GOD S 
 PUPPETS 
 
 William 
 
 White 
 
B 
 
J fr^A^ t 
 
 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
THE MACMILLAX COMPANY 
 
 N*W YORK BOSTON* CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMTLLAN & CO., LOOTED 
 
 CALCUTTA 
 
 THE MACMILLAX CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 BY 
 
 WILLIAM ALLEN WHITE 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A CERTAIN RICH MAN," "IN OUR TOWN, 
 "THE COURT OF BOYVILLE," ETC. 
 
 "All service ranks the same with God 
 "With God, whose puppets best and worst 
 "Are we. There is no last nor first." 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1916 
 
Copyright, 1914, 1915, 
 By THE CURTIS PUBLISHING COMPANY 
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 
 Copyright, 1916, 
 
 By THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published, March, 1916. 
 
i 
 
 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 919879 
 
GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 
 PART I 
 
 IN that early and unlovely day in our national 
 life when men coming home from the Civil War 
 still regarded pain-giving as one of the high vir 
 tues, the Times-Globe never referred to Colonel 
 Longford less gently than as " that human orang 
 utan." His presence was esteemed by the same 
 authority and in those days as a " portable plague 
 spot." In a great black sheet-iron box locked with 
 a log-chain and padlock a box whereon the edi 
 tor s rifle rested, a mute token of his willingness 
 to assist might in making right were filed away 
 records of the evil men had done in the town, in 
 the county, in the State and in the nation. That 
 box was a kind of black Ark of the Covenant which 
 the editor kept with his fellows, and in the box, 
 
 i 
 
2 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 he always claimed, were records and documents 
 whose lightest word would send Colonel Longford 
 through the penitentiary to suicide. 
 
 Yet the Colonel was not upon particularly inti 
 mate terms of enmity with the editor; the Colo 
 nel s dark record was one of scores to which the 
 editor of the Times-Globe in his high office of 
 guardian of the public morals and keeper of the 
 town s conscience pointed with pride. And it may 
 be worth while to recall that in the open season for 
 shooting editors as for instance when the cam 
 paign for the location of the courthouse was on, 
 during a campaign for voting railroad bonds or 
 for choosing a member of the school board or 
 the council the Colonel was but one of a gallant 
 company who availed themselves of the season s 
 pleasant privilege and took pot shots, wing 
 shots and trap shots at the editor. So the long 
 list of those names that could not be printed in the 
 paper grew longer, until in the decade following 
 the Civil War the list included the flower of the 
 chivalry of New Raynham. And as many of the 
 flowers in that bouquet were merchants whose ad 
 vertising patronage was needed by the sordid de 
 mands of a pay roll, it became necessary for the 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 3 
 
 editor to leave his citadel and find another watch- 
 tower of public virtue in another town. But be 
 fore he left the week before he left he 
 printed this item : 
 
 " Born to Mrs. Prudence Cabot Longford, three 
 hours before her death, a baby girl, who has been 
 named Lalla Rookh. For the sake of the moth 
 erless child who is cast into worse than orphanage 
 we regret that the sweet and patient sufferings of a 
 devoted life are ended." 
 
 When the black box was opened by the young 
 schoolmaster who paid seven prices for the Times- 
 Globe, the damning evidence in the dark archives 
 was found to be chaff. All that was held against 
 the Colonel was the fact that he deserted an Irish 
 regiment to fight on the Union side in the Civil 
 War; that he joined the Fenian raid on Canada, 
 and that he took a contract to furnish hay to 
 troops in Arizona before coming to New Rayn- 
 ham. 
 
 As a dashing young Irish colonel of a coloured 
 regiment John Longford had caught and held the 
 heart of a Yankee girl near Boston, had eloped 
 with her to Arizona after the Fenian raid, and the 
 rest we knew. He had no particular business or 
 
4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 calling, and was just coloneling round in a grand 
 way in politics and in real estate and in contracts 
 to supply stone or meat or hay or railroad rights- 
 of-way, wherever he could find employment for his 
 talents a bull-necked, bull-voiced, bull-headed 
 Irishman with a mid-Victorian education, who 
 loved to quote Tom Moore and Charles Lever; 
 drank corn whisky to flaunt his Democracy; was 
 not over-nice in his stories or his accounts; and had 
 the documents to prove that he was a true de 
 scendant of the rightful heir to the Irish throne. 
 He had the only case of books in the town in those 
 halcyon days of his early widowerhood, when he 
 launched out with a coloured mammy for his house 
 keeper, and walked with a chip on his shoulder be 
 fore all the town s widows and school-teachers, 
 tempting them to touch him if they dared. 
 
 A year and a month and a week and a day after 
 the funeral of the late Prudence he made a dashing 
 social sortie into the shining needles of the enemy 
 and gave a party and escaped. He was the 
 very devil in a church social, and aired his knowl 
 edge of cookery and his taste in literature before 
 the available women as one who loved dangerous 
 ice for its own smooth sake. When his little girl 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 5 
 
 was seven years old he had torn down his old 
 barns and built him new ones, and in his house was 
 a large room gaudy with Indian blankets and tro 
 phies and bestrewn with books. The books were 
 of such a sadly improper character, many of them, 
 that the town shook its head; but when he inau 
 gurated a weekly afternoon tea and read Locksley 
 Hall by the open fire in the twilight the town could 
 not resist. Now Tennyson done into Irish after 
 tea is a tempter that few women could withstand. 
 Yet the Colonel knew too much about cooking, and 
 after reading the song of Maud with such fire in 
 his voice as fifty full fighting years could fan up he 
 would sigh to the assembled company: " Ye never 
 can tell of the ways of the heart; and if I could 
 find a woman who had never parboiled a goose, 
 nor scalded a turkey to pick him " He never 
 finished the sentence, but wiped a tear from his eye 
 and smiled into the fire as he sighed : 
 
 " And my heart would hear her and beat, 
 Though I d lain for a century dead! " 
 
 But even that could not tempt them to touch the 
 chip on his shoulder, though it should have tempted 
 a woman saint. So the Colonel s fifties merged 
 
6 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 into his mellow early sixties and found him tall, 
 burly, shaggy, merry-eyed and devilish, with more 
 property than he knew exactly what to do with and 
 more notes outstanding than he could conveniently 
 pay. 
 
 And Lalla Rookh, of the house of Longford, 
 was passing from twelve to twenty before his puz 
 zled eyes. The little girl who loved to coast down 
 the boys hill " belly buster " and scorned the baby 
 hill; the little girl who had learned to ride as she 
 learned to walk; who had learned the stern virtue 
 of lying from her coloured mammy and the refined 
 art of it from her father; who took her mother s 
 Puritan religion as a dissipation and often went 
 on spiritual debauches at the revivals in the town, 
 adventuring with God until her little soul was ex 
 alted beyond human endurance; who swarmed 
 the girls of her hive at school like a queen, and 
 led them into the library for forage when her 
 father was away; the little girl who could always 
 bat her father s jokes back to him, was passing 
 in some mysterious way beyond her father s ken. 
 A strange, prim young person was coming into 
 her face. He shook his head and sent her to 
 a convent, and she ran away and wrote him from 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 7 
 
 a boarding school. He laughed, made a note at 
 the bank for her year s tuition and told the story 
 in the town as a sign of her prowess. 
 
 It was in those days when the country was bump 
 ing along over rough roads at high pressure, when 
 men grew rich over-night and poor before sunset, 
 that the Colonel, having taken what he wanted in 
 one way or another, had retired from business in 
 the fulness of years, with some kind of a vast Irish 
 dream of settling up his affairs and becoming a 
 patriarch for the town. He used to haunt the 
 newspaper office where his name twenty years be 
 fore had been a curse, and expound the meaning of 
 his dream. We never knew what it was; nor did 
 the Colonel know exactly; but we were for the 
 Colonel s scheme and wrote more or less about it. 
 Then there came a time when his interest in the 
 plan slackened and we found out, by the innumer 
 able lines of gossip that converge in every news 
 paper office, that the Colonel was worried about 
 his daughter. She had been too enthusiastic for 
 three separate boarding schools, so she came home 
 in her late teens very much of a young woman, 
 with a deeply cleft chin, the Colonel s own devilish 
 chin, which he had hidden all the years with whisk- 
 
8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 ers ; and with something as to eyes reddish 
 brown, a match for the Colonel s wavy hair 
 something as to eyes deep and restless and so in 
 decently candid as to be almost openly intriguing 
 with every pair of eyes they met, and with a 
 figure 
 
 " My heavens, Madie ! " said the little flat- 
 chested, milk-eyed society editor at her telephone 
 to the inky-nosed printer-girl waiting for copy, as 
 Lalla Longford whirled out. " Ain t that a god 
 dess in corsets for you ! " 
 
 The exit of Lalla Rookh was always as dra 
 matic as her entrance. Her coming and going 
 seemed like the flashing on and off of a joyous 
 flame, and when she left the newspaper office the 
 society editor brushed back a stray lock of luster- 
 less hair and turned to her typewriter, saying : 
 
 " Wait a minute, Madie; I ve got to rewrite this 
 Longford girl s item." 
 
 " Mercy, did you see those sleeves, Elsie? Are 
 they wearing em that big now? " 
 
 But the society editor went on writing and talk 
 ing it out in an undertone as she wrote : He 
 is a graduate of Evanston University 
 and the Medical School 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 9 
 
 u Say, Madie, this is her fellow; she left board 
 ing school near Chicago to be with him 
 
 " < Of Pennsylvania 
 
 " And she went to boarding school near Phila 
 delphia to be with him; they say it s an awful 
 case." Resuming her monotone : 
 
 " And he will occupy offices in the 
 Borland Building. His mother Mrs. Matilda 
 
 Kurtlin will live - with him at 1127 Col 
 lege Heights Avenue. They will arrive 
 
 The old lady s got money, they say; anyway 
 she s staying by the boy. They say he is only 
 twenty-four 
 
 1 Next Tuesday and during their 
 first few days in New Raynham they 
 will be the guests of Colonel Longford 
 
 at Longheath. " 
 
 The typist slipped the sheet out of the machine 
 and jabbed it at the inky-nosed person, saying: 
 " Mark that < Society. " 
 
 As the stubby printer-girl waddled out the so 
 ciety editor called shrilly: "Charley! Oh, 
 Charley!" 
 
 A man at a desk in the front office looked up. 
 " Make a note on your calendar that a young fel- 
 
io GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 low Lalla Longford s prize package named Dr. 
 Paul Kurtlin is to be here Tuesday to open an 
 office in the Borland Building, and go get his pro 
 fessional card for the paper and hit him for some 
 letterheads and envelopes." 
 
 " Got you," answered the man finally as he 
 pushed back his tablet; then he asked: " When s 
 it going to be? " 
 
 " Oh, I don t know," called back the girl at the 
 telephone. " Maybe never, now that she s good 
 and got him. She was that way as a little girl." 
 
 " I ll give her four months ; then she ll nab 
 him," said the man in the front office. No reply 
 came from the society editor s room. She was 
 rattling away at her machine. As she came out 
 ten minutes later the man in the business office 
 hailed her: "Elsie, I bet you an oyster stew 
 Lalla Rookh has him nailed down and married be 
 fore snow flies." 
 
 " You made a bet!" replied the girl as she 
 slammed the door on her way into the composing 
 room. When she returned she said : "Charley, 
 I don t want to take your money ; but I watched her 
 dancing with that young Prof the new one 
 Gregory Nixon, a big, handsome brute who teaches 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE n 
 
 physics out at the college and I m here to tell 
 you the Doc s got competition! My, but they 
 made a couple ! And after he danced five dances 
 with her I quit counting and went to work." 
 
 As the summer deepened the battle for the pos 
 session of Lalla Longford opened for the diver 
 sion of the whole town. A town s mind is a child s 
 mind. It cannot see the foreshadowing of a trag 
 edy for what it is. The town s mind saw only the 
 comedy of it. The town smiled and sometimes 
 even laughed. But those were serious days for 
 three young people grappling with the most vital 
 problem in youth. The slight, blue-eyed doctor, 
 with his sympathetic face, with his high forehead 
 full of dreams and his heart shining through his 
 troubled countenance, seemed only a boy, dis 
 traught and worried, as he went about his little 
 practice that summer. For Dr. Paul Kurtlin 
 realised, even before he had seen Nixon, that dan 
 ger was in the air. The Doctor had the nine 
 points of the law that come with possession. She 
 still wore his ring. But the tall, heavy, quiet, ef 
 fective, easy-going, slow-speaking, gentle-handed, 
 patient college man, older than the doctor, plodded 
 along, accepting the handicap of the ring good- 
 
12 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 naturedly but not seriously. And because the Pro 
 fessor was persistent in his love-making the Doc 
 tor could feel the quake of the ground under him. 
 As for the girl 
 
 " Ah, Archimedes ! " smiled the Colonel one 
 summer evening as he tilted his chair back in front 
 of the printing office and talked to the schoolmas 
 ter, grown into his forties, who for a score of years 
 had been handling the lever that moved the world 
 of New Raynham. " Archimedes, my boy, tis a 
 queer world ye hooked your lever to, a damned 
 queer world, and the fun of it is we have to lie so 
 much to keep it going. There s poor little Lally 
 Rookh, eatin the heart out of her; fer that she 
 loves em both, the polygamous little haythen! 
 She loves em both and wants em both, and could 
 love another and more if so be the case. But be 
 cause society holds her to one she s tearin her 
 heart out decidin a most unnatural question ! " 
 
 The Colonel thumbed his vest-holes and looked 
 at the twinkling September stars, and smiled and 
 nodded whimsically as though to an old friend. 
 " And don t ye know it s the truth, Prudey, by this 
 time, that I was a born polygamist? But for the 
 way you had of devilin kidneys and pannin a rab- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 13 
 
 bit and roastin a goose I d a been philanderin 
 far and wide, Prudey, and well ye know it now, my 
 poor gel well ye know it now ! " The Colonel 
 sighed and snapped his suspenders with his thumbs, 
 and continued: " And then Lally Rookh, Archi 
 medes, poor Lally Rookh, she s her father s 
 daughter by marriage, and blood kin to the chained 
 Turk who sits in the back of my head, gnawing 
 his chains and thanking God for the safety and the 
 comfort they bring him." 
 
 The reply of Archimedes is unimportant except 
 that it prompted these words from the Colonel: 
 " It s the young Doctor I m really sorry for, if 
 ye must know the truth. Haven t I tramped the 
 cobblestones of Dublin, across the bridge and down 
 the quay, and up the quay and over the bridge, all 
 of a winter s night, with the vultures of shame and 
 hate and saints forgive me ! murder rippin 
 my heart to shreds on the weddin night of Kate 
 McGarrity, dead these thirty years. Ah, my little 
 man, my game little doctor man, ye ll be salvin a 
 blister on your poor soul the long score of years 
 till you re passin forty! And I m wonderin 
 now " and the Colonel gazed wistfully at the 
 stars as he spoke " if Prudey and Kate will be 
 
14 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 meetin betimes and havin a bit of a tear and a 
 smile in their tea in the Milky Way yonder as they 
 talk me over! " 
 
 The autumn sank into winter, and still the town 
 smiled at the battle for Lalla Longford. We 
 Americans make a pretence of civilisation that 
 keeps us from claws and fists and knives and guns 
 in the struggles for our mates. But the fierceness 
 of the fight is prolonged only because it has no 
 climax, no expression in terms of blood and muscle. 
 How the town could laugh at the tense, strained 
 face of the Doctor, or the lowering animal wrath 
 that loomed big in his slow-moving, dogged rival, 
 is only explicable on the theory that it is always 
 funny to see a man act the beast, or a beast try 
 to act the man. But our sense of humour blinds 
 our eyes to the tragedy that inheres in every yield 
 ing of the man to the beast, or aspiration of the 
 beast toward man. 
 
 The quarrel that Nixon knew he would force 
 between the Doctor and the girl came in January. 
 The Doctor sent for his ring and got it; but he did 
 not know that she sent it covered with kisses of re 
 morse. Then the Colonel took her away to the 
 city for a week of grand opera, and Wagner har- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 15 
 
 rowed her heart. So she wrote passionate letters 
 to both her lovers, and the big man came to the 
 city and got her. 
 
 The boy who brought the telegraphic press re 
 port one Saturday afternoon came stumbling along, 
 reading the sheet. He handed it to the society 
 editor, who met him in the corridor, and she cried 
 to the man in the business office: "I win! I 
 win! They ve eloped to New York! " 
 
 The office force came crowding round to read 
 the despatch, and there it was, in plain typewritten 
 characters the story of Lalla Rookh and the 
 Professor, and the Colonel chasing them furiously 
 to the station in a cab and then throwing kisses 
 after them as they stood on the rear of the depart 
 ing train. 
 
 When they had all gone out of her room the so 
 ciety editor called: " Charley, come here!" 
 And when Charley came she shut the door and 
 whispered: " And not five minutes ago, as I was 
 in the post-office for the afternoon mail, I met Doc 
 tor Kurtlin his box is right above ours and 
 Charley, if that girl hadn t written him a letter 
 written Doctor a letter that he got just now. 
 My land, Charley what do you think 
 
1 6 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 of that ! Why, it must have been just before 
 she left with Nixon. I saw it drop from his box, 
 address up ; it s her big box-car handwriting, and 
 it wasn t a little old ta-ta or by-by; it was a big fat 
 letter!" 
 
 Then in a pause her newspaper sense came to 
 her, and she hurried to a door and called : " Her 
 man, Doctor Kurtlin got a letter a minute ago 
 from Lalla Rookh. You send one of the boys 
 over to his office and maybe he ll talk send 
 Jim ; he can fight if he has to ! " The girl came 
 back to her desk by the telephone and sat looking 
 at the advertising solicitor. " Charley," she said, 
 "listen to me: If that girl lives to be thirty, 
 she s going to make a big first-page, black-head, 
 three-decked story for this paper. She is full of 
 the kind of dynamite that makes news ! " 
 
 Well, don t you go telling Archimedes your 
 dreams, Elsie," answered the solicitor; " he s that 
 soft on the Colonel he ll order the story killed five 
 years in advance and cut down to-day s story to a 
 society item on the third page ! " And with that 
 they fell to their work. 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 17 
 
 PART II 
 
 But alas for the futility of prophecy ! The only 
 copy Mrs. Lalla Rookh Nixon made during the 
 first five years of her married life was birth notices ! 
 Three notices appeared in fairly regular succes 
 sion, and the last notice chronicled twins. Then 
 news of that character conspicuously quit coming 
 from Longheath, where the happy couple had set 
 tled down with the Colonel. The phrase " settled 
 down " perhaps may apply to Gregory Nixon, who 
 settled down to a steady brilliancy of work in his 
 profession; the phrase may even have applied to 
 the Colonel, who was enjoying to the full the long 
 afternoon of his vigorous life, as one on a quiet 
 perennial spree who lives in fear of the return of 
 somber sobriety; but "settled down " was no 
 phrase to use on Lalla Rookh. The current of 
 life was strong in her. But after the birth of the 
 twins she seemed to tire of the game of domes 
 ticity. Almost with a click or bang or whack she 
 slammed the door on the picture she had been 
 making of herself as she appeared in public with 
 her children, rather over-dressed and bedizened, 
 grouped beautifully round her. Then she opened 
 
1 8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 another door as impetuously as she had shut the 
 last one, and Elsie Barnes at the Globe office be 
 gan getting two kinds of items from Longheath. 
 One set of items was always written in Mrs. 
 Nixon s box-car chirography, setting forth the 
 achievements of the Professor in the line of pure 
 physics. Her chronicles told us what we knew in 
 the office, that his papers delivered before learned 
 societies were being translated into many foreign 
 languages and that he was becoming an interna 
 tional figure in his profession. The items told us 
 also of important offers he received from great 
 Eastern universities to take chairs or departments 
 in his line of work, which he always refused. We 
 knew why. It was because his salary at the col 
 lege was large enough to live on, and because he 
 had practically ceased to teach and was devoting 
 his time to research work. Also the Colonel loved 
 the babies, but he would not leave New Raynham, 
 and Lalla Rookh would not leave him, and the 
 Professor would not leave Lalla Rookh, so pure 
 science throve in our little college and all the world 
 made a path to the Professor s door. The second 
 type of news that we had from the Nixons con 
 cerned the activities of Mrs. Nixon. She had as- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 19 
 
 sumed a distinctive kind of social leadership in the 
 town. Let the divine Elsie with her troubled hair 
 and her baked-potato complexion describe it: 
 
 " Now, Madie, wait till I give you this chunk 
 of copy the Nixon woman has sent down here. 
 She can t spell for sour apples, but she does man 
 age to turn in the news. It s the list for to-day 
 of the contributors to the flood sufferers in Ohio. 
 Honest, Madie, I d think the merchants would 
 hate to see that woman come bursting into the 
 stores she never comes without a subscription 
 paper. And she s always wringing money out of 
 em for something floods and earthquakes and 
 doors of hope and provident associations and home 
 guards and the old brass band and the North End 
 Mission and the rescue work and the anti-saloon 
 league heavens to Betsy ! And say, Madie, did 
 you know she snatched that little tough hussy of a 
 Snay girl as a brand from the burning and 
 has her at Longheath a-makin baskets? and 
 Mrs. Nixon goes round selling em literally 
 choking baskets down people s throats. That s 
 the third little ash-cat she s picked up this year." 
 Elsie rattled away as she corrected the copy, and 
 when the printer girl had gone she called: 
 
20 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 "Charley! Oh, Charley! Come here. I got 
 something to tell you." 
 
 When Charley appeared with his paste brush 
 in hand : " What do you think the Nixons had 
 Dr. Paul Kurtlin out to dinner last night to meet 
 that Frenchman ! She handed the Doctor s name 
 in with the dinner guests." Elsie blinked malevo 
 lently, and Charley prodded her: " Go on, you 
 rattlesnake, say it! " 
 
 " Well, / think," returned the girl, busying her 
 self with the copy on her desk "I think, Mr. 
 Charley, that she s going to break up that little 
 budding affair between the Doctor and the Ellis 
 girl that s what I think, if you must know ! " 
 
 " Ah, Elsie, you re such a " He did not fin 
 ish his sentence, for the door opened suddenly and 
 the man, looking round, gazed into the pink-and- 
 white features of Mrs. Lalla Rookh Nixon. He 
 faded into the next room without a word. 
 
 " Well, Elsie, if it isn t too late here s another 
 hundred dollars I ve got for the flood sufferers. I 
 hope you can get it in the paper this evening." 
 
 She spoke in the gentlest tones, and put her 
 strong hand in a caressing habit she had on the 
 girl s shoulder. The girl at the desk looked up 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 21 
 
 at the tall, gorgeous creature scrupulously, even 
 painfully, tailored from toe to chin, with the frank 
 yet intriguing eyes, and the splendid head of flam 
 ing copper-coloured hair; and the rattlesnake blink 
 went out of Elsie s eyes. She touched the fond 
 ling hand and said: " Why, of course I can get 
 it in," and taking the paper and dabbing it here and 
 there with a pencil to make it conform to some of 
 fice style, she hurried out to the composing room. 
 When Elsie came back she found her visitor still 
 standing by the desk. Mrs. Nixon touched her 
 arm again with caressing fingers and said: 
 
 " Now, my dear, I want you to do two things 
 for me. First, I want you to assemble your Ply 
 mouth Daughters next month and give a fair and 
 sell a lot of the dearest baskets that Maudie Snay 
 is making; and now don t you flinch I wish 
 to arrange for Maudie herself to come down and 
 take a booth. It will give her self-respect, and 
 you know psychologists tell us self-respect is the 
 foundation of will power, and that s the thing she 
 most needs at present. Now you girls certainly 
 can contribute that mite of sacrifice to the cause 
 of charity. And I ll stand near Maudie and see 
 that she doesn t interfere with your boys." 
 
22 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 She paused and smiled, then added: " Oh, El 
 sie, Elsie, if you only knew how sweet the life of 
 service really is." She had her arm round the 
 girl s bony waist and hugged her a little. " Now, 
 Doctor Paul" she hesitated half coyly after 
 the name and then repeated: " Doctor Kurtlin 
 promised me last night he d solicit all the doctors 
 in the Argyle Building for my flood sufferers, and 
 he must have two or three hundred dollars." 
 Again she stopped as for a longer jump than she 
 had made and flushed prettily as she spoke : 
 
 " I don t want to go to his office." The tone 
 of her voice grew a little shrill and tense as she 
 said: "Elsie, dearest, won t you run up there 
 and get that list and tell him I m down here wait 
 ing for you?" The reporter blinked at Mrs. 
 Nixon a moment as she wondered what pose of 
 modesty was back of the woman s hesitancy about 
 going to the Doctor s office. But Elsie put on her 
 hat and was gone in a moment. Dr. Paul Kurtlin 
 returned with her, and she saw the over-candid 
 eyes of the woman meet the man s eager gaze, and 
 then droop a little a calculated little and 
 their hands met for an instant, perhaps two in- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 23 
 
 stants, before they fell to the work of inspecting 
 the Doctor s paper. 
 
 All the time Elsie, bending over her machine, 
 hammering away at her copy, was watching from 
 the sharp corners of her dull gray eyes the femi 
 nine craft of Mrs. Nixon the glancing touch of 
 a finger to a wrist; the brush of her body against 
 the man s arm; the mingling of her breath with 
 the man s as they bent over the paper; the devil 
 ish poison in the reddish-brown eyes as they flicked 
 the Doctor s flushed face, and over all this an ob 
 vious veil of kittenish innocence that made the re 
 porter s gorge rise. She felt she had to keep the 
 machine going, but she could write only, " Now is 
 the time for all good men and true to come to the 
 aid of the party," over and over, and she brushed 
 back her straggling hair betimes and set her teeth 
 by time lock. And Lalla Rookh smiled at the re 
 porter through it all as blandly as though she did 
 not know that Elsie knew what was occurring. 
 And what made Elsie s teeth ache as she ground 
 them was the knowledge that as soon as the man 
 was gone the beautiful creature who had herself 
 so well in hand would begin making love to Elsie 
 
24 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 to make her doubt the evidence of her own eyes 
 and ears. 
 
 As he was leaving the room Mrs. Nixon said: 
 " Here s a receipt I ve made out as chairman of 
 the committee, Paul. You just fill in the total." 
 She handed him a folded paper, and as he went 
 Mrs. Nixon was saying: " Now, Elsie, that 
 poor Snay child never has had a show a 
 drunken father and a mother washing out by the 
 day and the children growing up in the street. 
 Oh, Elsie, Elsie, I never see one of her kind nor 
 any of the poor girls down in Jimtown that I don t 
 say to myself: There you go, Lalla Longford, 
 if the good God hadn t shielded you. Don t be 
 narrow, Elsie, because you haven t had to fight 
 with that particular devil; your own devils are 
 probably just as bad of their kind." Her hand, 
 soft and yet strong, but white and well kept, 
 touched with a caressing pat the bony, brown-red 
 hand of the reporter. The girl felt an extra 
 squeeze, and the woman was gone. Elsie sat at 
 her desk and tore off the scribbled sheet of rough 
 copy paper on top of her pad. Under it she no 
 ticed a sheet had been torn out, and on the soft 
 white paper before her she traced in shadowy out- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 25 
 
 line where the hard pencil had written the words on 
 the extracted sheet: " My dear, dear Paul," and 
 then a few half-legible but meaningless lines, clos 
 ing with " ing Lalla." The girl tore out the 
 
 embossed sheet, wadded it up and threw it into the 
 basket. Then she reached for it, tore it up and 
 chewed it up, and carried it with her when she went 
 to the stove in the back room. 
 
 It was nearly a year afterward, when the young 
 est little Nixons were three years old, that the 
 town began to realise that Dr. Paul Kurtlin spent 
 more time than was necessary with the Nixons; 
 not with Mrs. Nixon particularly but with all the 
 Nixons, including the Colonel. Always the Doc 
 tor was around for Sunday dinner; always he 
 made a place at table when notables were to be 
 entertained. When the Nixons drove he rode 
 behind the family horse, sometimes with the Pro 
 fessor, sometimes with Mrs. Nixon, sometimes 
 with the Colonel, but never with the children. 
 For they were not taken on these family drives. 
 
 The children were at that time wandering about 
 the universe like four disengaged moons, in charge 
 of a white-capped nurse. They were more or less 
 out of school, more or less down with something 
 
26 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 catching, when Lalla Rookh was attending grand 
 opera and living what she called " my own life in 
 my own way " ; and what with short socks and 
 hygienic underwear and bare red knees in the win 
 ter, when other children of New Raynham wore 
 long flannels and overshoes, and what with an 
 ever-varying scientific diet to reduce their rising 
 tendency to fratricide, they were beginning to be 
 a sensitive point between Mrs. Nixon and her 
 friends. 
 
 It was at a committee meeting of the Children s 
 Home Society, of which organisation Mrs. Nixon 
 was for the moment president and moving spirit, 
 that she burst out in answer to a covert scratch of 
 one of the women on the committee : " Now, 
 Jane, you run your children and I ll run mine. Go 
 ahead and slave for them if you want to. I won t. 
 I get the best nurse that money will buy, and she 
 knows twice as much about the children as I do. 
 She s a graduate nurse and better than half the 
 doctors, and she s teaching them French and Ger 
 man as they grow up and she loves all four of 
 them fondly." 
 
 The great frank eyes swept the circle and the 
 cheeks reddened and dimpled as she smiled: 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 27 
 
 " Now, girls, I m going to shock you to death. 
 Listen: You are all pretending, faking, just po 
 litely lying, because you think it s proper to, when 
 you talk about mother love. There is no such 
 thing. I love my children as much as any of you, 
 but I don t love them at all because they re my 
 children. I could take any other four that were 
 just as good as mine and love them just as much." 
 
 When the committee had quit gasping Lalla 
 Rookh went on: " NOW, girls, don t you go and 
 say I don t love my children, for I do ; but it s be 
 cause they are good little things, and nice, and 
 clean, and not sticky and dirty and messy, and be 
 cause the nurse keeps them well-bred and teaches 
 them good manners." 
 
 When that story got out and over the town 
 legend declared that Lalla Longford would be per 
 fectly willing to eat her children raw if she were 
 hungry, and the comments on the strange relations 
 of the Nixons to Doctor Kurtlin grew more and 
 more acrid in their nature. The Professor had a 
 laboratory at one end of the long two-storied brick 
 edifice that was Longheath, and he often spent his 
 evenings in the laboratory or with the children. 
 Sometimes Doctor Kurtlin sat with Mrs. Nixon; 
 
28 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 sometimes the Colonel sat with her; and some 
 times the Colonel and his daughter and the Doctor 
 went to the theater together, or appeared at the 
 few social gatherings that the Nixons patronised. 
 For Lalla Rookh was not bitten by the social bug. 
 Most of the joy of social climbing is in climbing, 
 not in arriving; and in New Raynham, Lalla 
 Rookh was born in the social sanctuary. So she 
 was intensely democratic, loathed snobbery, and 
 went in, not for bridge and teas but for committee 
 work in the City Federation of Women s Clubs, 
 for the afternoons of the music club and for din 
 ners chiefly her own dinners, for that matter 
 where the talk often ranged upon subjects which 
 the Colonel, with his Victorian ideals, regarded as 
 a shade too frank even for his liberal standards. 
 So when gossip began to buzz about Mrs. Nixon 
 society could not reach her. She did not ask to be 
 chairman of any committee; all she asked was to 
 do the committee s work, and any committee will 
 surrender that right to any one, even though the 
 lady to whom the surrender is made does spend 
 rather more time than is required in the company 
 of a former lover. She did not seek for a place 
 on the programme of the music club; she asked 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE ,29 
 
 only to make the programmes, to see that the in 
 vited performers came, and to pay the bills from 
 her own pocket. 
 
 As for her dinners well, it was at her dinners 
 that all the vital energy that moved the soul of 
 Lalla Rookh came out to walk the earth. At her 
 dinners she dared dared in her cooking to do 
 those glorious things which other women read of 
 and dreamed of and fancied might be royal; dared 
 in her talk to say all that lay behind those candid, 
 fearless eyes; dared in her guests to twist social 
 lines and rub the insolent democracy of the aris 
 tocrat under the noses of the socially squeamish. 
 But most of all she dared in her clothes. No 
 one would imagine that the tautly tailored per 
 son, sailing like a trim schooner down Consti 
 tution Street by day, could strip for action 
 like a battleship by night and show where every 
 ounce was of the hundred and sixty pounds ton 
 nage she carried and show it a great glis 
 tening jewel of life, as much vitalised on her arms 
 and broad, dimpled back as in her face, which 
 changed every moment as the winds of feeling 
 played through the wide-open windows of her 
 heart. Indeed, as for her dinners, there Lalla 
 
30 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Rookh queened, even as the Colonel before her 
 had colonelled his way to such success as his soul 
 craved. So, in spite of the salient irregularity of 
 the thin-visaged, steel-fingered, probe-eyed Doc 
 tor s position in the Nixon household, there were 
 never too many plates for the guests at Mrs. 
 Nixon s dinners, and Lalla Rookh snapped her 
 fingers at the town, and the town replied as one 
 woman: "Well, how does the Professor stand 
 it?" 
 
 To which query the Professor might well have 
 put another: " Stand what? " And that would 
 have been a poser; for, whatever the relations 
 were between Mrs. Nixon and the Doctor, they 
 were not evidenced by a single episode or incident 
 which the town could question. But the town 
 might reply: U A man does not spend all his 
 spare time with a woman, particularly a woman to 
 whom he has been engaged, and by whom he was 
 madly and impulsively jilted, unless " " Well, 
 unless what? " might the devil s advocate make an 
 swer, and all the town could have done would have 
 been to wag its head and grumble : " Well, any 
 way " and let it go at that. 
 
 And yet at the bookstore there was evidence 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 31 
 
 that the Doctor was ordering all the books he 
 could find that told of the loves of Dante and 
 Beatrice, of Petrarch and Laura, of Pelleas and 
 Melisande and of all the other affairs of unre 
 quited affection of which he had ever heard. 
 Whatever Lalla Rookh s theory of the situation 
 was, it was certain that the Doctor was taking 
 it with dreadful seriousness. And his seriousness 
 affected him with a kind of an obsession of gentle 
 ness and consideration for everyone. He visited 
 upon the poor a very passion of tenderness, and en 
 tered into their lives with a fraternity of spirit 
 that made them his champions. Perhaps his work 
 among the poor was in the hope of feeling her 
 approval; perhaps it was because love begets love. 
 No one knew and few asked. For in such cases 
 the public mind finds it easier to scoff than to specu 
 late about eccentricities that are by-products of a 
 three-cornered love affair. 
 
 As for the big, preoccupied man with the deep, 
 quiet voice who was Lalla Rookh s husband, the 
 town had a divided opinion. Two things were 
 said of him that he was too busy to care what 
 was going on; and that he was biding his time. 
 And neither saying was true. 
 
32 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 For the truth is that Lalla Rookh fooled her 
 husband, after the old, old fashion of the woman 
 whose husband is away on a long journey; for the 
 Professor always was away on a long journey into 
 the innermost core of matter. Yet though she 
 fooled him such is the sad inconsistency of her 
 type of mind she loved him. He was the 
 shadow of a great rock in a weary land for her, 
 the land of vain pretences and subtle intriguing, 
 the land of exciting adventures all in the humdrum 
 of the day s routine work, the land of compli 
 cated motives and tangled desires, a waste land 
 wherein she descended slopes and ran breathless 
 back up steeps to safety ran panting lest she 
 should fall into the pit, and insanely hoping she 
 might fall; a land of stolen waters that corroded 
 her soul and of bitter desert fruit that choked her 
 life; a weary land of mirages, where she walked 
 she knew not why, save that she had a wandering 
 foot. And Gregory Nixon was the shadow of a 
 great rock where she rested and was happy. 
 
 Probably it was under the shadow of that rock 
 that Mrs. Nixon went forth as ministering angel 
 in her various public activities. For certainly that 
 part of her life was effective. Even though occa- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 33 
 
 sionally as she flitted from cause to cause, walking 
 among the poor, going in and out of the stores 
 and offices of the town begging for money for a 
 wide variety of charities, she met the Doctor, and 
 enjoyed miserably with him one of those brief pub 
 lic trysts which left her disheveled in mind and 
 heart even then she enjoyed keenly the satis 
 faction of helping the needy at no particular cost 
 to herself, save that of time and money, both of 
 which she had in abundance. 
 
 The town wagged a sad head and gave her up. 
 Whether she realised how publicly posted her 
 story was one cannot say. Perhaps even if she 
 had known how well her neighbours were reading 
 it she would have gone into the anti-saloon fight 
 merely to crucify herself and prove to herself that 
 she was not letting her daily excursions among the 
 mirages in the weary land make a coward of her. 
 Or probably she went as a fool blinded by her 
 folly. But she did go into the fight for a dry 
 town, and she went with all the enthusiasm of an 
 ardent nature. 
 
 Now, ladies and gentlemen in the saloon busi 
 ness and its allied trades, fighting for their lives, 
 have not those nice, chivalric scruples that Sir 
 
34 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Launcelot practised in seeking the Holy Grail. 
 They use whatever weapon the devil puts in their 
 hands, and they endured Lalla Rookh up to a 
 point; but when she began to be effective they let 
 fly. Whereupon the air grew first purple and then 
 red with stories, highly apocryphal and gorgeously 
 false, yet all based on the fundamental and un 
 disputed fact that Mrs. Nixon and Doctor Kurtlin 
 were engaged in some kind of love affair that had 
 no legal right to exist. 
 
 It was only after Archimedes, who handles the 
 lever that moves the world of the town, had re 
 fused to print the Personal Liberty League circu 
 lar, and indeed only after the League had taken it 
 to a job-printing office and had it made into a 
 handbill, that it seemed wise for Elsie of the flat 
 chest and rope hair and saddle complexion to act. 
 It was dusk and the office was deserted when Mrs. 
 Nixon came glowing into the dingy room where 
 the typewriter and the telephone ran the social 
 news of New Raynham through Elsie as a sort of 
 human transformer, from the high voltage of 
 truth to the low voltage of such sparkling facts as 
 she dared put on her humble society page. In the 
 room Mrs. Nixon found Elsie, and the girl blinked 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 35 
 
 for a moment at Mrs. Nixon before reaching in 
 her desk and bringing out the printed circular. 
 
 " Sit down, Mrs. Nixon, and read this," she 
 said. 
 
 Lalla Rookh, radiating health and joy and affec 
 tion, a kind of an incarnation of sweetness and 
 light plus a perfect and pleasurable digestion 
 sat beside the thin woman of her own age, 
 whose life seemed so meagre, and held the folded 
 sheet in her lap for a moment without looking at 
 it. 
 
 "So you wanted to see me, dear? Well " 
 The goddess patted the long, thin, brown hand 
 on the typewriter keys. 
 
 The girl nodded at the circular in the lap beside 
 her, but Mrs. Nixon went on : " Oh, Elsie, we 
 are going to win this fight. I ve been at headquar 
 ters all day and we know exactly how we stand. 
 Two women and one man are working in every 
 block, all under precinct captains and ward leaders, 
 and the fight is won it s won, Elsie ! " She put 
 the circular on the table, still folded, and squeezed 
 the girl in sheer joy of life, and then picked 
 up the paper and asked: "What is this, any 
 way?" 
 
36 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 "Read it," replied Elsie soberly, adding: 
 " They are going to spring it to-night if " 
 
 The girl saw the splendid, effective, exuberant 
 woman pass suddenly down creation s line. She 
 saw the colour come and go from shame to fear 
 and fear to shame, and saw the trembling jaw set 
 and the set jaw tremble, and the hands flutter in 
 fear and grip the paper in rage. The frightened 
 creature turned to the reporter, and licking her 
 trembling ashen lips said: 
 
 "If _ w hat?" 
 
 " If you don t get out of the fight to-night," 
 answered the reporter. " We just got it at half 
 past four. Archimedes thought your father was 
 too old to handle it. I said your husband should 
 
 not see " 
 
 " Oh, thank you thank " 
 
 The girl took the sheet from the floor where it 
 had dropped as she went on : " And I thought of 
 Doctor Paul; but I knew he d probably go to 
 shooting or some fool thing! " 
 
 The woman nodded and said u Yes," more in a 
 gasp than an assent. 
 
 11 So I sent for you." The girl put a steadying 
 hand on the fluttering fingers. " Now, then, Lalla 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 37 
 
 Rookh Longford, brace up. We re both thirty- 
 five years old. You know me; you knew me in 
 school, and you knew me when I delivered the 
 washing to your house in my little wagon, and 
 when I set type here in the back room. I m not 
 pretty-for-nice, Lalla, but I m here to help ! " 
 
 As she spoke she saw the beautiful mouth twitch 
 ing and heard the sobs struggling to rise, and in 
 another instant Lalla Rookh was convulsed in 
 weeping. Her whole frame shook and she 
 moaned. 
 
 " What have I done ! What have I done ! Be 
 fore God, I ve done no evil no evil no evil ! 
 Oh, what have I done ! " she cried as she clenched 
 her soft white hands. The reporter rose and 
 stood looking at the woman as she breasted wave 
 after wave of self-pity and let her emotions go un 
 restrained. The curtains were drawn, and the 
 lamp under its paper shade fell only on the type 
 writer beneath it. In the half darkness the two 
 women were as remote from the world as they 
 would have been upon a desert island. Finally 
 the shuddering form grew still and the wet eyes 
 lifted guiltily to the girl s pale-gray eyes, and with 
 intriguing candour in the brown eyes the woman 
 
38 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 began imploring Elsie for pity even before the 
 gentle voice spoke. 
 
 " You don t understand, Elsie, you don t un 
 derstand ! " cried the seductive voice. " God 
 never let you be tempted; you never have fought 
 my fight." She rose, came to the girl, and clasp 
 ing her hands whispered : " But as God is my 
 witness He knows I did no evil, and that " she 
 looked at the sheet on the table and shivered 
 " that is a lie a lie ! Oh, it s not true only 
 part of it. We did go there, but it was to rescue 
 that Snay girl when she went back once. And we 
 got her. Father was in the carriage outside when 
 we went there and brought her home again." 
 
 " That s all right, we won t discuss that part 
 of it," interrupted the reporter. " What shall we 
 do about it? How can I help? I want to help 
 and Well, it s my assignment from the office 
 to help. What s your first move? " 
 
 " First," answered the woman, who was coming 
 back from her long drop down the line of creation 
 and sat gripping the desk, " call up Doctor Paul. 
 I must be the first to tell him this to keep him 
 from " 
 
 " Yes." In a second Elsie was sending in the 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 39 
 
 call. When they found that the Doctor was out 
 on a professional visit the two women pondered a 
 moment. " I ll wait here with you. Telephone 
 Gregory to go on with dinner. Tell him I m busy ; 
 he ll understand." 
 
 A minute later, after the girl had hung up the 
 receiver, the woman asked: " Elsie, were you 
 ever in love ? " She took the girl s two hands and 
 held them tightly as she spoke. The reporter 
 nodded, and Mrs. Nixon went on : " Then tell 
 me, what is the matter with me ? I love my hus 
 band; I love my children. And yet " 
 
 Then the slow, hard voice of the girl beside her 
 began, as one reading dim print: "And yet 
 you ve lived soft and you are soft clear through. 
 Listen : Charley and I have been going together 
 ten years; we are kind of engaged and no one 
 on earth knows it. He s got his crippled mother 
 and his consumptive sister. And me? I ve got 
 pa. Don t you think oh, Lalla Rookh, don t 
 you think it s hard sometimes hard when I hear 
 my children calling out in the night hear the fire 
 on my hearth crackle don t you think it s hard? 
 Yet if Charley went back on them I d not not 
 I d not care for him, and he never yet has asked 
 
40 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 me to leave pa ! I ll just tell you something 
 it s five years it ll be T six in December since 
 he kissed me." 
 
 The woman beside her was sobbing. The girl 
 broke her hands away and squared the woman 
 round rather rudely. 
 
 " Wait a minute," she called. " I ll try to get 
 the Doctor on the phone again. Now you brace 
 up! You can t afford to have any high jinks; 
 you ve got to act." After the telephone had re 
 vealed the fact that the Doctor was on the way to 
 his office Elsie went on: " Your trouble, Lalla 
 Longford, is that you haven t got it in your noodle 
 that love is sacrifice. What have you ever given 
 up for your man or your kids ? Ask yourself 
 not a blessed thing. You ve had this grand flirta 
 tion with the Doctor, and made a fool of him if 
 there ever was one. And you ve paraded round 
 indulging in your philanthropic desires like a dope 
 fiend, and what have you given up? Now just 
 what?" 
 
 The larger woman shook her head and clearly 
 was thinking of something else. She was working 
 out in her mind, through the labyrinth of the politi 
 cal situation as she knew it, some plan to stop 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 41 
 
 the publication of the circular, either with her 
 lover s help or with her father s. Not once did 
 she bring her husband back from his journey 
 among the atoms and ions and electrons far into 
 the heart of matter to help her. When she 
 thought of him she flushed with shame. 
 
 When the phone bell rang she started, and when 
 the reporter had handed the receiver to her she 
 said in a low, excited voice : " Yes, Paul, it s 
 Lalla. Will you come out to the house as quickly 
 as possible? I must see you. Good-bye." She 
 rose full of determination, with all her faculties in 
 hand, and with her jaw firm and her eyes all but 
 flaming with excitement. Then she turned to the 
 reporter and cried : " You stay right here, and I ll 
 phone you when I need you. I m bound to need 
 you by eight or nine o clock. I m going to turn 
 this circular where is it? Oh, yes, all right. 
 I m going to let father and Paul read this, and we 
 three will work out some plan or something. But 
 we may need you you can act for us ! " She 
 turned to go, then came back and kissed the girl 
 and cried: " Oh, Elsie, Elsie, don t think I don t 
 appreciate you ; you re the very salt of the earth ! " 
 Then she hurried away. 
 
42 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 It was after eight o clock when she met the 
 Doctor at the front door of Longheath. She did 
 not give him her hand. She did not meet his eyes. 
 She would not take his arm as was her wont when 
 they were alone in the house. She put aside al 
 most angrily his question as to her mood, and as 
 the man and woman side by side went through 
 the hall it was in a silence as though they were ap 
 proaching some dread doom. They saw through 
 the living-room window the light in the Professor s 
 laboratory, and the woman caught the man s 
 sleeve and whispered : 
 
 " There he is. We won t disturb him. Father 
 is with him." She went on: " Come back here 
 to the big table and read this." 
 
 She handed the circular to the Doctor, and stood 
 over him while he read, with her hand upon his 
 shoulder. She could feel his body under her fin 
 gers give under the impact of the blow. When he 
 looked up he was cursing in a low, hoarse whis 
 per. 
 
 "Quit it! Brace up! Think, man think; 
 there is some way to stop this. Father s smart. 
 Now then " She left him with a quick stride 
 and called down a corridor. Through the win- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 43 
 
 dow they could see the Colonel moving about 
 the laboratory and could see the Professor bending 
 over his table. When the Colonel came in answer 
 to her call the gaunt, shaggy old man, with just 
 the faintest shuffle in his military tread and the 
 shadow of a slouch in his bearing, smiled at the 
 pair in the living-room and joked his old joke: 
 " Well, how re Pelleas and Melisande this even- 
 ing? " 
 
 "Father Father!" she repeated tragically; 
 " don t don t ! Sit down here by the lamp." 
 She handed him the circular without a word and 
 pointed to it, saying: "You must help"! Oh, 
 Father, you must, you must help ! " 
 
 As the old man fumbled for his glasses he said : 
 " Well, I m glad to help. I was helping Gregory 
 in there with that electrical experiment. The 
 transformer doesn t work some way, but he says 
 he ll get it down." The Colonel finally got on his 
 glasses. The two stood watching him. He had 
 not fixed his eyes on the sheet half a minute be 
 fore he began: "What in hell is" Then a 
 few seconds later: " Well, Go " 
 
 But a horrible blue-green glare in the window 
 and a crashing sound scattered the group, and they 
 
44 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 went running to the laboratory. It could not have 
 been ten seconds from the time they saw the glare 
 that the Colonel had shut off the current, and in 
 the darkness they stumbled over the body of the 
 Professor. The smell of scorching clothing was 
 in the air and the little tongues of flame were 
 lapping about the legs of a stool. While her 
 father and the Doctor were stamping out the 
 flames and chattering orders at each other, Mrs. 
 Nixon accepted the challenge of death. She bent 
 over the limp figure against which she had stum 
 bled in the dark. She lifted it without a gasp, 
 carried it into the living-room and put it on a 
 couch. Under her command the Colonel was 
 drawing water from a faucet in the laboratory and 
 the Doctor was at his medicine case, and the 
 woman, losing no second by a false motion or a 
 clumsy finger, was tearing away the clothing from 
 about the Professor s neck. She worked his arms 
 and did not speak or look round as she bent to her 
 task. She was unconscious of the Doctor at the 
 table, but as the seconds assembled into a minute 
 she realised that he was fluttering and fumbling 
 with his medicines. 
 
 The Colonel s hands were pouring water upon 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 45 
 
 the ashen face, and his old legs were hurrying him 
 to and fro from the laboratory with slopping beak 
 ers. She kept murmuring "Hurry!" over and 
 over as she worked. Finally, at another half min 
 ute s end she turned quickly and saw the fumbling 
 hands of the Doctor the steel fingers fatuously 
 wiggling, crazy and out of control. When she 
 had turned back to her work her mind recorded 
 to her consciousness that the fine forehead of the 
 Doctor and his upper lip were beady with sweat. 
 At that moment she did not see the devil shriving 
 the Doctor s soul. For so desperately was she 
 wrestling with death that she did not translate the 
 meaning of the Doctor s visage, nor read the warn 
 ing in his mad hands. She was breathing into her 
 husband s lungs from her own lungs deep drafts 
 of air; but when death and the devil came up be 
 hind her, as the Doctor moved, she glanced for a 
 moment into his face, saw the bestial glint in his 
 eyes, and saw a bestial slant to his slinking shoul 
 ders and swaying body and half rose to cry : 
 
 "Paul!" 
 
 The Doctor tried to answer, but his voice had 
 slipped from its control. She repeated : " What s 
 that? What s that? " looking at the medicine in 
 
46 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 his hand. A whisper came sputtering out of the 
 cruel animal mouth ; she did not heed it. For their 
 eyes met, and in the silence she understood him. 
 With one free hand she knocked the medicine from 
 the unsteady fingers. Half rising, she crouched 
 over the body as if to shield it, and cried to her 
 father: "Telephone for Doctor Roberts and 
 Doctor Keller quick! " Then, when her com 
 mand had started her father .to the telephone, she 
 whispered to the Doctor: " Hide that medicine 
 case. The other doctors must not think " 
 
 Then she lost consciousness of the Doctor, and 
 with no more tremor than a machine she held 
 to her fight with death. Something back of her 
 consciousness was directing that fight, something 
 strong, capable, precise, indomitable. 
 
 The Doctor reached to touch the limp hand 
 nearest to him, but from her distraught eyes a look 
 sent him back ashamed. In that look she saw 
 that the beast had left him. She saw his calm, 
 professional face, gray and worn and haggard. 
 " Come here and work work ! " she cried as she 
 heard wheels scraping the gravel of the driveway 
 and knew another doctor had arrived. 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 47 
 
 It was ten o clock. Mrs. Nixon was talking to 
 the Globe office and Elsie Barnes was at the other 
 end of the wire. Mrs. Nixon was speaking clearly 
 and so that the Doctor in the next room and the 
 maids might hear: " You may say for me, in to 
 morrow s paper, that this accident naturally will 
 keep me from my work on the Law and Order 
 Committee until after the election, and that I have 
 been compelled to resign from the chairmanship. 
 You understand, Elsie?" Then the Colonel, 
 standing by his daughter, heard her say: " Now, 
 Elsie, call me up any time to-night if anything goes 
 wrong." 
 
 The old man was wet-eyed and broken, not the 
 strong old man he had been when he came laugh 
 ing out of the laboratory less than two hours be 
 fore. The voices of the trio of doctors in the sick 
 room could be heard; but they were not excited 
 voices. One laughed ; another was trying to make 
 the patient laugh. Doctor Kurtlin was evidently 
 at the head of the stairs, coming down. 
 
 " Little girl, little girl! " cried the unsteady old 
 voice. " I m an old man, an old man, and they ve 
 cracked my old bones and they ve put water in 
 
48 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 my blood and broken my heart ! But oh, my little 
 girl, IVe given you an Irish spirit and God loves 
 the Irish all s well with the world ! " 
 
 He kissed her and made way for a child in her 
 little nightie with braids down her back, coming 
 to say her belated prayers. The mother fondled 
 the girl for a second and set her kneeling, as the 
 Doctor paused on the stair landing and gazed be 
 seechingly across the little figure. The woman 
 looked for a moment at the man, then shook her 
 head, and the Colonel from his post down the cor 
 ridor heard the front door open and close and felt 
 the night wind blowing through the house. 
 
 PART III 
 
 When the Nixons came home from Europe 
 from their two years sojourn in Europe the 
 Professor brought back sundry medals, degrees 
 and honourable parchments from the universities 
 in what the Colonel called the effete and crumbling 
 capitals of Europe. And the town was properly 
 impressed. But Lalla Rookh, she that was born 
 Longford, brought back seven trunk-loads of plun 
 der. And she gave a series of exhibitions for her 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 49 
 
 corals from Naples and cameos from Florence, 
 for her beaten silver and scarfs from Rome, for 
 her prints from Germany, for her millinery from 
 Paris and her silks from London. 
 
 Then too she slipped through the custom-house 
 before the very eyes of the inspectors a series of 
 poses, which she used in her home for practice 
 and when there was an audience, for applause ; 
 and these elaborate poses, that she had collected 
 from the statuary of the museums, gave her such 
 a classical effect that Archimedes spoke of her al 
 ways as the Goddess of Longheath. From her 
 face, which had taken form and colour from the 
 galleries of Germany, it was obvious that she had 
 some sort of notion that she was a kind of Ma 
 donna of the Clubs the federated clubs. 
 
 But the most important thing she brought was a 
 large oversoul like, say, crinoline which she 
 seemed to have picked up somewhere in the North 
 Country. She showed her hardware and shelf 
 goods and goddess effects to the women of the city 
 federation; she displayed her dry goods and mil 
 linery and madonnas to the Monday Music Club ; 
 but she kept her oversoul for her more particular 
 friends. She got it out one night for the old 
 
50 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Colonel, but he shook his grizzled head and 
 cried: 
 
 "To hell with it, Lally! And while we re a- 
 talking, gel, let me break off a bit of my under- 
 soul, which has been ingrowing for the two years 
 I ve been alone here with Archimedes downtown 
 and the cat at the house; and you can as well 
 take it now as any other time, and this is the size 
 of it: Your first job in the cosmos is the kids! 
 Your oversoul, spreading over the infinite and 
 touchin all the other gay young chips off the old 
 block of primal energy or first cause or the billy-be- 
 dee of your moonshine, is all very grand; but the 
 kids have their rights to a motherin ! " 
 
 " But, Father, if a woman feels she has a higher 
 mastery than " 
 
 "Ah-h-h!" drawled the disgusted old man. 
 " Lally, Lally, ye re like Paddy Mahone s dog 
 you re always goin a bit of the way with em all 
 and getting nowhere ! Let me tell you something, 
 daughter of my heart s core ; and tis this : When 
 the angels took the snip with the scissors that made 
 you a woman, my darlin , they gave you the high 
 est mastery in the world the transmission of the 
 life-stuff of the race from the last generation to 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 51 
 
 the next. You re the vessel, my gel, wherein the 
 destiny of the race is bilin . It isn t merely your 
 body that s important, wherein the seeds are 
 warmed into life; though that s much and that s 
 why you should treat it like God s temple. The 
 important thing is your soul, for trimmin and 
 prunin and pickin and sortin and choosin and 
 shieldin and passin into reality the dreams of to 
 day. I don t mind your votin and your agitatin 
 to make a better world about ye for the settin of 
 your workshop; that s part of your job, too, and I 
 glory in your spunk, gel. But your job s in your 
 workshop as sure as the Lord s in His holy temple, 
 and don t let this damn nonsense about your over- 
 soul hookin you up with infinity tempt you away 
 from a duty that makes you a part of God s plan 
 of progress little or big, as you have the heart 
 and the skill for it and as plain, Lally, as a boil 
 on the back of your neck ! " 
 
 Whereupon Lalla Rookh went to the piano and 
 played a movement from Schubert s Unfinished 
 Symphony and thought of the Doctor, and tried 
 to remember why she hated him, or if she did hate 
 him at all, and if it wasn t a sort of hang-over hate 
 from their disagreement on a lower plane where 
 
52 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 he had been an unpaternal tomcat and eaten all the 
 offspring in their first meeting in the jungle, or 
 something equally important. For she was con 
 vinced that her consciousness here was but the re 
 flection of the phenomena of time and space upon 
 some small apex of her submerged soul that sank 
 deep into a cosmic iceberg floating in the sea of 
 infinity. So she was vastly more concerned about 
 bumping into other icebergs and freezing to them 
 spiritually, as it were, than she was about the area 
 of reflection in the mundane sun. The Doctor, 
 however, held a low opinion of the iceberg theory. 
 He was devoting himself with some degree of con 
 sistency and great enthusiasm to going to hell by 
 the drug route. He seemed to have no time for 
 Lalla Rookh and her cosmic theories. 
 
 So Mrs. Nixon went floating about as a goddess 
 in her copious crinoline oversoul, touching a num 
 ber of things that in reality did not exist! And 
 the Nixon children s noses needed more or less at 
 tention, and their shoes went unsoled, and their 
 little breeches were often sadly neglected. Now 
 a handsome woman and no one ever held that 
 her transcendental rigging made her the less hand 
 some or dimmed in the slightest the gorgeous beef- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 53 
 
 steak dinners she gave to the Professor s Ion Club 
 a handsome woman who goes about in the seas 
 of infinity, sailing mostly with the hatches down 
 and scanning the lower currents of the universe 
 for submarine craft, is liable before she knows it 
 to be flying at the masthead of her ship, as a sig 
 nal, a palpable and material petticoat, and waving 
 it at such trousers as may heave in sight. For it s 
 the way of all flesh! 
 
 The person who considers too seriously the ca 
 prices of his astral arrangements is playing danger 
 ously near his emotions, and that is a slippery play 
 ground. 
 
 " I can t resist her," cried Elsie as the big, beau 
 tiful creature in a Paris street gown swept out of 
 the office after leaving with the society reporter 
 the programme of the Monday Music Club. 
 " Charley, I simply can t resist her. She comes 
 in here and kisses me and hugs me like a soft, per 
 fumed, upholstered bear, and she holds my hand 
 and makes love to me. And, Charley, I m going 
 to propose to her and elope with her if you don t 
 keep her away ! " 
 
 The advertising solicitor looked at the reporter 
 a moment and shook his head sadly : " It s tough, 
 
54 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 isn t it, Elsie?" He paused a moment and put 
 his hand across her desk and began: "Elsie, 
 Elsie " 
 
 " Don t you come round here Elsieing me, 
 Charley, at one-thirty, with the copy hook sticking 
 up as bare as Pike s Peak and three machines go- 
 ing." 
 
 He tossed his head and rose, saying as he went: 
 " All right, have it your way, Miss Porcupine. 
 You don t have to throw your quills at " 
 
 " Say, Charley, what do you think? " she called 
 as she looked over the programme Mrs. Nixon 
 had laid down. "They ve discovered Jim!" 
 To his lifting eyebrows she answered: "Why, 
 our Jim fighting Jim, the railroad reporter 
 the Monday Music Club has discovered Jim s voice 
 and they ve got him on the programme ! " 
 
 " No. You don t mean it ! " 
 
 "Well, here it is, big as life," and she read: 
 " Violets James Lawton. Fancy old Jim as 
 a society bud! Oh, me! Oh, my! Now, who 
 do you suppose? " 
 
 " Well," smiled the advertising solicitor wick 
 edly, " if it s your goddess lady and she tries any 
 of her endearing young charms on Jim, she ll 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 55 
 
 live to regret it. Jim s been eating raw beef and 
 chewing barbed wire for a year now to get in train 
 ing to lick the yardmaster, and Jim s not up to 
 much coddling." 
 
 He was a rather gaudily but poorly dressed and 
 highly overbrushed young man who sat crossing 
 and recrossing his legs in the big living-room of 
 Longheath waiting for the Monday Music Club 
 to assemble. He did not know that two-thirty 
 meant three-fifteen with the music club. He was 
 not temperamental. He was used to making 
 trains and reading time-tables, and as he talked to 
 the hostess he gripped his roll of sheet music as 
 though it were his one hope of safety. She tried 
 to talk art, and told him she had heard his voice 
 had a dramatic quality. He grinned and won 
 dered what Elsie would say when he told her that; 
 also he wondered what a dramatic quality was. 
 She knew it would be half an hour before the club 
 assembled, so she tried to coax him to sing and 
 in coaxing discovered that he didn t know one note 
 from another and that he sang entirely by ear. 
 
 Finally, after she had let him tell two or three 
 stories about the social jealousies of Mrs. First 
 Assistant Night-Wiper Martin and Mrs. Second 
 
56 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Assistant Cinderpit-Cleaner Gordon, who had se 
 cret ambitions that some day their husbands would 
 be conductors, she wheedled him to the piano and, 
 finding what he could sing, began to tempt him 
 with wisps of accompaniment. Then for a mo 
 ment he let out his big voice the great bull-roar 
 that he released in the press-room at night when he 
 and the printers were washing up for the day, and 
 it jarred the bric-a-brac noticeably, and more. 
 Mrs. Nixon began gripping the keys of the piano 
 as though they were the neck cords of her sweetest 
 enemy. Also she lifted up what voice she had and 
 sang a sort of tenor-alto until the tears came into 
 her eyes. 
 
 When the members of the club began to arrive 
 Jim kept standing by the piano, hoping she would 
 ask him to sing again, and she had to lead him 
 away by the arm. The membership of the club 
 was composed largely of women; two men from 
 the music department of the college came, and Jim 
 sniffed at them and all but growled. He sat in the 
 far corner where his hostess had put him, with his 
 deep-black eyes watching her, craning his head be 
 times to see her, holding his eyes on the door when 
 she left the room and gazing intently at her hands 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 57 
 
 and arms as she came to him with a cup of tea. 
 He took the tea, told her how the girl at the High 
 Sign Lunch counter wouldn t give the switchmen 
 saucers for fear they d pour their coffee in the sau 
 cers and disgust all the swell trade, and then, being 
 on his feet, he followed her much like a dog all 
 over the room, and she could not get rid of him 
 even if she really had cared to. But she was salv 
 ing him in her over-soul, and it was a joyful sen 
 sation. 
 
 She literally had to put him out of the house, 
 following the departure of the last lingering guest. 
 Young Mr. Lawton lounged leisurely down the 
 winding walk and, seeing the Colonel working with 
 a pruning hook among the trees, sauntered over 
 to him and called : " Say, Colonel, swell joint you 
 got here. I hadn t never been here but once 
 that night the Prof was electrocuted, and I didn t 
 get to see much of it then." 
 
 The Colonel looked the youth over and laughed : 
 " How did you get out the front way? " 
 
 " Sang my way in and sang my way out. I m 
 a Tyrolean warbler all right, Colonel, didn t you 
 know about that? Well, the pride of the whole 
 house is papa s babee, eh, Colonel? " 
 
58 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 The pruning shears snapped and the old man 
 moved away: " Gwan wid ye, Jimmy Lawton. 
 I knew your father when he was caterin in a livery 
 stable and yer mother when you could hear her 
 singin over the dishes at the Astor House half a 
 mile away. You in society! Music, heavenly 
 maid, is hard up for company! " 
 
 Jim told this ten minutes later at the office and 
 we had a laugh about it. But after we had en 
 dured three days of what they did at the musicale, 
 how they dressed, what they had to eat, what they 
 said, why and how and when they said it, with the 
 words " swell women " jangling interminably 
 through his talk over and over, morning, noon and 
 night, until it was plain that Jim was getting a fixed 
 idea, Elsie called the big reporter in and preached 
 at him : 
 
 " Cut it out, Jimmy; they re not your kind of 
 people. You can t trot in that class; it ll only 
 bring you trouble. They ll listen to you sing and 
 laugh at your manners. Don t go up there again." 
 But the flush that she saw in his cheeks and the 
 fire in his eyes could not be quenched. 
 
 It was a sad day for the Globe office when 
 Jimmy took to society. After three months at the 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 59 
 
 college music department, where they taught him 
 to open his mouth and to slip in extra syllables 
 in his singing words by way of emotional emphasis, 
 the head waitress at the railroad eating house saw 
 that there was no chance for her. He would hurry 
 over his beat like a hound, picking up bits of news, 
 then scurry back to his music lessons. He quit 
 chumming with the head pit man in the roundhouse 
 and the switch shanty knew him no more. But he 
 lowered no flag to the yardmaster, and still told the 
 reporters in the office that some day the yard- 
 master would appear with what Jimmy called the 
 " fixin s " on him. Jim held his job, of course ; but 
 that was all. He invested his substance in evening 
 clothes as gorgeous as his Sunday suit was gaudy, 
 and Elsie thought she could see the eye of Lalla 
 Rookh in the design of Jimmy s de-luxe regalia. 
 It had a vague European air that was foreign to 
 New Raynham. 
 
 But they certainly were helping the young man s 
 voice at the college, and in the spring he had a 
 solo part in the oratorio at the musical festival and 
 bellowed most feelingly through several hours of 
 pure music. In the town s society, where Jimmy 
 often, like little Tom Tucker, sang for his supper, 
 
60 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 he was known as Mrs. Nixon s " Golden Musical 
 Discovery," and the years between their ages made 
 it easy for him to get to heel without attracting 
 much comment. If only she had not kept such 
 a tight leash on him ! But that was the trouble ; 
 he would sing and do his parlour tricks only on her 
 order; indeed he would accept only such invitations 
 as came through her. She played all his accom 
 paniments and took him to the city to hear grand 
 opera. She bought quires of music of a kind new 
 to the town, which had become fairly used to 
 Wagner; and at the Monday Music Club she 
 would set Jimmy to barking on the new scores 
 tuneless, formless, and often inharmonious musi 
 cal chatter, full of emotional yelps and groans and 
 moans and complainings that shocked Colonel 
 Longford into language. 
 
 As for the Professor, he would often stand be 
 hind his glasses, looking rather than listening. 
 
 And thus slowly Lalla Rookh sapped out 
 Jimmy Lawton s soul. For a time perhaps for 
 nearly a year the youth s heart was lava. And 
 she let him glow and blew upon the fire all her 
 airs and graces. She had to struggle to keep him 
 to heel; he was forever about to paw her and rub 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 61 
 
 against her. But she was wise and he was young. 
 Then came the day that she wished for, when the 
 lava vaporised and Jimmy was all but mad. In 
 his vapid state she could handle him with a breath. 
 He was the soul of devotion, and no one knew 
 how completely she had captured him. But the 
 old Colonel suspected and was wroth. He used 
 to cover up his head with his handkerchief and pre 
 tend to sleep in the living-room when Lalla Rookh 
 and Jimmy were digging away at their music. 
 The old man saw the youth s eyes at such times; 
 the poor fellow s hands and feet were in a deep 
 submission. But he saw his daughter s eyes, and 
 her hands were still free, and once he startled the 
 singers with a mighty oath as he cried: " Let 
 that boy s hair alone, I tell you. He s got a comb, 
 Lalla; he can take care of it! " And after that 
 when he pretended to sleep they stuck to the score. 
 When the two were alone Lalla Rookh filled 
 Jimmy s head full of tall talk of their souls. And 
 she built up for him an elaborate fable about the 
 union of their spirits on another plane. She read 
 Emerson to him fancy Jimmy taking on Emer 
 son and Wordsworth and Jean Paul ! But he 
 didn t even blink at it, but looked dog-like into her 
 
62 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 eyes and heard her soft, purring voice in an ec 
 stasy. 
 
 Even if the Colonel alone had been watching 
 the young man he would have had trouble enough 
 in store for him; for the Colonel was hoarding his 
 wrath. But gradually he also noticed that when 
 ever Jimmy was at Longheath Doctor Kurtlin s 
 new red racing car would come panting by, always 
 once, sometimes twice, and occasionally three and 
 four times. The Colonel had nothing to do but to 
 fumble his cane and watch. Perhaps the others 
 did not notice what was happening. But when he 
 saw the Doctor s car whizzing past the house so 
 regularly the old man was distraught with fear. 
 
 A pitiful figure in the town was Doctor Kurtlin. 
 His practice was going; his clean, trim body was 
 slumping; his ruddy skin was reddening; his fine 
 eyes were dilating and glazing, and the fires of 
 the pit gleamed from every window of his soul. 
 And the Colonel saw it and hesitated, for it is the 
 habit of age to wait; and the Professor saw it and 
 was wounded with a deep shame. 
 
 And Jimmy Lawton saw it, and, knowing what 
 the Globe office knew, he snarled at the Doctor, 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 63 
 
 and bristled by him when they passed on the street 
 and met each other s sidelong glance of hate. 
 
 Thus stood the clock when Professor Nixon 
 started to Cambridge to receive his degree. He 
 left Lalla Rookh and Jimmy and the children at 
 the dinner table munching nuts, and the Colonel 
 took the Professor to the seven-forty train in Mrs. 
 Nixon s electric runabout. When the children had 
 cleared out, Jimmy and Mrs. Nixon went to the 
 veranda. Down in the railroad yards and in 
 all his philandering Jimmy never took his ear from 
 the voice of the yards he heard the four long 
 screams of the eastbound limited. " There she 
 comes, right on the dot ! She ll be pulling out in 
 three minutes." But before his voice had paused 
 he heard from the yards the hoarse hoots of a 
 great freight mogul in warning or distress. A com 
 motion followed and a little switch engine in the 
 west end of the yards began to clamour and the 
 switch engine in the east end made reply. Then 
 he heard her bell clanging as she hurried westward. 
 Ten years of training told him there was trouble 
 in the yards, and he went to the telephone and 
 called up the switch shanty. 
 
64 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Anything serious? " asked Mrs. Nixon as the 
 young man came back to his porch chair. 
 
 " Oh, nothing to speak of two or three 
 freight cars are ditched at Number seven switch 
 down in the west yards." He grinned. " Grief 
 for that boarding-house gladiator who goes round 
 with yardmaster on his cap. I told him that 
 switch was blinky." 
 
 In due course they heard the electric come up 
 and disappear in the garage at the back of the 
 house, and Lalla Rookh heard her father s step 
 in the living-room behind them, and when he had 
 fumbled over the evening paper she heard him 
 mount the stairs. It was a soft June night and 
 her heart was hungry for excitement, the kind of 
 excitement that sometimes gnawed at her vitals like 
 a poison. She sat in her swinging chair and played 
 upon Jimmy with all her wiles. She thought she 
 heard her father move across the room behind 
 her and lowered her voice. A little later she went 
 into the room and turned off all the lights save one 
 in the rear, a low reading lamp before a large 
 table. It shed a respectable twilight in the great 
 room, and when she heard her father moving about 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 65 
 
 in the room directly above her she let all her devils 
 out to play. 
 
 The horrible roar of the Doctor s racing car in 
 the street attracted her attention, but did not divert 
 her from her feline joy in the game with the mouse. 
 
 Again the automobile roared past, and again, 
 the snarling, whining devil in the hood lifting a 
 fearsome voice. In the roar she had to lift her 
 voice to be heard for an instant, and she did not 
 realise that behind her, sitting at the reading lamp, 
 her husband was writhing in his soul as he heard 
 her false, overstrained voice and felt upon his 
 heart the searing feet of all the devils which she 
 played with so wantonly. 
 
 He had been sitting there a long time, it seemed 
 to him, waiting for his delayed train. The voice 
 of the woman the fondling, intense, excited 
 voice of the woman, and the hoarse, suppressed 
 man s voice in broken phrases finally had driven 
 him mad. He tiptoed back to his laboratory and 
 returned, bringing in one hand a beaker filled with 
 yellowish, cloudy liquid and in the other a little 
 white clod. He sat for a time balancing the clod 
 over the glass loosely in his fingers, and her voice 
 
66 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 purred on. A child s shrill, gay, pillow-fighting 
 voice came to him from a distant bedroom. Then 
 he laid down the potassium cyanide gently on the 
 table and sat listening half listlessly with closed 
 eyes to the dialogue on the veranda. He dropped 
 his head on his arm and his body shook in sobs as 
 he pushed with a blind hand the glass and little 
 white lump to a farther corner of the table. 
 
 Again he heard outside the roar of the Doctor s 
 car ; then the car slowed down and he heard it come 
 snorting up the driveway to the veranda. 
 
 He was on his feet as his wife screamed, and he 
 heard a scuffle and a shot and saw the flash through 
 the window curtain, high up in the air, as though 
 the revolver had been pointed toward the ceiling. 
 
 " Bring him in, Jim, bring him indoors. Don t ! 
 The whole neighbourhood is ears ! " It was Lalla 
 Rookh whimpering, and a moment later through 
 the door came two male forms, clinched. In the 
 great, muscular arms of the youth the spent little 
 Doctor was struggling feebly, his cocaine courage 
 oozing and his strength all gone. At the noise of 
 the shot and the scuffle the Colonel had come limp 
 ing down the stairs with his cane, and stood behind 
 the group that faced the Professor. The old 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 67 
 
 man saw the hulking body of the Professor, half 
 risen, half crouching, with his hands out like a 
 bear s paws; he saw the wizened, trembling, bent 
 body of the Doctor reaching futilely up for his 
 pistol in Jimmy s hand, and the canine teeth of 
 Jimmy all but snapping. 
 
 The old man, with eyes blazing and bloodshot, 
 stood gathering strength, then broke the silence 
 with a wail a long " Ah." Then he spoke : 
 
 " Ah, Lally, Lally, ye re the evil spirit of the 
 glen, the witch of Bryan s Moor, the very same, 
 the witch herself ! " He stood panting in the 
 shamed silence and went on: " And every man 
 that s come to your bower is turned to beast. 
 Look at them here, the little jackal and this dirty 
 dog and yonder great ragin bear. My God, 
 Lally, is this what ye ve made of your life the 
 witch of Bryan s Moor!" When he began to 
 cry the spell broke. 
 
 The Doctor, wiggling weakly out of the youth s 
 strong arm, sank face down on a sofa, moaning 
 miserably. Fear had taken the colour from 
 Jimmy s face ; he was in a strange place and could 
 not find himself. The Professor saw the woman, 
 in a flash of horror, looking at the beaker of hydro- 
 
68 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 cloric acid. He pointed mutely at the white lump 
 at the other side of the table and cried: 
 
 " And this was to finish us both all three 
 probably! " His face still was drawn and pain- 
 wracked as he went on: " That is the beast your 
 enchantment made of me, Lalla ! " 
 
 The Colonel s body began to straighten as his 
 spent strength came back. He turned in rising 
 rage to the shame-ridden woman, whose bare 
 shoulders and neck were reddening. She bent her 
 eyes to the floor and would have left the room had 
 not the Colonel barred the way. Wrath was 
 burning a mounting, beating flame in his mas 
 sive old head, over the face, through the veins at 
 the temples up into the thin, soft, shaggy hair. 
 His voice was choked as he began speaking, but it 
 rang out fiercely as he went on : 
 
 " Maybe to see the devil in yer heart will help 
 you to cast him out and clean you I dunno 
 I dunno! But, Lally gel, this is the secret of 
 your damned witchery it is yer hellish selfish 
 ness. That s what turned em all to beasts about 
 you, yer black-hearted selfishness. I that begot 
 ye, know ye, ye witch of Bryan s Moor ! It s for 
 yerself, yerself, yer own pleasure, is all yer philan- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 69 
 
 thropies and all yer philanderin all fer yerself I 
 Ye have taken and taken and taken and give 
 nothing. Ye were too selfish in all yer lovin to 
 give the boys even a bit of a kiss by way of diver 
 sion not one small nibblin s of a kiss would ye 
 give em, Lally Rookh, and for why? I ll tell ye. 
 Not that ye were too good and didn t want it a 
 thousand times and more; but ye were too greedy 
 to call yourself a good and virtuous woman, too 
 damn selfish for the bit of a kiss for your own 
 beasties that ye made with the witchery of yer own 
 greedy guts of selfishness. Ye never loved any of 
 them, not even Gregory here ; but ye like the com 
 forts of home. It s a pleasant thing to have a day- 
 cint home and a kind man about; so ye come run- 
 nin here when yer enchanted menagerie gets too 
 hot for you. Ah-h-h-h," he wailed, " and now 
 that I m near the great White Door I m fay I m 
 fay and can see it." 
 
 And his great high voice was ringing clearly with 
 no tremor or break as he shook his snow-white 
 mane and cried: " She s my own begotten flesh 
 and I know how to handle her ! " 
 
 He stepped to her, waving his cane, and three 
 men stood by and saw the stick come whistling 
 
70 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 down on the woman s bare back and shoulders. 
 The white welt reddened, then oozed blood, and 
 no one moved. Nor did the woman cry. 
 
 The Colonel stood looking at her a minute as 
 she shook with sobs. Then the old man turned 
 to the two terror-smitten intruders and brandished 
 his stick, calling: 
 
 " Clear out! Clear out of here the both of 
 ye ! " A moment later he left the husband and 
 wife alone. 
 
 As he looked back he saw the man coming back 
 into the Professor s troubled face, and on the land 
 ing of the stairs he saw him bending over her as 
 she sat shamed and broken. The husband s face 
 was full of tears. He was covering her bruised 
 flesh. Then from afar the Colonel heard, and 
 knew the others heard, a child s lonely, frightened 
 voice, calling: 
 
 " Mamma! Mamma! " And again the cry: 
 
 " Mamma!" 
 
 * * 
 
 * 
 
 Like a thousand secrets that came to the office, 
 we knew the story of that night. Partly from 
 Jimmy we had it in terror; partly through Archi- 
 
A SOCIAL RECTANGLE 71 
 
 medes from the Colonel; partly from the very air 
 that gathers such things like dew. It was one hot 
 August night, when a cool breeze was just begin- 
 ing to stir the elm trees of the town, and Elsie was 
 helping the advertising solicitor paste up his 
 monthly string and make his monthly report. 
 
 They were talking of Jimmy poor Jimmy 
 who was coming in agony out of his enchantment 
 back to the head waitress in the eating house, and 
 back to his chum in the cinder pit. It was Elsie 
 who spoke of the goddess of Longheath. " She s 
 a strange woman a strange woman!" mused 
 the girl. 
 
 " A strange woman," repeated Charley, sighing; 
 " and * her feet go down to death/ 
 
 " Oh, well, Charley, I don t know. So far as 
 that goes, so are we all strange women some of 
 the time all of us. But, Charley," cried the 
 woman gently, " one of us was chosen as the first 
 witness to the Great Resurrection ! " 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 
 PART I 
 
 BOYCE KILWORTH was a kind of congenital 
 Prominent Citizen. His mother it was and 
 that the year before Boyce came into the world 
 who rose in New Raynham Colony before the 
 Civil War and stamped out the Fourierism that 
 Enoch Thacher and the Williams College group 
 were fostering. The whole notion of communism 
 upset Mrs. Kilworth s gorge. " Not that I ob 
 ject to their free lovin ," she was wont to say, 
 " for they only talk about that, and ain t got quite 
 the courage for it; but what I do oppose, and shall 
 ever pray against, is this givin up of the work of 
 our hands to a lot of lazy louts that want to sit 
 around in them phalanxes and talk about what 
 their predilections of labour is, without strikin a 
 lick of work. I ve got the Bible for my property, 
 and I m goin to keep it." And she did. When 
 baby Boyce was born, Mrs. Kilworth s property 
 
 72 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 73 
 
 consisted of one town lot segregated from the com 
 munal holdings, one rangy roan cow of long- 
 horned ancestry, and one brown mound in the new, 
 bleak, treeless graveyard on the gravel hill above 
 the town, wherein rested the body of the large, 
 placid, amiable person who had agreed with every 
 one and who was Boyce Kilworth s father. With 
 the cow and certain pigs that lived on the 
 skimmed milk and the slops of her kitchen, Mrs. 
 Kilworth founded her fortune. With the cow s in 
 crease and the pig s progeny she established a 
 boarding house of great respectability, and when 
 little Boyce was almost through the common 
 schools Mrs. Kilworth, being of an acquisitive na 
 ture, married her star boarder, the Rev. Winthrop 
 Hale, a town father. He was one of the Wil 
 liams College group, who, when the town com 
 pany s property was divided, had accepted as his 
 allotment twenty acres of raw prairie half a mile 
 from the town pump, all nicely divided into town 
 lots, the concrete representation of all the fine 
 dreams and high hopes of an impetuous youth. 
 With the town lots and her star boarder, Mrs. 
 Kilworth also acquired one step-son, Caleb, aged 
 five, whom she took up as her cross. But if Caleb 
 
74 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 was her cross, little Boyce, ten years older, was his 
 mother s crown. And after Winthrop Hale had 
 wandered off, rather inadvertently and entirely in 
 testate, to his supernal reward, Boyce Kilworth s 
 mother died triumphant in the blessed knowledge 
 that her son, just turning twenty, would have a 
 little property in his own right, and was almost 
 ready to run for a county office of honour and 
 profit. 
 
 Two fundamental principles she had dinned into 
 him until they were part of his nature : First, you 
 must be respectable ; second, you must get on in the 
 world ("on," being translated, meant prop 
 erty your own property). When as a youth 
 in his teens he had prepared the clerk s roll with 
 bogus names and had been an accessory before the 
 fact of the ballot box stuffing that brought New 
 Raynham the county seat, sympathy for him as an 
 exemplary son of an exemplary mother kept the 
 rival town from pushing the case against him. A 
 few years later when it was found that, as county 
 treasurer, he was lending the county s money and 
 appropriating the interest to himself, the fact that 
 the loans he made were good loans, all to respect 
 able people, and all paid in full, gave Judge Lad- 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 75 
 
 gett of the district bench an excuse for quashing 
 the indictment against Boyce Kilworth. And not 
 one session did he miss as superintendent of his 
 Sunday School while the action was pending 
 against him. Always he was respectable; always 
 he got on. He went from the county treasurer s 
 office into a bank that he owned within three years 
 after he helped to start it, and from the first day 
 of his ownership until the day he died he was Emi 
 nently Respectable. 
 
 Which was more than ever could be said of his 
 step-brother, Caleb Hale. The Winthrops and 
 the Hales took the orphaned Caleb back to New 
 England, sent him through Phillips Exeter Aca 
 demy, schooled him at Harvard, and then, having 
 visions of the wealth that Winthrop Hale had left 
 in the town lots in the growing village of New 
 Raynham, they shipped young Hale west, with his 
 Harvard degree and a ticket to the scene of his 
 father s glory. The pious letters of his step 
 brother had built Caleb s hopes high. But when 
 he sought to realise on his hopes, he found that a 
 perfectly balanced statement of the assets and lia 
 bilities, income and expenditures, gains and losses, 
 of the Hale estate was all that Boyce Kilworth 
 
76 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 had to show for their joint patrimony. And the 
 impetuous, unparliamentary language of youth, 
 rashly cast at his step-brother, was all the satisfac 
 tion Caleb Hale had in return for his loss that 
 and a rather frigid esteem for all Sunday-school 
 superintendents. 
 
 But Boyce Kilworth made a point an excla 
 mation point, as it were of publicly forgiving 
 Caleb for his sneers and slurs, and went on suf 
 fering in silence and selling the Winthrop Hale 
 lots in secret in Joel Ladgett s name, thus showing 
 to a sinful world how the righteous prosper. 
 Young Charley Herrington at one time had more 
 money than Boyce Kilworth, but never was so 
 Eminently Respectable. Colonel Longford made 
 fun of Boyce Kilworth s celluloid collars, his 
 ready-made ties, his clothes five years behind the 
 mode, his occasional lapses into have-sawisms of 
 speech and manners; but with all Colonel Long 
 ford s learning, with all his ease and grace of bear 
 ing he did serve toddy to his guests, he did let 
 his past due paper accumulate in the banks, occa 
 sionally was sued, and was suspected of bearing 
 something more than a widower s gallantry in his 
 attentions to the sex. So the Colonel was not 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 77 
 
 Eminently Respectable. And as for Boyce s step 
 brother, Caleb Hale, for all his New England 
 lineage, for all his exact sartorial regularity, for 
 all his Harvard degree, he gambled gambled 
 at cards while the whole town was debauching 
 itself gambling in real estate and that was the 
 end of him. But Boyce Kilworth got on with 
 Eminent Respectability. 
 
 Naturally, when Boyce Kilworth married he 
 married property. " He worships it," laughed 
 Caleb Hale, comfortably drunk for the wedding; 
 " so why not marry it? And if he gets a pretty 
 girl in the bargain well and good." She was 
 a pretty girl, was Matilda Venable, and it was she 
 who gave him his first taste for omnipotence. 
 He picked out all the furniture for their home 
 the kitchen furniture, the table linen, the bedding, 
 the carpets for the front room and bought her 
 kitchen apron with the outfit. After that he 
 bought her dresses, bought her underwear, and 
 when the babies began to come he sent home the 
 muslin and linen from which she made the little 
 things after patterns Boyce selected. And, be 
 ing a banker the only banker in the town with 
 out a past and having developed a talent as a 
 
78 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Providence for his family, the town came under 
 his sphere of influence and he became the Provi 
 dence of New Raynham; this before he was thirty- 
 five. 
 
 Boyce Kilworth was the Commercial Club; 
 gradually he assumed the functions of his party 
 conventions in the town and county and congres 
 sional district; he built the Methodist Church, 
 bought the organ paying his share of the bills, 
 naturally, but not much more was chairman of 
 the Public Library Committee, president of the 
 Humane Society, chief stockholder by virtue of his 
 promoting ability of the Brick and Tile Company, 
 the Canning Company, the Fair Association, and 
 even the Gun Club. And Boyce Kilworth made all 
 these things go. He was tireless, and as he grew 
 into his late thirties he became effective. In other 
 towns there was a general complaint that the Com 
 mercial Club did nothing. In other towns men 
 were forever buying stock in enterprises that were 
 supposed to help the town, and the enterprises 
 failed. In other towns near New Raynham the 
 Committee on Industries got nothing more impor 
 tant than a coffin factory or a planing mill or a 
 buggy and carriage works miserable little two 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 79 
 
 or three men affairs that always had to be stimu 
 lated by assessments of the stockholders, and then 
 finally moved away. But the things that Boyce 
 Kilworth brought to New Raynham thrived and 
 stayed. And incidentally it was found that Boyce 
 owned either a majority of the stock or a con 
 trolling minority, and reaped his reward in sub 
 stantial things. He horned young Charley Her- 
 rington so completely out of the local financial 
 situation that Herrington took his talents to other 
 fields and only used the Herrington bank as a fi 
 nancial coaling station. So the two financiers 
 hated each other with a low, steady voltage, lied 
 casually about each other, and sneered at each 
 other in private, letting it go at these amiable 
 amenities. 
 
 Three little Kilworth girls in very stiff pigtails 
 and very stiff petticoats and very high noses rode 
 with their fond parents to Sunday School every 
 Sunday morning in a family surrey of great price. 
 A tall, pompous, heavy-jowled, bearded man was 
 Boyce Kilworth in his thirties; black as to whis 
 kers, and ponderous; black as to hair and eyes, 
 deep voiced, slow-spoken, and sententious. " Yell 
 at Brother Boyce," hooted Caleb Hale, " and if he 
 
8o GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 forgets himself he ll say I seen. So he takes it 
 slow." 
 
 Profoundly impressed with the conventions was 
 Boyce Kilworth; vastly, elaborately, and creak- 
 ingly polite was he to " the ladies," and all women 
 were "ladies" with him. He gave the impres 
 sion of a knight in a full stock of armour, shelf 
 goods, and general hardware when a woman hove 
 in sight, and with the stiffness of his bowing and 
 scraping one felt that his armour was new and 
 needed oil. At home Mrs. Kilworth lived in an 
 attitude of devotion, with hands clasped on her 
 bosom, when Boyce was about. In the bank, 
 when they heard his keys jingling in the back door 
 at seven-thirty every morning, the bank began 
 to turn on its stools and chairs, and ledger leaves 
 began to rustle audibly, and in town no one cared 
 to tempt Providence by a jibe no one but Caleb 
 Hale. 
 
 In the midst of the shabbily pretentious lobby 
 of the Astor House was a double-faced writing 
 desk; and, dividing the faces of the desk, rose 
 a gaudy glass screen. In the screen were various 
 advertisements of New Raynham business houses, 
 most of the advertisements sadly out of date, 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 81 
 
 and none of the advertisements so sadly out of date 
 as the one announcing " Caleb Hale, Stockman 
 Dealer in Cattle, Sheep, and Hogs," giving the 
 number of his " office " in the Herrington block. 
 For it was known of all the town that the " cattle " 
 (and he did deal in cattle), the "sheep" (and 
 many a poor sheep followed blindly its leader to 
 Caleb s shears), and finally the "hogs" (many 
 greedy swine looking for something for nothing) , 
 were of the two-legged kind. But before Caleb 
 Hale recognised the irony of his sign he had trav 
 elled a long and devious way into the far country. 
 At first as a youth fresh from Harvard, with a 
 seven-devil lust for betting on things, taking gay 
 chances on anything from an election to a funeral 
 procession, Caleb Hale did busy himself as a spec 
 ulator in live stock. But it was the speculation, 
 riot the live stock, that interested him; he bought 
 cattle in such large quantities that for a few years 
 he was known as " Trainload Hale." The big 
 winnings and the big losses built up a passion in 
 him for gambling, and he began keeping a poker 
 table with its equipment in his office for his friends 
 among the stockmen. His office was a loafing 
 place for stock-growers from a dozen counties, 
 
82 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and when the market game grew dull and dreary 
 Caleb added roulette for the diversion of his 
 friends. Gradually he found that poker offered 
 more excitement than stock buying, so he let busi 
 ness slump. In the beginning he excused himself 
 because the market was hysterical and unprofitable. 
 At first he had a pretence that he allowed no one 
 but stock buyers in his room and of course a 
 few particular friends. But as the mania for 
 gambling held him tighter and tighter, his " par 
 ticular friends " increased, and the time came when 
 the right kind of a knock would make any man 
 Caleb Hale s " particular friend. * And only the 
 stockman s wide white hat, the stockman s flannel 
 shirt, and the stockman s grey tweed clothes of the 
 period gave Caleb Hale an excuse for keeping up 
 his pretence that he was a stockman. But even 
 then he kept the daily telegraphic report of the 
 stock market posted above his faro table. Dap 
 per, smooth-shaven, flaxen-haired; of mobile fea 
 tures, and with a quick, sensitive blue eye ; a good 
 boxer, a welterweight athlete; fond of books and 
 Colonel Longford; fond of horses and Charley 
 Herrington; fond of women and constrained to 
 " neither east nor west nor border nor breed nor 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 83 
 
 birth " in his choice; fond of a flute in a summer s 
 twilight, and patron royal of those bands of stroll 
 ing Italians, with harp and violin and cello, that 
 once infested Western America; quick tempered; 
 soft-spoken and merciless in a game such was 
 Caleb Hale at thirty the Caleb Hale who 
 wooed Vashti Sellers, the compositor in the 
 Globe-Times office. Wooing was no novelty for 
 Vashti. Her love affairs the office counted as 
 the sands of the sea. But this particular court 
 ship had the gorgeous distinction of being the 
 scandal of the Globe office. The other girl prin 
 ters with fathers and mothers to warn them were 
 inclined to draw their skirts about them a little at 
 Vashti in the midst of this particular young dream 
 of love. The foreman s wife only a year from 
 the composing room herself tried to talk to 
 Vashti about Caleb, to tell her of half a dozen 
 other girls who had flown into the light of his 
 countenance like moths. But she would shake her 
 head and smile sometimes, and shake her head 
 and cry at other times, but always would shake 
 her head. And just when the rattle of his red- 
 wheeled cart near where Vashti lived, was waking 
 the neighbours far after midnight, just when her 
 
84 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 printer s proofs by day were so full of errors that 
 it took more time to correct the proofs than to set 
 the type, just as the stones of her relations with 
 Caleb Hale had become so common that she found 
 herself walking alone on the streets, just as the 
 spring rush of work was making it almost im 
 possible to discharge her on any but an obvious 
 pretext Caleb Hale married her. And he mar 
 ried her largely because she was a challenge. He 
 took the bet that her red lips, her pink cheeks, 
 her gorgeous figure, her bright, animal eyes 
 in truth, the bet that the whole physical lure of 
 her made with his common sense : That he would 
 be miserable with her when he got her. And be 
 cause he had made the bet with his eyes open, be 
 cause he knew the value of the stake, he held it a 
 point of honour never to welsh on that bet and 
 never to whine about it. Their baby was born 
 for their Christmas present, and that bound the 
 bargain with Caleb Hale. Their life together 
 was long, stormy, often tempestuous, but Caleb 
 Hale s soul never listed to port and never sheathed 
 a sail. If the gaudy plumage she affected, the 
 rampant colours that she loved, the pretensions of 
 the clothes she piled on, ever sickened him, no 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 85 
 
 one not even Colonel Longford in the most 
 intimate moments of their boon companionship 
 ever had a hint of Caleb s disgust or the remote 
 basis for a guess at it. It may be said in passing, 
 however, that the colonel, in his hours of ease at 
 the Globe office, used to indicate that he was living 
 in lively anticipation of the sad day when Caleb 
 would have to go out and kill some man as a slight 
 return for Vashti s foolishness. 
 
 At first the Hales lived in one of the sharp- 
 gabled, bow-windowed, turreted, wooden houses in 
 a row far out among the saplings where Caleb 
 could have a garden, which was his heart s desire. 
 As they paid their rent a year in advance and made 
 their own repairs, and as Caleb was planting a 
 maze of shrubs and hardy annuals about the place, 
 improving it greatly, the complaint about the in 
 vasion of the neighbourhood by an undesirable 
 family achieved no result with the agent of the 
 Boyce Investment Company at the Traders Na 
 tional Bank. Caleb Hale, moving among men as 
 a gay young blade with a past that projected itself 
 well into the future, had felt little of society s dis 
 approval. He knew that the neighbours had com 
 plained when he moved among them with his bride, 
 
86 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 but it amused him, and Vashti was too busy with 
 her grand furniture and her baby clothes to care 
 much what the neighbours thought. But by the 
 time the baby was two years old Caleb Hale began 
 to feel the prick of the neighbourhood s disap 
 proval. Vashti complained that when she was 
 wheeling the little one along the sidewalk mothers 
 called in their children; that when she took little 
 Dick out for a walk, and he toddled into a neigh 
 bour s yard or ran away up the steps of a neigh 
 bouring house, doors were barred against him ; no 
 kindly hand led him back to her. He was put off 
 the porch and started home, and left to his own 
 devices. A day came when Vashti told Caleb that 
 a child in the block had referred to the little fellow 
 as " the gambler s boy." So twice in a year Caleb 
 left a garden and moved his household goods, but 
 each neighbourhood was like the other neighbour 
 hood, and as the child grew older the father be 
 gan to fear that the little fellow would feel his 
 isolation. Caleb cluttered the child about with a 
 wilderness of toys toys that other children s 
 parents could not afford. But little Dick often 
 would lay them down to run vainly after the other 
 children, or, playing with the toys, would look 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 87 
 
 up to see a group of children looking at him in 
 envy, but askance. And Vashti grew petulant 
 and probably mean. So they wrangled man 
 and wife and the little fellow s heart was hurt. 
 Caleb, bound to his Puritan training, felt the 
 moral responsibility of parenthood upon him, and 
 began teaching little Dick the rudiments of a code. 
 But he had to gulp his own shortcomings that rose 
 within him, and his Yankee self-respect was 
 wounded. The low esteem in which he held his 
 step-brother had been a cherished jewel in his 
 moral crown until he saw the little pig-tailed Kil- 
 worth girls going by to Sunday School. In spite of 
 all his carping, he did want little Dick to go to Sun 
 day School. The Kilworth s could go to Sunday 
 School; little Dick in the nature of things did not 
 go to Sunday School; there was an inequality that 
 galled him. After a session with little Dick, an 
 swering the child s questions, and knowing that a 
 day would come when the growing child would be 
 ashamed to ask the questions that went to the quick 
 in the father s heart, it took three man s-size 
 drinks at the sideboard in his " office " to restore 
 Caleb Hale s equanimity. So he tried to pickle 
 a certain area of his self-respect in liquor, and the 
 
88 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 pickling roiled the soul of Vashti, who had no 
 idea of letting liquor get the better of her husband, 
 and as she was a strong woman beneath her vain 
 surface, Caleb Hale s way lay among thorns. 
 Men on Constitution Street said, " Hale is drink 
 ing too much." This hurt his standing among 
 men more than his profession hurt it. 
 
 It was a bright May morning, and late enough 
 for Colonel Longford, who was of a sedentary 
 habit, to be down on Constitution Street shed 
 ding the light of his fine Irish countenance on the 
 town, when Caleb Hale came hurrying along. Al 
 ways he walked as if he were going to some par 
 ticular place on an appointment a few minutes 
 overdue, but the Colonel knew better, and 
 stretched out the hook of a great arm and dragged 
 the little man into a group. 
 
 " Shake hands with Brother Boyce here, Cale," 
 roared the Colonel. " Another girl; four now 
 four queens: a pretty good hand to fill to, eh, 
 Cale?" 
 
 Kilworth reached down a cold hand, and the 
 gambler shook it with all the fervour of a man 
 weighing a pound of snakes. The banker looked 
 knowingly at the Colonel, and began: " Colonel 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 89 
 
 can t we get him to quit to get into some 
 other calling? " 
 
 Hale flushed angrily, and the Colonel put out a 
 quieting hand : 
 
 " Steady, Caleb steady, my boy," and being 
 encouraged, Kilworth let his soft, ingratiating 
 voice saw its way into the gambler s heart : 
 
 " Colonel, here we have a smart man a very 
 smart man, Colonel- who is wasting his time 
 and talents and worse, Colonel and worse. 
 Why, let me tell you, Colonel " 
 
 Caleb tried to wriggle out of the Colonel s 
 grasp, but the older man held him, while the 
 banker went on: " He s moved three times since 
 he was married -and why? It s his peculiar 
 business, Colonel, and the neighbours. That s 
 why. And moving costs money. I tell you it 
 cuts down his profits such as they are ! " 
 
 The Colonel looked a question, and Caleb, white 
 with wrath, stood trying to pierce the bland, dead- 
 black eyes of Kilworth, with the steel-blue eyes 
 that had shot terror into many another soul. 
 " Colonel," asked Kilworth unctuously, " can t we 
 get him into something more regular? " 
 
 Hale stuck out his lean jaw and replied: 
 
90 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " The difference between us, Brother Boyce, being, 
 of course, that I give them a chance, and you rob 
 them without it. I gamble, run a straight game, 
 take my percentage, win or lose, and you charge 
 two per cent, a month to the poor, seven per cent, 
 a year when you can, and six per cent, to the rich ! 
 I guess it s about an even break." 
 
 Kilworth turned away, calling back : " Talk to 
 him, Colonel you understand poor Caleb even 
 better than I." 
 
 Looking at the portly figure disappearing in the 
 bank door, Caleb Hale sneered: "The psalm- 
 singing, canting hypocrite ! " But the Colonel 
 said: " I m sorry, Cale, that it happened," as he 
 pressed the quivering arm he held kindly. " And 
 now, Cale, tell me what about that moving?" 
 
 " It s the boy, Colonel, and the long-nosed she- 
 pelicans; they re jealous of all his toys," returned 
 Hale bitterly. " They won t let their children 
 play with him." 
 
 The two men walked down the street, and the 
 Colonel said artlessly: " Pretty fine boy that 
 your little Dick." The father smiled acquiescence. 
 " Good blood in him ! Good New England 
 blood, Cale," the Colonel persisted. Then he 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 91 
 
 added: "He ought to have his chance the 
 best chance in the world, Cale." 
 
 The Colonel s words touched to the quick the 
 gambler s heart. He turned to the older man and 
 burst forth : " He ll be four years old next 
 Christmas, Colonel. Not a day has passed in 
 those years that I haven t had that on me all 
 the time ! " 
 
 They walked in silence for a minute; then the 
 Colonel screwed up his courage to say softly: 
 " Cale Cale, my boy, they re not jealous of the 
 boy s toys, those mothers; we both know better 
 than that." 
 
 They had come to the stairway leading to Hale s 
 gambling room. The Colonel shook his head and 
 stood hesitating at the foot of the stairs : when he 
 looked up he found the keen, blue eyes of Hale 
 looking into the bearded old face. 
 
 * They re not caring about his toys, Cale," the 
 Colonel spoke gently, and then said: "It s be 
 cause he s the gambler s son." 
 
 Their eyes met for a moment, and the Colonel 
 touched the gambler s arm fondly, and his voice 
 had in it the affection one shows only to the well- 
 beloved as he added: 
 
92 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Well, think it over, Cale, anyway." 
 
 The younger face reddened, and the hard, mean 
 voice of Caleb Hale cut back miserably: " So 
 it s you, too you too! " and he ran quickly up 
 the stairs. 
 
 But all day and all night the words " The 
 gambler s son " burned into him. And the deeply 
 affectionate, uplifted face of the old Colonel stared 
 at Caleb from the cards. About midnight he no 
 ticed that an old man who had been losing more 
 or less steadily an old man of a miner s cast of 
 face was trying to put up as stakes some kind 
 of a paper. Caleb walked over to the table, 
 picked up the document, and looked it over, but the 
 words " The Son of a Gamboleer " jumped out 
 at him from the paper. He held himself from 
 starting visibly. Then cried sharply: "What s 
 this?" 
 
 " A deed to my mine, in El Paso County, Colo 
 rado," replied the man. " Do you want it for 
 for five hundred? " 
 
 Hale smiled and shook his head, then asked: 
 "What s it worth?" 
 
 " They offered me eight hundred for it out 
 there last week." 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 93 
 
 " How much are you to the bad to-night here, 
 grandpa?" queried the gambler, looking at the 
 excited old face and fluttering hands. 
 
 " Well, I think let me see ninety-seven 
 and a half will cover it." 
 
 " Better get up from there," replied Hale. 
 " Come over here. I ll give you a thousand dol 
 lars for this. I might as well buy it as anything 
 else. Where d you get that name ? " 
 
 " What ? The Son of a Gamboleer ? " 
 
 Caleb nodded. 
 
 " Oh, I dunno. That s what the feller who 
 prospected it called it. I traded him two burros 
 and a side of bacon for it last fall, and run a tun 
 nel myself this winter. It s near some good work 
 ings!" 
 
 Hale looked at the old man, who seemed 
 fearful lest his customer should slip away from 
 him. 
 
 The old man persisted: "Have your lawyer 
 look it over. I ain t in no hurry." 
 
 "Oh, to the devil" began Hale. "You 
 look honester than any lawyer. I just got this 
 hunch, and I m going to risk it." 
 
 The man rose. 
 
94 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Now sail out of here, and come up in the 
 morning and we ll make out the papers." 
 
 But Hale woke in the morning with rage in his 
 heart rage and a strange feeling of unrest and 
 reproach against the world. The prattle of the 
 youngster irritated the father, and he shuddered 
 away from the child guiltily. The ancient col 
 lege song with the refrain: " I m a son-of-a-son- 
 of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-son-of-a-gamboleer " stuck 
 in the man s head and became fixed. Every suc 
 cession of sounds fell into the rhythm that called 
 up that tune, and it poured gall into his heart. As 
 he shaved he broke into the song, hating himself 
 for his weakness, and little Dick, sitting in his 
 nightie watching his father as a lower creature 
 adoring one of the high gods at sacred rites, 
 asked: 
 
 " Daddy, what is a gamboleer? " 
 
 And when the child insisted on an answer the 
 father put him off, and the mother from the bed 
 room cried tauntingly : 
 
 "Why don t you tell the boy, Cale? I d tell 
 him if I was you." 
 
 Then the devil stalked forth in that house and 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 95 
 
 the husband went out after breakfast slamming the 
 door behind him. 
 
 But Boyce Kilworth, being of the elect and 
 anointed, had no such tempestuous moments as 
 these in his life. He had, of course, an occasional 
 perplexity over the prosperity of the sinful, but 
 the banker brushed the cobwebs of his perplexity 
 aside as he entered his holy temple every morn 
 ing and sat down to his desk. He got out his in 
 terest book a well-thumbed Bible it was and 
 began to estimate how much he should put on time 
 deposit to be compounded annually for his newest 
 little daughter s dower to make hers exactly equal 
 to the sums the other girls had. When Esther 
 came she had a hundred, and at compound interest 
 two years and three months and fourteen days 
 later it had earned $13.47. The enlarged sum 
 he placed to Ruth s account the day she was born 
 and later a similar amount to Mary s. And now 
 eighteen months later he must start little Deborah 
 equal with the others, and it gave him a thrill of 
 pleasure to dream how much it would be when she 
 was twenty-one how much each of the girls 
 would have ! So he sent in the deposit slip, made 
 
96 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 out a bank book for little Deborah, and turned to 
 the business of the hour. It was the new tin mill 
 
 a kind of a woodshed industry. Two men and 
 a boy were running the plant, and they owed the 
 bank $4,450 for their machinery, and were getting 
 in deeper every month. Still, the book profits 
 were there and money was comfortably loose, so 
 he decided to risk another month s losses ; for the 
 gain, if profits should accrue, would be large, and 
 if they failed he could, of course, unload the con 
 cern upon the bank. After he had gone over the 
 month s business with the owner of the machinery 
 
 or the man who thought he would be owner 
 Kilworth stalked forth to pervade Constitution 
 Street, walking with a wide, swinging movement 
 from his hips. He met Colonel Longford just 
 turning into the stairway where the sign " Caleb 
 Hale, Stockman Dealer in Cattle, Sheep, and 
 Hogs," was creaking in the afternoon breeze. As 
 Kilworth s eyes glanced from the sign, they met 
 Colonel Longford s, and Kilworth began : 
 
 " Ah, Colonel just what I ve been thinking 
 about our recent talk with Caleb. The poor 
 fellow is throwing away his opportunities. He s 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 97 
 
 not developing the right faculties. He s not ac 
 quisitive." The banker put a patronising arm on 
 the Colonel s shoulder. " Colonel, it s a gift 
 the acquisitive faculty. I turn over a park to the 
 city that cost me three thousand, and make five 
 right back on abutting town lots. Caleb is wasting 
 his time; he should learn to accumulate, and his 
 peculiar business doesn t teach acquisitiveness. I 
 thank God he has given me this acquisitive faculty, 
 and that I am not like other men who " 
 
 " Well, Boyce," laughed the Colonel in his deep 
 Irish basso, " ye ve distinguished Bible precedent 
 for that hosanna I dunno ! " 
 
 " Yes, Colonel, the man with ten talents had a 
 gift a divine gift," replied Kilworth, rubbing 
 his hands. 
 
 " So he had, Boyce; so he had, but I wasn t 
 thinking of that Bible character when I spoke," 
 answered Colonel Longford. 
 
 " The Bible is full of men of affairs, isn t it? " 
 insisted Kilworth, and, seeing Longford s foot on 
 the stairs, the banker went on : " That s good. 
 Go up and work with him. There were ninety 
 and nine, you know, Colonel! " 
 
98 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 A hard glare in the Colonel s eyes prodded Kil- 
 worth uneasily, and he asked: " That was what 
 you were going up for, I presume? " 
 
 ;< Well, you presume again, Boyce Kilworth," 
 grunted the Colonel. What I was going up for, 
 if you must know, was to get the enlargement of 
 your phylacteries out of my eyes and the scent of 
 your anise and cumin out of my whiskers with a 
 round or two of poker and a big snort of whiskey." 
 
 In the room above when the Colonel opened the 
 door he observed that business had scarcely begun 
 for the day. A three-handed game of poker was 
 progressing at a corner table ; the man at the faro 
 table was toying with the accoutrement, and half 
 a dozen idlers were lounging about the place shuf 
 fling cards, clicking chips, or drinking. Perched 
 on a lookout box above the tables sat Caleb Hale 
 with his hat pulled over his eyes. He was whit 
 tling on his finger nails with a pearl-handled pen 
 knife, and glooming perceptibly. His eyes turned 
 toward the Colonel the hulking, shaggy, leonine 
 old figure with rollicking blue eyes dancing in the 
 merry old countenance and Hale s glance 
 dropped again to his fingers. He did not speak. 
 The Colonel started for the long sideboard, where 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 99 
 
 the porter in a white apron was presiding, but the 
 old feet seemed to turn abruptly, and the Colonel 
 found himself before the lookout stand holding up 
 a hand to Hale, and heard himself saying, almost 
 as a third person : " Come out of your cave, Cale. 
 I m no Pharisee. I don t care how you make your 
 money, just so you don t hoard the damn stuff and 
 let it mildew the heart out of you. Let s have a 
 drink ! " 
 
 " Let s don t ! " replied Caleb, not raising his 
 eyes from his hands. 
 
 Colonel Longford looked up keenly, but could 
 not meet the gambler s downcast eyes. 
 
 " Why? What s eating on you, Cale? " asked 
 the Colonel. 
 
 "What s it to you?" snarled Hale. The 
 Colonel put out his hand, touched the younger 
 man s knee gently, looked a moment up into the 
 distraught face in silence, and turned away, say 
 ing softly: " I m sorry, Cale only don t think 
 I m a Pharisee," and walked to the sideboard. 
 
 As he was reaching for a decanter a hand 
 gripped his arm, and Hale whirled the old man 
 about and walked him across the hall. 
 
 " Come into my room a minute," said Caleb, 
 
ioo GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and the two entered a dark little cubby-hole, half 
 bedroom and half office. Hale raised a window 
 shade and locked the door. Then he stood star 
 ing for a few seconds at the Colonel in woe 
 and despair, before he threw up his hands and 
 cried : 
 
 "God God! Oh, God damn my soul! 
 Look at me a cheating, thieving, tin-horn gam 
 bler! Me! Me, who had a mind once! " 
 
 The Colonel started to put a soothing arm about 
 the lithe little figure, but Hale shuddered away. 
 
 "Here in the husks here among swine! 
 Here lower even than Boyce Kilworth; a sneak, a 
 bloodsucker. Oh, God God! Maybe there 
 is no God to damn my soul that s the hell of 
 it all! Maybe there is no God! " 
 
 He fell across the bed in a tremble. The 
 Colonel bent gently over the man, found a chair, 
 and took Caleb s hand. The thin, white wiry 
 fingers lay a moment in the big, burly hand of the 
 elder man, then another big hand closed over the 
 small hand, and the Colonel began patting and 
 stroking it gently, saying no word. A deep 
 tremor shook Caleb Hale; and then ne wept and 
 wept and wept. 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 101 
 
 Finally the Colonel was startled by the muffled 
 voice of his friend stammering: 
 
 " Could you do you suppose did you ever 
 
 Oh, Colonel Colonel ! For God s sake pray 
 
 pray for me ! " 
 
 The elder man s face turned blank. Quickly 
 his mind snapped back to the battle field of Shiloh 
 and the dusk where he stood beside a long black 
 trench in the morass. Even the chaplain had gone 
 down that day. The Colonel took off his hat 
 there in the dirty, sour-smelling room and lifted 
 up his face and whispered, as his memory 
 prompted through the years : " Oh, Lord, for 
 this our fallen comrade we pray thy mercy and 
 grace. Amen ! " And a tear-stained, wrenched 
 old countenance dropped on his chest as the Colo 
 nel sat down. 
 
 " Damn it all, Cale," he whimpered; " I ve got 
 no right to pray for you or any one ! But " 
 Here he punctuated his words with a sob. " Boy 
 
 boy boy- " he cried shrilly; "I m right 
 here to knock hell out of the first man who tries 
 to preach to you or lead you astray." 
 
 The younger man nodded. He was afraid to 
 try his voice. Finally he rose and sat mutely on 
 
102 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 the side of the bed, looking at the floor in a 
 kind of meditative trance, very still, while his life 
 stretched ahead of him in prophetic review. He 
 started to speak once, but did not. The Colonel s 
 eyes were closed, and his molten heart was cooling. 
 Hale walked to the window and looked into the 
 dirty alley, then came back, touched the square old 
 shoulder lightly, and said: 
 
 " Well, Colonel, it s done the great transac 
 tion s done." He smiled down into the big, trou 
 bled face and went on: u I m going to quit! " 
 
 The Colonel s face glowed in a warm smile, and 
 Hale cried quickly: "Will you forget this, Col 
 onel? Please forget it! " 
 
 Suddenly the old form rose, the old arms went 
 out, and the great hands clasped the small white 
 hands at the younger man s side, and the bull voice 
 of the Colonel roared: 
 
 " No, no, no! By the Eternal, I ll not forget 
 it not till the Lord swaps my memory for the 
 peace that passeth understanding." 
 
 Thus with clasped hands, the two men stood by 
 the window looking into the alley, and from the 
 filth below rose a pathway to the stars for both 
 their eyes. 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 103 
 
 The next day, when the story of the closing of 
 Caleb Hale s gambling room was in many mouths 
 
 Caleb Hale shook the dust of the town from 
 his feet. Every association of New Raynham 
 sickened him. He hungered for a new environ 
 ment, and partly following the gambler s supersti 
 tion that luck lay in the mine, and partly because 
 the mine was the only thing on earth he could call 
 his own with even tolerable honesty, he turned 
 blindly to Cripple Creek. Now, Cripple Creek 
 a generation ago was the capital of the wildest 
 mining district in the world. From all over the 
 earth men were hurrying there with golden dreams 
 
 dreams of cheating Providence by obtaining 
 through sheer luck that empty mastery over men 
 and events and destiny that money seems to be 
 stow. So Cripple Creek, where ten thousand men 
 were assembling with no thought but each for him 
 self, was as near the depths of the lowest hell as a 
 place often gets in this world. Into this mael 
 strom of ravenous selfishness cruel as war and 
 merciless as avarice came Caleb Hale, with a 
 deed to a prospect hole that punctured a slice of a 
 golden mountain. And no Childe Roland to a 
 darker tower ever came. At first the very gross- 
 
104 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 ness of the gambling protected Hale. He knew it 
 was gambling. Every transaction of the day about 
 him he knew was a bet, and he avoided it. By 
 way of penance he took two men out on to his 
 mountain, tried building a cabin where they might 
 work with him, and thought in some vague imprac 
 tical way that he would be a pick-and-shovel miner. 
 But he found that he was not bred for the job, 
 and while his cabin was slowly going up the thou 
 sands of gopher holes pocking the mountain-sides 
 were coming closer and closer to him, and the 
 proved area of paying ore was edging week by 
 week nearer to Hale s claim. One day a great 
 seam of gold almost lewd in its richness was un 
 covered, directly across the gulch from Hale s 
 cabin. That night the whole district got blind- 
 drunk some with whiskey, some with gold, and 
 some with the heat of the game and they of 
 fered Hale fifty thousand dollars for his claim. 
 But the lithe, steely-eyed little man in gray tweed, 
 with his white hat, shading a hard face, wrinkling 
 even in its thirties, shook his head, trudged over 
 to his cabin, and went to bed. 
 
 " It was not," he wrote to the Colonel that night 
 by his kerosene lamp, " because I think I can get 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 105 
 
 more I know it s not worth that but I know 
 Caleb Hale. If he had that much money in cash, 
 all the devils from the pit would be pulling him 
 into this fiendish game. I invested some money 
 here six months ago, in a few little houses in the 
 residence part of town in what seemed to 
 be a legitimate investment and now they have 
 doubled and trebled in value, and as rents have 
 mounted I am having other little houses crowded 
 into the vacant spaces between the first houses. 
 I ve got to a point now where I can walk through 
 the Board of Trade and the poker rooms without 
 having to grab my pockets and run. But that s 
 because my stake is small ; I know my size fifty 
 thousand would get me." 
 
 Three months later when the great shaft house 
 had risen across the gulch and the Golden Circle 
 was shipping ore, men knew that the flint-visaged 
 little man whom Cripple Creek tradition had 
 marked as the gambler of New Raynham had re 
 fused in the calm course of things first one hundred 
 thousand and then one hundred and fifty thousand 
 dollars for his claim. 
 
 New Raynham knew it too. Charley Her- 
 rington had come out to Cripple Creek in his 
 
io6 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 private car expressly to advise Caleb to sell the 
 claim and lend Herrington the money. Boyce 
 Kilworth had written Hale a long, friendly, con 
 gratulatory letter, suggesting that he was now on 
 the road to success, and filing many a wise saw 
 that grated on Caleb s mental ears. But Caleb 
 Hale collected his rents and sent home an allow 
 ance to Vashti, his wife, and to little Dick. For 
 a long line of New England Hales told him that 
 Cripple Creek was no place for a mother and 
 child. Shafts went down, shaft houses rose, 
 great dumps were spewed out on the hill near 
 him. On his side of the gulch long wagon trains 
 of ore filed across his claim, and still he lived in 
 his cabin, looked after his little property, and 
 rather enjoyed being regarded as a madman in the 
 bedlam about him. Special writers, " doing 
 Cripple Creek " for the Eastern press, wrote pieces 
 about Caleb Hale " The madman of Gold 
 Gulch," one writer called him and Vashti 
 brought these papers containing the articles about 
 Caleb to the Globe office. The articles were re 
 printed, and New Raynham, hearing that Caleb 
 Hale had refused two hundred thousand in cash 
 for his claim, gasped and began to consider the 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 107 
 
 propriety of calling on Mrs. Hale. Mrs. Kil- 
 worth, divinely sent of Boyce did call on her step- 
 sister-in-law, and certain other angels of social 
 mercy, also providentially sent from the Kilworth 
 bank, darkened the doorway of the Hale home. 
 And Mrs. Hale, dressed like Constitution Street 
 during a fair, in the course of her regular after 
 noon parades, always made it a point to call at 
 the Globe office to get these visits into the society 
 columns. Incidentally she spent a few blithe mo 
 ments of her call chinning the men in the printing 
 office. 
 
 And then one fair day in spring came a telegram 
 from Denver to the Globe announcing that Caleb 
 Hale, known as the madman of Gold Gulch, had 
 at last sold his famous claim, The Son of a Gam- 
 boleer, to the Stratton interests for a quarter of 
 a million dollars. The telegram made a tre 
 mendous sensation in New Raynham, and the 
 Hale myth, gilded by time and diamond-crusted 
 with Hale virtues, was revived in the town. 
 
 In the meantime Boyce Kilworth had plodded 
 into his late forties thinking, aspiring, living in 
 terms of money. And because he had squeezed 
 all the nobility of life into a minute seven-per-cent. 
 
io8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 schedule, he had gradually become used cal 
 loused maybe to a habit of clipping off any 
 annoying moralities that stuck out and spoiled the 
 symmetry of his little edifice. So in secret his 
 scissors were busy busier than even he realised. 
 He had kept a double ledger account with God, 
 entering nothing but cash on either side. There 
 were times when Kilworth could not help feeling 
 that his account was in the red; that he must pay 
 more money to God in the way of church dona 
 tions, public benevolences, and other cash items. 
 But God had not seemed to require interest on the 
 overdraft, and often Kilworth at the end of a 
 year had balanced the books by visioning under the 
 credit column " to net loss " and at the foot of the 
 debit column " to net profit," and let it go at 
 that. He had grown into a portly, sleek-jowled 
 man, with a face entirely unwrinkled except by fat; 
 a man of Eminent Respectability. Gray hair cov 
 ered his large head, and he had reduced his gray 
 ing beard to a moustache which still retained its 
 black. He was amiable to the point of geniality, 
 and his stock of jokes was so well known in the 
 bank and at the sheet-metal mill the mill that 
 had grown from shed to shed until it had become 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 109 
 
 almost a " plant " and at the church board meet 
 ings, and also at the Associated Charities Board, 
 the Commercial Club, and the county central com 
 mittee of his party, that his associates could list the 
 whole jokelogue from memory. They were 
 mostly money stories, about the blundering Irish 
 man, and the sharp Jew, and these stories were 
 highly proper, if not very funny. But they were 
 standard stock and every one knew when and 
 where to laugh at them. 
 
 He built up in his heart an image of himself 
 as a burden bearer, and liked to condone with 
 himself about the crushing weight of other peo 
 ple s burdens that bent his shoulders. Occasion 
 ally his self-pity found its way into his talks, short, 
 non-committal, reticent utterances dull and col 
 ourless, that could hardly be called conversations; 
 but burden bearing was one of his favourite themes 
 in these laconic utterances. He bore Congress 
 man Ladgett s burdens and that worthy soul never 
 had to decide how to cast a vote. Boyce Kil- 
 worth, consulting with an office in New York on 
 Lower Broadway, always told Judge Ladgett how 
 to vote. The banker bore Toney Delaney s bur 
 dens so that in a convention, Tony never had to 
 
no GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 worry about what issues he should support, nor 
 what candidates he should favour; he got these 
 things on a slip of paper from the back room of 
 the bank, just before the convention assembled, 
 and all he had to do was to round up the delega 
 tions and carry out the programme. At the sheet- 
 metal mill it was the same ; Boyce Kilworth knew 
 the market. He sold the output, paid the 
 pay-roll, bore the burden and took the profits. 
 And all his burden bearing in one way or another 
 seemed to bring him back about seven per cent. 
 
 " The chief," ventured Toney Delaney one day, 
 in an outburst of confidence to Colonel Longford, 
 " has things coming his way pretty fast these days. 
 Do you know," and here the Irishman lowered 
 his voice and looked about him for eavesdrop 
 pers, " he showed me his little brown book yester 
 day, and he s got a cool hundred thousand dollars 
 tucked away for each of his girls their hope 
 box, he calls it! " 
 
 "And what else?" asked the Colonel. 
 
 " Mother of Moses, man isn t that 
 enough ? " returned Delaney. 
 
 " I suppose so " repeated the Colonel medi 
 tatively and added: " What with Boyce s low 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 1 1 1 
 
 morals and their mother s kind of brains, God 
 would just about be showin his contempt for them 
 by givin them all that money ! Poor gels 
 poor, poor gels! " he sighed and changed the sub 
 ject. 
 
 That same night the Colonel tilted a chair on 
 the sidewalk to the brick wall of the Globe office 
 for a session with Archimedes whose hands, in 
 the cool of the June evening were resting from the 
 lever that moves the world. The crass reliance 
 of Boyce Kilworth upon money to make happiness 
 was big in the old man s mind, and he opened 
 the session by blurting out: " Tyin fightin 
 cats tails over the clothes line, makin a fellow live 
 with the hussy he s been philanderin with, and 
 givin a man all the money he s sold his soul to 
 the devil for how the blessed Lord does get 
 even with them who try to fool Him ! " At the 
 astonished look of the editor the Colonel ex 
 plained: " Tis a Chinese proverb from the Tal 
 mud or the Koran, I misremember which; but it s 
 the milk of the word, son! " 
 
 A month had passed since the sensation of 
 Caleb Hale s good fortune had stirred the town, 
 and naturally the talk of the Colonel and the editor 
 
in GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 turned to the prospective return of Hale. At the 
 end of an hour the Colonel was nodding a trou 
 bled head and saying: "So he takes her out 
 buggy ridin on the dark nights, eh? And sends 
 her theatre passes, and slips around to see her of 
 an evenin ?" The editor indicated his assent. 
 "And he s too good a foreman to fire?" The 
 old man paused and looked at the rising moon, 
 and sighed as he went on : " Well, I don t know. 
 I ve a letter from Caleb sayin he would be here 
 soon, but that may mean a day or a week or a 
 month. But when he does come he may do you 
 the kindness of solvin your problem by killin 
 your foreman by way of poetic justice. He s a 
 man of nice tastes is Caleb." 
 
 The Colonel sat for a time drumming on the 
 chair between his bony legs while he considered 
 many things, and then sighed a dreary sigh and 
 spoke: "Poor poor Vashti. I ve know the 
 philanderin lot of Sellarses for three generations 
 back a pack o set is the whole kit and bilin . 
 Poor Vashti vain as a weathercock, common as 
 kraut, and weak as dishwater by the blood that 
 is in her; addle-pated, and noisy as a load of coal 
 goin down a chute! It will take more than all 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 113 
 
 Caleb s money to make folks out of her." He 
 mellowed and smiled in a pause, then took up his 
 monologue: " Ye can read her and all the likes 
 of her as an open book. She s the kind that be 
 lieves all she needs to move in high society is to 
 know how to make a boiled salad dressing and veal 
 loaf. Poor, poor Vashti! But," he aroused 
 himself and said, " this won t do. We must take 
 this up in the lodge. How old will Vashti be by 
 now, Archimedes? Only twenty-eight or so? 
 Man," cried the old Colonel, earnestly, " Man, 
 if I was the Providence Boyce Kilworth is, which 
 Heaven forbid, I d make a general order in 
 Heaven, for the angels never to set down any 
 thing against anyone under thirty." After pon 
 dering a moment over his hypothetical ukase he 
 amended it, " and over fifty; we have only twenty 
 responsible years and I m not quite sure of 
 them!" 
 
 It was late when the Colonel ambled into the 
 street and started homeward. He deliberately 
 missed the first car that passed him, and when the 
 east-bound train was whistling in the yards, he 
 strolled aimlessly down to the station, two blocks 
 out of his way, to stretch his legs, and to see what 
 
ii4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 he might see. And there, dropping off the rear 
 Pullman, before the porter had put down his 
 box, was Caleb Hale, natty, dapper but as worn 
 and lined as a man of forty dare be. When the 
 two men had found a carriage, and the Colonel 
 had made the driver turn the top down so that 
 they could enjoy the moonlight and the Colonel 
 could show Hale how the town had grown, they 
 got in and for the fourth time the old man ex 
 claimed: "Well, well, well and it s you!" 
 Then he turned to Hale and quizzed: "And 
 why did you come home ? does the family know 
 you re comin to-night on this train?" 
 
 " No," answered Hale, " this train is a sur 
 prise; they know I m coming to-day or to-morrow. 
 And, Colonel," Hale went on, putting a hand on 
 the elder man s bony. knee, " I m coming home be 
 cause the game has got too strong. It passed my 
 limit. Oh, I ve been fighting, Colonel fighting 
 for all these long months watching the price 
 of that mine rise and rise; and every time the 
 price jumped I caught myself wanting to take the 
 price and sit in the game. But " he laughed 
 self-deprecatingly, "I said: * Steady boy 
 you ve beaten it this far, stay with it, and I did. 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 115 
 
 Finally I felt strong enough to sell. So I sold, 
 and it was too much for me this last month 
 since the sale, and I had to come ! " 
 
 " Had to come ? " echoed the Colonel. " Why, 
 Cale, you don t mean " 
 
 Then Hale broke out: " I tell you, Colonel, a 
 place where money raw, stinking, wet, green, 
 uncured money is god, comes nearer to hell than 
 any other place on this planet." 
 
 "Women, Caleb?" asked the old man softly. 
 
 Caleb Hale smiled a curious reflective smile and 
 shook his head: "No, Colonel the woman 
 proposition doesn t get me now. I ve played that 
 hand out! Seven or eight years ago the women 
 might have got me along with the rest." He 
 stopped and lifted his face to the Colonel and 
 said gently: " But there s my Dick my little 
 boy Nope, Colonel it wasn t the woman 
 proposition." He broke out suddenly: " It was 
 the money; the devil my own personal devil 
 the old one, who came up holding out the old lure 
 to bet, to speculate to play the big mining game. 
 And he sugar-coated it, slimed it all over with re 
 spectability tempted me to be big-rich to 
 Be Somebody. And I actually got to thinking 
 
n6 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 how fine it would be to come home with more 
 money than Boyce to be more respectable than 
 Boyce and then I came to myself and ran 
 ran like Joseph from Mrs. Potiphar and here 
 I am!" 
 
 " But your money, Cale?" inquired the Colo 
 nel cautiously. " What are you going to do 
 with" 
 
 u I ve already done with it," cut in Hale. And 
 to the elder man s blank look Hale replied: 
 " I ve put it where it will do the most good! " 
 
 The Colonel nodded unsatisfied, and Hale re 
 peated, stubbornly, as one who had decided upon 
 a formula: " I tell you I ve done with it. I ve 
 put it where it will do the most good." 
 
 The Colonel saw that Hale had closed the 
 door into that inquiry, and the two rode in an 
 embarrassed silence for a moment, then Hale went 
 on: " You go tell Brother Boyce, what I ve 
 told you, and get it to Charley Herrington ; they ve 
 both wired me and written to me and I m on 
 to both of em. I ve put that money where it will 
 do the most good, and I m going to rent a little 
 piece of a store and open a cigar stand, and buy 
 a place and have a garden." 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 117 
 
 "But Cale " remonstrated the astounded 
 Colonel, " the town s prepared to make a million 
 aire out of you you can t do any such thing as 
 that why " 
 
 " Nevertheless, Colonel that s my game." 
 
 " Why, Cale, the town will laugh you d be a 
 byword and a joke for " 
 
 " Well let em laugh, and be damned to em. 
 It s my business how I make my living if it s 
 honest ! " 
 
 As they rode past the gorgeous peaked and 
 towered mansion of the Kilworths, Caleb Hale 
 asked: " How is Brother Boyce coming on? " 
 
 " Just now," answered the Colonel, " your dis 
 tinguished step-brother is making a mint of money 
 out of his new tin-mill, and putting it right back 
 in improvements and additions. But it s a gold 
 mine. Boyce has the golden touch," the Colonel 
 continued. " He has the leprosy of easy success ! " 
 The real scrap heap of life, Cale, is made up of 
 those fragile souls, whom the Lord throws out be 
 cause they will not stand the thundering blows of 
 fate, that are needed to make a real soul ! " 
 
 " So that s your theory of life? " asked Hale. 
 " Thundering blows? " 
 
n8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 And the Colonel looked at the warped, wrinkled 
 face beside him, all eager and cheerful in the 
 moonlight, and thought of what a blow might be 
 hanging over the younger head. But the elder 
 man smiled and said: "This is no time for 
 philosophy, Horatio." Hale leaned forward to 
 catch the first glimpse of his home. Lights in 
 the upper part of the house relieved the tension of 
 the Colonel s nerves and he bade Hale farewell 
 and good luck and went sailing down the street 
 with his arms stretched out on both sides of the 
 deep upholstered carriage seat, and with his feet 
 serenely on the cushions before him, while he bel 
 lowed an ancient love song like an old dog to 
 the old moon, as he rolled down the street. 
 
 The commotion at the curb, the Colonel s roar 
 ing farewell, and the driver s word to the horses 
 shot it suddenly into the wife s consciousness that 
 her husband had returned. At the front door he 
 found her waiting for him. He stepped toward 
 her eagerly but she stood trembling and shudder 
 ing in the doorway. Then she spoke as one in 
 fear: 
 
 " Caleb don t don t come in don t come 
 until I ve told you! " 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 119 
 
 " Why, Vashti mamma " he cried and 
 looked keenly into her pale twitching face under 
 the hall gas : " What what," and with a shrill, 
 hard cry of understanding he almost screamed 
 "WHAT!" 
 
 " Not until I ve told you something, Cale 
 then maybe you ll not want " She spoke slowly 
 as one reciting a speech learned by rote. 
 
 They gazed into each other s eyes unsteadily 
 for a moment, then the woman groaned and 
 slumped and turned away in shame. She did not 
 go up the stairs before her, but went into a 
 darkened front room and the man staring at the 
 vacant door a minute groped to the steps behind 
 him and crumpled down. 
 
 Caleb Hale sat looking blankly at the walk be 
 fore him, as a man swaying under a burden. 
 From time to time as the hours passed he shifted 
 his position, rising to a chair beside him, leaning 
 against the porch post, sensible of the perfume of 
 the flowers near his face; pacing the short porch 
 floor, again sitting on the top step above the walk, 
 always with bowed head, save when once or twice 
 he lifted his face in agony to the stars. 
 
 The night was wan and old, and the sparrows 
 
120 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 in the eaves were beginning to stir, when Caleb, 
 sitting on the steps with his head buried in his 
 hands, cried softly: Vashti come here " 
 He heard her rise in the dark room behind him, 
 and in an instant she stood above him. He did 
 not speak but slowly put up a hand, which she 
 took; he rose and faced her as he kissed the hand 
 that held his and whispered: " Mamma 
 mamma mamma will you forgive me 
 too I " 
 
 PART II 
 
 And then for twenty-five years the winds of 
 time and chance blew over the world. " I have 
 seen," saith the preacher, " that time and chance 
 come to every man." Now in life are two 
 forces that fashion it: the inner force, the 
 spiritual bent and inclination of the soul; the 
 outer force of time and chance. So the race 
 is not to the swift, nor the battle to the 
 strong. But these rewards and counters of life 
 the race and the battle are only the rewards 
 and counters of exterior life events, circum 
 stances, material things. Within where the soul 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 121 
 
 lies, where the heart reaps its harvest, there the 
 race is to the swift, the battle is to the strong; 
 and time and chance the one tragically inevit 
 able, the other shifting pass with the fleeting 
 days and temper the soul they beat upon until it 
 shows forth its mettle and thus finds its just and 
 inexorable destiny. 
 
 For twenty-five years these winds of fate 
 time and chance blew across the life of Boyce 
 Kilworth. They galvanized him with metallic 
 success. 
 
 As the years piled upon him, Boyce Kilworth 
 found fewer and fewer men to whom he cared to 
 talk, and no women. At home he discoursed 
 largely in ukases, and at the bank and at the tin 
 mill he gave orders. The tin mills had spread 
 over the acreage called Boyceville like a great, 
 brown cancer on the hillside. A little town gath 
 ered around the mills a model town, of course ; 
 a town with proper houses set at proper distances 
 apart, with proper flowers growing in proper 
 places, and proper people living in the model 
 houses a town wherein the plumbing and the 
 marriage licenses in the proper homes were scru 
 tinised with equal rigour ! And over it all beamed 
 
122 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 the grace and beneficence of seven per cent, net 
 on the investment! 
 
 But at the bank, there his heart was! There 
 during most of the day, in the holy of holies be 
 hind his roll-topped desk, he sat sphinx-like, and 
 grim ! And there the whole community bowed, 
 whether they accepted his general providential 
 suzerainty or not, bowed a willing neck to his heel 
 in financial matters. Men who jeered at his 
 highly moral feudalism, gave their money to Kil- 
 worth for investment without question and re 
 ceived their seven per cent, regularly. Scores of 
 business men all but trusted their property to 
 Kilworth, and in the savings department of his 
 bank hundreds of accounts were made by men and 
 women who left their money personally with Boyce 
 Kilworth, taking no receipt, trusting solely to his 
 integrity. He had notes of merchants, real estate 
 dealers and stockmen issued in blank to cover their 
 over-drafts or for his own accommodation. The 
 Kilworth bank was a one-man bank; it had officers 
 and directors, of course, but they were rubber 
 stamp replicas of Boyce Kilworth. The Kilworth 
 tin mills were one-man mills; the officers and di 
 rectors were busy approving the plans of Boyce 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 123 
 
 Kilworth. The Boyce Investment Company was 
 a one-man real estate concern; its officers and di 
 rectors were consecrated to the high task of bring 
 ing the fulness of the earth to Boyce Kilworth. 
 The church where he worshipped was a one-man 
 church, where a preacher and the elders were de 
 voutly bowed to the task of kowtowing to Boyce 
 Kilworth and enjoying him forever. So nat 
 urally his God was a one-man God whose enter 
 prises in the universe were expected to bend to 
 the prayers of Boyce Kilworth. " Heaven," so 
 jibed Caleb Hale, " for Boyce, is organised much 
 like the bank, where there is a properly gray- 
 haired, properly dignified, properly pliable cashier 
 nominally in charge, but who wouldn t save a soul 
 without consulting Boyce Kilworth, any more 
 than old Grubb at the bank would discount a 
 twenty-five-dollar note without consulting the head 
 of the institution. Though I do believe that Boyce 
 encourages the Lord s work among the heathen, 
 much as he blesses Grubb in his golf, because 
 missionaries and golf are both well esteemed in 
 high financial circles." 
 
 Through the years that stretched half a century 
 back, Boyce Kilworth had learned the habit of 
 
i2 4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 keeping his business in his head; sometimes in his 
 wisdom he found it best not to deposit at once in 
 its proper account a sum intrusted to him. Dur 
 ing the panic of 93 he had learned that bank ex 
 aminers could be fooled when the inexorable 
 need of financial salvation demanded that they 
 be fooled. So as he blew the glorious bubble of 
 his seven per cent, beneficence, he raised from an 
 exact science to a fine art the rather common and 
 sordid business of robbing Peter to pay Paul. And 
 as the Kilworth interests broadened, a score of 
 small companies holding companies, sales 
 agencies, purchasing agencies, and their imitation 
 corporations bearing almost similar names, grew 
 up about the bank, and only Boyce Kilworth knew 
 exactly which company was solvent, and which 
 was a paper travesty of its respectable companion. 
 More and more he kept his own counsel; more and 
 more he grew owlish and more and more he was 
 busy with his own affairs and had no time to talk. 
 For he knew that a miscalculation, a moment s in 
 advertence, an hour s relaxation, would shatter a 
 financial edifice which he regarded as a special dis 
 pensation of Providence in his favour. His faith 
 in God was founded upon the miraculous preserv- 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 125 
 
 ance of the Traders National Bank. He knew 
 how great the miracle was, and paid his tithe, and 
 did his stint of religious observance, and walked 
 uprightly before men. And they said behold the 
 substantial man, without fads or follies, without 
 sentiment or foibles ; him we may tie to I Thus he 
 waxed fat in riches and in power as the winds of 
 time and chance blew over his life. But the 
 house of Kilworth was built upon sand stage 
 morals and stage money. He was a man in his 
 seventies who looked sixty smooth of skin, with 
 a shaven face, white of hair, steady of nerve, slow 
 of brain, and so hard of heart and dead there that 
 his crafty kindness, all prepense and put out at 
 interest, fooled many men and most of all Boyce 
 Kilworth. But it did not fool his sons-in-law; 
 they knew him all three of them the sap- 
 head, Hardy, dubbed by Colonel Longford, the 
 Light of the Harem of the Country Club; the 
 scoundrel, Griffin, who lived in the great city and 
 sometimes forged a check which Kilworth had to 
 cash, and Thompson, the plodder in the bank, who 
 for five long years had never been able to get a 
 balance any day on any book over which he toiled 
 and smudged and moiled. They all knew that 
 
126 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Boyce Kilworth s heart was dead in him. And so 
 did his youngest daughter, Deborah, twenty-six 
 years old and still away from home at school 
 with a bachelor s degree, a master s degree, a 
 doctor s degree, and taking music and domestic 
 science " anything on earth," quoth Elsie Barnes 
 at the society editor s desk at the Globe office, 
 " to keep her out of that whited sepulchre that 
 the Kilworths call home. And her father down 
 there at the bank, working his head off for his 
 sons-in-law who are mad because he doesn t die 
 and let them have it, and gnawing his heart out be 
 cause the one daughter he has won t live with him 
 and insists on spending a lot of money that he 
 can t see seven per cent. in. Say, Charley," added 
 Elsie, who was talking to the advertising solicitor 
 as she dashed a straggling, dirty, brown lock of 
 hair from her eyes, and whirled around to her 
 typewriter, u ain t it grand to be rich! " 
 
 As the prevailing winds in a burned forest cut 
 away the char and ashes, baring the beautiful 
 grain from the heart of the wood, so the winds of 
 time and chance, keen, merciless, constant, broke 
 into a thousand wrinkles the glad countenance that 
 shone from the heart of Caleb Hale. Broken and 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 127 
 
 battered his face was, yet his eyes shone out from 
 his seared countenance with an inner light that was 
 strong and kind. He was a man about whom 
 myths and legends gathered. For, to begin with, 
 there was the story of his early career as the town 
 gambler, with its sure basis of romantic facts to 
 build on. And there was the legend of the lost 
 fortune and the horse-laugh that went up in the 
 town when Caleb Hale came home and opened his 
 cigar stand, and offered no explanation for his 
 lowly estate. So myth said he had gambled it 
 away in a night or that he had invested it in wild 
 cat mining stock. But the prevailing tradi 
 tion declared that the whole story of the sale 
 was an invention of Vashti s to get into society. 
 His cigar store failed. And coached by Colonel 
 Longford, and without taking thought of Vashti, 
 Caleb Hale opened a little restaurant, where he ex 
 pected to serve rare, thick beefsteaks; mysterious 
 omelets, and sea-foods, rich and strange. But 
 there Vashti rose with the strength of a giantess, 
 and appalled the Colonel with her force. For she 
 was grounded in a deep and abiding faith that 
 beefsteaks should be pounded before cooking; she 
 would brook no lettuce unless served with vinegar 
 
128 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and sugar and her idea of an omelet was scram 
 bled eggs with minced ham. She overbore by sheer 
 lung strength the two men who had dreamed such 
 high dreams of commercialised art in cookery. 
 So the restaurant closed, and that vision faded un 
 realised. It was after the restaurant closed that 
 Caleb started a greenhouse on the lot he bought 
 the week after he returned from Cripple Creek, 
 and later he opened a flower store in the frayed 
 end of Constitution Street. And there he stuck. 
 A passion for flowers grew big and beautiful in 
 him. And because it is the love of flowers that 
 makes them thrive, slowly his greenhouse began 
 to spread over the lot, to cover part of another lot 
 and then all of it, and little Dick Hale graduated 
 from High School and was able to go to College 
 to his father s College in Cambridge, and Caleb 
 Hale s pride in the boy was a mania. And when 
 the boy came marching home with his degree, he 
 took that first calm, serene survey of the universe 
 that youth takes, stepping into its place of con 
 quest, and from the vantage of the flower store 
 found little to do. For with some sort of ex 
 quisite irony upon Caleb s elaborate public scorn 
 for money, Dick Hale had made his major study 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 129 
 
 at Harvard " commerce and banking." Grizzled 
 old Colonel Longford, shuffling into the flower 
 shop during the first week of Dick Hale s return 
 to conquer New Raynham, broke in upon a sad, 
 pitiful, little interview between father and son 
 about the limited territory offering itself for con 
 quest along lines of banking and commerce in a 
 flower shop, and the Colonel toddled out on his 
 three legs, with what fire he could blow into his 
 manner, and came rattling into Boyce Kilworth s 
 office and there bulldozed Kilworth into giving 
 Dick Hale a place in the bank. 
 
 When Dick Hale came into the bank, eager for 
 work, capable, charged with new ideas, and 
 abounding with the ambition of youth, Kilworth 
 partly, perhaps, unable to resist the youth, and 
 partly because Kilworth felt the need of the young 
 man made him an open favourite, loaded him 
 with work and in three years had won him. 
 
 And it was then that Deborah Kilworth, A.B., 
 A.M., Ph.D., B.M. and B. of D. S., entered the 
 plot. 
 
 Not that she entered the life of Richard Hale 
 with an especially dramatic entrance. They had 
 Dickied and Debbied each other all their lives; 
 
130 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 through the grades, and through the high school 
 
 three years apart with no thought of any 
 feeling more tender between the two than a left 
 over feeling on the boy s part that she was a 
 kinky-haired, dirty-faced kid, and on her part that 
 he was one of the big smarties who be-deviled little 
 girls in the lower classes. Yet Deborah Kilworth, 
 being in doubt, went to an authority, and the au 
 thority being in the bank one July afternoon, she 
 went there, drew up a chair in front of Dick 
 Hale s flat-top desk, and began: "Dickie 
 what about Radcliffe ? You re a Harvard man 
 and it s Barnard or Radcliffe for me next year 
 I want to do some work in social organisation of 
 the Assyrian cities, and I feel that Harvard has 
 the best courses though if Pennsylvania was a 
 place for women but I don t care much for 
 Philadelphia it s either New York or Boston 
 so tell me about Radcliffe what kind is it?" 
 
 "Going after Nineveh and Tyre eh?" he 
 teased, smiling boyishly into her earnest gray eyes. 
 "Say, Debbie why start so far up the social 
 tree? Have you heard of the perfectly corking 
 course they re giving next year at Johns Hopkins? 
 
 something about the beginnings of social in- 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE " 131 
 
 stinct as manifest in the gregarious habits of the 
 protozoa, and indicated by and related to the re 
 production of their species by sporeformations 
 great business better try it. Get down to grass 
 roots ! " 
 
 The gray eyes met the blue with a hurt expres 
 sion, and the girl replied: " Oh Dickie, don t 
 be a fool. Tell me about Radcliffe " 
 
 The young man grinned into the serious gray 
 eyes, and began: " Well, Deb it seems to me 
 that for a girl who has taken her A.B. at Kansas 
 University, her Master s degree at Wellesley, her 
 Doctor s degree at Wisconsin, her music at Ober- 
 lin, and her Domestic Science at Illinois Rad 
 cliffe hasn t much to show you except the clois 
 tered life, and the blue-stocking of commerce." 
 
 "That s what I ve heard rather sheltered 
 and exotic?" she questioned. 
 
 He nodded and burst out: "Say, Debbie 
 why don t you quit all this educational rounding, 
 straighten up, and settle down and " 
 
 She smiled cheerfully at him : " And get father 
 another son-in-law? No, thank you. Not 
 for " 
 
 " Look here, now, Debbie, listen to me ! Did 
 
132 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 you know that it is the sorrow of your father s 
 life that" 
 
 Yes, and he s got three other sorrows of his 
 life," she broke in flippantly. " There s little 
 Hardy, and George Griffin, and poor Thompson 
 
 three death s heads perching on his bed posts, 
 grinning at him in his sleep, waiting for him to die ; 
 and I presume you want me to bring in a 
 fourth " 
 
 They laughed because youth always laughs 
 when nothing else presents itself, and Dick an 
 swered: "Oh, well, Deb you know I didn t 
 mean that. I meant why not come home and live 
 and " 
 
 " Dick! " she exclaimed, " I have my side too. 
 What if I do come home? What will I come 
 home to?" She paused and smiled and said: 
 " Now, I m going to feel dreadfully sorry for my 
 self but if I come home, it s only to hear money 
 
 money money dinged at me all the time. 
 Do you know," she asked cynically, " that my edu 
 cation to date has cost father $11,387.64 in prin 
 cipal, and seven per cent, interest on the sum in 
 vested if I had not spent it? Do you know that fa 
 ther invests $9,348.93 every year in benevolences 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 133 
 
 and that he adds what he spends on us girls at 
 Christmas to make the sum larger and fool the 
 Lord? Did you know that he gave the widow of 
 a man killed in the zinc galvanizing works $234 
 yesterday for her husband, and then set it down 
 as charity? Why, Dick Dick did you real 
 ise that father actually figures that beautiful 
 model village of Boyceville as a seven per cent, 
 investment just a seven per cent, investment 
 including the overhead charges, as he calls it? 
 Perhaps I don t know, but perhaps at one time 
 he was moved by the beauty of it the fine fra 
 ternity of it once long ago," she mused with 
 a troubled frown. " I m not sure, but now 
 now he thinks he has figured out a nine per cent, 
 increase in the efficiency of the men by reason of 
 their housing! Think of that, Dick! " She was 
 gripping the mahogany board before her, and 
 looking steadily at the youth, facing her as she 
 cried: " That s what I hear when I hear any 
 thing at all out of father, and when he s out of 
 the house I hear Esther, and Mary and Ruth 
 whine and sniffle because papa gives so much 
 away; and mamma siding right in with them 
 when they re at home, and right in with father 
 
134 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 when the girls are away. Oh, Dickie! " she was 
 speaking quickly and earnestly. " I know that 
 father gives you an impression that I m a heart 
 less wretch; and not a good daughter but " 
 
 " No, Deborah," interrupted Hale. His blue 
 eyes had met the burning light in the gray eyes 
 that sought and held his in the girl s emotion, and 
 he was embarrassed. " Only I rather thought " 
 
 " Oh, you rather thought what they all think," 
 she cut in bitterly, " that a girl with a beautiful 
 home, with a devoted father, and a slave of a 
 mother, and three doting sisters, whose psychology 
 tests show that they quit growing mentally at about 
 ten years old, should stay at home and intrigue 
 and mollycoddle father for fifty or a hundred dol 
 lars, and hear him translating every fine and beau 
 tiful thing on earth into its greatest common de 
 nominator in money money money should 
 sit like a tabby cat on the hearth and be happy. 
 But I can t, Dick Hale I can t and I won t! " 
 
 The girl was leaning across the desk. The 
 young man had risen and pushed the door shut 
 lest the janitor, sweeping in the deserted counting 
 room in front, might hear her rising voice. He 
 stood over her, looking at the strong, capable 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 135 
 
 hands clasped convulsively on the table, and his 
 eyes rose gently to her eyes that were looking, 
 first down, then up at him in a misery that touched 
 a new spring in his heart. 
 
 " Dick," she began, " ever since father has been 
 making you his favourite here, I ve known what 
 you d think and some way I ve wanted you to 
 know to understand to appreciate my 
 point of view." 
 
 He dropped into a chair at the end of the table 
 near her, tilted it back, rocking on his toes in 
 silence a few seconds, and said, as he looked stead 
 ily at her: " Deb it s it s tough tough 
 luck why, some way I never I supposed, of 
 course, that " 
 
 " Exactly " bitterly, " you supposed I just 
 loved the dry nonsense of text-books and the 
 empty pursuit of knowledge and me an old girl 
 hanging around the colleges like a ghost with the 
 other anaemic old maids, and pie-faced old bache 
 lors who haven t got spunk enough to get out and 
 try real life. Well, I hate it if you must know." 
 She stopped a moment, then blurted out, blushing 
 up to her curling hair: "Dick Hale listen! 
 I want just what other women want a home 
 
136 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and and everything ! But the everlasting 
 money money money keeps me away 
 from it. The men who d marry me for my money 
 and make another son-in-law, I wouldn t have, and 
 the men I d like they re the kind who are too 
 proud to be sons-in-law " She threw out her 
 hands hopelessly and cried: " So I m going to 
 Radcliffe or Barnard. And because he can t 
 make me helpless as helpless as mother, and 
 the girls; as helpless as the preachers he always 
 wheedles out of conference, as helpless as the men 
 at the mills and in the bank; as helpless as every 
 thing every one but you, Dick that father 
 has around him, and has gangrened with money 
 you and the whole town think I m a person " 
 here she smiled and began to laugh, " without 
 proper human emotions." 
 
 The laugh saved the scene. They both laughed. 
 And the girl pushed her chair back impulsively 
 and rose, saying: " Now, Dickie, just forget it, 
 and remember women have no souls and that I m 
 like all the rest." 
 
 He stood in the doorway watching her as she 
 turned the corner, and the phrase " the men I d 
 like " kept coming back to his mind, and he won- 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 137 
 
 dered what sort of fellows she really would like, 
 and if maybe he was of the sort. 
 
 So Dick Hale, with a vision of soft brown hair, 
 curling and blowing about a vivid face, with a 
 vision of exceedingly even teeth, and a good 
 healthy skin with a vision before his eyes of 
 a woman who seemed for the first time fair to 
 him went back to. his work. And his work 
 was the rather delicate business of putting the 
 bank in order for the visit of an examiner the 
 next day a task which in three years had been 
 transferred by Kilworth largely to the younger 
 man. Kilworth, as had become his custom when 
 an examination was imminent, before leaving the 
 bank that night, had laid out a number of things for 
 Dick to do. Certain emergency matters, over 
 drafts and cash items had to be lifted out and scat 
 tered among the notes, using the accommodation 
 paper that Kilworth s friends had left in blank for 
 him to use at will. Also there was a note of Col 
 onel Longford s to be signed as the Colonel de 
 sired a renewal and had written to Kilworth from 
 Wagon Wheel Gap, Colorado, to extend the old 
 note. But the old note was in a bank in Vermont, 
 so Hale had been told to make out a new note with 
 
138 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 a signature as nearly like the Colonel s as he could. 
 He often did these things for Kilworth. They 
 were not included in the theory of banking and 
 commerce as Dick had learned it at Harvard. 
 But in the practical conduct of a bank his teachers 
 had told him that he would find certain varying 
 practices, and he had found them. They consti 
 tuted Mr. Kilworth s way, and that was enough for 
 Dick Hale. He knew, for instance, without hav 
 ing been told by Kilworth or by the others in the 
 bank, that the Kilworth corporations were large 
 borrowers from the bank, and he vaguely suspected 
 that these loans represented Kilworth s liabilities; 
 but he reasoned that if the federal banking laws 
 hampered a man so entirely able to pay as Boyce 
 Kilworth was able to pay, from borrowing from 
 the bank, then naturally good banking would com 
 pel the bank to adopt the very subterfuges to con 
 ceal the transactions which the bank used. So there 
 was the paper of the Boyce Investment Company, 
 and of the various subsidiary corporations or 
 ganised by Mr. Kilworth to conduct the sheet 
 metal works. But their notes and obligations had 
 to be cleared out of the way before the examiners 
 arrived, and other paper put in the note drawer. 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 139 
 
 EXick himself had borrowed five thousand dollars 
 from a bank in Utica, New York, with Boyce Kil- 
 worth s endorsement upon the note and had bought 
 some stock in the Corrugated Metal Manufactur 
 ing Company for a song, at Mr. Kilworth s sugges 
 tion, and he had smiled when he saw his rating one 
 day in a commercial report as good for $50,000. 
 After that rating appeared Dick often gave Mr. 
 Kilworth his note for rather large amounts to use 
 with Kilworth s endorsement in the East. But the 
 bank was paying eight per cent, semi-annual divi 
 dends and its stock was selling at one hundred and 
 fifty per cent, premium; so Dick Hale bent over 
 his task of fixing up the cash items for the ex 
 aminers and damned the banking laws in general, 
 and the rules in particular that were making him 
 work overtime. Also, he resolved that he would 
 never be a son-in-law. But he felt that if the 
 man who had offered him ten thousand for his 
 Corrugated Metal stock was in earnest, and would 
 bring in the money to-morrow, Dick Hale knew a 
 place : a snap in fact where he could invest 
 that ten thousand and turn it ten times over in two 
 years. And he dreamed of a day, within the rea 
 sonably near future, when Boyce Kilworth might 
 
GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 be a mere father-in-law. So he got out a striking 
 imitation of Colonel Longford s note, put a few 
 papers among the morning s collections that looked 
 plausible, as per directions of Kilworth, slipped 
 something like a hundred thousand dollars worth 
 of accommodation paper into the note drawer 
 and whistling the " Beautiful Lady " between his 
 teeth at half-past six, squinted over a tentative 
 statement of the bank s three-million-dollar busi 
 ness for Mr. Kilworth s guidance the next day that 
 looked like an oil painting of prosperity. He 
 called up the Kilworth home to ask Mr. Kilworth 
 if he desired to see the statement that night, and 
 when Deborah came to the telephone, he played 
 with her for two minutes or so before letting her 
 put her father on the line. That night after din 
 ner in the curious little cubby-hole filled with ex 
 pensive unread books in glittering sets, that Kil 
 worth called the library, Dick and Boyce Kilworth 
 went over the statement carefully, after their cus 
 tom, line upon line. At ten o clock the banker 
 threw his hand down on his desk to indicate that 
 he was satisfied, and called to his daughter, read 
 ing in the living room, to see that Dick got safely 
 out, while Boyce Kilworth reached for his Bible 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 141 
 
 to read his evening chapter about the Lord s ex 
 treme solicitude for them he has chosen to honour. 
 On the wide veranda twelve feet deep with its 
 massive pillars and heavy limestone railings, the 
 youth and the maiden loitered for a moment, and 
 the girl asked sharply: 
 
 " Dickie what are you and father up to 
 about that examiner? " 
 
 " Bookkeeping/ smiled the youth. 
 
 " Bookkeeping? " But he saw her serious eyes 
 in the twilight and answered her frankly: 
 
 There s no reason why you shouldn t know. 
 It s this: Good banking and the banking laws 
 sometimes don t jibe. We keep our books one 
 way in order to get results and we have to keep 
 our books another way to satisfy the examiner 
 who isn t interested in results, but is bound by 
 rules; that is all there is in it. We had a tip 
 from Atchison that an examiner was coming down 
 the line to-morrow and we re getting ready for 
 him." 
 
 " And father is worried, Dick I know 
 father." 
 
 Their eyes met for a frank second, and Dick 
 smiled and shook his head: " Not a thing in the 
 
142 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 world in it, Debbie; he s just seventy-four years 
 old and seventy-four years timid that s all." 
 
 The girl put her hand out, but withdrew it, be 
 fore it touched him, and then she cried: " Father 
 may be everything else under the shining sun, Dick 
 Hale but he never was and never will be timid." 
 
 He manoeuvred himself into a position near her, 
 where their arms touched. She did not shrink 
 away. And they were silent a moment, looking 
 out into the lawn below them. The man whistled 
 softly a bar from some street tune, and said gently 
 without turning to look at her: " Nothing to it, 
 Sis nothing but the baseless fabric of a dream, 
 Debbie." He turned to her, reached out his hand, 
 took hers, shook it in bashful quickness, and 
 skipped down the broad stone steps, calling mock 
 ingly : " Sleep, my pretty one, sleep thy father 
 is watching his sheep ! " 
 
 Richard Hale walked home slowly through that 
 July night. His mind was busy with new trains 
 of thought. For the first time he had a curious 
 uneasy feeling about Boyce Kilworth. All that 
 his daughter had said that day about him, her 
 warning that evening, had unsettled the young 
 man. And he recognised as he ran down his emo- 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 143 
 
 tions to their source that it was not what had been 
 said but the author of what had been said that 
 disturbed him. The hair and the eyes and the 
 teeth and the voice all for the first time striking 
 him as beautiful had impressed him ; had caught 
 his attention and held it to what the girl had 
 said. So he ran it over and over in his mind. 
 He knew Boyce Kilworth measured everything by 
 its money value; but, why not? Different men 
 had different standards of value, he reasoned; was 
 not one standard as good as another, and were not 
 men of differing standards equally good men? A 
 banker dealt with money; why not value things by 
 the measure he understood? But in his heart 
 some way -perhaps it was the argument of the 
 hair and eyes and teeth and voice Richard Hale 
 knew that his logic was lame. And the last thing 
 he heard at night as he turned to sleep was a voice 
 crying: " Why, Dick he even turns into seven 
 per cent, interest that beautiful model village he 
 has made of Boyceville ! " 
 
 In the night he woke up wondering why the 
 year before Boyce Kilworth had trusteed in four 
 separate trusts two hundred thousand dollars each 
 for his daughters, and taken the account and the 
 
i 4 4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 trusts to New York. He had not questioned it 
 before. But again the voice and the eyes and the 
 beauty of a girl s presence newly discovered, made 
 the query in his heart persist. He woke in the 
 morning keen to have the buyer for his Corrugated 
 metal stock materialise and anxious to make the 
 larger plunge that would bring him the greater re 
 turn but again the voice cried: " The men 
 I d like," and he asked if she would like a fellow 
 whose morning thoughts were of money. As he 
 dressed he heard his father whistling softly out 
 side where Dick knew the elder man was pottering 
 around among his garden flowers probably 
 among his delphiniums and bees playing the 
 old game of plant breeding. When he went out 
 Dick found his father standing proudly before 
 the giant stalk of blue that was known of men as 
 the Hale Delphinium. A great splash of rich 
 colour was smeared across the length of the gar 
 den and Caleb Hale, with his shirt sleeves rolled 
 above his elbows, was poking the earth in the bed, 
 or the next moment standing arms akimbo, head 
 on one side, squinting at the glory of the proud 
 upstanding gorgeous blossoms. The father 
 turned at the son s approach and cried: " By 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 145 
 
 Johnnie boy aren t they splendid? And to 
 think that all over this world, Dick everywhere 
 even down in Australia and in South America, 
 Hale s Delphiniums are splotching blue in gardens 
 and parks and flowerbeds ; and all because I took 
 to playing with the bees a dozen years ago, to make 
 a flower that would stand our dry, hot summers. 
 Why, Dick, they re as hardy as their granddad- 
 dies, the larkspur and never will run out; long 
 after I m gone these things will be gladdening 
 the eyes of the world. That s something eh, 
 Dick!" 
 
 The battered, broken old face lighted up in a 
 cracked smile of joy, and the son asked: " But 
 have they made you anything, pater what has 
 Hale s Delphinium netted you? " 
 
 The father s voice broke into a chuckling laugh 
 as he answered: " Why what do I know? 
 You see, Dick, we busted our adding machine and 
 I lost my ready reckoner twenty years ago, and I 
 never installed a cost system." He cocked a 
 humorous blue eye at his son as he continued: 
 " I suppose if I counted my time at fifty cents 
 an hour, and the time of the bees at say ten cents 
 an hour, and the interest on the value of the lot 
 
146 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 compounded semi-annually, and then stuck in thirty 
 per cent, for overhead charges and marketing 
 I d have been in the poorhouse on Hale s Del 
 phinium long ago." He stopped to laugh at his 
 conceit and added seriously: "Here s the way 
 I figure it, Dick all over the earth people glance 
 at these big, jumping spots of blue flower and a 
 little thrill of joy hits em. They don t know why, 
 but I do. It s the come-back of the soul to beauty; 
 the reaction of the infinite on the human heart. 
 Such ineffable beauty no human hand could make ; 
 it s a token of something bigger than us, Dick, in 
 the world God s visiting cards stuck around all 
 over the earth to let em know he s called. 
 And, being Hale s Delphiniums, I m travelling in 
 fairly good company, boy! That s how I figure 
 it." The old face, wrinkled and twisted with dead 
 emotions, with the once hard lines softened, stared 
 up into his son s face with a glow of pride as he 
 asked : " Ain t that something, Dick almost as 
 good as Boyce s millions? " 
 
 The night thoughts of the son formed on his 
 lips and he asked: " Father, why don t you like 
 Boyce Kilworth? What has he ever done to 
 you?" 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 147 
 
 The father dropped his arms to his side, and 
 gazed at the ground, as he answered musingly: 
 "Well I don t seem to cotton to Boyce do 
 I, Dick? 1 He paused and added: "I never 
 did." His head drooped reflectively as he 
 droned on: " Always got in my gorge and made 
 me want to heave. So kind of damn smoothly, 
 evenly successful! Dick," he cried, "look at 
 that face not a wrinkle not a retraced step 
 shown, not a temptation conquered, not a line from 
 an aching heart." The father lifted his head and 
 cried passionately : " How God must pity per 
 haps even scorn the life that shines through 
 that kind of a face ! " The old countenance was 
 turned to the boy s and the father cried: " Oh, 
 Dick Dick, my boy never a shame to sting 
 his pride never a remorse to furrow his heart 
 never a fall to test his strength never a fail 
 ure to harrow his soul ! What did God put us here 
 for, son, if not to come out stronger by our weak 
 nesses, braver by our retreats, bigger by wrestling 
 with our meanness, holier by coming into love 
 through hate ! Boyce Kilworth s ghastly success 
 has cost him all these things. So some way I 
 don t care for him. I just kind of feel he s missed 
 
148 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 the whole meaning of life, and I m agin him ! " 
 The keen blue eyes searched the young face for 
 a quiver of recognition. The son shook his head, 
 and sighed: "Some way I don t follow you, 
 pater. For the life of me I can t see what Mr. 
 Kilworth has done to " 
 
 "Done? Done? Done hell, boy that s 
 just it ! He d be better if he had done, if he would 
 do something miserable. I m a poor damned sin 
 ner, Dick, and I know it Lord, how I know it ! 
 But sin wasn t what I did so much, as it was 
 what I was ! Sin is a symptom of a disease of the 
 soul and Boyce s trouble is ingrown. The sin 
 ner, Dickie, is the cuss who grinds his guts out 
 day by day for material things for selfish things, 
 for measly finite things, and Boyce s whole life 
 ugh " he shuddered, " has been one long chase 
 of dollars for the sake of dollars, dollars for the 
 power of Kilworth, dollars for the glory of Kil 
 worth, dollars to make Kilworth the great tin god 
 of a Providence in the community ! And the devil s 
 answer to all his assumption is to set three leering 
 sons-in-law forever before him with their thumbs 
 on their noses, wiggling their fingers at his 
 pride!" 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 149 
 
 Caleb Hale laughed and sat down on a packing 
 box and chuckled. " Aye," another chuckle, 
 " God will not be mocked God will not be 
 mocked." When he had finished laughing he rose 
 and said: " Come on to breakfast, Dick and 
 don t let them fool you into thinking He will be 
 either. Sixty years of bumping the world on the 
 sharp places has taught me that, son and I give 
 you that and Hale s Delphinium as your heritage ! 
 The lawyers can t bust the will and take that from 
 you, my boy ! " 
 
 As he worked that day in the bank, marching 
 and counter-marching through his accounts with 
 the examiner, while Boyce Kilworth sat at his desk 
 making large Os on a paper and watching the con 
 test from the tail of his eyes, Dick Hale forgot 
 the morning s talk, but in his undersoul, it pricked 
 him like a thorn and made him dimly unhappy. 
 Only in the late afternoon, when the examiner had 
 gone, and Deborah Kilworth came down to the 
 bank in her electric car to take her father home, 
 did the thorn in his conscience ease him. He 
 looked up and saw her wearing a great bunch of 
 Hale s Delphiniums; so his own heart thrilled at 
 the beauty he could not express, and their eyes 
 
150 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 carried to both hearts a wordless message that was 
 deep and sweet. 
 
 And all that summer their hearts spoke words 
 that they dared not put upon their lips, and each 
 was shy and fearful lest the other misunderstand 
 what both were feeling. Such is the way with 
 love that sinks deeper than the flesh. For of all 
 the unfathomable, commonplace mysteries that go 
 to make up the unfathomable commonplace mys 
 tery of life, none is more baffling than the com 
 monplace mystery of love. How do hearts com 
 municate through the silences? Or, stranger still, 
 how do hearts find through the elaborate and 
 studied silliness of such small talk as convention 
 allows unpledged lovers, the golden wire, laden 
 with things deeply beautiful? Yet if lovers did 
 not speak through the hidden channels to the heart, 
 if only spoken words were left to life and love, 
 what monstrous indeed, what hideous courage 
 it would take for a lover to seek his first kiss ! 
 The truth is that the lips are the laggards of 
 love ; they come stuttering along with their empty 
 words long after eyes, and voice, and finger tips 
 and Heaven only knows what else, for therein 
 lies the mystery have gone forth seeking 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 151 
 
 eagerly, and have found the way of the ineffable 
 peace, and have plighted troth over and over 
 again. 
 
 So during the summer that followed that meet 
 ing in the bank, where first their hearts glowed with 
 a new and holy fire far below their conscious selves, 
 these two, going about their daily round of work 
 and play, were slowly and amid much conscious 
 amazement after the old commonplace fashion 
 meeting out in the place of mysteries beyond the 
 senses, and reading line upon line, precept upon 
 precept, here a little and there a little, the secret 
 meaning of each other s hearts. To transcribe the 
 dialogue of lovers whose lips are sealed, is to set 
 down the emptiest chaff in language. Here they 
 meet at a dinner party, there at tennis, yonder at 
 the bank, and again, on the street. And when 
 they meet they fall to with a will, threshing chaff. 
 Yet in the chaff, apart from the words, hidden in 
 eyes and tones and touch lies the grain that is 
 ripening in their hearts. It is all tearfully funny 
 and comically sad this mystery of nest-making 
 in the heart. 
 
 At the end of the summer of an August even 
 ing, just before Deborah Kilworth is to leave for 
 
1 52 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Radcliffe, they are sitting together in the deep ver 
 anda of the Kilworth residence, listening to the 
 screeching night-fiddles of the katydids, and the 
 zylaphones of the crickets, and the interminable 
 crash of small night sounds that affront the ear in 
 those embarrassed silences that come when two 
 hearts are struggling to push back from weak lips 
 the words not ready to be uttered. Finally talk 
 starts up perhaps it is of books serious 
 books, very likely, for the poor intellect is mis 
 erably floundering to regain its balance ; or maybe 
 politics fancy politics in a love scene, or re 
 ligion, which is just as grotesque, yet often used to 
 fill the gaps that make the silences that every heart 
 fears and loves in times like this. At the end of 
 one of these joyously painful silences the young 
 man broke out: 
 
 " Debbie I wonder if you d care to know I ll 
 make a lot of money for me on my Okla 
 homa oil lands deal? " 
 
 There jumped into her consciousness like a trout 
 from a pool the fear that perhaps he fancied 
 money gave him some status with her and she 
 cried: 
 
 " Oh no, I don t care, Dick how much you 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 153 
 
 make or how little. It s not what money you 
 make but what money makes of you, that counts. 
 Take it if it comes speed it, if it goes and 
 you re safe." 
 
 "I know I know, Debbie," returned the 
 youth, " only I thought you hated money; so I was 
 afraid " 
 
 " Yes yes," she answered, "I understand, 
 Dick. Money is nothing, I suppose, one way or 
 another, if you consider it properly; but it is liable 
 to become a cumulative poison in the heart. We 
 we, we Dick we must not measure life 
 by money! " The u we " that she spoke spilled 
 from her lips unconsciously. He caught it up with 
 an eager: " Oh, Debbie we ll not ! " He re 
 peated " We ll not." But the " we " was spilled, 
 the straw from the heart s nest had tumbled into 
 life, and the girl went on bravely: 
 
 " Dick you ve been so good to me this sum 
 mer; you ve understood." She stopped and 
 looked into his eyes where words were not needed, 
 then she went on : " Dick, let s you and me prom 
 ise ourselves we ll be the kind of friends who 
 measure life in joy in service, in in " She 
 was pushing back from her lips the obvious word 
 
i 5 4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and the youth before her glowed happily into her 
 eyes as he laughed: "In in oh, Debbie, 
 why not use the short and lovely word? " 
 
 She blushed and turned away crying as she 
 pushed his hand back: " Oh, Dickie, don t be a 
 fool! Let s just be friends." And so the old 
 commonplace mystery of love working its miracle 
 in their lives, rose almost to their lips and they 
 parted holding in their memories the glimpse they 
 had of the straw from their hearts nest that they 
 were building busily in the silences. 
 
 And then the autumn, the winter and the spring 
 went by, and as the months sped on they cut care 
 into the young man s face care that even the let 
 ters from Deborah Kilworth could not erase. For 
 slowly he was coming into the knowledge of good 
 and evil in a bank; slowly he was finding the sham 
 and illusion behind Boyce Kilworth s respectability. 
 The night following the day of Deborah Kil 
 worth s return from Radcliffe, after her ten 
 months absence, she heard her father call Dick 
 Hale upon the telephone and summon him to the 
 Kilworth house. And later, from a room wherein 
 she sat trying to read, a room near by her father s 
 library, she kept hearing the petulant voice of her 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 155 
 
 father complaining in short rasping sentences, as 
 the younger man explained something, or expos 
 tulated, she was not sure which it was. But it 
 was evident that a bank examiner was in town, on 
 his semi-occasional visit, and that the young man 
 was trying vainly to take a stand against the judg 
 ment of the elder. 
 
 " But I tell you I ve always bluffed em," the 
 girl heard her father insist. And again after 
 young Hale had gone over some problem the old 
 banker snapped: " Cheap bank clerks, ap 
 pointed by cheap congressmen, working for a 
 cheap politician in Washington who is always 
 leggin for a big job down in New York I know 
 
 em." 
 
 The girl tried to read her book and shut out the 
 clamour ; and succeeded for a time, but her father s 
 voice rising in a whine of rage, attracted her with : 
 * I tell you, boy the only way to win our game 
 is to beat theirs." 
 
 He would not go into the problem, whatever 
 it was that the younger man was presenting. 
 Finally the old man broke out angrily: " Sound 
 banking? Sound banking? I ve run this bank 
 since seventy-three, and I beat em in four panics, 
 
156 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and I tell you stick to their rules it s their 
 rules that count their rules and regulations. I 
 know em by heart, and I ve never been caught 
 breaking a rule, and they know it. Stick to their 
 rules on the books and fool em, and bluff em! " 
 Evidently young Hale tried to stop Kilworth for 
 the old man cried: " Ain t it my bank? Ain t 
 it my money? Now, sir I have told you what 
 to do go do it ! " 
 
 Apparently the younger man was picking up his 
 papers for a long silence ensued. Her father, 
 clearly piqued and fretting, mumbled: " I know 
 how to run that bank. My way has been good 
 for forty years, and I don t want you to bring your 
 college fads and isms of sound banking around 
 me." At the door Kilworth threw a growl at 
 Hale : " I know my way, and it s always won. I 
 shan t go trying your goody-goody game with 
 things like they are now! " 
 
 In the veranda, where the girl hurried to meet 
 the young man, she saw a worried, tired face. 
 Their hands met and the handclasp lingered as 
 they crossed the veranda. She asked anxiously: 
 " What is it, Dick? " He put her soft, yielding 
 hand to his face and held it there unresisting a mo- 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 157 
 
 ment, as one applying a healing balm, and an 
 swered gently: " I can t go into it all now, Debbie 
 but, oh, it is so good so good to know that 
 you are here so near now! " On the front 
 step he paused to look into the beautiful face of the 
 girl gazing at him intently and then Hale ex 
 claimed: "Oh, Deb Deb if the pater in 
 there just had the memory of one time, when he 
 had played a different game and won, what a big 
 help it would be to-night." Then he turned and 
 left her. 
 
 It was the summer when the world s supply of 
 zinc had been poured into the alloy of cannons, and 
 that summer some devilish fate had given Boyce 
 Kilworth a contract at the Corrugated Metal mills 
 for half a million dollars worth of zinc tubing, 
 and found him without a pound of zinc on 
 hand, with zinc consorting with the precious 
 metals. Work was dragging at all the other mills 
 in Boyceville and the old banker was walking gin 
 gerly and slowly through a labyrinth of chicanery 
 that he had built up day by day and month by 
 month during forty years of banking. And the 
 next morning came the first warning shudder of 
 the coming earthquake which was to wreck the 
 
i 5 8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 house of Kilworth. The first tremor startled the 
 bank when Colonel Longford, cheerfully hobbling 
 into the counting room, stood before the note coun 
 ter and bawled gaily across to the clerk at the note 
 docket: "Hi, there, you Hank Thompson, son- 
 in-law of Croesus, and keeper of the records and 
 seals come here." The old voice piped glee 
 fully. :t What kind of a insti-damn-tution, are 
 you running here, anyway? " He drew from his 
 pocketbook a slip of paper and waved it at the 
 meek son-in-law who stood wondering what blun 
 der he had made this time : " Sending me a notice 
 of a note due that I paid God knows how long 
 ago." 
 
 The old man rattled his cane on the brass railing 
 at his feet and cried: " Oh, you bankers I m 
 glad to get it on you! You re such an exacting 
 set of old maids, that it s worth twenty-five thou 
 sand dollars to catch you in an error." Thomp 
 son was flapping the leaves of his note docket. A 
 clerk near the note cage had gone in to look over 
 the paper set out for notification. An examiner, 
 working on the cash ledger, dropped his pen and 
 shoved the clerk aside, as the Colonel called to the 
 back room of the bank : "Hi hi hi you, 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 159 
 
 Boyce you, Dick why don t you get some 
 clerks here who can run a bank? " He was laugh 
 ing. " Boyce come out here and let s go over 
 to Pete s and get the cigars; it s worth a pocket 
 full to set my old heart jumping as it did when I 
 got this notice. Why, man, I haven t seen twenty- 
 five thousand dollars in twenty-five thousand 
 years." 
 
 Hale was in the banking room, trying to get in 
 front of the examiner to reach the bundle of notes 
 in the drawer first. Kilworth, gaping and pale, 
 sat in his room with his hand trembling on his 
 desk. 
 
 But the examiner reached the note drawer well 
 ahead of Hale, clicking the cage door lock behind 
 him. A little group of customers drew around the 
 Colonel, smiling in anticipation of the fun. But 
 Dick Hale was not smiling. He was trying to 
 catch the Colonel s laughing eyes. In a minute the 
 examiner had a note out of the bundle, and shov 
 ing it across the marble counter under the wicket, 
 asked: " What about this, Colonel? " 
 
 Colonel Longford eyed the paper. It was a 
 note for $25,000; it had apparently come into the 
 bank for collection from a New York bank, and 
 
i6o GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 it bore Boyce Kilworth s endorsement across the 
 back. Vainly Dick Hale coughed and tried to 
 divert the old man s attention. 
 
 The old eyes scanned the paper closely. Finally 
 the old, piping voice changed its note and roared : 
 " A damned forgery a damned, scoundrelly for 
 gery why, Boyce," he cried, " see if they ve got 
 your signature; mine s wrong there in the J. I 
 never make a J that way it looks like that, but 
 I swipe the pen up and this is carefully drawn 
 down, and I never in my life signed it John. I 
 always sign it Jno you know that ! " 
 
 The examiner looked at the Colonel, and caught 
 Dick Hale s eyes trying to reach the old man. 
 " Let s go into the back room, gentlemen," said 
 the examiner. As they turned out of the lobby of 
 the bank, the Colonel saw Kilworth s ashen gray 
 face. He looked up and caught Dick Hale s sig 
 nal. But he met the examiner s eyes at the same 
 instant. Slowly through the old brain a glimpse 
 of the truth made its way. As he walked back to 
 Kilworth s desk he resolved what to do. 
 
 He lifted his keen old eyes to the examiner s 
 face, pulled a cigar from a case, snipped the end 
 off as he sank into a deep upholstered chair and 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 16 1 
 
 asked: " Boyce say that couldn t be that 
 note I asked you to sign for me last winter when I 
 hurt my hand could it? By George, I believe 
 I haven t paid that note now, have I ? It was 
 for that Santa Fe stock I bought well, I m a 
 goat!" 
 
 The examiner sniffed. Kilworth saw it. He 
 cleared his throat, paused a moment and said 
 slowly: "Well, now I don t just remember. 
 Ask Mr. Hale." 
 
 " We ll trace it back and see," said the examiner, 
 putting the note in a pocketbook before him and 
 rising. And it took him just three days after that 
 to close the bank. 
 
 PART III 
 
 And in those three days, Boyce Kilworth went 
 through a Gethsemane without faith, into a Gol 
 gotha without hope. The examiner was just clos 
 ing a two days visit a visit rather longer than 
 the other banks thought necessary then at the 
 hour when Colonel Longford disclosed his forged 
 note. When the examiner did not go away after 
 two days in the Kilworth bank, the clerks in the 
 
1 62 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 other banks in the town, and later the directors 
 of the banks and finally their friends, began whis 
 pering. The night after the Colonel s explosion 
 in the lobby of the bank, in half a hundred homes, 
 men were looking anxiously for old copies of the 
 Globe to read the Kilworth bank s last quarterly 
 statement. Then the lights began to glow on the 
 switchboard in the telephone office in the residence 
 district at an unusual time between eight and 
 nine. A hundred quiet tips were whispered across 
 the lines, and a hundred others not so quiet fol 
 lowed, and by seven the next morning, the news 
 was running through the model village of Boyce- 
 ville in anything but an orderly fashion. At eight 
 a small crowd had gathered in front of the bank 
 door with its great bronze columns, and when 
 Boyce Kilworth came down, half an hour late, 
 after a night s tussle with the examiner, he saw the 
 crowd, heard its murmur as he went into the side 
 door of the bank, and there found three examiners 
 waiting for him. By nine o clock the whole town 
 knew that two extra examiners were in town, and 
 then the crowd before the bronze columns outside 
 blocked the street car traffic. Dick Hale stood at 
 the teller s window, when the examiners could 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 163 
 
 spare him from the back room, and counted out 
 the cash, slowly and confidently, joking with the 
 people he knew, and keeping a quick ear open for 
 developments behind him. He knew that the 
 three examiners would get no important informa 
 tion out of Grubb, the gray-haired, respectable 
 cashier; for Grubb knew nothing. And mentally, 
 Dick catalogued their pounding upon that worthy, 
 as a bass drum solo. But the young man, who 
 had put in ten hours with the first examiner, knew 
 that he had a turn coming with the two new men, 
 and all the time as he counted cash, he was going 
 over the story he had told, freshening it up, adding 
 details, trying and retrying his stepping stones of 
 fact, across the stream of fiction, to see whether 
 they would hold him. 
 
 And all the while Boyce Kilworth, ashen gray 
 and nervous, was sitting at his desk, making line 
 after line of large Os on the paper before him, 
 watching the current of old friends and neighbours 
 as it washed through the lobby of the bank. He 
 was dazed and helpless. He prepared a state 
 ment for the afternoon papers, declaring that the 
 run was a piece of madness, asserting that the 
 bank was as sound as the rock of Gibraltar. 
 
1 64 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 By half-past ten, Deborah Kilworth, answer 
 ing the telephone for her mother, realised that 
 something unusual was happening at the bank. 
 Strange voices kept calling for her mother; some 
 times they insulted her, sometimes they wept. 
 Her two sisters who lived in town, came hurrying 
 over, fear-stricken; they, too, had been getting tele 
 phone calls. A school teacher whom Deborah 
 knew, called while the girls were talking together, 
 and the teacher, frightened at the possibility of los 
 ing her life s savings, begged Deborah to help her. 
 Then the Kilworths knew the truth. The two 
 married daughters, in childish terror, planned to 
 leave town on the noon train, and Mrs. Kilworth 
 advised the girls to go, and then called up the 
 society editor of the Globe to tell her that Mrs. 
 Hardy and Mrs. Thompson had left on a shopping 
 tour for Kansas City. By the time Mrs. Kilworth 
 had these things done, her parlour was filled with 
 women old friends and neighbours, working 
 women, church friends who, when she met 
 them, began frantic appeals to her to help them 
 to get their savings. And when Deborah, leaving 
 her mother chirping sweetly to the frenzied group, 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 165 
 
 walked down the front steps of the house, she 
 passed a group of men and women at the gate. 
 In her electric she sped to the bank. There she 
 saw the crowd, half curious, half sullen, and she 
 heard its suppressed growl when she descended 
 from her electric car. She hurried through the 
 back door into the bank and found her father, 
 sitting dumb and stupefied, making aimless marks 
 on the sheet of paper before him. She went to 
 him and asked: 
 
 "Father Father what does this mean?" 
 He lifted his smooth, fat, white face to greet 
 her and cried impotently: " Go home go home 
 I tell you ! " 
 
 She looked into the adjoining room, where 
 Hale s desk was empty, then she leaned forward, 
 glanced into the banking room and, not seeing him, 
 asked: "Where s Dick Hale, Father?" A 
 face in the street, idly peering above the sash cur 
 tain of the high window beside Kilworth s desk, 
 may have diverted him, for he turned away and did 
 not answer her but, dropping his eyes, began a new 
 line of Os on the paper before him. Deborah 
 heard voices in the back room. She turned to fol- 
 
1 66 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 low the voices, which led her into the room where 
 three men at a table were cross-questioning young 
 Hale. 
 
 When she opened the door, the three strangers 
 rose, and she asked: " Will you excuse Mr. Hale 
 for a moment? " 
 
 She saw Dick smiling, with his blue eyes glitter 
 ing and a flushed place on his cheek, and called: 
 " Just a moment, please, Dick." And he fol 
 lowed her into his own office. 
 
 " Dick " she caught his arm, " what is 
 it?" 
 
 " It s a fight Deb," answered the young man, 
 meeting her eyes eagerly, " but we ll win I 
 think!" 
 
 u You think? Don t you know, Dick?" she 
 asked abruptly. Then she added quickly: " Dick 
 has he," she nodded toward her father s room, 
 " has he led you into any wrong? " The man 
 took her hand, and said in a low voice: " Debbie 
 Kilworth you must believe what I say." She 
 nodded, and he went on: " Debbie, I ve had to 
 do things for him this year that broke the rules 
 of this game as I would have played it; but, oh, 
 Debbie, Debbie, as I " he checked the sentence, 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 167 
 
 u by all that is beautiful between us, Deb, I ve 
 never touched one penny for myself not one ! " 
 
 " And father? " she demanded. 
 
 Into the silence there in the room, came the 
 even monotony of the crowd s mumble outside and 
 the ceaseless shuffle of many feet. To the young 
 man it seemed the dull complaint of the dying, 
 and he shuddered inwardly as he thought of the 
 town s dying faith. 
 
 After a moment s hesitation he spoke : 
 
 " Well " he paused, but her eyes called for 
 the truth and he went on: " He is a heavy bor 
 rower I can t say just how heavy." He hesi 
 tated again. " But I feel he is amply able to 
 pay and more ; only " 
 
 " Only what, Dick? we must have no reserves 
 now," the girl persisted. 
 
 " Only it appears you see he s always been a 
 borrower from the bank under various " he 
 stopped again and added: " devices." 
 
 " Devices?" asked Deborah. She caught the 
 buzz of the crowd distant and ominous, though 
 low and well-controlled a kind of drone ; then 
 she heard Dick saying: " You know, Debbie, the 
 law doesn t permit him to borrow money of his 
 
1 68 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 own bank; so he has had to " He did not fin 
 ish; the low insistent monody of the crowd dis 
 tracted him, and the girl returned with a ques 
 tion: 
 
 " And did you know it, Dick all this time? " 
 And the man answered : " Only a guess an un 
 easy guess until the last few months never more 
 than a fear that he smothered as soon as he saw 
 it. But, Deb : it s not his fight now so much 
 that I m fighting; it s for all those people out 
 there; it s for the business faith of this town. 
 That s the fight now!" 
 
 In the silence they both heard the voice of the 
 distraught soul of the street; Talk low-keyed, 
 footless talk, not excited, but deadly in its con 
 fusion and dangerous in its latent power. Neither 
 of the young people understood it. Yet each felt 
 it, and was ashamed to voice the dread that was in 
 each heart. For a second their hands clasped 
 tightly, then she said: " All right, Dick, that s all 
 I need to know ! Good good friend of mine ! " 
 She followed him with worried eyes as he crossed 
 the hall and passed from her sight. When she 
 came into her father s room, he looked up from 
 his desk and cried : 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 169 
 
 u Go home ! " But she put her coat in his 
 closet, and began taking off her gloves. Two 
 men, young working men, had climbed the tele 
 graph pole outside Kilworth s window, and were 
 pointing at him. 
 
 " The girls," she said, " have gone to Kansas 
 City." He turned to avoid the intruding gaze of 
 the men on the pole, and started to pull down the 
 shade, but stopped. He did not speak for a mo 
 ment, then sighed and said : 
 
 " Well it s just as well!" Into his room 
 came the nerve-wracking hum and rustle of the 
 crowd. The crowd s voice formed a sort of un- 
 derconscious stratum of their talk, subtly affecting 
 its character. 
 
 " Father," she asked, sitting beside him, " can t 
 Joel Ladgett help you with some of his old friends 
 in Washington? " 
 
 The staring faces above him seemed to annoy 
 him, and he did not answer. " Well, Father, how 
 about Toney Delaney? he s effective. He 
 might " 
 
 The whine of a car on a curve, a policeman s 
 shout clearing the car track, startled the girl, and 
 her father looked up. 
 
1 70 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 u Joel s tried and tried," the old man retorted 
 wearily. " And Toney s tried and tried, and my 
 New York friends, they ve tried and tried ! " He 
 sat looking at the symmetrical Os on the paper be 
 fore him, then broke out: " It used to be that in 
 business, business men had influence; business men 
 could help business men in our government. Busi 
 ness men once were our government." He paused 
 heavily. She touched his arm reassuringly, but it 
 was a mechanical gesture. For her heart was be 
 ginning to feel the tragedy gathering outside, in the 
 slow, hopeless death of the town s faith in her 
 father. 
 
 He began again: " But that scepter has 
 passed," and repeated the words monotonously; 
 and then continued querulously: "These three 
 harpies here these examiners what do they 
 know about business? They re out of sympathy 
 with business men. That scepter has passed!" 
 he cried with a weary finality, dropping his hand 
 upon the mahogany board. They sat listening to 
 the dull murmur of the crowd a kind of deliri 
 ous reiteration of one meaningless note, until a 
 clerk from the clearing house came in. From 
 his bundle of checks, he drew one for $7,000 and 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 171 
 
 put it on the desk before the banker. The girl 
 saw that it was signed with her father s name, 
 payable to his son-in-law, Griffin. Kilworth 
 picked it up, looked at the signature carefully, and 
 threw it down, shaking his head at the clerk. 
 
 " Your account is overdrawn, sir, as it is, and 
 they said " hesitated the clerk. Kilworth 
 glanced toward the pole where the men had 
 perched outside. The men were gone. 
 
 " They told you not to cash any more of my 
 checks?" asked Kilworth, nodding toward the 
 back room, where the examiners had Dick Hale 
 on the rack. 
 
 * Well " the clerk answered, stopping, and 
 added : " Not until this examination was " 
 
 " All right, throw it out throw it out ! " cried 
 Kilworth petulantly. 
 
 The clerk withdrew and Deborah asked: 
 " Father, was that your check? " 
 
 " No," answered her father, putting his hands 
 on the desk and dropping his head forward, " No, 
 Debbie that was Griffin s Mary s husband 
 Mary s husband ! " he moaned under his breath. 
 
 The girl persisted: " And he s got the money 
 on it?" 
 
1 72 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Yes," returned the father, " he s got the 
 money on it; and probably spent it twice over by 
 
 now." 
 
 "And that is forgery, and you can t help?" 
 the girl inquired anxiously. 
 
 " I couldn t help him if it was $70 instead of 
 $7,000 now!" His words had the effect of 
 closing the episode, and the two sat listlessly while 
 the purposeless roar from the street filled the 
 break in their talk. At length, as though he could 
 stand the crowd s slow tearing at his nerves no 
 longer, the father beat his hands despairingly on 
 the desk and cried: " He has no money, and she 
 has no money! " 
 
 "No money? Why, Father I thought you 
 told us all a year or so ago, that our money was 
 segregated in trusts for us? " 
 
 " Gone gone gone," he answered miser 
 ably. " I turned it all in to the bank last night 
 all of it ! " Again he looked quickly and 
 fiercely at the window, and stopped as if in the 
 midst of a sentence that he feared to finish. The 
 girl cried exultingly: 
 
 " Oh but I m proud of you for that ! " The 
 father looked out of the window of his soul at her 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE " 173 
 
 as from the dead, and mourned: " But the girls 
 the poor, helpless girls ! What can they do, 
 what can they do without money? " 
 
 "What have they done with money, Father? 
 Just ask yourself that!" replied the daughter 
 quietly, adding: "Money got them their hus 
 bands ; it could do nothing more horrible now 
 could it?" 
 
 He did not heed her but went on in self-pity: 
 " Joel Ladgett won t come in, and I had to send 
 for Toney Delaney; and they say that the whole 
 force down at the mills quit work an hour ago, 
 and is coming up here to draw their money! 
 And just before you came in, I saw Brother Ver- 
 non in here drawing out the church money the 
 church money. And I sit here and take it I 
 who have made them all I take it." 
 
 He was silent a long time; then he burst out: 
 " Is thy servant a dog that he should do this 
 thing? A soft thud of mud on the glass pane, 
 and a shadow, directed their eyes to the window. 
 Through the thin silk sash curtain, they saw some 
 one chasing a boy through the crowd. Neither 
 the father nor the daughter spoke until the break 
 caused by the incident outside had been closed by 
 
174 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 the rise of the shallow, weary voice of the crowd, 
 resuming its interminable complaint. Then the 
 girl said: " Father, you must come with me! " 
 And because his resistance had been broken by 
 the long, shameful hours when he had crumbled 
 weakly before the three examiners, he yielded 
 rather feebly and followed her through the back 
 door of the building to her car. 
 
 Late in the afternoon, he sent for Toney De- 
 laney and they talked together for half an hour. 
 And that night, after Dick Hale had gone through 
 another four hours on the examiners rack, De- 
 laney brought through the alley to the basement 
 entrance of the bank, a cartload of iron washers 
 of assorted sizes, and explained to Hale what Mr. 
 Kilworth desired. He thought a showing of cur 
 rency in the bank window might disperse the mob 
 at the bank doors, and with the mob gone, he felt 
 that he might work out some solution of his prob 
 lem. 
 
 Young Hale took in the washers, told the ex 
 aminer in charge of Boyce Kilworth s hope, called 
 the examiner s attention to the fact that the cur 
 rency on hand was really far above the legal re 
 serve, and that the little depositors would not ma- 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 175 
 
 terially affect the bank s security if all of them 
 withdrew. The examiner smiled, and nodded his 
 consent. 
 
 So after reading in the morning papers Boyce 
 Kilworth s hopeful statement, made to the report 
 ers the night before, the crowd about the bank, 
 when the curtain went up in the morning at nine 
 o clock, was further encouraged by the sight of a 
 great heap of currency sacks, filled with bulging 
 discs, and flowing out of the end of each sack on 
 the pile man high was a flood of gold coins ; 
 a cascade of gold in the bank window, flanked and 
 garnished with fat bundles of paper money. It 
 was easy to estimate from the figures on the sacks, 
 that half a million dollars was lying there in the 
 window. Boyce Kilworth came down town in his 
 limousine, stepped ponderously out of it at the 
 bank door, and smiled like a preoccupied Provi 
 dence at the throng that stood staring into the 
 golden heap in the window. He walked up the 
 steps and into the side door of the bank building, 
 through a crowd that was almost respectful. 
 
 But the morning s grist of telegrams had 
 brought to the examiners a fresh list of the Kil 
 worth liabilities; and at nine o clock all the mills 
 
1 76 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 and industries of Boyceville sloughed into the 
 wreck, and a line of workmen and women filed into 
 the bank when it opened. At half-past nine Dick 
 Hale appeared at the front window, carelessly 
 picked up a sack of currency, shook it out, and a 
 flood of gold eagles shimmered down the cascade. 
 The crowd smiled as he took a scoop and scooped 
 up a tray full of eagles a mere drop from the 
 flood and carted the tray back into the teller s 
 cage. Again at ten he did the same thing, and 
 this time the crowd tried a faint squeak of a 
 cheer. The cheer heartened up the clerks; but 
 still the sorry-looking line trailed its weary way 
 past the paying teller s window. A few minutes 
 after Dick Hale had brought the second scoop full 
 of gold from the window, Kilworth, heartened by 
 the thready little cheer, had stepped to the front 
 window of the bank and looked at the crowd. A 
 few hats waved to him. His vanity pushed him 
 to the front door, and there was again a faint yip, 
 as of half suppressed cheers. Then Boyce Kil 
 worth gave the crowd his smile his forced, 
 steely smile. Whereupon, Dick Hale became con 
 scious that Henry Thompson was making his way 
 from his ledger to the front of the bank. Dick, 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 177 
 
 in the teller s cage, could not see the satisfied smile 
 on the poor son-in-law s face, as Thompson winked 
 at the clerks near the front window. But when 
 Dick saw Thompson approaching the sacks, mount 
 ing to the box behind the sacks, lifting his arms as 
 if to touch the sacks, Dick turned from his window 
 and called wildly: " Get away get away from 
 there ! " Thompson s hands gripped the bottom 
 of a sack and Dick yelled: " For God s sake 
 take that fool from the window." 
 
 But Thompson smirked back, saying: " I want 
 to make em cheer again for the old man," and as 
 Dick cried madly : " Drop it drop it ! Oh, 
 oh drop it ! " he saw Thompson take two sacks 
 by their bottom corners, shake them viciously, and 
 then Hale saw the two gray streams of steel wash 
 ers pass down upon the golden flood. 
 
 Kilworth did not see what was happening inside 
 the window. But he saw the face of the crowd 
 change, grow puzzled, and he heard a dreadful 
 cry shrill and high and wicked. Then came 
 a wild roar and before he could move, someone 
 had pulled him half falling down the steps of the 
 bank, and a score of voices were crying: " Hang 
 him hang him! " After that life was a blur 
 
178 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 of awful impressions. The fall into the street, 
 and the rope the horrible bruise of it under his 
 ear these things he remembered. But the cut 
 on his face, the scratch on his neck, the bruises 
 on his arms, and the loss of his coat and shirt, 
 and the great tear up his trousers leg, all came to 
 him when his mind was too distraught to record 
 impressions in memory. So when the policemen 
 brought him into the bank, a bleeding, half-naked, 
 sobbing old man he who had walked Constitu 
 tion Street so proudly for fifty years he fell in a 
 shamed heap, half conscious and afraid, in his 
 great chair, and shook in hysteria and terror. 
 
 The front windows of the bank were broken. 
 The men outside had rescued the veneer of gold 
 from the pile in the windows, but the mob kept 
 surging in, and only pistol shots from the ex 
 aminers stopped the intruders. Dust from falling 
 plaster was in the air and the roar of the balked 
 crowd came like the bark of some rabid beast, 
 into the ears of the group that stood around the 
 figure that was Boyce Kilworth, huddled in his 
 heavy throne-like chair. 
 
 Then in due course they took him home. A 
 squad of mounted policemen appeared at the side 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 179 
 
 door of the bank, and the mob hooted. When 
 Kilworth, supported by the policemen, limped to 
 his car, he heard the crowd cat-calling and hiss 
 ing. The horsemen about his car tried to screen 
 him from the jeering throng; and when he was 
 gone the baffled rioters stayed behind in the street 
 and howled their rage out. 
 
 So Boyce Kilworth rode out of Constitution 
 Street. An hour after he was gone, the examiner 
 in charge pasted this notice on the yellow pine 
 boards that marked the place where the window 
 had been: 
 
 " This bank is closed, by order of 
 the comptroller of the currency. 
 " S. HORTON, 
 
 " Temporary Receiver. * 
 
 The evening papers carried the story of the mob, 
 and were kind to Boyce Kilworth; they even 
 played up in big type his statement that the bank 
 was sound; that it would pay its depositors in full. 
 The word " arrest " was the only unfriendly word 
 in the evening papers, and Kilworth s friends re 
 sented it loudly on the streets, and in the newspaper 
 office that evening. 
 
1 8o GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 When Dick Hale went home that night he found 
 his mother in the midst of one of her clamorous 
 cataclysmic tantrums; the bank failure seemed to 
 have started her, but her grievances were running 
 back to events thirty years before, and the son ate 
 his evening meal in shame and silence. At eight 
 o clock Colonel Longford came hobbling in 
 plump into the midst of a particularly rampant 
 tirade from Mrs. Hale. She stood glaring at the 
 Colonel a fierce moment, then vanished, and Caleb 
 Hale looked up unruffled and began to hum: 
 
 " Sister, thou art mild and lovely 
 " Gentle as the summer breeze," 
 
 At the end of the stanza he paused to sigh. 
 
 "Well, Colonel? So that s the end of Boyce 
 Kilworth!" 
 
 " Poor, poor Boyce," replied the Colonel, " I 
 spent the afternoon with him, and it seemed to 
 help him to talk to talk it all over from the be 
 ginning; from the time when he helped to stuff the 
 ballot box, and farmed out the county money." 
 The Colonel got out two black cigars, and the old 
 men lighted them. 
 
 " Boyce," resumed the Colonel, sitting tilted 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE " 181 
 
 back in a chair, peering through uplifted bony 
 knees at the universe, " Boyce hasn t got it yet. 
 Lord Lord, why couldn t he break the tether 
 the thing that bound him, limited him, baffled 
 him, and now is killing him. Just a little beyond 
 him, just outside the circle that he trod and maybe 
 strained to break from, lay greatness and happi 
 ness. If he could only only have had a 
 heart!" 
 
 "Taking it rather hard I guess?" asked 
 Caleb Hale. Dick went to his room and did not 
 hear the Colonel s further lesson and collect upon 
 the day s events. The Colonel smoked a while 
 and answered: 
 
 Yes damn hard ! That other Pharisee, 
 condemned to simmer forever in his own juice on 
 the trashpile outside Jerusalem, is having a toler 
 ably comfortable time, compared with Boyce, 
 Cale!" 
 
 " Kind of wants his money back I take it? " 
 suggested Hale. 
 
 " Yes, that too," returned the Colonel. 
 ;< Wants his money, and his power, and his Provi 
 dential relation to the town all back. But his girls 
 are left penniless, and he thinks they re ruined." 
 
1 82 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 The Colonel mused, " And I guess they are just 
 about ruined without money the kind he s raised 
 
 all but Debbie. And he s worried about Mrs. 
 Kilworth the dear old canary, what ll she do for 
 pepper-grass and cuttlebone, outside the golden 
 cage. You see, money just sheer, raw money 
 has been his dependence, and his family s depend 
 ence, and when it s gone it s the God s truth 
 
 what is there to him or them without it? " 
 
 " Hell? ain t it? " came back Caleb Hale in 
 the silence. 
 
 " And six to carry, Cale ! " assented the Colonel. 
 " But that isn t the worst of it as I started to 
 tell you. He sits there slumped all over mentally 
 and morally without faith in man or God, or 
 himself bewailing the fact that he has ruined 
 the lives of thousands of people. I says: 
 
 " * Boyce, you can t ruin people by taking money 
 from them not even all their money. He 
 stared at me as though I was mad, and moaned 
 on. Then I says: 
 
 " Boyce, sez I, * Boyce, can t you get it 
 through your head that other people aren t made 
 or unmade by money? Suppose you ve taken all 
 they ve got some of em lots of em, maybe. 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 183 
 
 They ll feel the slice of the knife and it will hurt 
 like sixty but only for a day or a week or a 
 month or a year. They ll adjust themselves; 
 their life s philosophy will make them happy or 
 unhappy entirely independent of this money you ve 
 taken! 
 
 " He kept on weaving back and forth, and 
 didn t hear it. I tell you, Cale, you couldn t get 
 the truth of life into him with an axe ! And that s 
 the real hell up there at Boyce s. He s frying on 
 the hot griddle of a remorse that he has ruined 
 ten thousand lives irrevocably, and forever, so 
 twenty thousand hands are pressing him down on 
 the bars of that grid and his agony is sickening ! " 
 
 The old man breathed hard as he remembered 
 what he had seen, and he spat out a pious damn 
 of sympathy. " He tells me he can t pray, and he 
 believes his God has forsaken him, and that it 
 doesn t make any difference what he does now." 
 The Colonel smoked a while and said: " Cale, 
 in the war, I saw men kill each other fighting hand 
 to hand. I ve seen men walk right up to death 
 in front of the guns. But I never saw a man lose 
 his God before. I m sorry for him poor 
 Boyce I m sorry as the devil for him, Cale." 
 
1 84 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Hale shifted his position in his chair and an 
 swered harshly: 
 
 " Well I m not." The two pairs of old eyes 
 met, and Hale went on: "Colonel did you 
 ever think of the other loss that this failure brings 
 to men the loss of faith?" He stood musing 
 a moment, then lifted up his face and went on, 
 abashed: " I don t care how much money I won 
 in the old game back in the old days ; though I 
 did win more or less." His face slowly red 
 dened in shame as he went on in a subdued voice : 
 " But, Colonel when I wake up in the night 
 from a deep sleep, with my soul all washed of the 
 day stains then I see what I was in those days, 
 what my winning meant to thousands who saw me 
 win neighbours, friends, young boys a whole 
 community I debauched em, cut into their faith 
 in the moral government of this world, by lying 
 and stealing and cheating and winning and win 
 ning getting away unscathed of God and man 
 
 and that s what shrivels my soul in abasement 
 
 that s what makes me cry : God, be merciful 
 to me, a sinner! I tell you, Colonel," cried 
 Hale angrily, " it s not what a hypocrite does, not 
 what he gets out of life, that makes him hated; 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE " 185 
 
 it s what he is, and the poison to our faith that he 
 spreads that s why men picture him as a snake ! 
 And, by the eternal, that s why " 
 
 " That s why you re not sorry for Boyce? " in 
 terrupted the Colonel. 
 
 " That s why I ve watched him year after year, 
 a great whited sepulchre doing all that I used 
 to do, but shamming all that men at their best 
 would be; and that s why I ve dreaded to-day, 
 like the coming of a terror to-day when all his 
 sham is exposed, and men have lost faith in 
 in" 
 
 " I know, Cale, I know," said the Colonel 
 gently. 
 
 " N no perhaps you don t know all not 
 all, Colonel. It s this : I have in me, bigger than 
 a horse, a desire to restore the faith of this town 
 in that man; I d give my immortal soul to do it 
 for my soul s not important. Until a man s will 
 ing to send his soul to hell for his creed, it isn t 
 much of a creed, anyway. But Colonel I ve 
 been thinking over a plan. I should have called 
 you up if you hadn t come in. Maybe I can 
 help maybe I haven t lived in vain. If I could 
 only feel " 
 
1 86 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 The telephone rang, cutting short Hale s sen 
 tence. Dick Hale was called from his room to 
 answer it, and in the bustle of his leaving 
 on the summons of the telephone the thread of 
 Hale s discourse was cut, and the two cronies fell 
 to gossiping about the practical affairs of the bank 
 its assets and what they were, and its liabili 
 ties as each had heard of them through Kilworth 
 and young Dick. 
 
 Dick Hale went out in response to a call that 
 said over the phone: " Dick Dick is this 
 you ? Father insists on seeing you to-night. He 
 says he needs you. Won t you come up right 
 away? " 
 
 When Deborah Kilworth heard far down the 
 street the familiar step of Dick Hale, she rose 
 from her porch swing in the veranda, and stood 
 at the top of the steps that led into the garden, 
 and ran eagerly to meet him when she heard him 
 at the gate. She put out a hand to welcome him, 
 and he would have kept it in his, but she whis 
 pered: "Don t, Dick every other bush here 
 is a policeman." But she did take his arm, and 
 he felt the fugitive pressure she gave as they 
 walked toward the veranda. 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 187 
 
 They stopped in the heavy dusk of the veranda 
 a moment, and talked in whispers. " Oh, Dick 
 
 you good boy I m so glad you re here!" 
 the girl said, still holding to his arm, as she 
 added: "All the afternoon and evening I ve 
 wanted you ; it s been so horrible this evening 
 worse than to-day; yes, Dick worse than to-day. 
 Father has changed so. I couldn t very well send 
 for you. I had no excuse. And now that fa 
 ther s sent Oh, Dick I m so afraid of father 
 
 the way he is now." 
 
 "Is he worse sick, I mean?" whispered 
 the young man. 
 
 " Sick ? " answered the girl. " Sick ! Why, 
 if he was just sick .or even dead but he s 
 changed so. I don t know father as he is ! He 
 sits in there cursing my father why, Dick 
 
 I don t believe he ever uttered an oath in his 
 life, and he sits in there cursing everything, and 
 everybody with some kind of a demon glaring 
 out of his eyes, and he s sent for you." She 
 looked intently up into the strong, careworn face 
 of the young man and then went on: "I m 
 frightened, Dick frightened I don t know 
 why maybe for you; perhaps for father or " 
 
1 88 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Again she stopped, and drew the young man 
 deeper into the shadow, clasped his hand and spoke 
 again: "Oh, Dick promise me you won t 
 no matter what father says break any more 
 any more rules for him! Promise me that, 
 Dick!" 
 
 A flapping curtain startled them; but the girl 
 stood before the door, and pleaded with her eyes. 
 The young man was puzzled. " Why, Debbie 
 you shouldn t bind me in advance. Your father 
 has made all but a son of me I shouldn t prom 
 ise not in advance, Deb " 
 
 " But when you see him, Dick you ll under 
 stand father poor, poor " 
 
 " Debbie " cried a harsh, strident voice from 
 the house, " didn t I hear that young Hale come 
 up the steps? " 
 
 Yes, Father he s coming," answered the 
 girl. And she led Dick Hale into the hall, 
 through the darkened living room back to the li 
 brary. 
 
 " Get out you ," the father snarled to the 
 daughter as Hale came into the circle of the study 
 lamp, " and mind you stay out," he added, " and 
 
THE ONE A PHARISEE " 189 
 
 don t come around listening to what ain t none 
 of your business ! " 
 
 When she had gone Boyce Kilworth stared sav 
 agely up at the drawn, tired face of the man be 
 fore him. " Criminal charges," he growled, 
 " criminal charges against me; that s what Toney 
 Delaney seen down at the newspaper offices from 
 them damn vultures of examiners ! " The 
 younger man was silent in a pause, and Kilworth 
 bawled out: "Well? well? do you think 
 I m going to stand it? me ? No, by God, I m 
 not ! I never touched a pen to paper and you know 
 it; they haven t got nothing not a damn scratch 
 of a pen on me. Not on me ! " he cried, shaking 
 both his great fists angrily, and wincing as his 
 bruised arm caught him. 
 
 Dick Hale, standing in amazement, began look 
 ing for a chair as he said: "Well, Mr. Kil 
 worth, I suppose I mean, naturally I 
 thought " 
 
 " Who told you to sit down," snapped the old 
 canine voice. "Listen here, boy! I m an old 
 man. I ve been bled by them damn leeches down 
 there at the bank out of all my money all 
 
190 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 my money," he shouted. " All my girls money! 
 All my interest in the mills, in the Investment 
 Company everything I got, and this evening 
 they came up here and talked me out of this house 
 
 the roof over my gray head; an I give it to 
 em ! And still I m a quarter of a million short 
 
 and so they run to the reporters and talk about 
 criminal charges, and get it to Toney Delaney! " 
 
 " Now, what can I do, Mr. Kilworth to 
 help? I want to help, sir," said young Hale. 
 
 " Well, boy now listen ! I m an old man. 
 You re young. This is my defence to these crim 
 inal charges: I was no bookkeeper; I was no 
 penman. You was both, and you got me into 
 this. That s my defence, sir. Do you get my 
 idea?" He was gazing wickedly into the as 
 tonished young face before him as he cried vi 
 ciously: "And what s your defence?" He re 
 peated his question, and yelped: "Legs legs 
 is your defence run run " 
 
 A flush covered Dick Hale s face as he opened 
 his mouth and burst forth: " Mr. Kilworth 
 are you crazy! " 
 
 " Run run run I I say. Get to South 
 Africa, and they can t bring you back from 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 191 
 
 there ! " He was talking fast and looking at the 
 scratches on his right hand as he spoke, but he 
 looked up furtively and asked: " Ain t that fair? 
 Ain t I treatin you square comin into my busi 
 ness and wreckin me and it too? Ain t I givin 
 you a show? You take that Oklahoma oil stuff 
 land and leases, and it ll start you up dowft 
 there and make a man of you, maybe if they 
 ain t too much damn ornery Hale blood in you! " 
 
 In the silence that followed the old man s tirade 
 Dick Hale stood with his hands deep in his 
 pockets, his head cocked on one side, squinting 
 into the coarsened plaster-striped face of Boyce 
 Kilworth. After a moment Hale said: " As 
 to the oil leases and those matters, I made them 
 over to the bank this morning. It was only 
 fair; the money you lent me for my start in the 
 matter came out of the bank, so far as that goes." 
 
 Kilworth lowered at Hale and sneered: 
 Well, I m glad you had that much decency about 
 you." He paused and added: " Now, what 
 you going to do about it? Stay here and bicker 
 with me and we both go to jail or git out and 
 leave me so s I can support my family and get on 
 my feet again? " 
 
192 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 u Putting it that way, Mr. Kilworth you in 
 terest me," said Hale. " At least, let s talk it 
 over." He was thinking earnestly as he looked 
 at the floor, and was speaking in a preoccupied 
 voice, as he went on: " Of course, if I go, I go as 
 a forger and a thief." 
 
 "What s that?" cut in Kilworth, listening. 
 
 a It s this, Father," cried Deborah, entering 
 the room. " If Dick goes as a forger and a 
 thief, I go with him as the wife of a forger and 
 a thief!" 
 
 The old man opened his mouth, partly in sur 
 prise, partly in rage, and showed his coarse, glit 
 tering, golden teeth, before he hit back: 
 
 "What what?" 
 
 " Oh, Debbie, Debbie ! " The young man held 
 out his arms, and she came into them, " This is 
 worth the whole day s torment Oh, this 
 this" He felt the pressure of her hands in 
 his and the pressure of her body against him strong 
 and unshaken. The two with glistening eyes 
 faced the father in silence. He rose, started 
 around the table toward his daughter, but stopped, 
 putting his hand to his head as though a blow 
 there had checked him, but he shouted after a 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE" 193 
 
 second s halt and pause: " You wouldn t follow 
 off a forger, would you a little little whif 
 fet, who d ruined your father not a thief, 
 would you, girl? " 
 
 " Even a thief, Father, if it comes to that. But 
 I know the truth the truth the truth ! " She 
 clasped her arms closely about the young figure 
 beside her and hid her face as she trembled with 
 joy. 
 
 Boyce Kilworth, still with his hand to his tem 
 ple, stumbled back to his place behind the table, 
 moaning in rage and pain. He started in fear 
 as he heard a shuffling in the hall, followed by the 
 cry: "Get away get away from here, I tell 
 you ! " Then he recognised the familiar voice of 
 Colonel Longford. " I tell you we re going to 
 see Boyce : we ve got business with him." The 
 girl and the young man were standing far apart 
 when the Colonel came in and they saw behind him 
 Caleb Hale. The Colonel carried a handful of 
 Hale s Delphiniums, and Caleb Hale brought 
 in, clumsily tucked under his arm, a thin, broad 
 sheet-iron box, earth-stained and rusted. The men 
 smiled abashed, and Colonel Longford spoke: 
 " Boyce here s a man s got something to say to 
 
i 9 4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 you. I brought Miss Deborah some flowers, but 
 Cale here has brought something else." 
 
 " Well, get it over with quick I m tired ! " 
 grunted Kilworth. 
 
 " So you re tired, are you, Boyce Kilworth," be 
 gan Caleb Hale, his wrinkled, gnarled face twist 
 ing nervously as he spoke. "Tired eh? 
 Well, I surmised life wasn t exactly exhilarating 
 for you these days. So I just dropped over with 
 a little something to chirp you up as it were ! " 
 
 He looked down deprecatingly at his flat tin 
 box, and Kilworth, following Hale s eyes, re 
 torted: " I don t want none of your damn char 
 ity!" 
 
 Fie fie ! " joked Caleb. " Also tut, tut 
 what s this naughty word from the holy man of 
 Uz ? Anyway it s not for you so don t 
 trouble yourself about the charity though," he 
 added grimly, " you ve got to take it." He 
 looked sniffed, perhaps, is a better word into 
 the patched face from which Kilworth s insane eyes 
 glared forth. Then into Caleb Hale s scarred, 
 battered countenance shone a clear glow of dig 
 nity out of an exalted soul. " It s not much I 
 am bringing," he began quietly, but in his voice 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 195 
 
 as in his face there was a dominance of spirit that 
 set him apart from the group around him, as he 
 went on : " It is nothing but money just 
 government bonds some poor government 
 bonds two hundred and seventy-thousand dol 
 lars worth, to be exact; so it s merely money after 
 all." His steady eyes met those of Boyce Kil- 
 worth that glared like the eyes of a hungry wolf. 
 Hale looked sadly into the ferocious eyes and 
 smiled kindly as he went on: "I say it s not 
 much just some money or what is the same. 
 But it s not for you; not even for those you ve 
 robbed directly and primarily. I guess I stole 
 this money some way. At least I didn t earn 
 it by the sweat of my brow or my brain ; I got it 
 gambling on a mine ! And I ve had it 
 buried in my garden all these twenty years " 
 he smiled about the room, and went on, " but I ve 
 been afraid to use it." His voice hardened and 
 deepened and the muscles of his face tightened as 
 he spoke. " I knew if I ever began with it I 
 was gone. I d gamble with it gamble in wheat 
 or stocks or something, and so, like the 
 coward I ve been, I ve tried my soul every day 
 by going and prodding all that money buried 
 
196 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 under my Delphinium bed, and then, knowing that 
 I was strong enough to resist the temptation, I ve 
 said a little child s prayer of thanks, and I ve 
 gone on doing my real work in the world." He 
 looked at the blue flowers and his wrinkled old 
 face beamed with pride. 
 
 " So here it is, Boyce Kilworth, and it s not for 
 you not even for the folks you ve robbed, and 
 least of all for this boy of mine Oh, I would 
 sooner think of feeding him poison than think of 
 giving him this money now! Not until he s 
 old enough to know what it means. It s all here 
 two hundred and seventy thousand dollars 
 worth of government bonds with not a coupon 
 clipped in all these twenty odd years." He put it 
 on the table, and Boyce Kilworth s hands went out 
 like fangs to the box. " No, Boyce Kilworth 
 not yours not Dick s not your depositors ! " 
 Hale kept his hand on the box and looked bashfully 
 at Colonel Longford, and went on: "I don t 
 know, Colonel, as I can rightly tell these people 
 how it is I wasn t exactly expecting to see Dick 
 and Miss Kilworth here," he stopped, " so I hesi 
 tate, rather, to say what I had to say before." 
 
 " Don t mind me, Mr. Hale," interrupted the 
 
" THE ONE A PHARISEE " 197 
 
 girl, " I know the worst the very worst 
 worse than you about things as they are here ! " 
 
 But Caleb Hale paused, and Colonel Longford, 
 dropping his cane, straightened up to say: 
 "Well, now then I can talk and talk plain, 
 Boyce. Cale and I have been talking this thing 
 over. We know you. We know you are a cant 
 ing, psalm-singing, hypocritical scoundrel beg 
 ging Debbie s pardon, for the plain words. 
 You ve always been that. But youVe some way 
 got thousands of people to pin their faith in you. 
 We don t care how much money you take from 
 them. But, by robbing them, you reveal yourself 
 as a sham ; you rob them not only of money 
 which is not important, but you rob thousands, and 
 really hundreds of thousands of people of their 
 faith faith in a lot of things, Boyce, beside 
 yourself faith in God is one of them. Faith 
 is scarce enough on this planet, and Cale, here, 
 thinks, and I agree with him, that though it is a 
 sneaking, lying, dastardly thing to brace you up 
 when you ought to be roasting in the hell your 
 hands have made still faith is faith, and it s 
 more than all the money in the world." 
 
 Boyce Kilworth s face showed that he could 
 
198 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 not follow the Colonel s words. " Oh, you ll not 
 understand it, Boyce God knows your poor 
 mind is a blank along these lines. But Cale and I 
 
 we feel deeply that this money here, if ever it 
 is to have a consecrated use now is the time." 
 
 A flash of intelligent joy lightened Kilworth s 
 face. Down in his heart a pump shook with a 
 deep throb of hope. He looked a dog-like grati 
 tude, yet uncertain, and Colonel Longford cried: 
 
 " Take it take the miserable stuff and lie 
 
 lie for the glory of God, and tell em it s yours ; 
 that you ve always had it, and that you can pay 
 up dollar for dollar as you said you would 1 Take 
 it not for you not for your depositors, 
 though it s got to go that way ; but take it for the 
 sake of a miserable sinner who had God s mercy 
 once and wants to make this small return in sus 
 taining the faith of his fellows. Take it, you 
 damned old scoundrel ! " He shoved the box 
 across the desk, and turned to Caleb Hale who 
 stood watching greed and self-respect curious 
 companions as they were being reborn on Boyce 
 Kilworth s face. Kilworth reached for the box, 
 opened it, looked at a bond, held it to the light, 
 
"THE ONE A PHARISEE " 199 
 
 counted the undipped coupons, thumbed down into 
 the box, and spoke no word. But the pump in his 
 heart was jumping like a machine with a shattered 
 governor. The ashen face flushed, and his mouth 
 watered, and he all but drooled, while the eyes of 
 those about him saw another self coming out of 
 the depths into the ghastly visage. 
 
 The Colonel beckoned Caleb Hale, and the 
 two old men withdrew; the lovers, with linked 
 hands, followed softly. The man at the desk was 
 not aware that he was alone. He was breathing 
 deeply and hard. The Colonel and Hale quietly 
 closed the outer door and left the house. In the 
 hall, where the lovers had stopped for their first 
 fleeting, shy kiss, they heard a voice the old 
 raucous voice of Boyce Kilworth, crying: " This 
 ends " he seemed to stop, then he went on, 
 " those criminal charges." 
 
 They thought they heard him cry sharply in a 
 choked voice : " Oh, my God, my merciful God," 
 and their hands tightened; for they felt Boyce Kil 
 worth was praying. So they sat in the deep, sweet 
 joy of love s first deep silence. 
 
 Then, hearing no sound from within the room 
 
200 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 beyond, they rose and went in. And there they 
 found that Boyce Kilworth s words were not a 
 prayer. He was only answering a bailiff who 
 haled him to a High Court. 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN r 
 
 The Thane of Cawdor lives, a prosperous gentleman. 
 
 Macbeth. 
 
 PART I 
 
 WHEN our grandfathers heaven rest them ! 
 " crossed the prairies as of old our fathers 
 crossed the sea," they brought their womankind 
 with them, after the manner of the Teuton. The 
 women brought their flower seeds; and where 
 those seeds were planted civilisation came to stay. 
 Not the schoolhouse, or the court house, or the 
 saloon, or the statesman, or the real-estate agent 
 proclaimed the permanency of this state-building 
 Northern white man so indelibly as the beds of 
 humble petunias and zinnias and larkspurs. 
 
 When these flowers blossomed in the desert, 
 heralding the swift coming of the old-fashioned 
 roses, there, indeed, was raised the everlasting 
 Ebenezer of the race. There was consecrated 
 ground. Over these Western plains of ours the 
 Cross had come, and had crumbled and was for- 
 
 201 
 
202 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 gotten. Grass had grown over the adobe walls of 
 deserted churches and nameless forts where the 
 sword of conquest lay rusting until the plough un 
 covered a degraded splendour. 
 
 The Cross and the sword came with pomp and 
 pride; and the outcast Indian woman smiled bit 
 terly, but took them, and her half-breed children 
 lost the Cross and the sword in the wilderness, 
 while a just God righted her wrongs for it is a 
 law of progress that a wronged woman s tears 
 shall salt the ground where they are shed. So 
 it was not until the petunias came, and the four- 
 o clocks and asters it was not until the great 
 hollyhocks and poppies glowed about the feet of a 
 happy, free-born womanhood that God let the land 
 prosper and made the flower garden the sign of 
 His covenant with men. 
 
 A long time ago in the beginning, two gen 
 erations ago, in fact in those days when the 
 grandmothers of New Raynham were young and 
 presumably beautiful, even that first summer of 
 the town s history, when the settlement was 
 picketed against the Indians and mothers huddled 
 with their young in the little stone schoolhouse 
 many an anxious night, while the men rode the 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 203 
 
 hills and stood guard at the fords even then, 
 about the unpainted, yellow-pine, one-roomed 
 houses on the prairie there were flowers. And 
 even then Mercy Hayden s flower bed was the 
 prettiest in the village. 
 
 A woman of parts was Mercy Hayden a 
 handsome woman she was, with clear brown eyes ; 
 and many tubs-ful of water she drew from the 
 well by the kitchen door to pour on her flowers. 
 Israel, her husband, was a busy little man, and on 
 him rested great affairs. He was perennial chair 
 man of the committee to do something that was 
 never done. He was forever bustling round try 
 ing to get the committee together to act. So 
 when the drought of sixty came, Israel, as chair 
 man of the committee on aid, was sent East to tell 
 the people of the famine, while at home the wind 
 lass creaked day and night at the Hayden well 
 the only well in all the valley that never ran dry. 
 
 Mercy Hayden, in man s boots and a faded 
 blue jeans dress, bent her body to the wheel and 
 sent scores of women home laden with water. 
 She did not let her flowers wilt; and the next 
 spring, when the rain came and Israel came bus 
 tling home with it, he found a small white-and- 
 
204 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 pink blossom blooming in a home-made walnut 
 cradle ; for Constance Hayden had come to Pleas 
 ant Ridge to grow up with the flowers. 
 
 In the wondrous seasonal procession of the 
 flowers one may trace an analogy between their 
 passing show and the life of man. Of course 
 such analogies are more or less imaginative, but 
 the first flowers of spring seem to bear more than 
 a fanciful resemblance to the sweet innocence of 
 childhood. As the year opens to its promise, 
 what is the rose but love? What is the peony but 
 joy? And the poppy the scarlet, shameless 
 poppy if there had been no word in the world 
 for the memory of a kiss, the poppy would have 
 saved the thrill for us. 
 
 Across the unfenced fields among the spring 
 flowers, innocent and beautiful the dogtooth 
 violets, the wild lupines, the anemones and prim 
 roses the brown, unshod feet of the little girl 
 wandered. And Elias Higginson, following the 
 town herd from hill to ford, used to think of the 
 child in his slow boyish fancy as a gay moving 
 flower, fluttering over the wide green stretches of 
 the unploughed fields. But, though the little girl 
 played joyously among the wild flowers of the 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 205 
 
 prairie, she knew and took to her heart the homely 
 garden flowers in the kitchen yard. And as she 
 moved through the town with her schoolbooks un 
 der her arm first her little primer, then her big 
 geography, and finally her fat geometry the 
 eyes of Elias Higginson continued to follow her 
 slight figure. 
 
 The town saw her among the other children 
 and said: " Her mother s face and her father s 
 ways!" And the town smiled and loved her, 
 for the town understood her father s ways. In 
 a decade or so every man in a new community, 
 or every new man in an old community, is 
 shaken down to his level. And Israel Hayden 
 found his place naturally. The town understood 
 how Israel s " old army trouble " had forced him 
 from the confinement of his real-estate and insur 
 ance office into a grocery store, where he clerked 
 and drove the delivery wagon ; and then the town 
 accepted without question his explanation that it 
 was only to oblige a dying comrade that he bought 
 the comrade s dray and plied it, doing odd jobs 
 that required no heavy lifting. 
 
 So her father s ways, in the mouth of the town, 
 even though her father s ways were not ascendant, 
 
206 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 carried no opprobrium with them. They were 
 gentle ways and kindly, and the town saw the 
 flower that Mercy Hayden always kept in Israel s 
 coat lapel; and the town understood the situation 
 and was kind. 
 
 Not even the proud Herringtons jeered at 
 Israel Hayden s declining station; and Charley 
 Herrington, whose youth was spent in a military 
 school, and who was a sort of town prince of the 
 blood, sometimes rode homeward on Israel s dray 
 to display an ostentatious democracy. 
 
 The years went by; until one year came when 
 Constance Hayden came to know the roses and 
 what they meant; but they were not Ellas Higgin- 
 son s roses. From his farm cabin, into which he 
 had built his heart s secret, he saw the little girl 
 of his day-dreams move on into another sphere. 
 When she was sixteen Constance finished in the 
 town high school. Her mother, foreseeing the 
 day when Israel s army trouble might make even 
 light work impossible, cast about her for some 
 thing the girl could do. So one fine summer 
 day found Constance Hayden, a small young 
 woman, sitting in a large chair before a huge 
 ledger, keeping books in the Herrington office. 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 207 
 
 Keeping books at that time and in that place 
 was a genteel employment. Women had not 
 found themselves outside the home; and Con 
 stance, in the grand office of the magnificent Her- 
 ringtons, did not realise how lightly she was es 
 teemed. She felt that the weight of the universe 
 was on her, without knowing that she was really 
 only half servant arid half toy; but when she came 
 to know the roses, and they were Charley Her- 
 rington s roses, the light of the aforesaid universe 
 seemed to beam on her. She kept the roses on 
 her desk behind the huge ledger; and often at 
 noontime, when the office was all but deserted, 
 Charley Herrington would slip behind the ledger 
 with her, and they would play that it was a secret 
 bower. When the youth left, the maiden breathed 
 the roses deeply, and they brought into the secret 
 bower a thousand joys; for, after all, it is the 
 fond recollections of youth rather than of age 
 that are sweetest. 
 
 When days and weeks and months form the 
 vista through which we look into a gently receding 
 past, instead of through years and decades, we 
 recollect more vividly and the pleasures of mem 
 ory are keener. So when Constance Hayden 
 
208 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 looked from the threshold of her twenties into the 
 remote period of her late teens, and recalled ten 
 derly delights that she had breathed in, with other 
 roses in other years (to be exact, the year before) 
 she seemed to herself exceedingly old and wise. 
 And the angels, knowing how young she was in 
 truth, how new to all sin and sorrow and suffering 
 was her girlish heart the angels must have sad 
 dened, as much as angels ever can sadden when 
 they see how blindly we walk through this world. 
 
 It was a clandestine affair the love affair be 
 tween Charley Herrington and Constance Hay- 
 den, the drayman s daughter in the Herrington 
 office; for she was just that in Charley Herring- 
 ton s heart the drayman s daughter in his 
 father s office. And he was, in his own view of it, 
 a young person divinely anointed by the unction 
 of a prospective inheritance, one of the rulers 
 one of the chosen few. 
 
 They say that our lives are formed, our careers 
 marked, our choice of destinies made, when we 
 are twenty-five; that after that nothing comes into 
 the mind which was not planted there before the 
 closing days of our youth. That fact is one of 
 the crudest facts of life; for inheritance and en- 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 209 
 
 vironment had planted in Charley Herrington s 
 heart a sad and miserable bed of poisons. The 
 age had planted its shams ; its false valuations ; its 
 meaningless architecture, its fortunes founded on 
 fraud; its lies and cheats in religion, and its mawk 
 ish sentiment in art. 
 
 The home had told Charley Herrington that 
 money makes right; that money brings happiness; 
 that money marks the distinctions among men, 
 and that those who have no money have no rights. 
 To them who have money, shall be given money; 
 and from them who have no money, shall be 
 taken away even that which they have/ was the 
 family interpretation of Christ s great spiritual 
 truth. So, in choosing his destiny, Charley Her 
 rington had chosen with blind eyes. 
 
 Partly he was to blame for his blindness, for 
 the truth is always near us; but much of the blame 
 for his sordid choice in life s great decision be 
 tween the ways of life was due to the age and its 
 environing shams for it was a material age 
 and in it youth had few visions. 
 
 Yet youth is ever youth; it must express itself 
 in whatever age life makes. So the gay young 
 man slipped through the sunflowers and the high 
 
210 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 weeds that bordered the town into the unpainted 
 home of the Haydens. The parents welcomed 
 him as a young prince. They did not compre 
 hend that he was merely a light young person, 
 flirting out of his class. He played among the 
 flowers, a gay girl-eating butterfly. And when 
 the roses came in May there was no man or God 
 or angel to spoil his joy in them only this that 
 might have intervened: Elias Higginson 
 silent, ignored, forgotten hovered ever about 
 the Hayden home, corroding his heart with jeal 
 ousy; a shamed but fascinated spy on the lovers. 
 
 Then one night one glorious summer night 
 when the pale harvest moon was lighting a 
 gray sky, the youth and the maiden sat alone 
 among the fading larkspurs. The dahlias were 
 at their full and the summer was past its climax. 
 That night Constance Hayden faced her tragedy. 
 It is such an old, old tragedy, recorded a million, 
 million times since life began and love came 
 into the heart of youth. The heart-break and 
 anguish of this particular kind of tragedy is that 
 it comes when life is young all unprepared by 
 philosophy and experience to meet the trial. 
 
 Every period of life has its distinctive heart- 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 211 
 
 break. Death, that makes the tragedy of ma 
 turity, does not crush youth, and perfidy does not 
 beat down men and women in their forties. But 
 when this girl, in the gray night, saw lies faltering 
 on the lips she had trusted; when she saw vanity 
 and deceit in the man she adored; when she knew 
 that love could not bind him to honour there 
 came to her, greater than love, more powerful 
 than self-respect, a big, chattering fear, which 
 rises in us when we have lost everything. She 
 fell on her knees at his feet and begged in quick 
 whispers. She tore at his clothing in a frenzy of 
 terror. 
 
 " No ! " he said, as he tried to turn a*way. " I 
 tell you I ve bought my ticket and I ve got to go 
 on the early morning train." 
 
 "But, God why, God Dear God, let 
 me pray! " she panted, clutching his legs as he 
 turned away. " Oh, dear God, don t do this to 
 me ! What have I done ? Oh, Charley Char 
 ley Dear God! Can t you make him see 
 what how mother and oh, Charley there s 
 father dear " 
 
 He broke from her and stepped beyond her 
 reach. He lacked courage to run, but stood 
 
212 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 beside the faded larkspur bed, where she was 
 groping on her knees. 
 
 " Ah, brace up, Connie I Don t be a fool ! 
 You re just as much to blame " He looked at 
 her trying to rise and went on: " And, anyway, 
 Con, I keep telling you " 
 
 She stumbled to her feet and in her hand she 
 held a wisp of flower stalks. She was trembling 
 and sobbing. 
 
 " The larkspur s all faded all withered and 
 faded ! " she repeated, holding it out toward him 
 beseechingly. "The larkspur s all faded like 
 me." She caught her breath as she cried: " All 
 faded like me !" 
 
 He ran through the garden and down the weedy 
 road; and when he came to the board sidewalk 
 that led him to the thick of the little town, with 
 its sham architecture and its false pretences, he 
 shuddered as he walked; for he, too, was young 
 and could not face what he had done without 
 wincing. 
 
 The week after he came home in the late au 
 tumn Constance Hayden died. Her death might 
 have been suicide or it might have been murder; 
 but in either case the town saw her a victim 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 213 
 
 little and poor and young, and essentially innocent. 
 And at the black wrong of her death the town 
 boiled with sudden fury. In her lover s trunk, an 
 hour after her death, the officer who came to arrest 
 Charley Herrington found her letters, her pitiful, 
 pleading letters. These letters were read in court. 
 
 The dead girl s mother did not come to the 
 courtroom she could not face the shame of it; 
 but Israel Hayden came, a little, ineffective, old 
 ish man, in his frayed, brushed, old-fashioned Sun 
 day best, with a foolish flower on his coat lapel. 
 He looked with weak, watery blue eyes at the 
 jury, at the reporters, at the judge on the bench, 
 and at the prisoner, who sat, as the papers de 
 clared, " nonchalantly through it all " ; and Char 
 ley changed colour only when a bunch of faded 
 larkspurs fell from the first letter read by the 
 prosecuting attorney. He shuddered for a sec 
 ond and played nervously with his blond mous 
 tache; but in a few minutes was smiling at his 
 arrogant father, who sat beside the prisoner rather 
 grandly, like a tin god in iron-grey whiskers. 
 
 By one of those subterranean manoeuvres com 
 mon in country politics, Elias Higginson had 
 worked himself on the jury list and had sworn 
 
2i4 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 himself into the jury box. He sat, grim-faced 
 and terrible, glowering at the handsome young de 
 fendant from the minute the jury was accepted; but 
 his hatred was impotent. The dead girl s letters 
 constituted the only evidence against the young 
 man and the jury disagreed. When a new prose 
 cuting attorney was elected he continued the case 
 term after term until the judge struck it from the 
 docket. And so the tragedy of Constance Hay- 
 den passed and the world rolled on. 
 
 PART II 
 
 In a decade the comrades of the Grand Army 
 laid Israel away in a bower of homely flowers, 
 with a posy on his breast. Mercy, his widow, 
 sold the home; and when she left the town for 
 New England the flower garden faded and would 
 have disappeared had not another woman, with 
 joy in her heart, rented the Hayden place the next 
 spring. Another family grew up among the flow 
 ers, and life, with its wonderful panorama, 
 wrought its changes, while the changeless flowers 
 looked on. The town grew big and black with 
 coal smoke, and strong and ruthless with capital. 
 
 When Charley Herrington walked from the 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN" 215 
 
 courtroom under a nominal bond after the mis-trial 
 of the case against him, people shook their heads 
 and said: " He ll never get over it; he can t live 
 this down!" But he walked to a cigar stand 
 near the courthouse, filled his pockets with ten- 
 cent cigars not for tribute or defence, but for 
 his own solace and took up life with apparent 
 good cheer. The cheer on his face was only ap 
 parent, however, for his soul had been scalded 
 with the fury of public opinion, and that soul 
 winced and trembled behind his lonely cigar every 
 hour of the day. 
 
 It seemed to the young man that he met at least 
 one of those jurymen whenever he walked on the 
 street; and people who had sat in the courtroom, 
 leaning forward, gaping and red-faced, to hear 
 those letters read, filed by the young man in a 
 never-ending procession for years and years. 
 During the trial the wrath of a score of fathers 
 had translated itself into talk of lynching, which 
 came to the proud Herrington family; and these 
 fathers were forever crowding into cars with Her 
 rington, sitting in public places beside him, and 
 confronting him in stores and offices as he went 
 about his business. 
 
2i6 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 The long list of citizens who had hired an attor 
 ney to assist the county prosecutor was seared on 
 the young man s mind; and each name remained 
 an object of hatred with him. Yet he faced the 
 town though, for the most part, alone with 
 a smile so firm that men called it the Herrington- 
 grin years after they had forgotten why he turned 
 the corners of his mouth up instead of down. 
 
 He went into his father s bank and worked 
 steadily; and men said: " Well, Charley s getting 
 down to business ! " He drove a good horse 
 but not too good and he always drove alone ; 
 and he drove many a mile out of his way to avoid 
 seeing Mercy Hayden s flower garden. He had 
 strange things to drink in his locker at the club, 
 but did not drink much of them and always drank 
 alone. 
 
 He bought doubtful assets of the bank at liberal 
 discounts, forced the assets to collection; and the 
 directors nodded wise heads and called Charley 
 a chip off the old block. Then the old block went 
 to the fire, and Charley Herrington supported two 
 horses, rather fast steppers for a country town; 
 and they would not go past Mercy Hayden s old- 
 fashioned garden, either. 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 217 
 
 Charley got under the ancestral plug hat and 
 went on mysterious trips to the West and South, 
 where he was known as an Eastern capitalist 
 for you must understand that in New Mexico and 
 Arizona, the Missouri Valley is called the East. 
 
 And as an Eastern capitalist Charley Herring- 
 ton brought home to the First National Bank of 
 New Raynham much curious paper. In his bag 
 were irrigation bonds of various projects where 
 it was twenty miles to water up, down or side 
 ways; municipal bonds of towns where they 
 counted prairie dogs to make up a legal popula 
 tion; mining stock that covered gopher holes; and 
 mortgages on land where the coyote and the cac 
 tus were the only staple crops. 
 
 It was at this interesting stage of his journey 
 through the vale of tears, however, that Charley 
 Herrington quit buying the bank s doubtful assets, 
 and made such changes in the directorate that the 
 bank became a customer for his securities. Un 
 der his high hat, with his grand manner, in his 
 rented private car, when Charles Herrington en 
 tered a sage-brush principality he went as a satrap 
 visiting his province, and men came running out 
 to meet him. He bought lavishly of what they 
 
2i8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 had to sell, but he insisted on all commissions, 
 promoter s profits, gratuities and perquisites being 
 made over to him before he would talk busi 
 ness. 
 
 He squeezed one poor Cripple Creek gold 
 miner, with a daughter to sell, so ruthlessly that 
 when young Charley brought home his new wife 
 they said in the bank that he sweated beads of 
 gold ore, like roasted quartz, for a year after the 
 wedding. 
 
 Among the dummy bank directors who bought 
 the Herrington assets at Charley s bidding the 
 bride was known as the incontrovertible asset; but 
 the bridegroom kept her most of the time in Eu 
 rope or in New York, where her father s name 
 was well known in financial circles, and used her 
 as a sort of daily New York balance. In the 
 middle of the nineties Herrington left the South 
 west as a hunting ground, partly because of cer 
 tain wide areas where he could not go without 
 danger of arrest or of summons to suits for dam 
 ages. 
 
 He opened an office a rather modest office 
 on Lower Broad Street in New York as a 
 broker in Western securities, and also had the 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 219 
 
 name of his Missouri Valley Bank printed on his 
 office door. 
 
 In New Raynham he remained Charley Her- 
 rington, of the First National; and because there 
 came into the town in due course, but on rare oc 
 casions, riding a Shetland pony with much pomp, 
 a grandson of the Cripple Creek Bonanza King, 
 known as little Charley Herrington, the father, 
 still in his forties, became known as Old Charley 
 Herrington. He was gray before he was fifty; 
 his face took on a granite cast, and his eyes were 
 sharp and keen and hard. 
 
 He was a liberal giver to all the town institu 
 tions that begged their way: the churches, the 
 Y. M. C. A., the public library, the band, the 
 Christmas fund of the lodges. And he was an 
 affable, amiable, smiling, half lovable, altogether 
 lonely sort of fellow, who kept so far aloof from 
 the town s business and political factions as to have 
 few enemies. Yet he estimated everything in 
 terms of dollars. It was worth what it would 
 bring, or if not, it was worth the money invested in 
 it. He was as joyless and taciturn about his money 
 to his associates in business as he was about every 
 thing else; but, as a matter of fact, everything else 
 
220 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 of his life covered a small area. He had quit 
 reading books because he found things in them 
 that irritated the scalded spot in his soul. He 
 had scarcely been a part of the social activities of 
 his town for something like the same reason. 
 Men said he was inordinately modest and self- 
 effacing; but he feared fame too just as he 
 feared to go to court to assert his rights in busi 
 ness deals. 
 
 Time and again he was about to make a boast 
 of the fact that he had never had a lawsuit, but 
 he always saw to what exception the boast would 
 lead him and refrained from it. At home in 
 New Raynham he took no leading part in any 
 thing, for fear he would call down criticism on 
 himself; and away from home he avoided news 
 paper notoriety, and always met former citi 
 zens of his home town with diffidence and obvious 
 constraint. The scalded spot on his soul, instead 
 of healing and growing smaller, began to eat; and 
 its infection began to sink deeper into his life. 
 
 As for his wife and the transient home they 
 kept, she and the home did not help matters for 
 Herrington. The wife was a noisy, extreme sort 
 of person, whose figure changed with the modes, 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 221 
 
 and who loved to play the aristocrat on the towns 
 people, whom she called the natives. She drew 
 about her a fast and rather impossible young set, 
 and hooted at the attempts of the women in the 
 town who tried to better conditions through the 
 City Federation, the Library Board and the Civic 
 Improvement League. 
 
 So the Herringtons remained an alien family in 
 their home town a social anomaly. Thus, in 
 his middle fifties, when thirty years living with 
 the gnawing ulcer on his soul had made its symp 
 toms a part of his life, Charley Herrington was a 
 repressed, colourless, wiry, white-haired, flint- 
 visaged man, with suspicious, furtive eyes, one of 
 which -was curtained by a cynical drooping lid. 
 He gave the impression of one living with under- 
 spiritual nourishment, without having a wicked 
 face. He looked morally hungry. His reckless 
 manner fooled no one into thinking him brave. 
 He was eager without enthusiasm, and often re 
 vealed a flashing, greedy desire for some common 
 place of human companionship that disclosed the 
 lonesome, unspent life he had lived. The soul that 
 shone through his emotionless face was not the 
 mildly blanching soul of one leaving youth for a 
 
222 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 higher state, but the charred soul of a quenched 
 fire. 
 
 It was in those days of his middle fifties that 
 he bought the whole block of ground, once far 
 out in the sunflowers, a part of which was the 
 little lot where the Haydens had lived though 
 only a few very old settlers remembered that 
 and on the block he put up the great Colonial 
 mansion that is the town s pride to-day, a building 
 more awful in its solemn lines than the courthouse, 
 more splendid than the five-story hotel, more gor 
 geous than the Y. M. C. A., more impressive than 
 even the ten-story First National Bank Build 
 ing. 
 
 This Colonial mansion, set among great trees 
 that came to the town from afar on flat cars and 
 made the town gasp for weeks, is surrounded by 
 beautiful gardens and by flowers the very names 
 of which are strange to the population of New 
 Raynham ; but the thing about the house that really 
 paralysed the town, rendering it speechless and 
 setting it in its low place in the universe far be 
 low the exalted Herringtons was not the house 
 itself, but a detail of its construction. To begin 
 with, a contractor from Chicago did the work 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN 1 223 
 
 brought his workmen from Chicago, and the town 
 never had so much as a glimpse of the plans. 
 
 However, that was not what reduced the town 
 to a social pulp. The town was pulverised by the 
 fact that as soon as the Chicago contractor began 
 his work he put up a great board wall round the 
 entire block, with signs marked Private Grounds 
 Keep Out ! on the walls. After that what 
 could the town do on Sunday afternoons and 
 pleasant evenings when, according to all the tra 
 ditions and customs of New Raynham a man is en 
 titled to take his family and stroll critically through 
 the rising home of his neighbour and locate the 
 kitchen, the spare bedroom, the bathroom and the 
 hired-girl s room, as a free fancy may dictate ? 
 
 So the town circled the walls of the rising man 
 sion much as Joshua circled the walls of Jericho, 
 calling down mild anathemas on it; not knowing 
 that within the pine-board walls the prosperous 
 gentleman proprietor had built wire netting around 
 a garden spot where a few old-fashioned flowers 
 smiled in the great grounds wherein the builders 
 built. 
 
 When the pine-board walls came down the 
 house was finished and the gardens all laid out. 
 
224 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 So, when the town went in and it went in pell- 
 mell as soon as the iron gates swung on their 
 hinges between the high stone pillars the town 
 did not know that the old-fashioned garden, nes 
 tling in the formal gardens, so beautifully de 
 signed, was Mercy Hayden s garden, that had 
 lived through all the years. But Elias Higgin- 
 son, grizzled and gnarled by time and toil, rattling 
 by the iron palings of the garden on his farm 
 wagon, saw over the formal design into the old- 
 fashioned heart of it, suckled his hard-boned hate 
 and said to himself: "He s afraid of it; he 
 dassent trample it out ! " 
 
 What whim or fancy or fear made Herrington 
 save the old garden one may not say; but there it 
 grew, much as it had grown for nearly half a cen 
 tury iris and peonies, lilacs and old-fashioned 
 roses, asters and larkspurs, tall hollyhocks and 
 zinnias, four-o clocks, poppies, petunias and chry 
 santhemums growing gradually less gorgeous, 
 less fragrant, less deeply appealing to the senses 
 of men as the flowering season waned and passed. 
 
 Man goes through his life s garden in some 
 thing like such a procession; and all the exotics 
 of pleasure bought and paid for, all the hothouse 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 225 
 
 flowers of luxury and artificial beauty, cannot 
 bring back the breath of his May roses or the 
 joy of his June poppies. 
 
 The years that followed the building of the new 
 house saw the climax of Herrington s career. He 
 went into railroad building and became president 
 of the little New Raynham and Gulf Road. His 
 status as president of even so unimportant a road 
 as the N. R. & G. was such that New Raynham 
 felt it to be sacrilege to call him old Charley ; and 
 he became Mr. Herrington. 
 
 Most of the people of New Raynham in the be 
 ginning of the second decade of the new century 
 had never heard the story of Constance Hayden at 
 all; but President Herrington, of the N. R. & G., 
 knew that story. As the years weighed on him, 
 the story remained in rigid detail, crazily out of 
 drawing with the rest of his life; yet the white- 
 haired, hard-visaged, cock-eyed old man, living in 
 the great house the sharp-voiced, querulous old 
 man, who softened only to the little granddaugh 
 ter who toddled beside him under the great elms 
 in the gardens went to work every morning at 
 seven and toiled until dark. He did not appear 
 like a man who had ever been touched by the ten- 
 
226 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 der passion. " Mr. Herrington is Old Business," 
 quoth the town. " Watch out if you ever catch 
 him napping; he will wake up and bite a hole out 
 of you!" 
 
 When he was in New Raynham Herrington s 
 great motor car swung like a pendulum between 
 his office and his home. Partly because he had 
 the only limousine in town and partly because 
 he was the town s capitalist, he was a marked fig 
 ure as he sat all alone stooped over on the back 
 seat of the car, whirling from his work to his 
 meals and his bed. Romance seemed beyond his 
 universe. At sixty he was as tight-skinned and 
 dried-up as a man of eighty; but he was as vigor 
 ous and hard as a man in his forties. 
 
 There went with him in those days, whether he 
 worked at home or travelled in state over his 
 little railroad, a smart, trim, shrewd, silent young 
 woman, in her thirties Mrs. Ogler, his secre 
 tary or chief clerk, as the railroad people called 
 her. The town accounted Mrs. Ogler a wonder. 
 A myth grew up round her as to the things 
 she knew and as to the things she could do and 
 did. It was said that Mrs. Ogler knew every 
 tie on every railroad Mr. Herrington had built; 
 
U A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN 1 227 
 
 that she drew his contracts and kept all his many 
 businesses at her finger-ends. No half-servant, 
 half-toy status had Nellie Ogler. She had arrived 
 in the day and generation when women and men 
 worked together out in the world as equals, as 
 partners in achievements if not in profits. 
 
 Two men stenographers worked under her, one 
 of them a faithful, scrubby-looking Airedale sort 
 of person, being her husband by way of diversion. 
 The clerks in the bank and the little railroad 
 offices held Mrs. Ogler in great awe; but a little 
 awe more or less did not spoil Mrs. Ogler. She 
 went right on investing the fabulous salary that 
 town gossip paid her in shirt waists that made 
 the angels in the Boston Store weep. 
 
 Day after day and year after year her em 
 ployer leaned more and more heavily on her. She 
 was his memory in a score of business deals, and 
 in certain ways she was his judgment. A cheer 
 ful, normal, wholesome sort of person she was; 
 and perhaps her continued presence gave Her- 
 rington some vague idea of what he had missed 
 in life. He knew he was too old to amass a first- 
 class fortune; his little million did not satisfy him; 
 yet he felt the money clutch of his fingers grow 
 
228 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 clumsy. Life was drab and dreary, and he did 
 not understand why. 
 
 Occasionally he caught himself using the wrong 
 word and the wrong name, and doing absent- 
 minded things. One day he sat drumming on the 
 table while the woman worked. At length he 
 spoke, clearing his throat: 
 
 " By the way, Nellie," he asked, looking at her 
 intently, "what did I call you a moment ago? 5 
 Why, Connie. You often call me that 
 here lately." 
 
 Herrington s hands hovered over his desk, 
 vainly trying to find something to pick up ; and he 
 dropped his eyes and said: 
 
 Yes Conway; that was the name of the 
 clerk I had ten years ago. Nice boy! " he added, 
 trying to smile. 
 
 The woman went on with her work, aware that 
 the hard steely old eyes were on her; but she 
 could not know that the thought had framed itself 
 definitely in his mind that he was getting nothing 
 out of life. As he looked at the woman trim, 
 clean, fresh, blooming, and sound to the core 
 he contrasted her with the false, kittenish, stale old 
 woman who was his wife; and he realised with 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN" 229 
 
 a pang that Mrs. Ogler s husband was only a 
 poor clerk. 
 
 Then some nerve or vein or fiber in his brain 
 whisked itself out of gear and Herrington, in the 
 realisation of his vast impotence, became obsessed. 
 
 PART III 
 
 There is a form of romantic dementia that at 
 tacks certain men in the early adolescence of their 
 senility. It is hard to say whether or not this mad 
 ness is more grotesque than the puppy love of early 
 youth. Perhaps because age is supposed to be 
 more circumspect than youth the capers of the old 
 man and the young woman for always he is 
 enamoured of youth are more fantastic than 
 those of the young. Or perhaps in the earlier 
 affairs of life both the man and the woman are 
 dancing to the same tune in their blood and the 
 dance is more seemly. But, whatever sets love s 
 sweet song off-key in the calf love of early senility, 
 something does jar it and all the world laughs. 
 
 There followed, like the course of a malady, a 
 rising tide of what might be called a foxy folly in 
 the Herrington breast; and this folly showed itself 
 in a network of vast circumlocutions, meant to at- 
 
230 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 tract the woman s personal attention. A score of 
 times a day he managed to touch her foot or hand 
 or arm; and he begged her pardon rather elabo 
 rately. 
 
 He began showering the two men stenographers 
 in the office with cigars and baseball tickets, in 
 order to pass a few boxes of candy and some 
 flowers to Mrs. Ogler. And once, six months 
 after the outbreak of his malady, she found a 
 fifty-dollar bill in a box of chocolates. She pinned 
 it to a letter in the morning s mail a letter from 
 one of his disagreeable creditors who was trying 
 to settle a disputed bill and left it on Mr. Her- 
 rington s desk, without a word. 
 
 When the woman let him see her annoyance at 
 his silliness he sighed and moped, and made her 
 work harder; but she could feel as the months 
 passed that whatever madness was in his dull old 
 head was growing. She could not know that it 
 had its root in the man s barren life, his utter lack 
 of any vital hold on things worth while. She 
 saw only a capering old fool, making grotesque 
 and horrible, something that in youth might have 
 been beautiful. But Herrington, finding that the 
 insanity of a life of getting had gone unbearably 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 231 
 
 stale, plunged into this fatuous make-believe of 
 love with all the eager greed of his nature; and 
 Mrs. Ogler saw that she must fight. 
 
 So she planned her campaign. She planned 
 it one Sunday when the Herrington electric car 
 offered for her use had twice gone home from her 
 door empty. She said nothing to the Airedale, 
 but on Monday morning sent him on an all-day 
 errand to the construction department of the rail 
 road. 
 
 When Herrington came swinging jauntily into 
 the office, with his cock-eye softened as it turned 
 upon her, Mrs. Ogler closed the door and sat op 
 posite to him at the mahogany table. She met his 
 calf-like leer without flinching. He opened his 
 mouth as though to speak, when she interrupted 
 him. 
 
 " This," she cried sharply, " is " she paused 
 "nonsense!" And she repeated firmly: 
 "Miserable nonsense! And what s more, Mr. 
 Herrington, youVe been too good to me in the past 
 for me to stand it. Quit it ! Quit it ! " she cried. 
 
 Herrington started round the table. His eyes 
 were glowing and his steps uncertain. She rose 
 quickly and put her finger on the call button. 
 
2 3 2 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 "None of that! " she snapped. 
 
 " Oh, Connie ! " He stopped. His ear 
 caught the word he had uttered. His mouth 
 worked vainly. He spat out bitter ashes a mo 
 ment and went on: " Oh, no Nellie, I mean. 
 You know what I mean I mean you you 
 you Con " 
 
 He was becoming distraught at his own words ; 
 but he went on excitedly: 
 
 u I want to give you it s not just money 
 that s not it not money; but larkspurs. No, 
 no ! " Horror blazed through his steely eyes 
 frantically. There was no passion in his voice, 
 but a miserable determination, cold and mad, as 
 he slowly picked his words: " No no! Oh, 
 God Oh, God, damn that wormwood on my 
 tongue ! It s my " he paused and took the 
 next syllable " name my name," he repeated 
 quickly. " Not just money I want to give you, 
 Connie!" 
 
 At the sound of that name he let out a bleat of 
 terror and wilted into his chair, with his hands 
 nervously fingering his desk. A sudden and deep- 
 planted resolution came to Herrington and he 
 spoke again: 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 233 
 
 "I I want to to I ll sacrifice 
 heaven and earth all withered and faded " 
 
 Again he seemed to be spitting ashes, appalled. 
 The woman stared amazed at the old man. She 
 was speechless for a moment, while dread over 
 came her loathing. He rose in a palsy of fright. 
 A kind of infantile questioning agony spread over 
 his face as he stood, with twitching mouth, chok 
 ing down the words that kept swelling to his lips. 
 
 The man and woman, gazing dumbly at each 
 other, saw that something bigger than a dotard s 
 passion had come into the room. The woman 
 stepped to a water bottle and handed him a drink. 
 His weak hands carried it slowly to his quivering 
 lips. 
 
 " Yes, Nellie that s better. The larksp " 
 He shook his head hopelessly. 
 
 * You are ill, Mr. Herrington," answered the 
 woman. He nodded. She stood in doubt a few 
 seconds and then said: "But, of course, Mr. 
 Herrington, I must not work here any longer. 
 I ve transferred myself in this letter." She 
 pointed to a sheet of paper prepared on her desk. 
 " I ve issued an order transferring myself to the 
 passenger department if you don t mind. I 
 
234 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 can help you there if you need help at any 
 time; but I can t work here." 
 
 Again he nodded, afraid to speak. She turned 
 to her desk and the old man sat trying his lips and 
 mouth in whispers for a long time. At length 
 he spoke. 
 
 " I m all right now, Nellie I believe." 
 
 " Very well, Mr. Herrington," replied the 
 woman as her finger pressed the call button. In 
 the seconds that elapsed before the door opened 
 she added: "I m sorry very sorry for you, 
 sir; but I m going now." To the man who ap 
 peared with his notebook she continued: 
 * There s nothing important in the mail but the 
 request for Mr. Herrington s opinion on the 
 Canal-tolls repeal from the Senate committee. 
 Find the rate facts in file K not the private file. 
 Mr. Herrington will explain. I must be out of 
 the office this morning." 
 
 The heads of departments who saw Mr. Her 
 rington that summer remarked that he whispered 
 to himself much of the time, and that he had a 
 baffled uncertainty in his eyes. The traffic depart 
 ment said to the maintenance department : " The 
 chief s not up to his top form these days." So his 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN" 235 
 
 subordinates took as much work away from him 
 as they could, without letting him know it. 
 
 His silent habit seemed for a few months to 
 be growing on him. When he spoke it was in 
 monosyllables. He took to writing his orders 
 on a tablet, which was ever before him, and with 
 a grunt handing the written order to the proper 
 clerk. He wrote fluently, and scribbled notes 
 for his stenographers on the backs and tops and 
 sides of the letters that came to his desk; but 
 gradually, as the summer waned, his fear of speech 
 lessened and he became less taciturn. He de 
 veloped a ponderous habit of weighing every word 
 before he uttered it; so men thought him exceed 
 ingly wise. 
 
 It was in September when an Interstate Com 
 merce Commissioner, seeking to maintain the 
 long-and-short-haul clause of the Federal law, 
 came to New Raynham at the request of the 
 Chamber of Commerce. The town was demand 
 ing its place on the commercial map. President 
 Herrington, of the N. R. & G., was backing up 
 the demand; for if the town could get the advan 
 tage of its geographical location it would mean 
 better rates for his road. So he consented to 
 
236 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 preside at the banquet given by the town to the 
 investigating commissioner. 
 
 It was something like a day of triumph for 
 Herrington, for he found himself backing a town 
 enterprise in which his own self-interest lay; so 
 he rose in his place at the head of the table on 
 the night of the banquet with a renaissance of 
 the Herrington grin on his face the grin that 
 had been drooping for nearly a decade. 
 
 The flutter of handclapping that greeted him 
 died away, and he smiled his flinty, steely, cock 
 eyed smile at the banqueters. He felt secure ; for 
 he held in his hand, partly concealed, the card on 
 which he had written his opening remarks. They 
 stared at him in his familiar, exact handwriting, 
 and he beamed. 
 
 " My pleasure," he began, grinning cheerfully, 
 " is all withered " 
 
 The crowd, preparing for some light play of 
 words, saw instead a white pall mantle Herring- 
 ton s face as he stammered: " All fade " 
 
 His eyes became fixed, as though he were look 
 ing at some specter. He stood for a second, stiff 
 and panting, glaring at his unseen enemy. Then 
 he sank down slowly into his chair, crying hoarsely : 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 237 
 
 " God! God! God! " and dropped his chin 
 on his shirt-front. When they rushed to him he 
 sat tight-lipped and grim. He would not answer 
 their questions. So they led him from the hall. 
 They put him in his car and telephoned to his 
 home that he was ill. 
 
 The next day they took him to a Chicago nerve 
 specialist. Herrington seemed more or less dazed 
 at times and began to grow homesick. At the end 
 of a week he was crying pitifully to go home. 
 
 At home they could not keep him in bed. He 
 would wander through the grounds about his 
 house like an old dog looking for something. He 
 would not speak, and cried when the attendant 
 stood too near him; but always he would go into 
 that part of the grounds where the old-fashioned 
 garden flourished. There they often found him 
 staring dumbly at the old-fashioned flowers, ap 
 parently listening; and many times the attendant 
 behind the lilac bush heard the old man whimper: 
 
 " The larkspurs are faded all withered and 
 faded! The larkspurs are faded like me!" 
 
 This he would whisper over and over, and sigh. 
 Then he would look round carefully, as though 
 to find the larkspurs ; but the larkspurs were gone. 
 
238 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 On a fair, clear day in late autumn Elias Hig- 
 ginson was digging in a pit, up to his hips. Beside 
 him was a rickety little old man, with a short 
 breath and a misery in his back. The little old 
 man from time to time leaned on his shovel and 
 held one hand to his back; but Elias went on 
 gouging the earth with his pick. Finally the 
 silence became torturing beyond endurance and the 
 little old man asked : 
 
 "Gravel under this ?" 
 
 " Not for a while yet," responded Elias; and he 
 did not look up. 
 
 Another long quarter of an hour passed, when 
 Elias suddenly burst forth: 
 
 " I was a-thinkin of him," he mused. 
 
 The little rickety man gasped slightly and re 
 sponded: 
 
 " Oh, yes." And added: " What about that 
 wireless you hear so much about? Do you sup 
 pose it s so savin of them boats or just what 
 you read in the papers? " 
 
 " Of him ! " returned Elias doggedly. 
 
 The rickety man dropped his shovel for the 
 hundredth time and picked it up wearily, but did 
 not reply. At the end of a long pause, in which the 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 239 
 
 old man several times seemed about to go to work 
 and then thought better of it, Elias burst forth : 
 
 " The last time I saw him he had his overcoat 
 on out in the garden her garden," he added, 
 looking sharply at his companion. 
 
 The old man had fallen to work and was try 
 ing not to hear what was going on; but his curi 
 osity got the better of his goose-flesh and he asked : 
 
 " Whose garden? " and held his back for the 
 reply. 
 
 " None o your damn business whose garden ! 
 His wife s garden whose do you suppose? " 
 
 " Oh! " cut in the old man timidly; and Elias 
 went on: 
 
 " Right there in her garden same as that 
 where I seen him thirty-odd year ago right 
 there under the lilacs, shiverin in his damn hoss 
 blanket of a overcoat where I ve crept up and 
 peeked at him a damn site hotter n that ! " 
 
 The little old man tried not to listen; but Elias, 
 tearing the earth with his pick, cried angrily: 
 
 "And now he s colder n ever! You bet he s 
 cold enough now 1 " 
 
 The rickets in the old man set him a-flutter. He 
 did not like the subject. Elias went on: 
 
240 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " As I was sayin , I passed the iron palin s 
 of his garden and stopped to have a look at im. 
 And they was a couple passin same as that 
 and she says to her man : A old man settin in 
 a autumn garden how very poetical ! she says 
 same as that. An they didn t know he was 
 dotty, and I didn t tell em. They stopped by 
 me and the man says : * How very dignified he 
 looks there in the autumn of life, amid the cosmos 
 and buddin chrysanthemums ! How calm ! How 
 peaceful ! 
 
 1 When the storm of life is past, she says 
 same as that linin out the hymn. And him 
 a-settin there, jabberin under his breath and 
 starin at the flowerbed like a idjot! " 
 
 Elias stood aside to let the shoveler get at his 
 dirt pile, and went on: 
 
 " But they never noticed it. They kept sayin , 
 * How poetic ! and all that a old man, after 
 the passion of life, settin among the passionless 
 flowers same as that ! Oh, hell ! I says to 
 myself and to them. I ast : l Did you know this 
 ere party? And they says: No; who was 
 he? And I says: * Well, you bet his name is 
 Dennis now same as that! " 
 
"A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN" 241 
 
 The old rickety man shuddered and whispered: 
 
 " Is the party s name Dennis? " 
 
 " You ve said it," replied Elias, getting back 
 to his work. He went on : " But when I first 
 knowed him he went by another name. Folks 
 used to call him Prince Charmin same as that." 
 
 He laughed and jeered. " Prince Charmin ! 
 Even as a boy in school I knowed him him a 
 little boy ; one o them nicey, spicey boys 
 boughten sleds, boughten wagons, silver skates, 
 spangle-topped boots and all that. And then 
 later on he come along, bustin it up with me an 
 her Prince Charmin ! Prince Charmin , with 
 his pretty yaller-molasses moustache, and his tooth 
 pick shoes and dude breeches, skin-tight. Oh, I 
 remember him ! And me nothin but a farmer boy 
 with a buckboard; and him comin sailin up with 
 his red-wheeled rig! Prince Charmin ! A hell 
 of a Prince Charmin he looked, all scrooched up 
 in his overcoat there in her garden! " 
 
 " Whose garden? " asked the rickety man, con 
 fused, and to seem to be making talk. 
 
 Elias stopped to look at the dull eyes staring 
 at him and the stupid face. 
 
 " His wife s whose do you suppose? " He 
 
242 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 went on digging for a time and then broke out 
 again: " An then pretty soon the man and the 
 girl moved off; and this ere party I was speakin 
 of, he came " 
 
 " The party? " queried the rickety man timidly, 
 looking at the hole beneath him. 
 
 "Name s Dennis same as that!" went on 
 Elias. " He come shufflin over to the palin and 
 the keeper come up beside him; and he stared at 
 me, this here Prince Charmin did, and he jabbers: 
 The larkspurs is faded; all withered an faded 
 
 all withered an faded like me ! same as 
 that. And he stares at me and don t know me; 
 and then : and then" the pick went hungrily 
 into the earth again and again before Elias fin 
 ished his sentence; he gave it a final bite of anger 
 and went on u an then I knowed him knowed 
 my Prince Charmin for all these thirty-odd years 
 
 same as that ! 
 
 " For, I tell you, hidin behind that same lilac 
 bush, I heard her beggin him and pleadin with 
 him; and as he slunk off like a houn dog I heard 
 her say them same words, same as that same as 
 that! And I ve carried em in my head and he s 
 carried em in his head him and me. And why 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 243 
 
 I didn t kill him that night kill him like the 
 dog I knowed he was same as that there an 
 then, I never can tell; except that he was this here 
 Prince Charmin an I was a farmer lyin behind 
 the lilacs, sufferin like a dumb animal for her." 
 
 " For who? " asked the old man, sitting on the 
 dirt mound, cleaning his shovel with a stick. 
 
 " His wife who do you suppose? " retorted 
 Elias, glaring at the weak-minded man. " I 
 thought I knowed, when he was gettin the jury 
 out of town one at a time all those years 
 what was in his heart; and I thought I knowed 
 why he always wanted me to leave not at he 
 ever heard of me and her, but because I got on 
 that jury and tried to swing it agin him. So, Mr. 
 Prince Charmin , that was the canker in your 
 heart, eh? same as that! An you growed 
 rich and you growed richer; and you got littler 
 an littler as you got things as a body always 
 does who lays up treasure in this earth same 
 as that! 
 
 " And you growed rich and you growed richer, 
 and smaller and smaller, till yer little sodderin 
 pot of a hell inside you jest naturally burnt all 
 the pith out of you, and you was a poetical-lookin 
 
244 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 old party, white-haired and leather-skinned, a- 
 dyin in a old-fashioned garden a-dyin at the 
 top ! " He stopped talking and bent to his pick 
 in silence. 
 
 The rickety old man was afraid of the silence 
 and said, as he mopped his forehead: "Hot 
 work, ain t it? " 
 
 Elias dug on without replying. 
 
 " He goes to the gravel," remarked Elias as 
 his pick struck the little stones. " We ll have to 
 make im a concrete bed nice and soft! Oh, 
 you Charmin Prince you Prince Charmin , 
 with your sodderin -pot hell in your belly, how 
 much have you bested me? " 
 
 " Meanin the party?" questioned the rickety 
 old man. 
 
 " Same as that! " rejoined Elias. 
 
 Whose name is Dennis? " persisted the shove- 
 ler, looking furtively at the hole. 
 
 ; Whose name is just that ! " answered Elias 
 as he buried his pick in the gravel. 
 
 The reporter for the New Raynham Tribune 
 owned by the N. R. & G. interests was in 
 structed by the managing editor to turn himself 
 
" A PROSPEROUS GENTLEMAN " 245 
 
 loose on the funeral. So he told how the male 
 choir sang Crossing the Bar, and Lead, Kindly 
 Light; how two preachers prayed and another 
 read the Scripture lesson; and printed in full the 
 remarks of the bishop who delivered the eulogy. 
 At the end of the article the reporter appended 
 a list of the railroad nobility from all over the 
 West who had sent floral offerings, and he de 
 scribed some of the grander set pieces of hothouse 
 flowers gates ajar, broken columns, American 
 Beauty palls, and other floral gewgaws; but he 
 did not tell how empty and meaningless they are 
 those hothouse flowers. For, after all, it is 
 the seasonal procession of the flowers of the field, 
 growing gently and beautifully more serene and 
 glorified as the season runs its course, that typify 
 life. 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 
 PART I 
 
 ONCE upon a time and the time was in the 
 latter half of the first decade of the twentieth cen 
 tury, when strange new currents were running 
 through the minds of men in a certain small 
 town in the Missouri Valley there sat at night in 
 a smelly little newspaper office, rather poorly 
 lighted, in the midst of a great throng that watched 
 anxiously bulletins which flashed on a dead wall 
 near by, a congressman. 
 
 The congressman was a pudgy, soft-handed, 
 short-legged, thin-haired, pink-browed, clabber- 
 jowled congressman, all swathed about as to his 
 pod-like torso in a white vest, draped in a black 
 frock coat. His name was Joel Ladgett. Joel 
 Ladgett was the famous author of the Ladgett 
 Bill. He sat rolling a dead cigar from one side of 
 his loose, coarse mouth to the other, displaying a 
 set of big, uneven teeth, badly battered by time. 
 His jaw was coming unscrewed and was wabbling 
 
 almost visibly. 
 
 246 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 247 
 
 He held in his small, soft hands a yellow tele 
 gram and was reading it over and over, and over 
 again. Outside, the contents of the telegram were 
 shining on the dead wall ; and in the summer breeze 
 that played through the south window near the 
 congressman he could hear the hum of the crowd. 
 Somebody started a cheer; but the cheer was not 
 successful and a faint clapping of hands died away 
 fatuously. 
 
 The crowd knew that Mrs. Ladgett sa.t beside 
 the congressman and his enemies banked the bon 
 fires of their exultation. It was the first primary 
 for choosing a congressman ever held in the dis 
 trict; and on that yellow slip of paper, containing 
 the news from four of the seven counties of the dis 
 trict there, impersonally and irrevocably the 
 finger of Fate spelled his defeat. 
 
 Defeat in a convention, with the tumult and the 
 shouting of the captains, softens political death 
 by dramatizing it. Often the vanquished has 
 something of value to trade with the victor, and 
 thus defeat is not complete. It may mean a slow- 
 turning movement as, say, to a Federal judge- 
 ship, or a receivership, or a state office. Or it 
 may mean any of the thousand feather beds of 
 
24 8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 political consolation wherewith politicians ease 
 their wounded and dying. But Congressman Lad- 
 gett s defeat at the primary was just cold, hard, 
 miserable, unmitigated defeat. His hands sank 
 trembling to his lap and his eyes filled, and he be 
 gan trying to choke down the sobs that were rising 
 in his heart. 
 
 The yellow sheet slipped to the floor. A lank, 
 leathery man, who stood at attention, as a sort of 
 courier or herald or outrider, near the Person, 
 stooped to pick up the paper, and, as he rose, cried: 
 That s what your pure democracy does to a 
 man!" Rising, the lank courtier put a horny 
 brown hand out, grasped the flabby little paw that 
 dropped loosely from beneath the white vest; and 
 the tall man said gently: " It s all right, Judge 
 it s all right. I d lots rather go down with you 
 than with " 
 
 "Hiram!" 
 
 The man turned his face toward Mrs. Ladgett, 
 a monumental person with three chins. 
 
 " Hiram," she repeated, " get a hack Joel is 
 tired; tell it to come to the alley; I don t want them 
 to see him." 
 
 " The situation, madam, certainly does seem 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 249 
 
 " Larson replied; but a look from the woman al 
 most batted him out of the room. 
 
 No emotion shook the woman s voice; yet her 
 face was burning with wrath. She stood four- 
 squared to whatever winds were blowing through 
 her soul and gave orders like a ship s captain in a 
 gale. She looked at the tall man beside her and 
 directed his eyes to the figure of the congressman. 
 It had slumped. The face was hidden and the 
 hands were clasped above the half-bald head; and 
 the slanting shoulders were nervously pumping as 
 the man wept. The woman said instantly : 
 
 " Keep the boys in the office away from him. 
 Get the hack, quick! " 
 
 As Hiram Larson left the room Mrs. Ladgett 
 locked the door behind him, and stood beside her 
 husband. She did not whimper; nor did she touch 
 him for a minute, but let his anguish spend itself. 
 Then she said: 
 
 "Joel Joel!" She found his hands. "Joel, 
 you you mustn t not here not now ! " 
 
 He raised his grief-riven face, all working with 
 shame, and whimpered: 
 
 " But my life my work ! It s all over ! It s 
 all done!" 
 
250 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 When the royal party was gone and the editor s 
 room deserted, the crowd in the office, where the 
 telegraph instrument was clicking out the details of 
 his defeat, knew vaguely that Congressman Lad- 
 gett had in some way broken under the news. No 
 one laughed; men were constrained. They shook 
 their heads and sighed: "Too bad!" even 
 those who had contributed their votes to the land 
 slide that overcame him. 
 
 The clicking instrument was bringing news of 
 similar defeats from elsewhere in the state, and for 
 months the primaries in other states had been 
 mowing down men of the Ladgett type all over the 
 nation. So the town about him was prepared for 
 the overthrow of Ladgett. But though the con 
 gressman had seen his fellows drop before the 
 grim reaper with the new weapon of democracy, he 
 had imagined himself safe. He had his organisa 
 tion the strongest in the state all bristling 
 with postmasters under the control of Hiram Lar 
 son. The congressman also had the district at 
 torney, the revenue collectors and their deputies, 
 and the flunkies of the Federal court. He had 
 Boyce Kilworth s money all he needed of it; 
 and the golden touch of the Kilworth money never 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 251 
 
 before had failed to do everything but raise the 
 dead. 
 
 And then, of course and the congressman did 
 not minimise this point there was his splendid 
 record: his high place in the House, his great 
 power with the Administration, the fame of the 
 Ladgett Bill, and his place on The Committee. 
 Even the congressman himself capitalised The 
 Committee when he spoke of it, for it awed him 
 with its power. 
 
 No matter how jauntily he pranced before the 
 newer members across the floor of the House, with 
 the red carnation in his coat lapel the red carna 
 tion that set him apart and made him a member of 
 the autocracy The Committee, even to him, was 
 a holy of holies, and his membership in it seemed 
 to guarantee him against ordinary mortal mis 
 haps. Politically he thought himself one of the 
 deathless gods. He marvelled that a member of 
 The Committee could eat and sleep and function 
 physically as other men functioned; so, when the 
 avalanche hit him, when the last definite telegram 
 unmistakably revealed the truth to him, Congress 
 man Ladgett s whole universe came crashing in. 
 He could see no moral control of creation, no pur- 
 
252 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 poseful guidance, no plan or scheme or direction 
 to it. 
 
 It was a week before he could show himself to 
 the town; but in that week the red corpuscles of 
 hope began building round the congressman s 
 heart. A thousand plans developed in his mind to 
 bring back the seat he had lost. Two years, he 
 thought, would give him a needed rest; but it 
 would do more. The two years would prove to 
 Boyce Kilworth that his tin mills could not run 
 without a congressman. Rates, schedules, duties 
 specific and ad valorem trailed through his 
 head in endless procession as he built his life 
 firmly into the structure of his country s future. 
 For he saw life not as a moving picture on the reel ; 
 he saw it rather as a tableau set in the static calm 
 of some Elysian Field, with the gods of things as 
 they are in full dominion, and with congressmen 
 and manufactures moving together in a common 
 orbit of magnificence, dependent on each other, 
 glorifying each other in heavenly harmony for 
 ever. So the hope in his heart charged his mind 
 with an unshaken conviction that the universe re 
 quired him in its divine economy. 
 
 As he sat in his rooms at the Astor House, 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 253 
 
 where Hiram Larson was the host, and there, re 
 arranging to his purpose the fragments about him 
 of the wreck of matter, he read the press clippings 
 that came flooding in on him from the Clipping 
 Bureau. Hiram used to come to the royal bed 
 chamber betimes, and, after reviewing what he re 
 ferred to as the Situation for an hour, he would 
 slip out of the pile of newspaper cuttings those 
 which indicated in a rather definite way that the 
 congressman s district had shown itself stark mad, 
 in retiring such a distinguished statesman. And 
 these clippings the cupbearer of Parnassus would 
 read exultingly on the streets of New Raynham to 
 such gross cattle as he thought might be prodded 
 to repent of their ruthless conduct; but Hiram 
 never was able to report any change in the Situa 
 tion. The Situation always was grave with Hi 
 ram grave or acute. 
 
 Finally Mrs. Ladgett decided that the congress 
 man should appear on Constitution Street, in the 
 marts of trade, where the author of the Ladgett 
 Bill was used to the adulation of the multitude. 
 He made his public appearance in his long coat, 
 his white vest, his immaculately creased trousers, 
 his high hat. For twenty years in this regalia 
 
254 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 he had swept the town before him as the wind 
 bends the grainfield. Yet that first day his regalia 
 did not seem to be achieving all it should have 
 achieved. Men were patronizingly polite ; and that 
 cut him. And some men, whom he knew were 
 lying to him, professed sympathy; and that an 
 gered him. 
 
 Because Mrs. Ladgett had insisted that he go 
 to the bank, he went; though he knew his over 
 draft was wide and deep, and that his past-due 
 paper was baled in a withered bundle. Boyce 
 Kilworth, of the Traders National, for thirty 
 years had been a sort of foster Providence to the 
 congressman, controlling his destinies at home and, 
 through New York channels, guiding his Wash 
 ington career. In greeting the Judge, Kilworth 
 looked up from his interest book gloomily, then 
 took the Judge into the back room of the bank 
 and gave him the bank s third degree for delin 
 quents. He had heard Kilworth give others that 
 third degree ; but it was a new thing to the Judge 
 to hear it visited on his own head. It rumpled his 
 white vest, disheveled his hair, and disorganised 
 his fundamental faith in the essential goodness of 
 great riches, as such. And that faith was all he 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 255 
 
 had left in a shattered universe whereon to pin 
 his sanity. 
 
 The congressman left Boyce Kilworth s bank 
 dazed, like a new soul in purgatory. That the 
 dogs in the hustings might turn on him, he had 
 come to believe, was largely to his credit. He ac 
 counted it a virtue that he had been picked for a 
 high martyrdom to his principles. Greece and 
 Rome furnished countless examples of the treach 
 ery of the rabble. But that Boyce Kilworth, who 
 was of the divine cult and of a divinity of pure 
 gold higher than that in which mere congressmen 
 moved, that Boyce Kilworth should snarl at his 
 friend and should bicker at the defeat, that 
 he should find Boyce Kilworth s gilding rubbing 
 off and disclosing brass that indeed was real 
 disillusion. 
 
 But his faith in the political immortality of the 
 demi-gods of his Parnassus was unshaken. He 
 knew in his soul that Boyce Kilworth s tin mill 
 would shrivel under the blighting curse of the jeal 
 ous divinities if there was no Ladgett in Washing 
 ton to intercede for the mill ; and, though he was 
 pained even deeply hurt at the ingratitude 
 of Kilworth, still, he knew that in the order of 
 
256 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 things in his universe Kilworth would be brought 
 to see his error and retrace his steps. 
 
 Yet, as the Judge turned out of Constitution 
 Street into a shady elm-covered avenue and walked 
 sadly to the Astor House not the best hotel in 
 New Raynham by any means, but one where for 
 many years he had been welcome without money 
 and without price for the glory that he shed 
 there as he walked he wondered and wondered 
 and wondered at the perfidy of the gods, which 
 was so uncomfortably like the baseness of man! 
 Only in the mad tragedies of Euripides could he 
 find any counterpart of this baseness of the di 
 vinities, such as he had seen in Kilworth. 
 
 He hesitated to go to Mrs. Ladgett, who had 
 packed him up and sent him to Constitution Street 
 as a Spartan mother might throw her offspring on 
 the rocks. So he gave audience first to Hiram 
 Larson, the cup-bearer. In a little cubby-hole be 
 hind the high pine desk, whereon rested the dog 
 eared hotel register, Ladgett and his lieutenant 
 retired as to a sibylline cave; and there the con 
 gressman gave out this oracle : 
 
 " Hiram, have I or have I not deserved of the 
 Fates a kindlier portion than they have dealt me ? " 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 257 
 
 He put one hand behind him, pointed an orator 
 ical finger at the lank hotel keeper, wrinkled his 
 mottled pink brow until his eyebrows all but met, 
 and glared at Hiram as though he was one of the 
 Fates; and then the congressman proceeded to 
 break the dam of his restraint: 
 
 " Hiram, boy and man for sixty-five years my 
 goings in and comings .out have been an open book. 
 Did I desire an education? Yes. Well, who 
 paid for it? Who? I ask. Joel Ladgett taught 
 school and paid for it ; and none of your flimsy fads 
 and frills were in that education. Greek hard 
 beautiful Greek and elegant Latin, and deep 
 mathematics, and subtle philosophy. And when I 
 came home and studied law here in Old Man Her- 
 rington s law office, I ask you, who was the young 
 est county attorney ever elected in Lincoln County? 
 Who ? Well, I was. I was ! 
 
 " And who was it that stood by Boyce Kilworth 
 in the county attorney s office when they were clam 
 ouring to send him to the penitentiary for stuffing 
 the ballot box? You know! You know! And 
 who, as district judge of a district as large as a 
 New England State who shielded Boyce Kil 
 worth from the clamour of the mob that would 
 
258 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 have sent him up for fee grabbing as county treas 
 urer, if it was not I myself? I defy you or any 
 other man to tell me who it was ! " 
 
 The Judge was strutting up and down the little 
 cave of a room, with his hands in his trousers 
 pockets, wagging his head vigorously in his best 
 manner, defying some hypothetical adversary. 
 
 When I went into politics," he began again, 
 taking a new tack, " I knew the game. I knew one 
 must rise by his own efforts and I rose. It was 
 my business to rise and I kept rising. I made one 
 office get me another. And no other man in this 
 State ever played a smoother game than I played 
 if I do say it They were my own offices. No 
 man can say he ever made Joel Ladgett. Joel 
 Ladgett had no faith in the rabble ; he didn t fool 
 himself into thinking the rabble would appreciate 
 what he did. He didn t fawn on em and pretend 
 he was in office to serve em. 
 
 " Joel Ladgett, Hiram Larson, was in office to 
 rise, and keep rising; and now, when the Huns 
 and Vandals come, overwhelming the city, Joel 
 Ladgett does not propose to run. Joel Ladgett 
 will sit on the porch of his house in his vestments 
 of office a Roman noble, garbed in all the in- 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 259 
 
 signia of his rank. And let the Goths do their 
 worst! " 
 
 That figure pleased him. And, though there 
 was much more of his speech to Hiram, the cup 
 bearer, that day, his picture of himself grandly 
 sitting under the marble pillars of a decaying re 
 public while the barbarians ravaged his country, so 
 gripped the Judge s imagination that he resolved 
 never to appear on Constitution Street without his 
 white vest and the carnation at his coat lapel, which 
 marked his high calling as a Roman patriarch. 
 
 It was while the Judge was ruminating thus in 
 silence amid the debris of our institutions that 
 Hiram mysteriously beckoned the waiting Mrs. 
 Ladgett into the darkness of a linen closet and con 
 fided to her, in a high-pressure whisper, that the 
 Situation was becoming " acute." 
 
 The day following Judge Ladgett s interview 
 with Boyce Kilworth the banker sent his wife round 
 to call on Mrs. Ladgett. And the call roiled the 
 waters of Mrs. Ladgett s soul. For of old it was 
 known in the town that whenever Boyce Kilworth 
 had reason to hate himself for a particularly des 
 picable trick it was his practice to send his meek, 
 soft-voiced wife to call on the victim. 
 
260 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 She was known as Boyce s First Aid not that 
 she aided in any sense. It was her habit to chirp 
 naively through her call about nothing at all, and 
 to get up and leave a whole pack of cards rather 
 shyly; then fly happily away on the next errand of 
 mercy to deposit her peace tablets elsewhere. 
 When she called on Mrs. Ladgett, at the Astor 
 House, Mrs. Kilworth sat with her gloved hands 
 carefully folded in her lap and listened meekly 
 to the unctuous patronge of the grand dame. 
 
 " Of course, Mrs. Kilworth," quoth the consort, 
 sitting bolt upright in purple satin, and with all her 
 false hair set on her wrinkled front, giving her the 
 appearance of an animated heathen temple " of 
 course, Mrs. Kilworth, you cannot understand that 
 they have let in chaos at Washington. It is not 
 only the Judge they have retired temporarily, 
 of course but the other strong men of the 
 House ; the government, in fact. The government 
 has fallen only a shell remains." 
 
 Mrs. Kilworth smiled up sweetly from under her 
 white hair, falling in gentle waves on her placid 
 forehead, and replied: 
 
 " Of course ! Isn t it unfortunate ? " 
 
 " Unfortunate ! Unfortunate ! " rumbled Mrs. 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 261 
 
 Ladgett. u Why, woman is that the word to 
 use about the fall of your country? I have just 
 said it is chaos Chaos ! They have let in 
 chaos; and the Judge feels it a patriotic duty to 
 hurry right back to Washington session or no 
 session to do what he can to prepare the coun 
 try against its ruin. Ah, madam " this with a 
 shake of the head that set the temple lights of 
 beads on the lower levels to trembling as in an 
 earthquake " you little dream what it means to 
 this government to lose the guiding hands that 
 have kept it from socialism and anarchy! " 
 
 But the time had come when the impulse to de 
 posit her cards was burning unquenchably in Mrs. 
 Kilworth, and she rose and flitted away, carrying 
 a vague impression with her that Mrs. Ladgett was 
 booming on interminably. And ten days after the 
 primary, when the Ladgetts moved majestically 
 back on Washington, Mrs. Kilworth had a curi 
 ous notion that they were going back to do some 
 thing or other to chaos. 
 
 It was a beautiful world into which the Ladgetts 
 came when they finally returned to New Raynham 
 from Washington and a happy world, too, as 
 worlds go. Here were miles of wide, elm-shaded 
 
262 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 streets, and hundreds of acres of bluegrass, 
 whereon children pastured; and flowers grew in lit 
 tle gardens behind comfortable homes. Youths 
 and maidens met and played the little comedies of 
 their courtships simply and gayly, without thought 
 of class or caste; and the natural selection of the 
 human creature was going on as Utopians for 
 many hopeless ages dreamed it should go. Riches 
 were distributed more fairly than ever dreamers 
 had known them to be in any other age in the 
 world, and life was full of joy. 
 
 If they had but looked for it the Ladgetts could 
 have found joy, too, in seeing the flower of many a 
 world-old dream fruiting so sweetly. But the 
 Judge saw only the wreck of the order on which 
 he had built his life s faith; and the Roman matron 
 who stood beside him saw only chaos. Their eyes 
 were focused on a universe running wild; and they 
 had no eyes for the loving hand of God, which 
 was beckoning through all the streets, through all 
 the homes, through all the hearts and lives of the 
 town, to an age-long human vision achieved to 
 a glimpse of a justice that might some day be 
 realised by all men. 
 
 So it was a hard, hopeless, dreary sky that 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 263 
 
 gloomed over the Ladgetts when they settled, tem 
 porarily, of course, into their old apartments 
 two bedrooms, with a tin bathtub in a closet be 
 tween them in the Astor House. They had not 
 accumulated a stick of furniture during their 
 twenty years in Congress, and the New Raynham 
 home that they had built in the seventies, long be 
 fore had been taken for its mortgage and the 
 taxes. 
 
 However, because credits in the stores of the 
 town were easy for the nobility, and the Judge kept 
 the flag of his hopes floating, for a year he man 
 aged to put up the outward show of prosperity. 
 Always the white vest, the tail coat, the high hat, 
 the red carnation, insignia of his nobility; always 
 the grand manner r even in buying his cigars on 
 credit; always the air that the author of the Lad- 
 gett Bill was stooping to dwell on a mortal plane; 
 always the atmosphere of the grandeur that was 
 Rome > pervaded him. He made no new 
 friends; when he came out of his lofty dream to 
 speak at a formal occasion, the audience was made 
 to feel that the author of the Ladgett Bill was still 
 in public life. 
 
 Hiram Larson always had been his campaign 
 
264 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 manager; always had spoken for the Judge, trans 
 lating the oracles into the language of the people. 
 Hiram continued at his post; and the Judge s 
 casual appearances on Constitution Street during 
 his first year of exile seemed to partake something 
 of the nature of a pageant, so far removed was he 
 from his fellows. 
 
 " He wears," said Colonel Longford one after 
 noon to Toney Delaney, as they sat in the back 
 room of Boyce Kilworth s bank watching the 
 Judge out skirmishing for a cigar "He wears 
 the hue 
 
 like that when some great painter dips 
 
 His pencil in the gloom of earthquake and eclipse." 
 
 11 Tis the procession of the bleedin heart," re 
 turned Delaney. " And I wonder," he mused on, 
 " whether the Judge really knows it s all over for 
 him ! He can t come back. Why, all the chief s 
 money here wouldn t galvanize him ! And, what s 
 more, the chief s tied up the new man so tight he 
 can t breathe." 
 
 The miserly drib of a pension which the Judge 
 received for his service in an Indian war in the 
 late sixties Mrs. Ladgett appropriated to bedeck 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 265 
 
 herself in a manner befitting her station as wife of 
 the author of the Ladgett Bill. She referred to 
 this pension as " our income," and precious little 
 did Joel get to apply on Hiram Larson s rising ac 
 count. It was her habit to commandeer periodic 
 ally one of the three musty hacks in the town and 
 call in regal pomp on such official families as she 
 considered required calls from her. 
 
 On these occasions she would tell, with bated 
 whispers, of the responsibilities at Washington that 
 almost broke her husband s body and soul. She 
 was careful to exhibit an indifferent view of the 
 senators, a nicely restrained contempt for the Cabi 
 net Members, and to withhold her loathing of the 
 President s general incompetency only by main 
 strength and awkwardness. But for Joel Ladgett 
 Mrs. Ladgett calmly left New Raynham to 
 freeze with horror at the thought of what would 
 have happened to a bleeding country if it had not 
 been for the Judge. 
 
 When some of her friends suggested that she 
 should join the Woman s Research Club, Mrs. 
 Ladgett rested her arms proudly over her ample 
 fortifications and smiled benignly and replied : 
 
 " I shall avail myself of the opportunity to visit 
 
266 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 your club sometimes. But " here she 
 paused "naturally for so short a time I can 
 scarcely be expected to take an active part; I should 
 hardly get into next year s work before the Judge 
 would no longer feel the need of the rest he is tak 
 ing and would be back in the harness again and 
 we shall be in Washington." 
 
 It was in those decadent days of the republic 
 that Mrs. Ladgett began livening up the interest 
 in her Thursday afternoons by telling the ladies 
 mostly oldish ladies of an unfashionable cult 
 of the temptations that beset public men in Wash 
 ington. Such a seamy side did she turn to the 
 ladies; such dreadful court secrets did she dis 
 close; such an insight did she give her salon into 
 the wicked life of the capital that Elsie Barnes, 
 the society editor of the Globe, once said: 
 
 " Charley " speaking on the office square and 
 under the Masonic pledge of secrecy which that 
 solemn obligation put on the youth before her 
 " Charley, if I could just get the right to publish 
 what she reels off there at her Thursday after 
 noons, under some such a title as The Secret 
 Memoirs of a Lady Dragoness in the Court of 
 Theodore I, I could make our fortunes." 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 267 
 
 It was not Mrs. Ladgett s habit to paint a halo 
 of virtue round the thin hair on the Judge s pink 
 head; but she gave the strong impression that she 
 had snatched him from the burning pit and held 
 him spotless only by her own splendid qualities of 
 heart and mind. She was not, however, the 
 woman to say so ! 
 
 Thus, as the Ladgetts first year away from 
 Washington went by, the town said that the drag- 
 oness was getting used to her chains. But people 
 did not know how fiercely she snapped at those 
 chains. It was in January following their return 
 from Washington that Mrs. Ladgett breathed fire 
 into the Judge s soul and sent him out, with the 
 weapon of his trembling hopes, to release her from 
 her captivity and take her to the heights where she 
 was wont to dwell. 
 
 It was one thing to buckle on the Judge s ar 
 mour and send him valiantly into Constitution 
 Street; but, alas, it was quite another thing for 
 the Judge to storm and retake the Kilworth for 
 tress. As the Judge went into the marble and tiled 
 splendour of the outer offices he clicked his heels 
 as gayly as he could for one whose legs seemed 
 water beneath him and swung as jauntily as pos- 
 
268 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 sible past Boyce Kilworth s desk into the back 
 room, where all the dire deeds of the bank were 
 done. In a few moments Kilworth followed the 
 Judge and found him seated at the table where in 
 times before the two had often held high confer 
 ence. Kilworth remained standing. He held his 
 fountain pen impatiently in his hand and asked 
 quickly : 
 
 " Well, Judge ?" 
 
 " I have come," answered Judge Ladgett try 
 ing vainly to get back into the old imperious man 
 ner that came to him naturally as a member of 
 The Committee and as the author of the Ladgett 
 Bill " I have come," he repeated, to get a good 
 start, " to talk over our plans for my campaign 
 this spring." 
 
 " That s good that s good ! " cut in Kilworth, 
 still holding his pen, and jingling his keys and his 
 silver with his other hand in his trousers pocket. 
 " By the way, what are you running for now, 
 Judge?" 
 
 The Judge met the keen black eyes of the 
 banker, and the old eyes dropped. Kilworth felt 
 that the worst was over. The Judge s head and 
 eyes came up in a moment and he replied: * You 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 269 
 
 know very well what I m running for, sir ! What 
 should I be running for but Congress? " 
 
 " All right, Judge go ahead. It s a free 
 country. But I ve had to obligate myself to the 
 present incumbent. You know the story of the 
 appointment of the new United States marshal. 
 I had to have him. And, anyway, I m lined up 
 that way now, Judge." 
 
 Kilworth put the least shade of kindness or 
 maybe it was self-pity into the last sentence. 
 He stood towering over" the Judge and saw sud 
 denly come into the old frame a stiffening of pur 
 pose; and an instant later the Judge was on his 
 feet. 
 
 " And you," cried the Judge passionately, " you 
 tie up " he paused and repeated " you tie up 
 with him ! With him ? With anarchy, with so 
 cialism, with the enemies of the Constitution 
 just for a Federal marshal to herd round your serfs 
 down there at the tin plant and keep em down! 
 You betray your country for a piece of pie?" 
 His face was red and his voice charged with wrath. 
 4 You you who would be doing your time still 
 in the penitentiary if it wasn t for me! You! 
 You!" 
 
270 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 He was glaring at the banker when Kilworth 
 sneered: "Get off your high horse! A man s 
 got to be practical, hasn t he? Anyway, I m 
 busy." 
 
 Kilworth turned to go. The Judge s passion 
 was waning and he cried: 
 
 " Look here, Boyce; can t you listen to reason? 
 Does a stable government mean nothing to you? " 
 He stood pleading rather pitifully as the banker 
 stopped but did not turn. 
 
 Kilworth answered harshly: 
 
 u No use talking, Judge; I m all tied up. I m 
 sorry; but I can t help you." 
 
 He was gone a moment later. The Judge 
 picked up his hat and his gloves newly cleaned, 
 as a part of his burnished armour, by his wife. He 
 stood for a moment looking out of the window, and 
 then walked through Kilworth s room into the cor 
 ridor of the bank, without speaking, and with what 
 pride he could rouse from a broken heart. 
 
 He countermarched about the outside of the 
 frowning fortress he could not storm and made a 
 sad detour before going to the castle, where the 
 pining prisoner lay in the dungeon of the Astor 
 House. He talked a long footless hour with 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 271 
 
 Hiram, went over every county in the district, post 
 master by postmaster, precinct by precinct, town by 
 town; but, as for conclusions, Hiram, after the 
 manner of his cult and caste, had few to offer. 
 He looked wise, made certain familiar grimaces 
 to indicate that he was thinking deeply, and, in the 
 end, would venture nothing more definite than that 
 the Situation seemed very grave acute, in fact ! 
 At the end of the hour the defeated knight in ar 
 mour shuffled wearily and rather stiffly, in the 
 clotted garments of his downfall, up the stairs to 
 break the news to the captive in her shackles. 
 And she the dragoness alas ! when she took 
 the burnished armour off her knight, being wise and 
 exceedingly kind in her innermost heart, knew full 
 well that the armour never could go on again. 
 
 PART II 
 
 The Judge tried vainly for a month or two to 
 rouse some enthusiasm for his candidacy in the dis 
 trict. Hiram Larson went through a rather pon 
 derous ritual of giving out interviews to the ef 
 fect that the Judge might run again if his friends 
 insisted. One or two, perhaps altogether half a 
 dozen, patriots in post offices wrote letters to the 
 
272 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 papers demanding that the Judge should run and 
 restore the government of the fathers; but the 
 movement got no farther. 
 
 And in the spring the Judge swung a new tin 
 lawyer s sign to the breeze. He moved a rickety 
 old walnut desk into an insurance man s shabby 
 office, upstairs in a by-street, and took up the prac 
 tice of law; but he had not been on his feet in a 
 courtroom for thirty years. The law had grown 
 away from him and his youthful practice was scat 
 tered. He had no law books, and the whole busi 
 ness of law had changed so since he had practised 
 in the courts that he was sadly adrift in it. Rarely 
 did a client climb his stairs except the old sol 
 diers who puffed up, with their tangled pension 
 cases, which he was supposed to untangle free of 
 charge. 
 
 A rather dreary and distinctly dingy life lived 
 this little tin god, forever beleaguered in New 
 Raynham. For a time he wrote letters to his 
 grand friends in Washington and kept in touch 
 with the life of which he had been a part; but their 
 letters to him grew shorter, and sometimes he got 
 form letters, which he knew were signed and 
 alas ! composed by their clerks. So it came to 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 273 
 
 him that the lost Alsace for which he was eating 
 his heart out was a vast sham. They were all 
 frauds down there, he told Hiram. The coming 
 of the Gauls had sapped their courage and they 
 were truckling to the mob. 
 
 " Are they blind? " he would demand fiercely of 
 Hiram on hot afternoons, when he saw no reason 
 for inhabiting his dusty office and having to live 
 with a man to whom he owed a year s office rent 
 " are they blind to the follies that wrought the 
 downfall of Greece and Rome? Can t they see 
 that these new fads are old perils? What are all 
 these frills of popular government but the rise of 
 the Grecian demagogues? And these low abase 
 ments to labour what are they but the soup 
 kitchens of Rome and the idiocy of the agrarian 
 movements ? Why can t men read history? And 
 why do we forget the principles of the fathers and 
 besot ourselves with demagogy ! " 
 
 And Hiram, in his wisdom, would pull a wry 
 face and shake a doubtful, silent head over the 
 grave Situation. 
 
 A time came when the white vest had lost its 
 pristine splendour. It was often spotted and 
 poorly cleaned with gasoline; then washed in the 
 
274 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 tin bathtub and badly ironed. Money was so 
 scarce with the Ladgetts that a dollar became a 
 family institution before it was spent. It was 
 known as " that dollar," and then as " that 
 quarter " and finally, " that nickel." 
 
 The Retailers Association another of those 
 modern devices that were bleeding the noblest 
 blood of New Raynham white by making the no 
 bility pay cash had entered the Ladgetts in 
 their fraud book. They were marked FFz; and 
 when the Judge desired to smoke he had to saunter 
 behind the counter in the office of the Astor House 
 sometimes when Hiram was there and the 
 Situation was grave, and sometimes when he was 
 not there and the Situation was less acute and 
 take a cigar. No Constitution Street store would 
 sell to the Judge without the cash. The business 
 of being a Roman lictor and staring the Gauls out 
 of countenance, or of dying that France might 
 live, was a sad and discouraging business. 
 
 Sometimes perhaps on circus days, or when 
 lodge conventions were meeting in the town, or 
 when a club or society was filling the Astor House 
 for a few brief hours the Judge, as a creature 
 of some higher order among mortals, would ap- 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 275 
 
 pear behind the counter in the office, obviously 
 stooping to the lower classes as Alfred ate the oat 
 loaf, and would assign guests to their rooms; 
 take their money with conspicuous playfulness ; or 
 in something like the manner of a dancing elephant 
 he would even take ice water to their rooms or 
 bow them into the dining room. 
 
 It had been over a year since Mrs. Ladgett had 
 begun to help Mrs. Larson in the kitchen at rush 
 times and to slip into the bedrooms on her floor, 
 making the beds, half surreptitiously, half apolo 
 getically like some grand griffin caught violat 
 ing a garbage can ! 
 
 When he went to the newspaper office in the aft 
 ernoons to get the news of the day the Judge was 
 still able to rise to his heights to the real Par 
 nassus, where he had shone with the glittering di 
 vinities. Our Press report is a pony report of only 
 three thousand words a dignified bulletin serv 
 ice ; but still a bulletin service. At first the Judge 
 used to sit by the pale youth who edited the briefed 
 copy that came from the telegraph instrument, and 
 trust with the wistful eyes of a hungry dog 
 to the young man s dropping a skin or a bone of 
 news from the scant feast we were enjoying. 
 
276 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 A line from Washington meant so much to the 
 Judge that he had to share it with the youth at the 
 desk. And when the Judge expanded the inner 
 meaning of the line, it was the habit of the youth 
 to write out what the Judge had said and share the 
 wider knowledge with the readers of the paper. 
 So it happened that the Judge became an office in 
 stitution. 
 
 One afternoon the story came across the young 
 man s desk of the overthrow of the regulars in the 
 National House of Representatives. They were 
 the cohorts of the Judge s own Roman legion, and 
 the Speaker was their proconsul. It was a meagre 
 story as it came, rather undramatic and colourless; 
 but when the Judge visualised it, and the pale 
 youth had written it, he pictured the determined, 
 white-visaged regulars huddled in a corner of the 
 House like fighting rats, with the cowardly ma 
 jority hectoring the intrepid minority, and with the 
 blood of the martyrs coursing through their hearts. 
 
 The Judge saw, and he made the youth at the 
 desk see in spite of himself, the fine fettle and gor 
 geous pluck of the little band that rallied about 
 the great proconsul, who was beaten down and 
 overwhelmed. 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 277 
 
 When the youth had finished writing the story, 
 however, he looked up and saw the Judge still 
 holding the original yellow sheet from the tele 
 graph instrument in his trembling hands. Tear 
 stains smudged the mottled, unshaved old face; 
 and as the Judge met the young eyes the husky old 
 voice spoke: 
 
 " Oh, my Leonidas my fallen Leonidas ! 
 How long shall we wait for some Thermopylae 
 to make thy death immortal? " 
 
 Whereupon he rose, snapped his spectacles into 
 their case, and toddled out of the office. He came 
 back the next morning bright and early to get a 
 look at the morning papers ; but his heart was never 
 the same after the overthrow of the Speaker. 
 He never smiled again on politics. He looked out 
 on the world round him as one from a fortified 
 citadel looks into a captive plain filled with the 
 dead, the mad and the invaders. 
 
 Little by little, as this creed or that theory had 
 been enacted into law, or had been made a part 
 of the common life of the people about him, his 
 cronies in Washington had accepted the new order 
 established and had taken to worshipping it as a 
 part of the fixed destiny of the race. But the 
 
278 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Judge never surrendered. At evening he saw the 
 sun setting in his country s blood, and at dawn he 
 watched for the invasion of the Parthians and Van 
 dals of a heathen democracy. 
 
 The time came when he could no longer pre 
 tend to have a law office. The insurance man, 
 who had borne with him for years without rent, 
 finally moved to a smaller office to get rid of the 
 Judge; so he took to spending more and more 
 time in the newspaper office. We gave him a chair 
 at a desk where the exchanges were tumbled ; and, 
 because he liked to have the papers as quickly as 
 the mails brought them, we gave him a leather 
 pouch and made it a part of his duty to go for the 
 mails. He used to shuffle moodily along the streets 
 in his frayed coat, shiny trousers and dirty white 
 vest, head down, brooding over the wrongs of the 
 republic. Coming back to his chair, he would sit 
 for hours browsing through the newspapers, tak 
 ing a kind of fiendish pleasure in torturing himself 
 with the radical papers, gloating terribly as he read 
 the socialist press, and mortifying his flesh with 
 an occasional anarchist weekly. 
 
 Patriotism with the Judge was a primal emo- 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 279 
 
 tion. And to him patriotism meant the order that 
 was the good old times; the Constitution of the 
 Fathers; the divine right of capital to rule. As 
 he hated kings, so he hated democracy; and the 
 rising intelligence of the middle classes, which de 
 manded recognition in the government, seemed to 
 the Judge the return of the jungle into a well-or 
 dered garden of life. 
 
 So, when his state gave the ballot to women, 
 Caesar s great heart broke. The Judge had tried 
 to make some speeches against it, but the rabble 
 hooted him, and the fund to pay his expenses was 
 meagre ; so, early in the campaign he came home to 
 view with what equanimity he could muster the 
 wreck of matter and the crash of worlds. For a 
 week after the election he kept off the streets. 
 Then one day he toddled to the newspaper office 
 and picked up not the goading journals that had 
 excited his wrath before the fall of man, but, in 
 stead, he reached for an old reliable, safe and 
 sane organ of the Bourbons, which had been his 
 strength in ages past. 
 
 The Judge felt that there was a firm rock to 
 which he could cling; but he forgot if he ever 
 
28o GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 knew that newspapers find their way into homes 
 largely on the woman s dictum, and that editors 
 even Bourbon editors are quick to observe on 
 which side their bread is buttered. So, in running 
 down the editorial column of the paper that he had 
 come to regard as the last palladium of his liber 
 ties, the Judge s eye found this : 
 
 " And what steam, electricity and capital did 
 for the material development of the nineteenth cen 
 tury, we may expect the conscience of an enlight 
 ened womanhood to do for the spiritual advance 
 ment that is before us as our problem in the es 
 tablishment of justice in the twentieth century." 
 
 Slowly he put the poison from his quivering lips. 
 He folded the sheet carefully and sat looking 
 dazed and helpless as he struggled impotently with 
 the shame and rage that crackled within him. The 
 busy young men in the room clicked away at their 
 typewriters; and the telegraph instrument chirped 
 its song a cricket on the hearth of the planet 
 Only the society editor in the next room, holding 
 her hands in puzzled anxiety, trying to recall 
 whether Mrs. Gregory Nixon had worn her black 
 velvet or her orange satin at her dinner the night 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 281 
 
 before only Elsie Barnes could see the emo 
 tional tumult that was shattering the old man s 
 heart. And even she did not appreciate how 
 deeply he was stirred. Suddenly he rose, as 
 though addressing some specter chairman, and 
 cried: 
 
 " Conscience, gentlemen! Justice, gentlemen! 
 Spiritual advancement, gentlemen! My God! 
 Oh, my God ! Are these things to be dragged in 
 the mire of politics? Lord! Lord! Has reason 
 fled to brutish beasts? " 
 
 The young men looked up, startled, from their 
 machines. But the old man, like Pontius Pilate 
 after asking his fateful question, did not wait for 
 the answer, but shuffled out of the room. 
 
 At the general election following the victory of 
 the women, New Raynham was stirred to its 
 depths; matters of vast moment were involved in 
 the election of a county commissioner, and inci 
 dentally a President, a congressman and a state 
 ticket. So lines in the town were taut. 
 
 A week before the registration books closed it 
 was found that the Judge had not registered. 
 Somebody spoke to Hiram Larson about the 
 Judge s oversight and Hiram passed the word on 
 
282 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 to the Judge, who nodded and said nothing. Four 
 days passed and still the Judge had not enrolled as 
 a voter. The women had enrolled Mrs. Ladgett 
 early in the campaign. Hiram again reminded the 
 Judge that his name was not on the books, and 
 again the Judge nodded. 
 
 On the seventh day Hiram and Toney Delaney 
 and Colonel Longford, as a board of strategy, 
 took charge of the Judge. It was late in the after 
 noon when the Colonel had laboriously and rather 
 deviously herded and manoeuvred the Judge to a 
 point where the two stood in front of the city hall 
 and the Colonel remarked casually: 
 
 " Better step in and register, Judge ! " And 
 he offered Judge Ladgett a cigar. 
 
 The backs of many women who were registering 
 at the last hour were seen through the open win 
 dow and the shrill rasp of female voices tore the 
 Judge s nerves. 
 
 " Look in there just look in there, Jack Long 
 ford 1 A pink tea party a bridge-whist joint 
 a miserable millinery opening! No, Jack no! 
 You may do it; you may sully your manhood by 
 voting with that she j bedlam that that " 
 
 He could not finish the sentence, but choked in 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 283 
 
 emotion, and took the Colonel s arm and tried to 
 move away. But the Colonel was obdurate. He 
 held the Judge and cried: 
 
 " But, Joel Joel, my boy your vote? Your 
 vote?" 
 
 The two old men stood looking vainly into each 
 other s eyes the Colonel pleading; the Judge in 
 wrath and shame that shook his head as in a palsy. 
 It was the Judge who found voice; but his voice 
 was cracked with rage as he shook his old head in 
 defiance. 
 
 " Vote 1 Vote ! " he repeated. " What s one 
 honest vote more or less in a madhouse? Jack, 
 I ve cast my last vote ! " 
 
 He turned sharply, broke away from the Colo 
 nel and stalked down the street alone, with what 
 dignity his years would grant him on his unsure 
 feet. A moment later Hiram and Toney Delaney 
 appeared from round a corner, where they had 
 been in waiting; and the Colonel, pointing to the 
 wrathy, shuffling little figure trudging down the 
 street, turned a sad face skyward and bellowed his 
 emotions in his fine old voice : 
 
 " For God s sake, let us sit upon the ground 
 And tell sad stories of the death of kings" 
 
284 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 Toney Delaney did not laugh for once in his 
 life; but Hiram, nodding his head like a mechan 
 ical toy, and then shaking it, scowled and admitted, 
 as one keeping back the meat of the truth and cast 
 ing out a bone : 
 
 " Colonel " Hiram paused " Colonel, the 
 Situation is certainly grave! " 
 
 The passing years were taking the Judge into 
 his early seventies, trimming the sagging paunch 
 that held his little round stomach, cutting away the 
 fat from his jowls, deepening the wrinkles in his 
 forehead. He came to have a lean, frowsy look, 
 more or less unshaved; waxy as to skin and red 
 as to eyelids. 
 
 The year that saw a tide of reaction registered 
 in the elections found the Judge scarcely able to 
 muster a decent-looking suit of clothes for the ban 
 quet that the Old Guard held in the grandest hotel 
 in New Raynham. Not that there was much to 
 celebrate in the way of results achieved in his state ; 
 for there popular clamour still held the man who 
 had the loaves and fishes to distribute, and there 
 was no hope for the Judge from those who lent an 
 ear to popular clamour. But in other states the 
 outlook was better. Some of his old congressional 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 285 
 
 colleagues were slipping back into governorships; 
 and one who had served with the Judge on The 
 Committee was the orator of the day at the Old 
 Guard s celebration. 
 
 So the Judge, in his frayed garments, from 
 which the nap had long since been brushed; in his 
 freshly washed white vest, all tucked in at the back 
 to fit his shrinking paunch; with his hair cut 
 a new hair-cut of great price, namely, a quarter 
 showing the two lean arteries at the back of his 
 neck, the Judge came home from the banquet a 
 giant refreshed. 
 
 The plan to name and elect one of the Judge s 
 old cronies as President, and restore forever the 
 order that was, put iron into the old soul of the 
 broken demi-god ; for a President could scatter the 
 powers of darkness and bring back the days of 
 duties, specific and ad valorem wherein con 
 gressmen and tinmakers walked together in maj 
 esty on the heights. It was a beautiful vision, and 
 it warmed the Judge s old heart to a recrudescence 
 of youth. He had agreed to raise his county s 
 share of the campaign fund that was to be used as 
 a sinew of war in the state to fight against the hated 
 Parthians of popular clamour. 
 
286 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 For a day or two after the Feast of Belshazzar 
 he sat pondering at his desk in the exchange room 
 of the newspaper office, writing down names, as 
 sessing tentative sums after the names, and build 
 ing vain castles of power and glory on the hopes 
 he had of making his assessments a reality. Then 
 for a day or two the place that knew the Judge 
 knew him only intermittently. The reporters 
 brought in the news that he was out collecting; 
 they also declared that he was not collecting much. 
 And even Boyce Kilworth seemed to be turning an 
 ear to popular clamour and gave the Judge a dol 
 lar where he had expected to get a hundred. 
 
 A week passed; we heard the Judge rattling two 
 dollars against a third as he sat at his desk in the 
 office, and one morning he toddled in unsteadily, a 
 trifle late. It was the morning when the state con 
 vention of the Woman s Federation was gathering 
 in the town. He seemed feeble and preoccupied. 
 He went over and over his assessment list and was 
 forever looking up to see who entered the office. 
 
 An hour before the noon mails were due he 
 walked cautiously to the business office, put down 
 three silver dollars and a ten-dollar bill, and asked 
 the man at the counter to get him a draft for thir- 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 287 
 
 teen dollars, payable to the treasurer of the Con 
 stitutional Club, at the Capital. In due course 
 he wrote his letter, inclosed his draft and went to 
 the post office to wait for the mail. 
 
 While he was gone Hiram Larson came into the 
 office looking for the Judge. Hiram explained 
 rather foolishly that a ten-dollar bill had dropped 
 out of his counter drawer on the floor of the of 
 fice that morning and he was wondering whether 
 the Judge had seen it. Hiram wrote out a " lost " 
 advertisement and left it, saying: 
 
 " Tell the Judge, if he hasn t seen it, to have 
 this put in the paper. You know there s a chance 
 that the bill may have been swept out under some 
 of the petticoats onto the sidewalk, and somebody 
 might have picked it up ; for I know it was there at 
 half past nine I counted the cash myself then. 
 And, of course, the Judge may have picked it up 
 and put it somewhere there s that." 
 
 After Hiram had gone, the Judge came sifting 
 in. His leather pouch was stuffed with papers 
 and in his fingers he held a letter. Before he 
 could open the letter, the editor handed the old 
 man the advertisement. He flushed when he read 
 it and shook his head, and the advertisement took 
 
288 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 its course. Then he opened his letter. It was 
 from his friend and former colleague on The Com 
 mittee, who, as orator of the day, had met the 
 Judge at the rally of the Old Guards. 
 
 The letter was written on the embossed station 
 ery of the state > a rich state, lying to the east 
 ward. It began affectionately: "Dear old 
 Joe ! " and indicated between the lines that the 
 heart of the man who had spoken at the Old 
 Guards rally had been touched by the faded, 
 broken figure who had edged about the crowd at 
 the banquet. The letter closed with these words : 
 
 " And now, my dear Joe, here is something I can 
 do for you : I have a contingent fund voted by 
 the legislature to defend the various measures of 
 popular government recently passed by our people 
 at the polls from certain attacks in the courts. I 
 find I can appropriate five hundred dollars of this 
 sum to you for associating with the attorneys of 
 this state. See inclosed sheet for specific suits. I 
 realise that you don t altogether agree with the 
 spirit of these new measures; but a lawyer must 
 take whatever business comes to his office." And 
 then, after a few personal words, the letter closed. 
 
 Judge Joel Ladgett sat before the unopened ex- 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 289 
 
 changes for a long time. His hands were clasped 
 and his thin little body swayed as in a breeze. 
 He rose and looked out of the window, and read 
 and reread the letter. Then he moved unsteadily 
 over to the desk of the editor and put the letter 
 before him without a word. When he had read 
 the letter the editor reached out and grasped the 
 Judge s hand, crying : 
 
 " Fine, Judge! Fine!" 
 
 But when the editor looked up into the waxy old 
 face he found it cast into a determined mould, 
 which was half stare and half a self-deprecatory 
 smile. The Judge stood in silent embarrassment 
 a moment, then spoke in a cracked, overstrained 
 voice : 
 
 "No no no ! I tell you, Archimedes 
 don t you see I can t do it? " 
 
 The inner storm in his heart was playing in heat 
 lightning twitches across the wrinkled face ; but the 
 high, overstrained voice answered its own ques 
 tion, while the self-deprecatory smile held its place 
 through the storm: 
 
 " Why, man, can t you see? I can t surrender 
 not now not now, Archimedes." He was 
 weaving slightly; and he grasped the desk with his 
 
290 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 bony, veinous hands as he went on in the same 
 tense, unnatural voice: " I ll not pull down my 
 flag now, after after " 
 
 He gathered strength from outside himself and 
 found his natural voice, to say very slowly and 
 cautiously, as one picking his way through flashes 
 of light: 
 
 " I have begged for this cause, man ! I have 
 had to lie for this cause. I may yet I may I 
 well, I could steal for it if I had to; but, with 
 the help of all the high gods, I ll not sell it out 
 I ll not sell it out for money ! " 
 
 His voice broke in a little senile scream. The 
 heat lightning on his face was a sheet of emotion 
 and his trembling hands shook the desk. In a 
 moment the storm subsided, for age does not long 
 sustain its passions. An instant later he cried in 
 triumph, as though to some invisible gallery : 
 
 " No no ! l My head is bloody, but un 
 bowed! " 
 
 He was proud of his quotation, and his pride 
 held back for a moment the reaction of grief in his 
 soul. He may have felt it coming, for he turned 
 quickly, sighed a spent sigh that was half a sob, 
 
THE GODS ARRIVE 291 
 
 and fumbled his way out of the room, along the 
 hall and into the street. 
 
 There, through a window, the man at the desk 
 saw the Judge rubbing, with his bony fingers, the 
 moisture from his burned-out eyes; but he was 
 marching proudly through some exalted heaven to 
 recite the story of his great refusal to the griffin, 
 in her chains, and to the adoring mortal who 
 watered his shrine. 
 
 " And I have seen," mused Archimedes, as he 
 drummed on the desk with the little pine lever that 
 moved his world, " the half gods go and the gods 
 arrive ! " 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 
 
 THEY had just returned from their work in the 
 Manual and were considering large matters con 
 cerning their coming hike. They were Twelve, 
 Thirteen and Fourteen, and full of the joy that 
 washes into life with the first full tides of youth. 
 At the Manual they had been making things with 
 their hands in wood and iron and stone. Creation 
 seemed good to them. And they talked, making 
 their to-morrow a kind of exalted yesterday, which 
 is the way of youth. An old party of forty-five, 
 sitting near them reading a musty book that had 
 been off the list of best sellers for six long months, 
 closed the book over his finger to mark the place 
 while he listened to the chatter of the boys. 
 
 There was talk of a day s walk in the country; 
 of a raft to be made at the river under the scout 
 master s direction; of fishing tackle to be had at 
 the town s stores; where the best rods might be 
 bought; what minnows were worth. Some con 
 sideration was given to the various grades of khaki 
 
 292 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 293 
 
 for scouting suits. Also, not a little incidental 
 gossip was sprinkled through the talk of the bat 
 ting averages of the baseball kings, and of records 
 on the high-school tracks of those nearer and more 
 palpable heroes whose prowess was attainable even 
 to Twelve and Thirteen and Fourteen. 
 
 They were good scouts of the first and second 
 classes, and much of their chatter was of the camp 
 and the field. The old party, hearing of river- 
 bends where he had sounded the flat-bottomed 
 depths, and of fields that were woodlands in his 
 day, and of rifles he had dammed, let the hand 
 with the book drop to his knee as the talk woke in 
 his heart a faint pulse from some underconscious- 
 ness that had not been stirred for years. 
 
 The boys were lying on a lawn beneath the stone 
 veranda railing whereon his old feet rested. 
 From time to time the youngsters looked up as 
 automobiles went whizzing by and in monosylla 
 bles checked off the makers and perhaps the own 
 ers of the machines; but the checking did not stay 
 their talk of the glorious to-morrows, silvered and 
 gilded with yesterdays. Life, through the boys 
 eyes and in their visions, was a splendid picnic; 
 and, like every picnic, it was away from home. 
 
294 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 The garage in the rear of the lot whereon they 
 were lying, the coal bin in the cellar of the house 
 beside them, the great shade trees that overhung 
 the lawn, the formal rows of flowers and clumps 
 of shrubs about them, the wide parking, the as 
 phalted street before them, and the house behind 
 them, had small place in their tall talk. The ath 
 letic field, the ward play-ground, the gymnasium, 
 the public highway beyond the town limits, and the 
 river, which to them seemed designed as a part of 
 their rather formal business of playing, furnished 
 their minds, like set pieces in a clean and well- 
 appointed room. 
 
 "Canned!" sighed the old party. "Canned 
 boys ! " he repeated. 
 
 The boys looked up and, seeing the feet dis 
 appear from the railing, Thirteen rose quickly and 
 said as he appeared: 
 
 "Yes, sir. What was it, Father? Did you 
 speak?" 
 
 The old party shook his head, and the boys 
 stretched out again on the blue-grass. As he 
 opened his book and fumbled for his place, over 
 the page top he saw, coming round the house from 
 the rear, a thin, freckled, barefooted youth, with 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 295 
 
 long trousers rolled up halfway to his knees, show 
 ing the flowered calico lining. Suspenders striped 
 the shoulders of the boy s coarse-checked blue-and- 
 white cotton shirt. Twisted into his right suspen 
 der was a Y-shaped stick, wound with rubber, 
 whereon a diamond-shaped leather piece dangled 
 from two strings. 
 
 " If the marshal sees that he ll arrest you ! " 
 said the man; and as the strange boy grinned the 
 old party asked: "Where have you been so 
 long?" 
 
 The other boys did not seem to notice the 
 strange boy, who grumbled as he sat down beside 
 them: 
 
 " Doing my chores. Old Sooky s calf like to 
 never got her supper out of the bucket. And old 
 Sooky tried to hold up on me. I think they ought 
 to make somebody brush the flies off while I milk. 
 I bet old Sooky hit me in the eye a dozen times 
 with her tail. Say, they s a mangerful of kittens 
 in the south stall; but I bet the old Tom will eat 
 em up before mornin if the girls don t take em 
 
 in." 
 
 The other boys looked up when the old party 
 shifted his feet and groaned: 
 
296 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Oh ! These are not real boys they re 
 canned boys ! All the other industries have left 
 the home for the cannery why not boy-making? 
 Here, boys!" The old party lifted his voice 
 sharply. 
 
 1 Yes, sir! " cried Fourteen, rising agilely and 
 saluting. 
 
 4 Which one of you knows what wood makes 
 the best arrows ? Which one of you ever seasoned 
 a piece of hickory behind the stove over the wood 
 box all winter for your bow? Do you know what 
 bodark is? " 
 
 * Yes, sir," replied Thirteen. " It is a corrup 
 tion of the French words bois d arc, meaning wood 
 of the arch, and is probably an Indian translation 
 of the French habitant s word describing the 
 tough, springy wood of the Osage Orange, or com 
 mon hedge plant." 
 
 The strange boy grinned and the old party an 
 swered : 
 
 " Oh, grand! Now then, Bud, you tell them 
 about the bodark." 
 
 The boys sat down, and the old party took the 
 words from the strange boy s mouth and went 
 on: 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 297 
 
 " Bodark is a hard brown wood and makes the 
 best bow you ever saw better than hickory even. 
 Few boys that I knew ever had a bodark bow, 
 though all of them knew that the Indians prized 
 bodark highly. Bud " the old party turned to 
 the strange boy " do you remember that Beasley 
 boy whose mother was scalped by the Indians in 
 the raid of 69, when the Cheyennes came up from 
 the territory and cleaned out all the settlements 
 along the creek bottoms and carried that boy off 
 when he was a baby? 
 
 Well, he came back when he was ten years 
 old, a thorough-going Injun silent, stubborn, 
 mean, revengeful; but, lordy-lordy, what a shot 
 with a bow and arrow ! And what a lot of things 
 about horses and dogs he knew, and how he could 
 get round in the woods! You boys think you 
 worship Ty Cobb or Johnnie Kling; but we boys 
 bowed down before Jack Beasley as to a graven 
 image.* 
 
 Twelve, Thirteen and Fourteen were chinning 
 by the stone railing and eagerly looking at the old 
 party, who smiled at the strange boy. 
 
 " Bud," cried the man, " do you remember how 
 we gave Jack our marbles? " 
 
298 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " And he put em in his slingshot and threw them 
 at the birds," answered the strange boy. 
 
 " And we were proud of his scorn of the mar 
 bles ! " laughed the old party. 
 
 " He threw my black agate my best black 
 agate, that cost me twenty glassies and a dozen 
 potteries and a whole cigar box of commies he 
 put my black agate in his slingshot, whirled it 
 round his head and killed a pigeon with it on a 
 roof." 
 
 " And he taught us the Injun pinch," laughed 
 the man as he closed his book. " Say, Bud, give 
 the boys an Injun pinch ! And he sold us by mak 
 ing us eat Injun turnip and about burned our 
 mouths out." 
 
 " I can taste it yet; but I was mighty proud to 
 be sold by Jack Beasley," said the strange boy, and 
 added : " What a mean little devil he must have 
 been!" 
 
 " And filthy too ! Why, Bud, do you remember 
 the day at the old limekiln swimming hole when 
 Jack cooked a chicken without cleanin it, and ate 
 it tops and all? " 
 
 The strange boy grinned. :{ But how he could 
 run ! Used worm oil on his legs to make em lim- 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 299 
 
 her; put a lot of fishworms in a bottle and fried 
 em in the sun; and " 
 
 " Snake oil that was," interrupted the old party. 
 " Say, boys " the man addressed himself to the 
 youths whose faces beamed cherubically over the 
 rail " suppose you could have Ty Cobb and 
 Teddy Roosevelt, and the greatest scoutmaster in 
 the world, and the greatest football player, all 
 rolled into one right here in the yard who would 
 wait in the barn while you " 
 
 " What barn? " cut in precise Thirteen. 
 
 Well, the garage, then " the man corrected 
 himself and hurried on " while you went into the 
 house and stole fried cakes for him, and " 
 
 " Stole what? " cut in Twelve. 
 
 lS Why, fried cakes doughnuts. Don t you 
 boys eat doughnuts? " 
 
 "No man in training would, I m sure," ex 
 plained Fourteen. 
 
 " Oh," humbly returned the old man, drawing a 
 deep breath. " I forgot you boys are highly sani 
 tary absolutely pure ! You probably never ate 
 sheep sorrel, nor " 
 
 "Nor sucked a grapevine in spring nor ate 
 redbuds?" 
 
300 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 " Bud," smiled the old party, looking into the 
 blue eyes of the strange boy with that fond remi 
 niscence which is the keenest joy of maturity, " do 
 you remember how we used to go trailing through 
 the woods, browsing off the young fresh twigs like 
 gods in the elder days? " 
 
 " Perhaps we were gods," replied the strange 
 boy. 
 
 The old party gazed mutely for a moment 
 across the green carpet of the lawn and saw a 
 strange thing: A thick, deep wood, stretching up 
 over a wide bottom land; a shimmering stream, 
 flashing in merry ripples over brown stones; a 
 water bird flickering round a distant bend, disap 
 pearing as into some mystic sanctuary; overhang 
 ing elm trees far up-stream, shading green water; 
 a curling path, leading down to the brink, a path 
 worn smooth by a thousand boyish feet. And he 
 heard above the heron s cry and the jay s fret 
 ting, blended indistinctly with the mourning dove s 
 complaint the far, shrill call of boys voices, 
 chattering like the herons and the jays voices 
 that came through the underbrush nearer and 
 nearer, until soon the woods resounded with their 
 calls. In a moment he saw them flash, naked and 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 301 
 
 beautiful, into the still, green water, and, running 
 up the slanting elm s great branches, drop scream 
 ing with joy from the elm top into the pool. 
 
 * Yes," he answered softly; " perhaps we we-re 
 perhaps we were ! " 
 
 "Perhaps we were what?" insisted Fourteen. 
 :< What are you talking about, Father? " 
 
 " Can you make a whistle from a hickory sap 
 ling? " replied the old party, ignoring the question. 
 " Can you make a horn from the stem of a pump 
 kin leaf? Did you ever belong to a band that 
 went trailing out, single file and naked, through 
 a cornfield, and down through the horse-weeds of 
 the tall timber, to a swimming hole, playing on 
 horns made from pumpkin vines, with the little 
 boys blowing on peach leaves held between their 
 upright thumbs? No; you never did such a 
 thing!" He shook his head sadly. "Well, 
 Bud and I have done just that! " 
 
 14 Did you have feet like goats, Father? " sug 
 gested Twelve timidly. 
 
 1 Yes ; hard, callous, cut, bruised, sore, brown, 
 ugly and adventuring were our feet," answered the 
 old party. "And those were the pipes of Pan 
 those pumpkin-vine horns, those hickory whis- 
 
302 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 ties, and those peach-leaf clarinets. And once 
 we got a conch shell from the whatnot and sang 
 into it, and made wonderful music. Bud! Bud, 
 do you remember that? " 
 
 The strange boy s face beamed with delight, 
 and Thirteen cut in : 
 
 "How very interesting!" and then asked: 
 " What is a whatnot, Father? " 
 
 The man looked his mild scorn at the question, 
 but only the strange boy saw it, and he chuckled: 
 
 " They don t understand! They were never as 
 we were. They are of the higher order." 
 
 " I think," mused the man, u when the barn 
 went the half gods went and these gods appeared. 
 The barn was the temple of earlier gods they 
 who were neither brutes nor gods, but half of 
 each. The barn was our real abiding place. 
 Why, Bud, when the old barn went and the garage 
 came, I saw each timber go as one bids good-bye 
 to an old friend. 
 
 u The very rafters were sacred! There our 
 trapeze swung; there the rings dangled on 
 which we turned buzz-wheels; there was our 
 springboard before the haypile in the manger; 
 there we gave our shows ; there we played our first 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 303 
 
 casino and seven-up ; and there we learned in whis 
 pers the great mysteries of life. The barn was 
 the boy s Eden. He entered it in the sweet inno 
 cence of childhood and played ghosts there, and 
 talked with voices there, and held communion with 
 the gods; and when he left it when the barn 
 no longer held him its creaking doors banged 
 on him, and he walked past the flaming sword 
 into life, filled with the knowledge of good and 
 evil ! What will boys do when there are no more 
 barns ?" 
 
 "Come on!" said Fourteen, taking his chin 
 from the stone railing. " Father is tired." 
 
 The three sprawled on the close-cropped sward 
 on back or belly as it pleased each; and the talk 
 droned from carbureters and a cynical criticism of 
 the talking movies to the proper weight in tennis 
 rackets, then into the local boy problems in wire 
 less, and on into the mysteries of the new pul- 
 motor over at the engine house of the fire depart 
 ment. But on the veranda the old party and the 
 strange boy were holding forth on the splendours 
 and glories of the Golden Age. 
 
 " And yet," returned the strange boy, " what 
 they have all this large leisure to consider the 
 
304 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 universe, all these store things, all this machine- 
 made pleasure and formal joy was what I hoped 
 for, what I longed for most eagerly. They are as 
 I would have had the angels in my heaven. They 
 are the visions I saw of good boys made perfect." 
 
 " And you," repeated the old party gently, 
 " you, Bud you are the dreams I dream! " 
 
 " I wonder," smiled the strange boy through 
 his great brown freckles, u if your next heaven will 
 be so well, so different in a way from what you 
 thought it would be as my heaven is here ! " 
 
 " I wonder too, Bud! " The old party drew a 
 deep breath before going on. " I wonder if our 
 heaven isn t mostly behind us ! " 
 
 " I know," said the strange boy, " I should not 
 be so wise for my age; but living with you has 
 kind of wised me beyond my years. So I ll ven 
 ture to guess that most of our heavens are behind 
 us when we pass forty-five." 
 
 You re a nuisance, boy!" laughed the old 
 party. " Some day I m going to discharge you 
 fire you throw you out get rid of you ! I 
 wouldn t keep you round but for one thing, 
 and" 
 
 "And that is " 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 305 
 
 " And that is because if it wasn t for you I d 
 die ! You are the cupbearer who brings me the oil 
 of gladness. You bring the quick clank of steel on 
 dark-green ice; the whizzing landscape that reels 
 past the bob-sled. You carry with you the taste 
 of hackberries in winter woods, and in your whistle 
 is the call of redbirds, glistening like divine fire 
 among the sombre woods of February. You take 
 me trudging to my traps in the winter dawn, and 
 teach me again the intimate secrets of the field and 
 water and timber lot, and the tangle of the un 
 broken forest. Because you come, I remember the 
 joy of splitting black walnut and hackberry, and 
 how the crooked stick fills up the wood-box. 
 
 " Ah, but you re a rascal, Bud ! You re a ras 
 cal ; a wool-dyed villain ! How slow you work 
 before Sunday School ! How long you lie behind 
 the blackberry bushes in the back garden in the 
 shade when your hoeing takes you past this shel 
 ter I What a thief you are stealing old man 
 Boswell s tobacco from the field; swiping old man 
 Howe s chickens, and rolling off old man Swing s 
 watermelons from in front of his store! While 
 old man Young, wearing his marshal s star of 
 great pride, chases you through the alleys to your 
 
306 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 pirates cave ! Old man Garrison knew you when 
 you raided his apple wagon in the autumn with 
 your apple stealer. All the old men knew you for 
 a scoundrel old men who were in their forties 
 then! Old men? Old men who only died two 
 decades ago ! Old men? Ah, Bud, only one old 
 man in all the world ever knew you and loved you 
 just one old man! " 
 
 The strange boy turned away and pretended to 
 be interested in what the youths were saying on the 
 grass below. 
 
 " Bud, I ve been pretty good to you haven t 
 I since you came back, twenty-five years ago? " 
 
 "Was it that long ago? Why, I thought it 
 was only " 
 
 Twenty-five years, Bud! I didn t miss you 
 so much for half a dozen years ; and then when you 
 did come back I rather " 
 
 Yes ; you ve spoiled me probably, so far as that 
 goes," the strange boy broke in; " made a pet of 
 me and a fool, more or less." 
 
 " But, Bud, answer me this," said the old party 
 quickly : " What became of you in those years 
 those beautiful years of youth? Where did you 
 go and why did you go ? " 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 307 
 
 The strange boy stood still and looked at the 
 ground. 
 
 "Aw why, that s all right!" he answered 
 evasively. "I m here, ain t I? Say, do you re 
 member the time we tied Nate Brown to a tree all 
 night down in Balch s hog lot, and " 
 
 "Stop it, Bud! Answer me: Why did you 
 go?" 
 
 "Do you want to know, honest honest?" 
 asked the strange boy, drumming his fingers on 
 the cool stone. 
 
 " Honest to God, Bud!" 
 
 " Won t you ever tell her? " 
 
 ;{ Who? " He followed the strange boy s eyes 
 toward the house ; and the old party went on with 
 his oath : " Honest to God, Bud ! Hope to die ! 
 Hope to be any name you can call me cross my 
 heart, and hope to drop dead ! " 
 
 " Well Aw, I m not goin to do it ! " 
 
 " Ah, yes ! Come on ! Why did you leave me 
 so suddenly and only come back in my dreams? 
 Come on, Bud! Tell a feller something, Bud! " 
 
 The boy looked at the open door of the house. 
 He stepped close to the old party. 
 
 "Aw well, it s nothin much only she 
 
3 o8 GOD S PUPPETS 
 
 her in there that used to live across the alley 
 Well, you know just as well as I Aw, I ain t 
 a-goin to tell ! " 
 
 The old party looked gently into the strange 
 boy s red, shame-coloured face. Tears streaked 
 through the freckles, but he tried to smile. 
 
 " Go on, Bud; I ll understand." 
 
 " Well, you remember that night she was stand 
 ing by the fence, that June evening when we came 
 home from Pilliken s party? Well, doggone it, 
 she killed me killed me as dead as a nit, I tell 
 you ! She did she who is in the house she 
 who has been in the house all these years she 
 killed me, I tell you ! " The strange boy wagged 
 a vengeful head toward the door. 
 
 " How? Why, how, Bud? " exclaimed the old 
 party under his breath, also, furtively keeping his 
 eyes on the door. 
 
 " With that that Oh, you know with 
 that first awful kiss ! " 
 
 " Oh I see ! " replied the man. " And so 
 she " 
 
 Yes," interrupted the strange boy; u she 
 turned me into a dream and you into a man and 
 we parted." 
 
THE STRANGE BOY 309 
 
 As the book fell to the floor the old party cried : 
 
 "Son! Son, how about that music? Isn t it 
 time for your practicing? " 
 
 " Just a minute, daddy! " called back Fourteen. 
 * I m inventing a new kind of airship, with an 
 armour-plate bottom, for war! " And the young 
 men saw visions. 
 
 The old party smiled sadly and sighed as he 
 saw the strange boy dragging himself slowly round 
 the corner to finish his evening chores, limping 
 heavily as he went, and whispered : 
 
 " And the old men dream dreams ! " 
 
 THE END 
 
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