers, New Yock KATHLEEN NORRIS' STORIEI i : V i ■**.«**' lis i f - tak lting developments follow, THE UPAS TREE A love story of rare diarm. It deal* with a successful author and his wife. THROUGH THE POSTERN GATE The story (rf a seven day courtship, in which the dis- crepancy in ages vanished into insignificance before the convincmg demonstration of abiding love. THE ROSARY The story oi a young artist who is reputed to love beauty above all else in the world, but who, when blinded through an accident, gains life's greatest happiness. A rare story of the great passion of two real people superbly capable of love, its sacrifices and its exceeding reward. THE MISTRESS OF SHENSTONE The l<)vely young Lady Ingleby, recently widowed by the death of a husband who never understood her, meets a fine, cleai. youi«[ chap who is ignorant of her title and they fall deeply in fcve with each other. When he learns her real identity a situation of singular power is developed. THE BROKEN HALO The story of a young man whose religions belief was shattered in childhood and restored to him by the little white lady, many years older than himself, to whom he is passionately devoted. THE FOLLOWING OF THE STAR The story of a young missionary, who, about to Start for Africa, marries wealthy Diana Rivers, in order to help her fulfill the c6nditions ol her uncle's will, and how they finally come to love eat* other and are reunited after experiences that soften and purify. — — ^^-=^==^= Grosset & DuNLAP, Publishers, Nevt York ETHEL M. DELL'S NOVELS M«r II M alMnw Mia ■« MM. THE LAMP IN THE DESERT , The icene of thit iplendid woty if laid in India and telli of the lamp of love that continuei to ihine throu^ all lorti of tribuUtioni to final happineM. GREATHEART The ttory of a cripple whoae deformed body conceab a noble louL , T TTF. HUNDREDTH CHANCE A hero who worked to win even when there waa only " a hundredth chance." THE SWINDLER The story of a "bad man's" aoul revealed by • woman's faith. THE TIDAL WAVE Talcs of love and of women who learned to know th« i true from the false. THE SAFETY CURTAIN I A very vivid love story of India. The volume ab* ' contains four other long stories of equal interest Gbosset & DuNLAP, Publishers, New Yo« JAMES OLIVER CURWOOD'S STORIES OF ADVENTURE **** ■» «* iwiM-t iiit.~ THE RIVER'S IWD A alory of tlM Royal Uointad PoUe*. THE GOLDEN SNA RE Thrilling adveutum in tl»~Far Notthland. NOMADS OF THE NORTH Tba itory of a b««r*cub and a dog, KAZAN The tale of a "qn»rter.«traln wolf and tlirM, betwaen the cull of the human and hla wild mata. BAREE, SON OF KAZAN The story of the son of the blind Orey Wolf and the nllaat part M played in the Urea of a man and a woman. THE COURAGE OF CAPTAIN P LUM The story of the King of Beavai laland, a Mormon colony, and hit battle with Capuln Plum, /■«.-"» THE DANGER TRAIL A tale of love, Indian vengeance, and a mystery of tb* North. THE HUNTED WO MAN A tale of a great aght in the " valley of gold " for a woma.-]. THE FLOWER OF THE NORTH The story of Fort o' God, where the wild flavor of tb* wildem^ b blended with the courtly atmoaphara of Franca, THE GRIZZLY KING The story of Tbor, the big grizzly. ISOBEL A lov* story of the Far Nortb. THE WOLF HUNTERS A thrilling tale of adventure la th« Canadian wUdemen. THE GOLD HUNTERS The story of adventure in the Hndson Bay wilds. THE COURAGE OF MARGE O'DOONE Filled with exciting Incidents in the land of strong men and wom*& BACK TO GOD'S COUNTRY A thrilling story of the Far North, The great Photoplay was madf flotc this book, (ino sSET & DUNLAP, PUBLISHERS. NeW YoRK ZANE GR EY'S NOVRi g \. THE MAN OF THK FOREST THE DESERT OF WHEAT ' THE U. P. TRAIL WILDFIRE >HE BORDER LEOMM THE RAINBOW TRAIT THE HERITAGE OF THK DigSICIlT RIDERS OF THE PITRPrr c^^y THF LIGHT OF WEST F.RN STARS THE LAST OF THK PLAINSMEN THE LONE STAR RANr.FB DESERT GOLD BETTY ZANE LAST OF THE GREAT SCOII^ * *" Wetnore. with Foreword ind eondmkm by Ztt.* Gr.^ ZANE GREY'S BOOKS FOR BOYS KEN WARD IN THE lUNGty THE YOUNG LION HirMTvi^ THK YOUNG FORESTFB THE YOUNG PITCHKR THE SHORT STOP THE RED-HEA DED OUTFlELn Awn OTHER BASEBALL STORIES ' SrmV ^ P"'^'-*'. PuBusMM,' Niw York ELS IchCo^y 3Y8 IZR ' Yow