VAN CLEVE 
 
 MARY S. WATTS 
 
VAN CLEVE 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, Lra 
 
 TORONTO 
 
VAN CL E VE 
 
 BY 
 MARY S. WATTS 
 
 AUTHOR OF "THE LEGACY," "NATHAN BURKE," ETC. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 1913 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1912, 1913, 
 BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY. 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913, 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 
 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published September, 1913. 
 
 Nortoooti JJ00 
 
 J. S. Gushing Co. Berwick & Smith Co. 
 Norwood, Mass., U.S.A. 
 
CONTENTS 
 PAET I 
 
 CHAPTEE PAOI 
 
 I. IN WHICH WE PERFORM SEVERAL INTRODUCTIONS . 1 
 
 II. CONTAINS SOME SLIGHT MEMOIR OF A RESPECTABLE 
 
 FAMILY , . . ... .15 
 
 III. SOME FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS . . . . .35 
 
 IV. CONCERNING THE GILBERTS AND SOME OTHERS . . 49 
 V. THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 70 
 
 VI. MOSTLY IDLE TALK 85 
 
 VII. TREATS OF SUNDRY AFFAIRS OF THE HEART . . 102 
 
 VIII. THE INDUSTRIOUS APPRENTICE 118 
 
 IX. IN WHICH WE GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME . . . 133 
 
 X. REMEMBER THE MAINE! 145 
 
 XL MRS. AND Miss JAMESON AT HOME . . 157 
 
 XII. IN WHICH WE PACK OUR VALISES . . 174 
 
 PAET II 
 
 I. IN WHICH WE CONCENTRATE AT TAMPA . . . 191 
 
 H. IN WHICH A CERTAIN KIND OF NEWS TRAVELS FAST 202 
 
 HI. KEY WEST 215 
 
 IV. ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ! 234 
 
 V. BUT TWAS A GLORIOUS VICTORY! .... 250 
 
 VI. IN WHICH WE WITNESS A SURRENDER .... 263 
 
 V 
 
 39382 
 
vi CONTENTS 
 
 PART III 
 
 OHAPTBK PAGE 
 
 I. IN WHICH WE RETURN TO OUR MUTTON . 283 
 
 II. IN WHICH MR. KENDRICK PUTS HIS FOOT DOWN . 294 
 
 III. OWING TO ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY, Miss GILBERT 
 
 REGRETS, ETC 306 
 
 IV. IN WHICH THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER ISSUES 
 
 A WARRANT 319 
 
 V. BUSINESS WOMEN 335 
 
 VI. ANOTHER BUSINESS WOMAN 346 
 
 VII. IN WHICH WE CALL AT THE GILBERTS 1 . 360 
 
 VIII. THE END OF THE TETHER 378 
 
 IX. WHICH is IN THE NATURE OF A FOOTNOTE , . 390 
 
VAN CLEVE 
 
YAN CLEYE: 
 
 HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 
 
 PART I 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH WE PERFORM SEVERAL INTRODUCTIONS 
 
 THERE comes a time in everybody s life when all 
 the most important events of it seem, somehow, to 
 have occurred about ten years ago. Tom went into 
 business, Dick got married, Harry died poor fellow ! 
 Such-a-one was born and Such-another started off 
 to Europe, Timbuctoo, the North Pole. These land 
 marks some of them look a deal too much like 
 gravestones in our little individual cemetery of fail 
 ures and regrets considered in perspective, crowd 
 together at the far end according to the familiar illu 
 sion of perspectives ; and I suppose it is Youth that 
 we may painfully discern vanishing down that indis 
 tinguishable vista, with Middle Age grimly or furtively 
 peering out of your eyes and mine here in the fore 
 ground. The present writer, for an instance, being 
 about to record the circumstances of a first meeting 
 with certain of the personages that figure herein, was 
 upon the point of announcing that it took place ten 
 years ago, or such a matter, when, in a shock of recol 
 lection, she became aware that it must be much nearer 
 twenty alack and alas ! Some of us are getting 
 gray and frankly think ourselves luckier than some 
 others of us who are getting bald; and we might be 
 B 1 
 
2 VAN OLE v~E : 
 
 inquiring pathetically for the locality where blooms 
 the rose of yesterday, if we were not enough of philoso 
 phers to realize that even for us there is a fine and 
 perfectly satisfying crop of roses coming on to-day, also. 
 So then, on reflection, it cannot be far short of 
 twenty years since that, going one day into the cafe* of 
 the Saint Simon Hotel and sitting down to luncheon 
 with my friend Mr. J. B. Taylor, we encountered the 
 following described assortment of heroes ; although, to 
 be sure, at the time all parties were in a comfortable 
 state of ignorance of their heroic quality and associa 
 tions, and indeed one or two have probably remained 
 so to this day. J. B. and I dwelt no longer in the city 
 of our youth ; there had been many and dire changes 
 besides our departure from it ; we were become respon 
 sible persons, heads of families, and liked, on his brief 
 visits, to talk over the ancient times of five years 
 back before we were married or had taken up the 
 serious duties of life. During a pause, as we were thus 
 engaged singing the Lord s songs in a strange land, 
 there walked in and took seats at a table near by a 
 company of gentlemen whom perhaps I may have 
 examined a little too openly, being rather surprised to 
 see such a force of trousers in what was generally held 
 to be the plume and petticoat district. Unless I was 
 much mistaken, two of them at least felt themselves 
 more out of place even than they looked a couple 
 of nice, fresh, green, gawky boys about eighteen or 
 twenty, and growing out of their clothes in every 
 direction, clothes which, by the way, were of a very 
 modest, inexpensive style and by no means new ; and 
 one of the lads wore a high collar which was too tight 
 for him, with a sadly frayed edge that had sawed his 
 honest young cockerel s neck into a pitiable state of 
 rawness. What were these two, with their awkward 
 knees and feet and elbows, and their coats crawling 
 up across their backs, and their big schoolboy hands 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 3 
 
 which I am sure they had only lately learned to wash, 
 and their perverse voices liable to break into hideously 
 embarrassing snorts and cackles at any moment - 
 what were they doing among us? It was plain they 
 would have been having a great deal more fun out 
 playing baseball this pleasant, hot afternoon ; for they 
 were not at all interested by the glittering atmosphere, 
 the gilt and plate glass of the Saint Simon lunch room ; 
 on the contrary, they looked diffidently bored. What 
 were they doing here? 
 
 At the orders of one of the older men with them (who 
 themselves were being served with whiskey and seltzer) , 
 a waiter came and solemnly set down before each 
 young fellow a handsome tall glass of apollinaris 
 lemonade and a plate of macaroons whereat they 
 exchanged a grin, and one of them, happening to catch 
 my eye, turned very red and exploded alarmingly over 
 his drink, and had to be clapped on the back and 
 otherwise shaken into self-control by his companion. 
 I could hear them gurgling hysterically together and 
 being reprimanded in an undertone by their elders 
 after I had hastily and, I daresay, rather confusedly re 
 treated from my inspection. 
 
 I had better never have looked at all, of course ; for 
 later, glancing quite casually in that direction, I found 
 myself being stared at with a disconcerting steadiness, 
 ogled clean out of countenance, in fact, by the tall, 
 slim, fair young man who had ordered the boys drinks 
 (as I noticed) and who seemed to be entertaining the 
 entire party. I do not know whether the others were 
 conscious of it, but J. B., his eyes travelling about the 
 room, at last perceived this unwelcome piece of atten 
 tion. " What s the matter? Is that fellow annoying 
 you?" says J. B., alertly, making a slight, ominous 
 movement in his chair. 
 
 My friend is a native of our fine old neighboring 
 Commonwealth of Kentucky, and of a truly Kentuckian 
 
4 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 stature and development. One would think that the 
 man who should offer to annoy any woman in Mr. 
 Taylor s company might with propriety be ignored as 
 presenting a promising subject for the commissioners 
 in lunacy a view which, however, never occurs to 
 J. B. "That fellow getting fresh?" he inquired, turn 
 ing himself about briskly and formidably on the spin 
 dling little decorated Chippendale chair that creaked in 
 anguish under his weight. "Don t worry. I won t 
 have any row with him here, of course !" says J. B., 
 reassuringly, in an aside to me, the while he discharged 
 a glance as pacific as a volley from a six-shooter at the 
 offender, who, for his part, remained quite cool and 
 brazen and eyed us both all over again placidly ! 
 
 And now I am obliged regretfully to state that as 
 this is no romance, but a plain history of plain events, 
 after the above magnificently sensational, swash 
 buckling beginning, this incident ended, faded out, 
 trickled off, as one might say, in the feeblest and tamest 
 fashion imaginable. For, before any more looks or 
 words could be exchanged, the fourth man at the other 
 table jumped up and, advancing with his hand out in 
 a cordial style, said affably: "Mr. Breckinridge- 
 Taylor, if I m not mistaken ? How d ye do, sir ? I ve 
 been trying for a solid quarter of an hour to get you to 
 look at me tried mental telegraphy, thought trans- 
 ferrence, hypnotic suggestion no use ! You wouldn t 
 turnaround. How d ye do, sir ?" 
 
 Mr. Breckinridge-Taylor an arrangement of his 
 name which, as all his friends know, this gentleman 
 not only never uses, but particularly dislikes got up, 
 pretty red in the face, and stammering out: "Oh- 
 why ah how d ye do ?" in a rather comical 
 surprise and discomfiture. It was not easy for him to 
 adjust either his look or temper to so sudden a change 
 of attitude ; for even the indignant chivalry of Ken 
 tucky could scarcely return this innocent, jolly, kind 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 5 
 
 greeting by proclaiming : "Sir, your friend yonder - 
 who is apparently paying for your luncheon -- has 
 been making himself stupidly offensive to this lady, 
 my guest ; and I therefore propose at my convenience 
 to punch his head for him!" Indeed, it would be 
 interesting to know exactly what line of conduct the 
 treatises on etiquette would recommend for such an 
 occasion; seldom have I beheld J. B. so flustered. 
 "Oh ah Major " he said again disjointedly, and 
 shook the other s hand like an automaton. "No I 
 - 1 didn t see you I didn t know you were here 
 
 And in another half -minute, to my amused astonish 
 ment, there was J. B. being introduced to the whole 
 pack of them, as if no meeting could have been more 
 timely and desirable hail-fellow-well-met, hands- 
 all-around ! "Mr. Philip Cortwright, a young friend 
 of mine. . . ." This was the blond and good-looking 
 lady-killer, who went through the presentation w T ith 
 entire ease, although J. B. contrived to make his own 
 nod emphatically cool, distant, and non-committal, 
 I thought ; but no amount of snubbing seemed likely 
 to take effect on this cavalier s metallic equanimity. 
 " . . . and my nephew, Van Cleve Kendrick, Mr. Taylor, 
 and this is a chum of his, Bob Gilbert. Boys, this is 
 Mr. Breckinridge-Taylor that you hear me talk about 
 so much you know all about Mr. Breckinridge- 
 Taylor, don t you, Van? Often heard me mention 
 him, hey?" 
 
 "Why, no, not that I remember," blundered 
 out the youth, honestly; and then crimsoned all 
 over his face and his liberal-sized ears at the terrific 
 breach of manners he saw too late he had committed ; 
 the other boy, the Gilbert one, jogged him in the ribs ; 
 it was an appalling moment for both of them ; but, 
 fortunately, went unnoticed by every one except myself, 
 I believe, in the sort of friendly hullaballoo their 
 sponsor was so busily creating. He was a slender, 
 
6 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 flourishing gentleman, considerably older than any of 
 the rest of us, with amiable blue eyes, and fine aquiline 
 features ; and gray hair and mustachios both worn 
 quite full, long, and flowing, in a taste one does not often 
 see nowadays ; and with, furthermore, a long, flapping 
 frock-coat held in by one button below the waist-line, 
 and a waistcoat cut down low to show a great expanse 
 of shirt-front and a black string-tie all of which, 
 taken with his military title, immediately and power 
 fully suggested blue-grass, mint-juleps, blooded horses, 
 Uncle Tom, and, in short, all the other hall-marks of 
 that fine old State from which, as I have just explained, 
 J. B. B. -Taylor himself hailed. So when the latter 
 presently came back to our table and sat down again, 
 having separated from his new friends on the best of 
 terms, although still with a somewhat cloudy, puzzled, 
 and dissatisfied expression, I said harmlessly, "You 
 know Colonel Carter of Cartersville, it seems ?" The 
 book was recently out and being read by everybody ; 
 and that was what I had privately christened the gray 
 mustache instantly upon seeing him, so pronounced 
 was his type. 
 
 "Hey? Oh, you mean him f" said J. B. ; "yes, I 
 know him he s a Major Van Cleve. But he s not 
 a Southern man. I don t know why it is," J. B. went 
 on touchily ; "every time anybody up here sees a man 
 with a Prince Albert coat and a slouch hat and his hair 
 a little long, they begin right away on the Suwanee 
 River and the Lost Cause and all the rest of it. They 
 think these stage Southerners are the real thing. 
 Why, you heard him call me Breckinridge-Taylor, 
 didn t you ? That ought to have given him away. 
 Can you imagine any man born South calling a fellow- 
 creature s name that way? Breckinridge-Taylor!" 
 ejaculated J. B. in implacable disgust; "anybody 
 that tried to get that off down in Bourbon County 
 would get lynched !" 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 7 
 
 " You know he looks Southern," I said acutely ; "why 
 do you resent it so ? Is it because you don t like him ? 
 If you liked him, he might look as if he came from Texas 
 or Tien-Tsin, you wouldn t care." 
 
 He got red again, and said I was just like all the rest 
 of the women, and made up my mind to something 
 without any reason for it " . . . right off the bat, and 
 then no power on earth can ever make you change it ! 
 I don t know that I like or dislike old Van Cleve, and 
 it would be ridiculous for me to resent anything about 
 him. As to where he comes from, it s neither one of 
 those places you mention, although," said J. B. a little 
 dryly, "I don t believe they d consider themselves 
 particularly unlucky to have lost him. He comes from 
 somewhere up in your own State, Chillicothe or Lan 
 caster, or or New Skeeterville, Sorghum County. 
 And he got his title in the Civil War, when he enlisted 
 in the Ninety-nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-ninth Ohio 
 Volunteer Cavalry. Is it possible that you have never 
 heard of that regiment? Such is Fame !" J. B. con 
 cluded with an ironic sigh ; indeed, he had delivered this 
 whole speech in a style of sour humor entirely foreign 
 to him, having plainly been very much ruffled by 
 the late occurrences. And it was odd and pleasing to 
 see how quickly he regretted this display of irritation. 
 "I don t know much about old Van Cleve. I really 
 oughtn t to say anything. I don t want to give you 
 a wrong impression," he added precipitately, anxious 
 and contrite. 
 
 "How on earth did you come to know him?" I 
 could not forbear asking. 
 
 "Why, met him first down in Florida Palatka, 
 Florida. My father had an interest in an orange 
 grove down there at one time, and we spent a 
 winter there once oh, it must be ten or fifteen 
 years ago now. The Van Cleves, that is, the Major 
 and his people, he s got a whole houseful of women 
 
8 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 relatives, sisters or something, I don t remember 
 much about them anyhow, they owned the grove 
 next to ours. I think they lived there a year or 
 two. Then the Major went broke frost knocked 
 out the oranges, I suppose I ve a vague recollection 
 of hearing about it. That sort of thing is all the time 
 happening in Florida. They sold out and moved 
 away. I ve run across Van Cleve every now and then 
 since, and he always remembers me. I don t know 
 what he does ; they have some little property, I believe. 
 One of those boys is his nephew, he told me just now. 
 Your goo-goo-eyed friend isn t any relation, I think." 
 J. B. brushed the crumbs at the side of his plate into 
 a minute heap, and scowled at it pensively. " You see, 
 it s the merest acquaintance," he ended. 
 
 All this conversation we had conducted in a properly 
 subdued fashion; nevertheless, I was sure that the 
 other table knew we were talking about them, and sure, 
 moreover, that they were talking about us. The Major 
 was asking questions ; the boys were explaining some 
 thing. But now their party began to break up ; that 
 is, the blond Mr. Cortwright arose and took his leave 
 of the rest, excusing himself on account of a " business 
 engagement," as I overheard him elaborately announc 
 ing, and he went off without further notice of us or of 
 my friend s final glare. Presently thereafter, Major 
 Van Cleve, having held some kind of conference with 
 his two boys, himself got up and came over towards us 
 with sundry interrogative and semi-apologetic glances 
 and hemmings and hawings directed at J. B. 
 
 "Er ah one moment if you ll pardon me, Mr. 
 Taylor ?" 
 
 My friend rose in his turn with a wondering look, 
 and I began to think that the Major might just pos 
 sibly be " broke" once again and seeking a loan, in 
 which case I had better be gazing out of the window 
 and temporarily deaf. No such thing. What Mr. or 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 9 
 
 Major Van Cleve wanted, of all things in this world, 
 was to meet me! "I couldn t get out of it," J. B. said 
 to me afterwards ; i when he said he had a letter of 
 introduction to you, you know - 
 
 "The fact is, madame," the Major explained with 
 his amiable flourish; "when my young friend, Robert 
 Gilbert here, divulged the fact that he not only knew 
 you, but had often met you in church, I presume, of 
 course, hey, Robert ?" here he executed a pro 
 digiously playful diabolic wink at the young fellow, who 
 colored and fidgeted and ended by grinning at me in 
 an exceedingly taking way, honest, bashful, and hu 
 morous "I say when my young gentleman said he 
 knew you," repeated the Major; "the name caught 
 my attention, and after a question or two I decided 
 you must be the lady we were recommended to - 
 meaning my sister s family and myself, madame by 
 a mutual acquaintance. I have her letter here, I be 
 lieve " and forthwith he searched out the document 
 from his pockets, letter-case, and so on with rather 
 impressive gestures and presented it to me ceremo 
 niously. "I meant to have called, of course, and still 
 hope to be allowed to give myself that pleasure. But 
 no time like the present, you know ! Especially as I 
 observed we had another mutual acquaintance in Mr. 
 Breckinridge-Taylor," says Major Van Cleve, smiling 
 jovially upon J. B. I was about to answer with some 
 ordinary civil speech, when the Gilbert boy, who had 
 had the air of waiting anxiously and uncomfortably to 
 account for himself, struck in abruptly in his frank, 
 rough, boyish voice. 
 
 "I I didn t say I knew you not exactly that 
 way, I mean," he blurted out, casting a worried look 
 at the older gentleman s suave countenance. "You 
 don t know anything about me, I don t believe, but 
 I m Professor Gilbert s son at the University, you 
 know. You know my mother and Lorrie my sister 
 
10 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Lorrie, you know her ?" And, sure enough, on this 
 hint, I recalled certain glimpses I had had of some 
 youth s long, gangling legs and tousled head and 
 muddy boots and glaring striped blazer jacket vanish 
 ing in a panic of shyness or annoyance from the ham 
 mock on the porch or the sway-bottomed lounge in the 
 parlor at the sound of my entrance when I went to 
 call on Mrs. and Miss Gilbert ; so unquestionably I 
 should have recognized Mr. Robert from the first. 
 However, he was very far from feeling any resentment 
 about it. "I didn t say I knew you not that way, 
 that is, you know - "he murmured over again, plainly 
 much troubled at the suggestion. 
 
 We all sat down once more, Major Van Cleve accept 
 ing an invitation to join our table very pleasantly, 
 though both of his young companions would un 
 doubtedly have been glad to escape, if either could 
 have devised a proper-sounding excuse. The Major, 
 who seemed, for his part, to be a ready, fluent person 
 of ample social experience and able to keep an easy 
 countenance on almost any occasion, laughingly said 
 that these introductions reminded him a little of an 
 incident in the life of his grandfather which he had 
 often heard the old gentleman relate, when he was 
 presented at a ball in some private house in Philadelphia 
 to President and Mrs. Washington. ". . . He was a 
 very young man at the time, and naturally quite over 
 come in the presence of all the great people, and when 
 he was taken up to make his bow before Lady Wash 
 ington (that s what they called her, you know) the 
 best he could do was to stutter, I I m sure you re 
 vastly honored to meet me, Lady Washington ! get 
 ting his speech end for end, as you see, in the most 
 ludicrous way. My grandfather used to say he never 
 could forget the beautiful courtesy with which she 
 passed it over, saying, i Thank you, Mr. Van Cleve, 
 without the suspicion of a smile. But he said the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 11 
 
 President heard the whole thing and burst out laugh 
 ing so that everybody in the room stared. It was a 
 very unusual thing for Washington to laugh, you know 
 he wasn t at all a humorous man. Afterwards, how 
 ever, when my grandfather got to knowing them in 
 timately, they often used to laugh together over that 
 first meeting. When I was a little fellow, I could 
 sometimes coax the old gentleman to talk about those 
 days," the Major finished with a look of amused and 
 tender retrospection. 
 
 "Your grandfather must have had some very inter 
 esting experiences," I said after a short silence, dur 
 ing which nobody else seemed disposed to make talk. 
 J. B. had visibly adopted the normal American man s 
 attitude of letting the women attend to the conversa 
 tion, and the two lads had subsided into thankful 
 dumbness. 
 
 " Yes, oh, yes. And by the way, he used to say that 
 the cherry-tree-and-little-hatchet story, contrary to 
 our enlightened popular view nowadays, was perfectly 
 true/ said Major Van Cleve ; "he had it from Lady 
 Washington s own lips. Only, you know, Stan, she 
 said to him (his name was Stanton, the same as mine, 
 madame), his father didn t let George off that way at 
 all. He gave him a fearful caning ; and I think that s 
 the reason the General doesn t like to have that story 
 repeated to this day. It puts them both in such a bad 
 light, anyhow. 
 
 J. B. said, "Ah?"; and after another pause, "Mr. 
 Cort wright a friend of yours?" he inquired irrele 
 vantly. 
 
 The Major coughed. "Well er ahem we 
 we ve known him some time he began to say, 
 hesitating ever so slightly ; and for half an instant I 
 thought a kind of indecision showed in his mild blue 
 gaze, as if he scented hostile opinion, and was uncer 
 tain whether the best policy was to placate or join 
 
12 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 with it. But the nephew interrupted him ; broke in 
 pretty rudely, in fact. 
 
 "No," he said squarely to J. B. "No, he s no par 
 ticular friend. He works in the same office I do, that s 
 all, Steinberger & Hirsch, Brokers, Walnut Street, 
 just off of Third." 
 
 "I know that firm," said my friend; and he looked 
 at Mr. Van Cleve Kendrick with some slight in 
 terest, thinking perhaps as I myself was thinking 
 that the boy was young to be working anywhere, and 
 also that his manner, if plain and straightforward, was 
 still, somehow or other, not wholly agreeable. He had 
 nothing of his uncle s gentle and friendly disposition, 
 that was easily seen ; and I doubted whether it would 
 ever be possible for him to learn any such tact and 
 regard for conventions. 
 
 " Cort wright s my friend, though," said the other 
 boy, eagerly even a little defensively ; but then the 
 Major intervened, steering the talk away from what he 
 apparently felt to be a risky subject with admirable 
 adroitness. 
 
 "Brokerage is a very remunerative business, I make 
 no doubt. At least Van s employers have the name of 
 being money-makers ; isn t that so, Mr. Taylor?" he 
 said. "These brokers and bankers!" He shook his 
 head and gave a short, humorous sigh. "Well, well, I 
 might have been one, too, I suppose, but it wasn t 
 ordained that I should ever accumulate ! Just about 
 the time I would have been going into business, the 
 War came on, and of course that settled it for me." 
 He addressed me. "You can t imagine you re 
 far too young to remember what kind of times those 
 were for boys, madame." 
 
 "I thought you were a Southerner when I first saw 
 you," I told him. 
 
 "Yes, a good many people take me for one. 
 We old army fellows all get to looking alike, I 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 13 
 
 believe. And for that matter there was mighty little 
 difference between us at the time mighty little. We 
 were just two sets of American boys out for a good 
 time just American boys!" declared Major Van 
 Cleve with fervor. "Why, madame, just for an illus 
 tration, I remember something that occurred in my own 
 personal experience down in Tennessee, not long before 
 Chickamauga. I was detailed to take some men and 
 destroy a railroad bridge and a few hundred yards of 
 ties and rails in the rebel territory just outside our 
 lines. The object was to cut their communications, 
 you understand, of course ?" 
 
 We all did understand, of course, and the Major 
 went on : 
 
 "They called for volunteers, appearing to think the 
 enterprise rather risky. / couldn t see it that way," 
 said the military gentleman with some contempt; "I 
 thought it was a good deal of a lark. And we did 
 have a lark never had so much fun in my life ! 
 Pretty near the whole regiment volunteered, but they 
 picked out the biggest, strongest, strappingest fellows, 
 of course no joke tearing up ties and rails, you know. 
 There wasn t one of us under six feet, and we were all 
 athletes athletes and hard as nails. We had a little 
 wheezy old engine and tender and some kind of ram 
 shackle caboose tacked on behind; and we got to the 
 place and got through the job without much annoy 
 ance half a dozen or so Confederates potting at us 
 from a hill about an eighth of a mile off, but nothing 
 else to speak of. They weren t strong enough to 
 attack. But by the time we started to go back, they d 
 got a reenforcement from somewhere, and were smart 
 enough to line up on both sides of the track so as to 
 get a good crack as we went by. Could hardly miss 
 at that distance, you know, especially as our train 
 wasn t exactly a lightning-express and they were 
 pretty close together, too, let me tell you. We had a 
 
14 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 nigger engineer and fireman that we d shanghied into 
 going, but of course the minute the bullets began to 
 sing, those darkies just collapsed on the floor of the 
 cab. I swear you couldn t have made a rag-carpet 
 any flatter; we boys got so full of laugh we couldn t 
 sight our guns. One of us, a little wiry, active runt, 
 not much bigger than a twelve-year-old boy, crawled 
 over the tender into the cab and opened up the throttle, 
 and and your humble servant volunteered to stoke," 
 said the Major, looking correspondingly modest; "so 
 we got through somehow, though it was tolerably hot 
 for a while. But what I was going to say, madame, 
 to illustrate the real good feeling in the ranks on both 
 sides, after we d run through em into comparative 
 safety, we looked back, and there were the gallant fellows 
 cheering and waving their hats at us ! They had done 
 their best to get us, but they were just as glad we 
 escaped as we were ! We had one or two wounded, 
 nothing serious, but poor Alf Harper, the little fellow 
 that took the engineer s place, dropped dead in the 
 bottom of the cab, after it was all over. We thought 
 he d been shot, but there wasn t a mark on him. Ex 
 citement, the surgeons said, pure excitement ! Singu 
 lar, wasn t it ? He wasn t a strong man, anyway, and 
 simply couldn t stand the strain." 
 
 "He was one of the athletes, I suppose," murmured 
 J. B., mildly. 
 
 I do not know whether the Major heard this obser 
 vation; he kept on talking in his lively and com 
 panionable way. But young Kendrick, his nephew, 
 gave us all a quick look, and turned red in a distressing 
 fashion, and hung down his head, fingering the table 
 cloth. All at once I felt myself liking the poor young 
 cub better, manners or no manners; and thoroughly 
 understood now why it was that my friend J. B. did 
 not seem to fancy much Major Stanton Van Cleve, 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 CONTAINS SOME SLIGHT MEMOIR OF A RESPECTABLE 
 
 FAMILY 
 
 SOME few years back at about that date in our na 
 tional history when Mr. Nast was drawing cartoons 
 about the Tweed Ring ; when every stray child was 
 suspected of being Charley Ross ; when Goldsmith 
 Maid held the trotting record ; when the youthful Miss 
 Mary Anderson was essaying Juliet and Parthenia " ; 
 when ladies wore pull-backs and waterfalls, and men 
 made the landscape glad with the spectacle of flowing 
 side- whiskers, low-necked waistcoats, and diamond 
 shirt-studs briefly, about the years 1872 or 73, 
 two very handsome weddings took place in the high 
 circles of a certain Ohio city, to both of which the 
 fashionable columns in all the local papers of the day 
 refer in the richest terms. You may read therein that 
 Miss Helen Van Cleve was united in marriage to Mr. 
 Harrison Glaive Kendrick at Christ Episcopal Church, 
 six o clock the evening of June fourteenth, in the pres 
 ence of a brilliant gathering of friends and relatives ; 
 there were six bridesmaids and six groomsmen ; the 
 bride was given away by her brother, Major Stanton 
 Van Cleve ; her dress was a magnificent creation of 
 white grosgrain with garniture of white velvet bows and 
 white silk fringe, and she carried a bouquet of roses, 
 white carnations, and maidenhair fern in a filigree gold 
 holder (the gift of the groom), etc., etc. In the autumn 
 of the same year the Van Cleve household furnished 
 another and similar social sensation. This time, 
 
 15 
 
16 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 according to the same reliable sources of information, 
 Miss Myra Van Cleve was united in marriage to Mr. 
 Richard Lucas, supported by an equal number of 
 attendants, given away by the same military hero, 
 dressed and decorated with identical elegance. There 
 is a photograph yet in existence of the two pretty young 
 women taken together in their wedding finery, the 
 grosgrains made alike, with duplicate bouquets, mon 
 strous, mathematically circular, the roses and carna 
 tions packed tight within frills of lace paper ; they smile 
 from out their white illusion and orange-blossoms, 
 happy and satisfied, and each one, without a doubt, 
 serenely convinced of the excellence of her own choice, 
 and wondering tolerantly in private at her sister s. 
 The heart grows young again to see them. 
 
 The Van Cleve brides were twins and ten or twelve 
 years younger than their brother Stanton, being all 
 of them children of Joshua Van Cleve and his wife, 
 who was one of the Zanes of Wheeling, a staunch old 
 pioneer family. Joshua came out here from Phila 
 delphia or Germantown somewhere about 1840, and 
 went into the commission business, in which he amassed 
 a considerable fortune ; but he had been dead a good 
 while at the time of these weddings. The widow was 
 living in comfortable style in the large, double, brick 
 house with the tall doors and windows and the Mansard 
 roof that her husband built shortly after the war, 
 during the course of which struggle Mr. Van Cleve had 
 repeatedly foreseen and taken advantage of the fluctua 
 tions of the cotton, grain, and provision markets with 
 admirable sagacity and fearlessness, and always to 
 great profit. He did not enjoy his bricks and mortar 
 and his Mansard roof very long ; we brought nothing 
 into the world with us, and it is certain we can take 
 nothing away. Already five years after his death, 
 the property he left exhibited a woful shrinkage; it 
 is to be feared the Van Cleve heirs were a rather im- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 17 
 
 practical, helpless set. An elderly gentleman of my 
 acquaintance (Judge A. B. Lewis, in fact, a well-known 
 figure on our bench whom most people will remember), 
 long engaged in the legal profession and the manage 
 ment and winding-up of estates, who had had some 
 experience with the family, delivered his opinion of them 
 to me (on request) in pretty plain words. "The Van 
 Cleves ? Oh, yes, I know who you mean know them 
 all well/ he said, stroking his chin, whereon he wore 
 a pointed goatee of the classic American pattern ; t we 
 used to attend to a piece of property on South High 
 for the widow collected the rents for a number of 
 years. No, they never lived in Columbus ; but Mr. 
 Van Cleve owned considerable real estate, I believe, 
 all through this central section of the State, in one town 
 or another. I used to see a good deal of him, at one 
 time, and I ve always kept track of the family - 
 up to the last few years, that is. Now you say they ve 
 turned up down there with you? Van Cleve himself 
 was a very solid sort of man a hard worker a man 
 of force. It was a pity that fine property he d got 
 together was all dissipated so soon, although that s 
 such a common occurrence people don t pay much 
 attention to it. Of course you couldn t expect the 
 Van Cleve women to know anything about taking care 
 of their money; but there s a kind of a parsimonious 
 streak in pretty nearly every woman if you don t 
 mind my saying so and Mrs. Van Cleve and the girls 
 would have probably held on to the estate longer, if 
 it hadn t been for the son. I knew him, too, but I 
 haven t seen him or any of em for five or six years. 
 I think they ve travelled about a good deal ; every 
 time they sold a piece of property, they d make a move 
 -go to Europe or somewhere. That s the kind 
 they are, you know. You say you met Stanton the 
 other day? He must be forty-five or fifty years old 
 now. Yes, he was in the army, First Lieutenant in 
 
18 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 the Nine-Hundred-and-Ninety-ninth oh, yes, that 9 s 
 perfectly true. No, he never got any higher than that. 
 Fact is, as I remember being told, Stanton never was 
 in any engagement, somehow. He was always at home 
 on furlough, or sick, or something, whenever there was 
 any fighting going on. He was first called by that title 
 of Major, I understand, when he was training boys in 
 some military academy at Painesville or Sandusky up 
 in that part of the country, after the War was over. 
 I don t believe old Josh Van Cleve ever took much 
 stock in his son Stanton ; but he made him work ; he 
 was a pretty good hand at keeping everybody up to 
 the mark. However, he died, in sixty-eight or along 
 there, and then the Major came home to live, and I 
 never heard of his doing a stroke of work afterwards. 
 You say you saw him ? Well, well ! How was he 
 looking ? Seedy ? They can t have much left by this 
 time. That young Kendrick must be poor Helen s 
 son. Did anybody say anything about Myra Mrs. 
 Lucas, I mean, you know ? She was the other daughter." 
 Mrs. Helen Kendrick died within a year of her mar 
 riage, which was the reason my old friend spoke of her 
 so pityingly. She left a baby of two months, whom 
 they had had baptized by her family name, and whom 
 her mother and sister took into their own keeping after 
 the poor young wife s death. They all lived together 
 for a while under that same paternal Mansard, in the 
 amiable delusion that the several families each saved 
 money thereby; though Heaven knows what queer, 
 helter-skelter accounts they kept, or how heavily this 
 economical arrangement bore on the widowed grand 
 mother. Her husband s will left almost the entire 
 property at her sole disposal, and she seems to have 
 been a generous, high-handed sort of woman, the last 
 person in the world to deny either herself or her children 
 anything in reason or out of it. It was also true 
 that Stanton, being more or less of an invalid from 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 19 
 
 injuries received on the field of battle, as everybody 
 knew or had heard (whatever Judge Lewis might say 
 to the contrary), required this spacious home and con 
 genial surroundings. There they all lived, then, Mrs. 
 Van Cleve and Major Stanton, and the remaining 
 daughter and the two sons-in-law, the whole tribe of 
 them, to whom, in no great while after Master Van 
 Cleve Kendrick s appearance, there was added another 
 baby, a girl this time, little Evelyn Lucas Evelyn 
 being the somewhat rococo name her parents bestowed 
 on her. 
 
 Then Lucas died. He had a weak heart and died 
 with dreadful suddenness of sunstroke the hot summer 
 of eighty-one. It would seem as if the Van Cleve 
 house was one of mourning and tragedy and a pur 
 suing Fate. Judge Lewis, for all he was so familiar 
 with the Van Cleves, and with all the ins and outs of 
 their relationships and affairs, could only speak in a 
 very vague way about the two men whom the girls 
 married ; neither of them had what you might call 
 good luck, he intimated. He had never heard any 
 thing against them ; they were young fellows and had 
 not had much chance to show what was in them (if any 
 thing). Kendrick got the gold-mining fever, and went 
 out West to the Black Hills, where he contracted a lung 
 trouble from exposure and the roughness of the life, 
 from which he never recovered. He came back home, 
 lingered in a decline for some months, and finally died 
 at Cresson Springs, Pennsylvania, where they had taken 
 him on one of those futile and pathetic journeys that 
 consumptives are forever making up to the last moment 
 of their lives in the hope of a cure. 
 
 The boy Van Cleve was perhaps eight years old at 
 the time of his Uncle Lucas s death. He remembered 
 indistinctly the shock of the tidings, and people hurry 
 ing to and fro, and the grewsome black-clad figures of 
 the women moving about the house, which was in an 
 
20 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 appalling darkness with all the blinds down at broad 
 midday, and a wild wailing and noise going on inter 
 minably in his aunt s room. He remembered stand 
 ing on a chair in the nursery where both the children 
 had been incarcerated and peeping through a crack 
 between the closed shutters and seeing a great con 
 course of carriages in the street and persons who were 
 evidently attired as for Sunday entering the house 
 all of which reminding him of certain festivities which 
 he had also witnessed from afar, he reported to the 
 baby Evelyn that there was a " die-party" in progress 
 and remonstrated with the horrified nurse for not let 
 ting them both go. It was not more than a year after 
 this that Van as in later life he could recall clearly 
 enough, but without any sentiment whatever, for he 
 was not a youth of easy emotions found himself 
 being gravely taken in to see a gaunt man with a flushed 
 face and great glassy eyes, who lay in bed, and put out 
 one fevered claw of a hand and held the little boy by 
 the shoulder, and told him feebly to be a good boy - 
 to be good to Grandma and Aunt Myra and little 
 Evelyn, and take care of them would he do that ? 
 Would he promise to do that ? 
 
 "Yes, sir. All right. I meant to anyhow," Van 
 said in a cheerful and practical voice. "When I m 
 big enough," he added prudently. 
 
 "Do you know who I am?" the other asked. 
 
 "No," said the boy, who was of an honest spirit. 
 
 "He was only four when you went West, Harry," 
 cried out his grandmother, anxiously; "we ve talked 
 about you we ve told him about you indeed we 
 have. But the child s too little he can t remember. 
 It s Papa, Van, you know Papa, dearie?" 
 
 "Never mind. When I get well, I ll stay at home 
 with you, and we ll get to knowing each other, sonny," 
 said the sick man. Van Cleve wondered why the two 
 women hustled him out of the room so quickly, and 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 21 
 
 cried so over him in the hall, outside the closed 
 door. 
 
 There followed upon this sad event a period of 
 journeyings about and kaleidoscopic changes of scene 
 which must have lasted ten years and upwards. Soon 
 after Mr. Kendrick s death, the Van Cleve family 
 sold a lot they owned on South High Street in the capi 
 tal city with a five-story building and some small 
 stores on it it was that very piece, in fact, which the 
 Lewis firm of attorneys used to look after and bought 
 an orange grove down near Palatka, Florida, wiiere 
 they all emigrated, and lived for a matter of eighteen 
 months. Little Van heard a great deal of glowing 
 talk about soil and climate and the dignity and ease 
 of rural life upon one s own " broad acres beside some 
 clear, sparkling mountain stream, or within view of the 
 majestic ocean s proudly swelling tide," to quote his 
 Uncle Stanton, who was not particularly strong on 
 geography or not nearly so strong as he was on 
 rhetoric, at any rate. "Our golden orchards will yield 
 us golden returns," the Major observed poetically. 
 Sad to relate, nothing of the kind happened ; or, at 
 least, prosperity such as Major Stanton indicated was 
 too tardy in arriving to suit these speculators. They 
 returned, denouncing the unfortunate State of Florida 
 high and low. Climate pooh ! It was as cold as 
 Nova Zembla, with no furnaces in the wretched frame 
 shanties of houses, not even a decent fireplace. Soil 
 - fiddle-de-dee ! You had to plough and weed and work 
 like a slave, or nothing would grow. The orange trees 
 were full of scale, of blight, of the ten plagues of Egypt 
 you couldn t get servants for love nor money - 
 it was three miles from the post-office they found 
 a snake under the front porch ! "Of course a man 
 doesn t mind roughing it even a man with a bullet 
 in him that s been giving him occasional pretty severe 
 reminders of its presence for twenty years," said the 
 
22 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Major with a deprecating smile; "but I couldn t ask 
 the ladies to put up with the hardships of that life, 
 though they spring of such a noble old pioneer stock." 
 To their surprise and consternation and great wrath 
 the Van Cleves found serious trouble in disposing of 
 the Palatka grove which caused the ladies, Mrs. 
 Van Cleve and Mrs. Lucas, to go about crying out with 
 even more vehemence against the folly of Florida in 
 vestments ! One can scarcely blame them ; they re 
 covered only a lamentably small proportion of the 
 money they had put into this venture. The last of the 
 land was sold for taxes ten years or so ago to a man who 
 has since made a fortune off of it in string-beans, as 
 I understand. 
 
 After this Mrs. Van Cleve sold the big old Mansard- 
 roof home for twelve thousand dollars (a good deal 
 less than it had cost) and with this sum bought an untold 
 number of shares in the Cincinnati, Paducah & Wheel 
 ing Steam-Packet Company, which had been a flourish 
 ing concern before and during the sixties, when Joshua 
 Van Cleve himself had for a while been interested in it ; 
 he sold out on observing the increasing activity of 
 railroad traffic in this section of the country. The Ohio 
 River had ceased to be that " highway of commerce, 
 of wealth, travel, and industry" which Stanton called 
 it, by the time the widow came to invest in the C. P. & 
 W. Packet Company, which, to tell the truth, was 
 already on its last legs ; and shortly thereafter it 
 tottered over altogether the steam-packets figura 
 tively blew up went to pieces sank, carrying along 
 with them poor Mrs. Joshua s twelve thousand. What 
 with receiverships, injunctions, suits of one kind and 
 another, the echoes of the catastrophe lingered in our 
 courts for years. The Van Cleves, however, were not 
 among the litigants ; they never had the means to press 
 their claims, even had it been worth while. 
 
 Perhaps these two samples of the Van Cleve style of 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 23 
 
 business management will serve to justify Judge Lewis s 
 pronouncements on the family. He was wrong in one 
 particular; they never did "sell something and go to 
 Europe" ; the poor things were not knowingly extrava 
 gant or self-indulgent. Rothschild, Astor, Shylock 
 himself, could not have fixed a more serious eye upon 
 the main chance, or expected a dollar to go farther. 
 But as long as there was anything left to buy with, 
 Mrs. Van Cleve and her children were buying and 
 scheming and failing and selling out at a heart-rending 
 sacrifice. They tried oil lands in Texas, mica mines in 
 Georgia, granite quarries in Maine, lots and " corners" 
 in half a dozen different cities there was nothing 
 they did not try. Sometimes they went and lived in 
 the locality of their wild-goose purchases ; sometimes 
 they tried to direct at a distance in either case with 
 the same disastrous results. Conditions, wherever the 
 Van Cleves went, and whatever they did, were some 
 how invariably adverse ; the air was all wrong, the 
 water was all wrong, the society was all wrong, for the 
 older members of the family; the schools were all 
 wrong for the youngsters. Circumstances, in short, 
 contrived always to be so overwhelmingly wrong after 
 they had lived in one place for six months, that a 
 change was imperative, and it was amazing to see the 
 confidence, the happy expectation, with which they 
 looked forward to the next move. A few such experi 
 ences would have made pessimists of most of us. 
 
 Master Van Cleve Kendrick, therefore, began at an 
 unusually early age to see the world, and acquired his 
 education in an extensive variety of places and ways. 
 They were in Florida when he learned his letters and 
 read his first book, " Robinson Crusoe"; and where, 
 whatever his seniors may have suffered, Van, for his 
 part, had a happy time fishing and wading and play 
 ing in the sand and scrub, and getting himself infested 
 with "chiggers," to the fright and misery of the rest of 
 
24 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 the family. He had a year of school in Pittsburgh 
 (this must have been during the C. P. & W. episode) 
 and after that a year in New Orleans, and another 
 year divided between Boston and Bangor, carrying it 
 off pretty well as a scholar, on the whole, in all these 
 places ; he was not a dull boy, and showed, moreover, 
 an eminently plain, sane, reliable temperament. His 
 teachers unanimously reported that if he had a special 
 turn, it was for figures news which the elder Van 
 Cleves received with pride and gratification, but no 
 surprise, though any outsider might have supposed a 
 taste for arithmetic to be rather unusual with them ; 
 they considered it, however, an outcropping of a well- 
 established family trait ! Some of Van s other char 
 acteristics were not so familiar, and occasioned the 
 others much amazement and speculation. Once (when 
 they were in Baltimore, when the boy was about 
 eleven years old) Major Van Cleve, having given his 
 nephew an odd penny or two, observed with a humorous 
 curiosity that the young gentleman deposited these 
 coins carefully in a little tin bank that somebody had 
 presented to him, the key whereof he carried in a 
 pocket of his small breeches, securing his property 
 with a sedate air and complete absence of any sort of 
 affectation. 
 
 " What s that you re doing, Van?" his uncle asked. 
 
 " Putting it away," said Van, tranquilly, looking 
 about for his cap and a certain new baseball bat with 
 which he proposed to try conclusions in that day s 
 game after school hours. 
 
 11 Putting it away ! Don t you want to spend it?" 
 said the Major, astounded at the novelty and origi 
 nality of this conception. 
 
 "No, sir. I ve got some money. I ve got a dime. 
 I don t need any more right now," Van Cleve explained ; 
 and perhaps seeing doubt on the other s face, he dug 
 his sturdy little grimy fist down into the pocket again, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 25 
 
 and pulled out the coin, and showed it, still in his 
 matter-of-fact style. 
 
 "Do you put all your money away?" his uncle in 
 quired, winking over the boy s head at the grandmother 
 and aunt, sitting by with interested looks ; and Mrs. 
 Lucas signalled to little Evelyn, who was playing noisily 
 with her dolls in the corner (she was a noisy and rest 
 less child), to keep quiet so that they could hear these 
 revelations. 
 
 "No, sir," said Van again, unembarrassed. "I 
 always put away some, though." 
 
 "How much have you got?" 
 
 Van Cleve considered, wrinkling his brows. "I 
 don t know whether it s a dollar-forty-five, or a dollar- 
 fifty-five," he announced at length; "I d have to 
 count it. But I guess it s only a dollar-forty-five, be 
 cause it s always littler than you think it is. I mean 
 to get a book and put it down, so I ll always know, 
 without having to count every time." 
 
 "What are you going to do with it? Aren t you 
 going to spend it sometime?" 
 
 "I don t know maybe. Maybe I ll just save it," 
 said the youngster, beginning to fidget a little under the 
 concentrated attention of his superiors. 
 
 The others exchanged a glance again. "You mustn t 
 be a miser, you know, Van Cleve," said his Aunt Myra 
 in her clear and sweetly dictatorial voice ; l misers are 
 horrid!" And, although the habit of saving some part 
 of one s money does not of necessity lead to miserliness 
 according to most persons view, the family were all 
 more or less relieved when later on Van expended almost 
 his whole capital on an outfit of second-hand fishing 
 tackle, and presently had nothing left to show for it - 
 like any normal, ordinary boy. 
 
 Yet, as young Kendrick grew up, amongst other 
 alien and puzzling traits, the most pronounced, which 
 he every now and then displayed anew, was this same 
 
26 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 unaccountable tendency to thrift. The lad did not, 
 indeed, seem to possess much aptitude for earning 
 money ; he was as prone to absurd planning and dream 
 ing, as lazy and industrious by turns, as enthusiastic 
 and despondent in fits and starts, as the average boy ; 
 and played and studied with like alternations of energy 
 and indifference. "But Van Cleve is sure always to 
 have some money. He s never clean out !" the Major 
 used to remark with indulgent laughter; "and he 
 never will let any of us keep it or take care of it for 
 him. No, sir ! Van s his own banker. He reminds 
 me of an ancestor of ours an uncle of my father s, 
 in fact, who, being a man of known wealth, was advised 
 by Benjamin Franklin (an intimate friend) to put his 
 money in a bank, instead of keeping it in hogsheads of 
 Spanish gold dollars in the cellar, which was the old 
 fellow s habit. Some day they ll murder thee for 
 that money, Marcus, says Franklin; thee should 
 put it into a bank. Well, when I m dead, I shan t 
 need it, says Uncle Mark; and I d as lief the mur 
 derers had it as the bank ! There s small choice in 
 rotten apples --ha, ha! Quaint old chap, wasn t 
 he?" Major Van Cleve would finish, looking around 
 upon the company to whom he had retailed this anec 
 dote in his usual pleasantly dramatic fashion. Van 
 Cleve used to hang his head, and wriggle on his seat, 
 and fiddle with his big, overgrown, sunburned hands, 
 while the stories were going forward. He had heard 
 about Benjamin Franklin and the hogsheads of gold 
 dollars many times to say nothing of a score of 
 other yarns the Major was accustomed to tell. Van 
 thought they were not very funny, nor very bright ; he 
 did not believe them; he did not see how anybody 
 could believe them. Between family loyalty and the 
 dread of ridicule he writhed in the depths of his boyish 
 soul, and wished the floor would open and let him 
 through. Which of us that are humane and have been 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 27 
 
 young does not share that feeling? Verily I think I 
 should rather make a fool of myself (a feat which I 
 perform with facility and unconsciousness) than see my 
 brother do it ! 
 
 Van Cleve had reached eighteen when, during a sum 
 mer spent at Put-in-Bay on Lake Erie, his family 
 became acquainted with that of Professor Samuel Gil 
 bert, one of whose household made his bow to us in 
 the last chapter. Mr. Robert Gilbert was near Van 
 Kendrick s own age, and they speedily contracted one 
 of those heroic, splendidly unselfish, time-and-death- 
 defying friendships into which young gentlemen at this 
 stage sometimes enter. To the credit of mankind, those 
 friendships do often endure, and there is nothing more 
 amiable and comforting in life than the spectacle. 
 Bless me, I remember seeing these two, fifteen years 
 later, when they were grown men who had known 
 cares and tragedy and bitter hours of misunderstand 
 ing I remember seeing them engaged in an informal 
 game of ball in the blazing sun at some picnic or club- 
 outing, and "Say, let Van have a bat, you fellows ! 
 He s been chasing your flys out there in the scrub for 
 an hour. Let Van come in and bat once !" Bob cried 
 out warmly and imperatively. So they let Van come 
 in and bat, and Bob took his place in the scrub, and 
 the two friends merely exchanged a nod and grin as 
 they passed each other ; they would have been as 
 tonished and abashed to have been told that there was 
 anything beautiful in the incident, yet so it seemed to 
 one onlooker, at least. 
 
 It was after that long, lovely summer season of 
 swimming and rowing and idling about ; and reading 
 "The Count of Monte Cristo," and the adventures of 
 Mr. Huckleberry Finn, and "The Luck of Roaring 
 Camp," and sundry other gallant classics ; and dream 
 ing glorious dreams, and spinning happy, impossible 
 futures for both of them with his boy companion, that 
 
28 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Van Cleve, upon returning home (they were living in 
 St. Louis at the time), announced his desire to go to 
 college everybody went to college Bob was going 
 to college Van Cleve would go, too he knew he 
 could get ready maybe he would be conditioned, as 
 they called it, but he would get in, anyhow he was 
 way up in mathematics, and that was what counted 
 most, Bob said and he could make up the languages 
 and the the other things easily, oh, easily. Couldn t 
 we afford it ? He wanted to go to Bob s college - 
 that wasn t a very expensive place, you know. The 
 family agreed readily; Major Stanton commended his 
 nephew s ambition ; they were all very proud and fond 
 of Van; and moreover, by a neat coincidence, Mrs. 
 Van Cleve was upon the point of selling that old farm 
 up in Union County that they had owned all these 
 years, and never got a cent out of, for forty-five hundred 
 dollars, part of which money could not be better em 
 ployed than upon her grandson s education. It was all 
 delightedly settled around the reading lamp in the 
 library one evening; and the next day, Mrs. Lucas 
 hurried down town to secure a set of book shelves and 
 a wicker lounge she had noticed in one of the shop 
 windows, which would be just the thing for Van Cleve s 
 college room. 
 
 Well-a-day, it must be told ! All this pretty scheme 
 came to naught. Van Cleve did not go to college that 
 year, nor any other year; he never lounged on the 
 campus, nor cut chapel of a winter s morning, nor 
 strummed on a banjo with the Glee Club, nor shouted 
 his young lungs out around the football field, nor got 
 his degree magna cum laude, and marched down from 
 the platform with the tassel of his mortar-board over 
 the honorable ear that signifies graduation and the 
 close of the scholastic career. Without any of these 
 agreeable preliminaries and with a sad suddenness, the 
 young fellow came to the sign-post on his road marked, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 29 
 
 "This way to LIFE," and if he did not reach manhood 
 in a night, at least he took a long step in that direction. 
 That wretched old Union County farm, which had 
 always been a nuisance, now, at what you might call 
 its final hour, when it was as good as sold, and every 
 body in a figure of speech had pen in hand to 
 sign the deeds, all at once developed new powers of 
 annoyance ; it is not too much to say that in the minds 
 of Mrs. Van Cleve and her daughter it took on a malig 
 nant, a diabolic personality. For the first time in the 
 history of the family sales, the lawyers on the other 
 side raised some objection to the title. The title, of all 
 things ! "It was good enough for my husband, and it 
 ought to be good enough for these people/ said Mrs. 
 Van Cleve in majestic indignation; "Mr. Van Cleve 
 was a very careful man a remarkable man ; he 
 never would have bought a defective title. I have 
 managed my property for twenty-two years, and I 
 think I can lay claim to some knowledge of business, and 
 I never had a title disputed before." 
 
 But it appeared that the attorneys were casting no 
 reflections on anybody s integrity or abilities, as they 
 respectfully pointed out. They had wished to see Mr. 
 Van Cleve s will a not unusual request and accord 
 ing to the terms of it they were inclined to the opinion 
 that, etc., etc. Mrs. Helen Van Cleve Kendrick had 
 died in February, 187-, they understood yes ? and 
 Mr. Kendrick at such and such a date? He would 
 have had no more than a one-third interest, at any rate, 
 it was probable, which would of course cease and deter 
 mine immediately upon his death. The boy was still 
 a minor, but, etc., etc. Their civil accuracy frightened 
 the widow, domineering and self-reliant as she was; 
 terrifying doubts of her own position for the first time 
 in her life assailed her. Stanton looked profound, but, 
 understanding absolutely nothing of what was being 
 said, for once kept silence. He had no stories that 
 
30 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 would fit the occasion. Mrs. Lucas, with not much 
 clearer vision, was bewildered, and helplessly angry. 
 They all three came back from the legal offices very 
 much excited and perturbed, and all talking at once 
 in their high-pitched, vehement way which would 
 have alarmed any one but Van Cleve, who was used 
 to it. 
 
 "Pooh, they haven t got a case they can t do 
 anything! They haven t got a case, I tell you!" 
 cried the Major, stroking his side- whiskers with large, 
 contemptuous gestures, and looking very fierce and 
 military; " don t be alarmed, Mother. These fellows 
 are mere shysters." 
 
 "Oh, Stanton, it isn t a case there isn t going to 
 be any lawsuit can t you see? " both of the women 
 wailed in concert ; "they don t want to go to law about 
 anything it isn t that, at all ! It s just that we didn t 
 know all these years how could we, when nobody 
 told us I don t see why they didn t find it out before 
 - all the buying and selling we ve done ! maybe it 
 isn t true anyhow - " they questioned each other, in a 
 frenzy of worry. 
 
 "What on earth s the matter? Can t you sell the 
 old land? Don t they want to buy it after all?" 
 asked the boy, aroused to curiosity at last; "won t 
 somebody else buy it ? What on earth s up ?" 
 
 "Oh, Van, my dear boy, I I m afraid we oughtn t 
 to have tried to sell it at all I m afraid we oughtn t 
 ever to have sold anything !" Mrs. Van Cleve began ; 
 and fairly burst out sobbing, to the youth s horror and 
 distress as she put her arms around his neck. He was 
 growing fast this last year, and had shot up to be a 
 head above her ; the thought that he was almost a 
 man in some indescribable way at once startled and 
 consoled the grandmother. She tried to explain 
 brokenly : "The lawyer that Mr. Fogson, you know 
 wanted to read your grandfather s will, and he said 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 31 
 
 something about it having v- virtually created a tr-trust 
 for you for your mother s share, you know, my dear 
 
 - poor Nellie s share and and I can t understand 
 it I don t see why somebody didn t find it out before 
 
 - but I m af-fraid we ve used your property your 
 money, Van ; I m afraid we ve spent what you ought 
 to have h-had !" She looked into the boy s face, the 
 tears streaming down her own. Every one looked at 
 him ; and there was a silence in the room. 
 
 "My share? My mother s share, I mean?" said 
 Van Cleve, perplexed, but not much upset otherwise ; 
 he had seen the family get into states of excitement such 
 as this before, over matters no more weighty than 
 dismissing the cook, or laying a new carpet, so was not 
 disposed to take it very seriously. 
 
 "We didn t mean to, Van we didn t know we 
 hadn t any right to it !" cried his aunt, hysterically. 
 
 "Well, how about Evelyn s?" Van inquired. "Oh, 
 I see," he added quickly; "Aunt Myra s being alive 
 makes a difference, I suppose. Evelyn couldn t in 
 herit until her mother s dead, anyhow." 
 
 Van Cleve ! How can you ? How can you talk about 
 my being dead that way ? " Mrs. Lucas almost screamed ; 
 "don t you care if I die? Don t you care if I die?" 
 She, too, broke into tears and sobs of sheer fright at the 
 idea. 
 
 "I didn t say that!" said Van Cleve, helplessly; 
 "I only wanted to get the straight of it, Aunt Myra. 
 I don t want you to die. Nobody wants you to die." 
 
 "We didn t mean to wrong you, Van, my dear, 
 darling boy. You know I love you like a mother, 
 you know that, don t you?" his aunt gasped out be 
 tween sobs; "you ve had just as much good out of 
 the property as anybody else, anyhow. We ve always 
 shared with you, haven t we ? Oh, say you forgive us, 
 say you forgive us!" She cast herself on him with 
 wild prayers. 
 
32 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Well, but I don t know what s happened yet - 
 the boy began, not too patiently. 
 
 "Say you forgive us!" reiterated Mrs. Lucas with 
 prodigious determination in the midst of her weeping. 
 
 "Don t get so excited, Myra," Major Stanton re 
 monstrated; "you ll hurt yourself. You know excite 
 ment s not good for you. 7 
 
 "I m not excited I m not excited," retorted the 
 other in a tearful impatience. She attacked her nephew 
 anew, at once pleading and imperative. "You do 
 forgive us, Van, don t you?" 
 
 "All right. I forgive you !" said Van Cleve shortly, 
 coloring at the words. Anything for peace, he thought 
 in a species of resigned exasperation and then won 
 dered guiltily if there was not something wrong with 
 him morally or mentally because his aunt s behavior 
 seemed to him utterly foolish. He reminded him 
 self with remorse that he had been warned repeatedly 
 that Aunt Myra was very delicate and high-strung; 
 and it was always perilous to contradict her. Every 
 body in the family was more or less delicate and high- 
 strung, for that matter ; Van had even heard himself 
 so described, although he was uneasily conscious of 
 being all the while in absolutely brutal health ! 
 
 "I guess I d better go down and see those lawyers 
 myself, hadn t I ?" he suggested, perceiving that it was 
 useless to expect any more definite information from 
 his elders, and judiciously selecting a moment when the 
 scene had quieted down somewhat. And everybody 
 agreeing with many expressions of wonder and satis 
 faction at the maturity of his judgment, young Ken- 
 drick did go down on the morrow and interviewed 
 Messrs. Fogson and Dodd not the true names, indeed, 
 but they will serve, as this is the first and last appear 
 ance of that legal firm in this history, and Van never 
 saw them again. Both attorneys smiled a little when 
 the young fellow recited the family fears that he had 
 been done out of his inheritance. Mrs. Van Cleve, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 33 
 
 they said, had not precisely understood they re 
 gretted exceedingly to have given her a false impres 
 sion of course it would not have been possible for 
 her to alienate her grandson s property anything 
 like real estate, that is. Nevertheless, after a careful 
 study of Mr. Van Cleve s will, they thought it not un 
 likely that confusion might arise at some future time 
 from er from the fact that his daughter s, Mrs. 
 Kendrick s, interest, which was certainly implied if 
 not explicitly stated, had been apparently overlooked, 
 etc., etc. They had no trouble with the boy ; the ques 
 tions he asked were clear-headed enough ; and he 
 listened to their explanations with more understanding 
 and self-control than they had met with in any of the 
 older members of the family, Messrs. Fogson and Dodd 
 remarked to each other with some amusement, after 
 Van had taken his leave. He himself came away not 
 greatly cast down ; he walked home slowly in a thought 
 ful mood, and as he went up the steps to the Van Cleve 
 front door, and rang the bell, decided privately that 
 he must have a latch-key. 
 
 His grandmother was alone in the sitting-room with 
 a mass of documents spread out before her, and the 
 little old wooden strong-box bound and fortified at its 
 corners with brass, with "J. Van Cleve" outlined in 
 brass nails on the lid, in which her husband had always 
 kept his papers standing open alongside. She looked 
 up at the lad, troubled and apprehensive. "Well, 
 Van?" she said; and her hands trembled slightly 
 amongst the old deeds and receipts and letters. "I 
 I think perhaps you ought to look these over. You 
 you re getting to an age when you ought really to know 
 something about business about our our af 
 fairs. I must begin and teach you." 
 
 "Yes. I guess it s time I took hold," said Van Cleve. 
 He came and stood by her, smiling, as he looked down 
 at the litter. "I used to think all the money came out 
 of that box, when I was a boy," he said. 
 
34 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 When he was a boy ! That was only yesterday, Mrs. 
 Van Cleve thought, with a strange mixture of fear and 
 pride and pain. Well, and why should he not be grown 
 - be a man ? She was an old woman, she would be 
 seventy her next birthday, and she had been only 
 fifty- two when this grandson was born. "What did 
 those men tell you, Van Cleve?" she questioned him 
 jealously; "what have they been saying to you? 
 You know we I never meant to use any money of 
 yours, whatever they say." 
 
 "Oh, you couldn t, anyhow," said the young fellow, 
 practically; "that s safe enough." 
 
 "But I wouldn t why why, I wouldn t!" his 
 grandmother cried out, grieved and indignant; "I 
 wouldn t do such a thing !" she broke off abruptly, 
 aghast at the sound of her own voice raised in futile 
 protestations for that they were futile, she could 
 read in the kind indifference of the other s young face. 
 She recognized in a sort of terror the same feeling that 
 had so often possessed her in her Joshua s company ; 
 she remembered Joshua s harsh tolerance, his half- 
 answers, even that gesture of putting his hand in his 
 pocket and that abstracted, "Well, how much d ye 
 want?" which was many times the only notice her 
 attempts at conversation got. It used to irritate her 
 so ! And now this youngster ! Desperately she 
 made an effort to regain their familiar footing. "I 
 suppose we d we d better not talk any more about 
 college, Van," she said, with a tightening of the throat ; 
 in spite of her, the words came humbly. "I hate to 
 have you disappointed, but - 
 
 He was not listening to her ! But, at her second 
 attempt, he roused himself. "Hey ? Oh, college yes, 
 I know," said Van Cleve, and patted her hand sooth 
 ingly. "That s all right, Grandma, don t worry 
 it s all right. I haven t got any time for college, anyhow. 
 I m going to work." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 SOME FURTHER RECOLLECTIONS 
 
 LATTERLY we have fallen into the habit of saying to 
 one another that the city is getting so big with all its 
 near and far suburbs, and the distances are so impossible 
 (unless one has a motor), and there are so many new 
 people, and everybody has so much to do, and one is 
 constantly meeting at clubs and parties, anyhow I say 
 we have got into a way of telling ourselves that for 
 all of these reasons the fashion of making calls is 
 practically obsolete. But at the date when the Van 
 Cleve family came here to live, this efficient catch 
 word had not yet come into vogue ; people called on 
 them, all the formalities were duly observed, and they 
 began to be known and to go about in a surprisingly 
 short time. I think all the ladies had a quite unusual 
 social gift, setting aside the fact that they were well 
 introduced and very well connected the Zanes and 
 Van Cleves, you know. Even Major Stan ton, for all 
 his unreliable reminiscences, was a man of distin 
 guished presence, and good manners, an agreeable 
 enough addition to most companies. Young Kendrick 
 was the only unornamental member of the family, and 
 hardly anybody ever saw him ; very likely he was grub 
 bing down town in the grimy Third Street office all 
 day and coming home at six o clock in the evening, 
 tired and hungry and short-tempered, hanging on a 
 strap in the trolley-car along with the rest of the tired, 
 the hungry, and short-tempered. A shabby, over 
 grown, and, on the whole, rather sulky and silent lout, 
 
 35 
 
36 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 was the verdict passed upon Mr. Kendrick by most of 
 the people by all the women, in fact who were 
 privileged to meet him at this time. As to the gentle 
 man s opinion of them, he probably never took the 
 trouble to form one ; during all this part of his career, 
 Van s energies were strongly concentrated on his own 
 affairs. 
 
 But the ladies ! I remember the first time they 
 appeared at Sunday morning service at All Saints 
 in our suburban parish of Elmhill, where they had 
 taken a house somewhere on Summit or Riverview 
 Avenue, so the Gilberts with whom, it seemed, they 
 were intimately acquainted had told me. There 
 was a tall, fine-looking old lady, Mrs. Van Cleve, pre 
 sumably, with an erect carriage, dark hair thickly 
 laced with silver, brilliant dark eyes, and a beautifully 
 fresh complexion almost like a girl s, to whom the Major 
 correctly frock-coated, gloved, and high-hatted this 
 time carefully gave an arm up the aisle ; to tell 
 the truth, his mother looked much more capable of 
 giving an arm to him, and indeed of generalling the 
 whole congregation and church to the Reverend Mr. 
 Babcock himself, for all her seventy-odd years ! After 
 her, there came a couple of much younger women - 
 Mrs. and Miss Lucas, as it developed - both of them 
 slender, tall, black-haired, bright-colored, repeating 
 in the strangest incisive way the older one s effect of 
 personal distinction. They were quietly dressed, their 
 entrance was as unostentatious as any lady s should 
 be; and we ourselves were no staring, provincial- 
 minded audience; but had they been preceded by a 
 herald and trumpets, they could scarcely have been 
 more impressive. I recognized Van Cleve awkwardly 
 bringing up the rear; but nobody else noticed him, 
 even when he stumbled over the hassocks in their pew, 
 and sat down with undue violence, reddening around 
 to the back of his neck. He was figuratively nowhere 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 37 
 
 by the side of the imposing Major, and those three 
 torch-like women. 
 
 It was after this that I bethought me, not without 
 shame, of my own polite duties, six weeks must have 
 gone by since that meeting at the Saint Simon ! 
 and in a day or so posted over to the Gilbert s for 
 Lome s company and countenance, in a call upon the 
 Van Cleve household. The Gilberts lived on Warwick 
 Lane in a weatherbeaten old house their means 
 must have been very small ; it was wonderful the way 
 Lorrie and her mother managed and young Mr. 
 Robert himself opened the door to my ring. Instead 
 of bolting off incontinently, as heretofore, at sight of 
 the petticoats, he grinned and said, "Oh, how d ye 
 do?" in an affable and unconstrained manner; and 
 ushered me into the big, battered parlor, explaining that 
 Lorrie was out she had just gone over to see one of 
 the girls, and his mother busy with a seamstress up 
 stairs, but if I d wait awhile, they d both be here, he 
 thought. And he hospitably pulled forward an arm 
 chair, and offered me some home-made peach cordial 
 out of the short, squab, cut-glass decanter that Mrs. 
 Gilbert always kept she was a Virginia woman - 
 on the side-table by the dining-room door. It was 
 pretty strong, high-flavored stuff, and doubtless there 
 were members of All Saints congregation who would 
 have shaken their heads at the spectacle of the Pro 
 fessor s son drinking it, and at my countenancing him. 
 
 "Why, it s Summit Avenue, the house is on Summit 
 Avenue, Number Eight it s one of these two-houses- 
 stuck-together places, under one roof, you know," 
 he explained graphically, in answer to my question; 
 "you can t miss it, anyhow. Isn t it funny, every 
 body calls em the Van Cleves, and yet it s just the old 
 lady, Van s grandmother, and the Major that are named 
 that. There s Mrs. Lucas besides, she s Van s aunt, 
 and Evelyn, she s his cousin she s about seventeen, 
 
38 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 I think, and Van s own name s Kendrick, you know." 
 He went on with some further details about the family ; 
 indeed, it was from young Gilbert that I learned no 
 small part of that Van Cleve history which has already 
 been set forth herein. Bob, who seemed now to feel 
 himself on intimate terms with me, displayed a re 
 freshing willingness to talk, joke, chatter, tell every 
 thing he knew in the obvious desire to be a civil and 
 entertaining host, and being, moreover, by nature as 
 I judged him open and talkative. The burden of 
 his conversation was mostly Van, however Van this 
 and Van that ; he told me all about their association 
 at Put-in-Bay two or three summers before ; how Van 
 Cleve had wanted to go to college with him, and how 
 something had happened, Bob didn t know what, of 
 course Van wouldn t say much, but his friend sus 
 pected the funds gave out. Anyhow, Van went to 
 work got a job in a shoe factory over there in St. 
 Louis at eight dollars a week. Didn t I think that was 
 a fine thing to do? Didn t I think that was a great 
 thing to do? Yet Bob was sure from little things he 
 saw and heard when he was with them, you know, 
 that Van s family had made the most awful fuss. A 
 shoe factory that s what got em ! That s what they 
 couldn t stand. As if that made any difference ! 
 It s what a man is that counts, it s not what he does, 
 isn t that so ? "I mean, as long as he does something 
 honest, of course," the young fellow added hastily, 
 fearing I might misunderstand the above highly orig 
 inal statement. "I think Van s pretty big he s 
 the biggest man I know !" declared Robert, roundly, his 
 own fair, good-looking face flushed with enthusiasm and 
 a little with the peach-brandy, no doubt, and his voice 
 shaken by a generous excitement and pride. "Give 
 me a chance, that s all ! I d show you how quick I d 
 do it!" he cried bravely. It was rather foolish and 
 rather touching. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 39 
 
 He went on without much prompting. Hey ? Why, 
 yes, I think they have some money yes, Van as much 
 as told me that himself. But it s not enough without 
 him working Major Van Cleve doesn t do a thing, 
 you know. Anyway, Van wants his own money - 
 why, any man does. Van s not going to sit around and 
 ask his grandmother for it I wouldn t, either," said 
 Robert, loftily. "Van Cleve just kept right on at the 
 shoe factory, and let em fuss. He s awfully stern and 
 and strong, you know, when he wants to be." How 
 ever, at about this time, it seemed they had moved to 
 Lexington, and Van Cleve went right off and found 
 another place some kind of a place where he did 
 some kind of office work in one of the Government 
 bonded warehouses or distilleries, or whatever they are, 
 Bob wasn t quite certain. They only stayed in Lex 
 ington a few months ; and since they had been living 
 here, Van Cleve had been working for those same 
 people Phil Cortwright was with, but he didn t like it 
 - he was going to leave them in September. No, Bob 
 didn t know what it was that Van Cleve disliked about 
 the brokers office or business he wouldn t be likely 
 to tell anybody, even Bob. Van wasn t that sort 
 "He says I m a regular sieve, anyhow !" Robert con 
 fessed, with a laugh. 
 
 "Has he got something else to do ?" 
 
 "Oh, yes ! Van wouldn t throw up any job unless 
 he was sure of another. He s going into the National 
 Loan and Savings Mr. Gebhardt s bank, you know. 
 He ll have a pretty good thing there, he thinks," Bob 
 said with a large air. "At least, he told me he meant 
 to stick this time. He says he s chopped and changed 
 around enough ; he s tired of it, and he s getting too old. 
 He s right, too he ll be twenty-one his next birth 
 day. Funny thing about Van, he isn t the least bit 
 swell-headed, you know, but he talks about sticking 
 with the bank just as if nobody else had any say about 
 
40 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 it just as if he was perfectly dead sure of making 
 good. And he will, too, you see!" said the friend, 
 confidently. 
 
 I said quite truthfully that it had always seemed to 
 me a formidable sort of undertaking to go and offer 
 one s self and one s services to anybody ; that I won 
 dered how any man could ever get up the courage to 
 do it. Young Mr. Gilbert heard me with gravely 
 smiling tolerance. 
 
 "Well, of course, a woman, you know ! Now be 
 tween men, it s so different," he spoke with the wisdom 
 of the ages. "But Van Kendrick why, applying for 
 the bank job, or any other job, wouldn t worry him 
 any. He went right to Mr. Gebhardt. Mr. Gebhardt 
 knows his people, anyhow; he knows Major Van 
 Cleve - " and here Robert stopped short, struck, per 
 haps, by a certain idea of which he may have seen the 
 reflection in my own face ; for, our eyes meeting, he 
 burst into a sudden guffaw of laughter. I am afraid I 
 smiled, too. It was more than a little funny to think 
 of Mr. Julius Gebhardt or any other hard-headed 
 business man being favorably influenced by knowing 
 Major Van Cleve. 
 
 "Has he been to see you yet?" the boy asked. 
 
 "Yes, but I was out. I m going to call on the ladies 
 to-day. I thought perhaps your sister might care to 
 go with me." 
 
 "I m sure she d like to very much," said Robert, 
 gallantly. "Lorrie knows them pretty well; we were 
 all summer up there at Put-in-Bay together, and she 
 used to do fancy work with them and the rest of the 
 ladies on the porch of the hotel; Lorrie and Mother 
 got to knowing the Van Cleves pretty well, lots better 
 than I do excepting Van, of course. Lorrie says he 
 isn t a bit like the others. I don t believe he is, my 
 self. Seems to me from the little I ve seen of them 
 (and Lorrie says so, too) that that old lady Van Cleve 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 41 
 
 and Mrs. Lucas and Evelyn are all of them the kind 
 that get up and run around in circles and scream if 
 they don t get their own way, or things don t go to 
 suit them. Van s not at all like that. And the Major 
 
 " he checked himself again, eying me with a dubious 
 smile that presently became another laugh. " That s 
 all bunk, you know, those stories he tells you knew 
 that, didn t you?" he said confidentially. " Isn t he 
 the prize hot-air-distributor, though?" He made a 
 metaphorical gesture. "Whoosh! And the blow it 
 most killed father ! Van knows it, of course. But 
 nobody can say anything about his uncle before him 
 - not much ! He d take your head off. It must be 
 pretty hard on him sometimes, though." 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert s entrance, patting her hair and picking 
 a stray thread or two from her dress, put a stop to 
 these confidences. Robert, as oft happens with young 
 people, was struck into dumbness and awkwardness 
 again by the parental presence ; and sat quite silent 
 and self-conscious until the end of the visit. " Won t 
 you have some peach-brandy ? You know I m one of 
 those amusing creatures, an old-fashioned housekeeper, 
 and I love to inflict my home-made stuff on people," 
 said Mrs. Gilbert, as we rose, "Oh, the decanter s 
 empty. Mercy, that s not at all like old-fashioned 
 housekeeping !" 
 
 I said elegantly that I thought that was a great tes 
 timonial to the brandy, and as I had had a taste, I 
 could easily understand why it would be hard to keep 
 the decanter filled whereat Mrs. Gilbert, who was 
 really very Virginian in her ways, at once announced 
 and insisted on it that she was going to give me some - 
 so handsome a speech must be recognized now don t 
 say a word she always had plenty a two- or three- 
 gallon jug every fall ; one can t have a little of a thing 
 like that, you know ; it was like mincemeat and pre 
 serves, it must be put up in quantities and if I really 
 
42 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and truly liked it ? She would send me over a 
 bottle that very evening Robert should bring it - 
 why, dear me, it was no trouble at all, and he would 
 be only too glad, etc. all the way to the front door 
 and down the steps ! I thought, nevertheless, that the 
 young gentleman looked rather red in the face and 
 confused and put out, at being assigned this butler s 
 errand. Mothers never will realize that their little 
 boys have grown up ! And, by the way, Bob did not 
 come over that evening with the peach-brandy, and I 
 never heard another word about it ; so maybe it had 
 given out, after all. 
 
 Summit Avenue, where the Van Cleves had estab 
 lished themselves, was in those days a quiet, plain 
 street on the edge of one of our most fashionable and 
 expensive suburbs, and quite popular, therefore, with us 
 small gentry. The row of brick houses, whereof Num 
 ber Eight was one, commanded a distant and narrow 
 prospect of the river and the Kentucky hills; and a 
 fine, large, comprehensive one of the back-yards and 
 clothes-lines of various aristocratic residences fronting 
 on the main street near by. One always remarked 
 upon how beautifully the So-and-Sos kept their grounds 
 when one called on some Summit Avenue acquaint 
 ance, and beheld, as not infrequently happened, the 
 So-and-Sos colored man washing a carriage across the 
 way, or lounging and chatting in the stable door with 
 a visiting colored gentleman (temporarily out of em 
 ployment). Number Eight, although it was of pre 
 cisely the same plan and architecture as its neighbors 
 on either hand, still contrived to appear amongst them 
 with a certain distinction, acquired, without doubt, from 
 its present tenants or so I fancied. The whole row 
 was, as a matter of fact, out of date and beginning to 
 be wofully shabby-genteel, but neither of those terms 
 could be applied to the Van Cleves, and their home 
 looked like them. A nice-looking German maid-of-all- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 43 
 
 work let me into the long, dark, narrow hall whence a 
 long, dark, narrow stairway ascended steeply to the 
 floors above. In the parlor there were charming 
 cretonne draperies, cushions, and so on ; and chairs and 
 tables which one might guess to be the solemn black 
 walnut of a few years earlier, now rendered extraordi 
 narily seemly and sprightly by a disguise of white 
 enamel paint ; there were ivory-tinted plaster casts ; 
 there were " Copley Prints" and "Braun Photographs" 
 of all the best-known classics ; there were smartly 
 colored posters framed in passe-partout ; and there 
 were, besides, all over the delicate green walls, a 
 glorious lot of water-color sketches, and chalk and 
 crayon representations of woodland scenes, old mills, 
 Italian-looking boys in costume, the Venus de Milo, 
 Phidias s or Somebody s head of Jupiter, and other 
 studies of antiquity ; and, at my elbow, an easel with 
 an oil-painting in a handsome frame of a brass kettle, 
 a tumbler, a napkin with red fringe, and a plate with a 
 banana on it admirable portraits, all of them. 
 These trophies recalled a rumor that one of the ladies 
 was " artistic," the youngest, most probably; and this 
 was presently confirmed by Mrs. Lucas and the grand 
 mother, who entered restlessly sparkling with a kind 
 of overpowering and devastating graciousness of wel 
 come; it left you stunned, tense, with the sensation 
 that something tremendous had happened or was about 
 to happen during every moment of your stay in the 
 house ! 
 
 " Yes, Evelyn my daughter Evelyn is the artist, 
 or, rather, the art student. She is studying at your 
 Paradise Park Academy," Mrs. Lucas explained. 
 "Oh, thank you for saying that ! Of course, we think 
 she has talent. Evelyn is very temperamental, all her 
 teachers have always said, and temperament is invalu 
 able!" -and in the middle of this, the young lady 
 herself came in, from an outdoor sketching class in the 
 
44 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Park in remarkably neat tramping attire with a trig 
 little folding camp-stool, portfolio, and artists et ceteras 
 under her arm. More superlatives, more graciousness, 
 more excitement ! They were indeed, as I had been 
 warned, as different as possible from the lank, sandy- 
 haired, tongue-tied youth I had met in his uncle s com 
 pany and seen going about with them, later. Young 
 Kendrick did not seem at all vivacious or ready-witted ; 
 he was a little slow, if anything ; whereas nobody could 
 have been quicker, more unsparingly enthusiastic and 
 emphatic, than these other Van Cleves. They were 
 delighted with the city, the street, the house, the people. 
 Everybody was so kind, so charming, so interesting, so 
 clever ! Wasn t All Saints an attractive church ? 
 Wasn t Mr. Bab cock a wonderfully gifted man for the 
 ministry so true, so eloquent, so sound! Wasn t Mrs. 
 Gilbert a dear, sweet woman ? Wasn t Lorrie simply a 
 precious girl ! 
 
 " Oh, you re sitting in a draught there ; do take this 
 chair ! So careless of me ; I didn t notice before ! " 
 cried Mrs. Lucas, interrupting herself with startling 
 suddenness and energy in the midst of a cataract 
 of exclamation points ; " do take this chair ! I know 
 you re not comfortable ! " 
 
 "Why, thank you I m all right there isn t any 
 draught, I think - 
 
 "Oh, yes, I know there is! Do take this chair - 
 you ll be quite safe here. And suppose you caught cold ! 
 I d never forgive myself!" says Mrs. Lucas, tragedy 
 in her voice. All at once, terror quivered in the air 
 about us ; pneumonia diphtheria tuberculosis 
 all the forms of death from taking cold menaced me ; 
 the Grim Reaper, as our newspapers love to call him, 
 was flourishing his scythe for the blow, when I averted 
 the calamity by moving to the other chair! Every 
 body breathed freely again (I trust), at least until the 
 next crisis, which occurred when the maid brought in 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 45 
 
 tea. This pretty fashion was at that time, twenty 
 years ago, somewhat novel with us ; but it was easy 
 to see that the Van Cleve ladies were well up in all the 
 latest ideas ; spirits so active and determined as theirs 
 were not likely to let anything escape them, no matter 
 how trivial. 
 
 "You take sugar?" Mrs. Lucas said commanded 
 would be the better word clamping me firmly with 
 her bright, insistent eyes ; "you take sugar, of course !" 
 
 "No, thank you, I- 
 
 "Oh, you must try sugar! This tea doesn t taste 
 nice without sugar, and I do so want you to have a nice 
 cup of tea ! Really, you ll take sugar, won t you ? I 
 know you won t like it without sugar I know you 
 won t ! Have you ever tried sugar ? You ought to, 
 really you can have no idea how it improves tea. 
 Do let me put some in now do ! I know you ll like it 
 with sugar !" 
 
 I took sugar; and tranquillity was restored. That 
 is, Mrs. Lucas did not start from her chair and begin 
 to "run around and scream," which at one moment had 
 seemed imminent. After this the call progressed with 
 out any more sensational incidents, excepting, perhaps, 
 a burst of alarm from Mrs. Lucas when it was dis 
 covered that Evelyn had gone out on the damp grass 
 of the Park it had rained twenty-four hours pre 
 viously without any overshoes ( ! ! !), and the depart 
 ure of the young lady upstairs to change her shoes and 
 stockings immediately ( \ ! !). Miss Lucas did not go 
 without some objections, which she voiced in what I 
 took to be the temperamental manner, that is, with 
 considerable sharpness and stubbornness, but she 
 yielded at last, for "Everybody always has to give 
 in to Myra. She s a natural boss," said the Major to 
 me with an indulgent laugh. He arrived on the scene 
 while the amiable little contention was going on. 
 
 "Myra is really not at all strong she s very high- 
 
46 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 strung and sensitive/ Mrs. Van Cleve also explained 
 aside ; " and of course Evelyn is all she has in the world, 
 and Evelyn isn t strong, either, so they re each one a 
 constant anxiety to the other. It s nothing but affec 
 tion and worry, you know, but it sounds so much like 
 quarrelling, I sometimes wonder what strangers think 
 of it." 
 
 "Oh, I hear what you re saying, Mother," said 
 Mrs. Lucas from behind her tea things, looking up with 
 a roguish smile that was very attractive and disarm 
 ing, somehow. She addressed me. " What they really 
 think is that Evelyn has been terribly spoiled, whenever 
 she is rebellious, and I have to insist with her. But 
 you know how it is with young people, they don t 
 know what s best for them. I tell Evelyn and Van 
 Cleve that they will both live to thank me for making 
 them mind. You ve met Van Cleve? Isn t he the 
 dearest, noblest boy?" 
 
 "That is, of course we think so," put in the grand 
 mother; suddenly her eyes filled. She had to take a 
 quick gulp of her tea to keep down her emotion. 
 
 "Van Cleve s a splendid fellow," said the Major, 
 emphatically, setting his cup on the table; "an 
 unusual young fellow, madame. Mr. Gebhardt, whom 
 I ve no doubt you know I mean Mr. Julius Gebhardt 
 the banker, your most prominent citizen, I should 
 judge - (and it is impossible to give any idea 
 in writing of the lusciousness which Major Van Cleve 
 managed to impart to this description) "paid Van 
 what we consider the very high compliment of inviting 
 him to accept a position in the National Loan and 
 Savings, of which he is the president, as you know, 
 of course. Your nephew is a striking example of 
 an old head on young shoulders, Major! Mr. 
 Gebhardt remarked to me the other day. Gebhardt 
 is himself a very original and brilliant man, a man of 
 enormous character." 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 47 
 
 " That s what makes us sure Van Cleve is going to like 
 it at the bank Mr. Gebhardt and he will be so con 
 genial," said Mrs. Lucas, with so much innocent pride, 
 one could not find it in one s heart to laugh. It was a 
 chorus of absurdly and pathetically extravagant praise. 
 Did they repeat these things to Van Cleve s face ? It 
 set one upon the thought, what kind of an atmosphere 
 was this for a young man to live and grow up in ? The 
 Kendrick boy looked sensible, and all that I had heard 
 about him so far sounded sensible ; but it would need a 
 deal of intrinsic force in any character to weather through 
 these alternate gusts of hysterical devotion and hys 
 terical tyranny, and keep its integrity to the end. It so 
 fell out that coming away, about a square from the 
 house, I encountered Van Cleve himself, striding along 
 home in the late afternoon, and whistling sturdily. 
 He recognized me, and stopped and took off his hat at 
 my salutation ; and spoke with a very nice manner, 
 about which it struck me there was less of boyishness 
 than I had noticed in him the first time yet that was 
 only a few weeks ago. He gallantly turned back to 
 escort me to the car ; and on the way, Bob Gilbert s 
 name having come up, I said that I had already under 
 stood from him that Mr. Kendrick was about to make a 
 change of business. 
 
 "Yes/ said Van Cleve, briefly. He was not nearly 
 so much of a talker as the other boy. Van, on his side, 
 had no idea of launching into talk or praise of his 
 friend, it was plain ; and, as to betraying any sort of 
 opinion about Steinberger & Hirsch, or brokers in gen 
 eral and their offices, that would be the last thing in the 
 world to enter young Mr. Kendrick s head. I remem 
 ber saying to him out of some queer impulse to ex 
 periment that Mr. Cortwright was a very nice fellow 
 to be associated with in business? And "Yes?" says 
 Van Cleve, in as non-committal a voice as my own, and 
 with a kind of polite blankness of expression. 
 
48 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 As we waited for the car, there came walking on the 
 other side of the street, Miss Lorrie Gilbert, in pretty, 
 fresh, white pique skirts crisp and cool on this warm 
 day, with a straw hat with roses on her brown head and 
 a white embroidered parasol (they had been put down 
 to one-ninety-eight, and I had seen her in the shop the 
 other day gleefully buying one of these bargains out of 
 her little, lean, careful purse) whirling and twirling 
 over her shoulder ; Miss Gilbert came walking with 
 some other girl, and they both nodded and waved to us 
 pleasantly. The other girl I saw was that newcomer 
 here, that Miss Jameson, who could be recognized from 
 afar by her bright auburn hair, and who (as the young 
 people reported) was forever attaching herself to Lorrie, 
 anyhow. Van Cleve looked after them with an interest 
 showing through the odd, unyouthful reserve of his 
 face which I fear I had not excited alas ! His light, 
 cool, slate-gray eyes brightened indefinably. 
 
 " Miss Jameson s a very pretty girl, isn t she ? " said I, 
 obligingly. 
 
 He started faintly. "Miss Jameson ? Oh, yes, she s 
 awfully pretty!" he said with almost unnecessary 
 heartiness ; and the car reaching our corner at that 
 moment, he hustled me on to it, and scurried off after 
 the young ladies, quite like the boy he really was, in 
 spite of his uncannily mature airs. He could be seen 
 to join them, out of breath and smiling, and jabbering 
 fast enough now, no doubt ! 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 CONCERNING THE GILBERTS AND SOME OTHERS 
 
 PROFESSOR SAMUEL GILBERT S name bore after it 
 on the rolls of the University teaching staff a handsome 
 train of capital letters and abbreviations signifying all 
 sorts of honors achieved at, or conferred by, a number of 
 similar institutions of learning, and forming a set of 
 decorations to which the Professor himself was never by 
 any chance known to refer. He was a plain man. He 
 occupied the Chair of Dead Languages; and might 
 be seen any morning, even the rawest, windiest, and 
 iciest, trudging off in the direction of that piece of 
 furniture, to his class rooms in the University ; plough 
 ing along with his large, square, tired, placidly humorous 
 face set towards the heights, and his large, square 
 frame clad in a loose, ill-fitting, shabby style not at all 
 in accordance with the dignity of his position and titles. 
 But who ever heard of a dapper or dressy professor? 
 Chairs of Dead Languages or what-not in the 
 colleges of this land of wealth and freedom are not noto 
 riously the best-paid of offices ; educators as well as 
 education ought to come cheap from our splendidly 
 democratic point of view. And it is possible that Sam 
 uel Gilbert, with his head full of hard-won Greek, Latin, 
 and Sanskrit, with his capital letters and his scholastic 
 eminence, walked through rain and shine to economize 
 on carfare, and slaved away the long, hot days of sum 
 mer school to pay last winter s coal bill, and wore his 
 dingy old overcoat and those monstrous, clumsy brogans 
 which furnished his classes so much amusement, be- 
 E 49 
 
50 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 cause he could not very often afford to change them. 
 For the matter of that, few of his brother-professors 
 were in much better case. There was Weimer (Meta 
 physics), who kept his wife and two children in Diissel- 
 dorf over in Germany, on half of what it would have cost 
 him here, and who hoped, by saving up most of the 
 other half, to be able to visit them, in two or three 
 years. There were Burdette (Political Science) and 
 Stoller (Mathematics), lucky bachelors who roomed 
 together, thereby reducing expenses incredibly. There 
 was Livingstone (Chemistry), engaged for the last twelve 
 years, and waiting till he should get up to a salary of 
 two thousand for the wedding. No, Professor Gilbert 
 was by no means an isolated instance. 
 
 As to Mrs. and Miss Gilbert they were a mother and 
 daughter of a type much more familiar among our 
 American women than the critics would have us believe 
 - active, helpful, and good-tempered, even though 
 they had to trim Mrs. Gilbert s bonnets, and make over 
 Lome s party dresses, and clean their own gloves, and 
 go on foot to teas, and skimp and manage daily in a 
 thousand ways which are supposed by most social 
 observers to be unknown to, or disregarded by, our en 
 tire feminine population. This unfortunate country 
 is wholly given over to a set of idle, pampered females 
 without head or heart, devoured by mean, fashionable 
 ambitions, who waste their time, and neglect their 
 homes, and ruin their husbands. We know it because 
 we read it in every novel, we see it on every stage, we 
 have it shouted at us from hundreds of pulpits, amateur 
 and professional. The astonishing thing is that you 
 and I don t know any of these wretched creatures, as 
 numerous as they are ! All the women of our acquaint 
 ance are good wives, sisters, mothers, daughters ; if 
 we saw one that had ruined her husband, we would 
 stare as at the dodo ! And unbelievable as it sounds, 
 we are certain that there exists a very large section of 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 51 
 
 American society which positively doesn t care a thing 
 in the world about whether its members are rich or 
 poor, or how or where they live, provided it finds them 
 upright and intelligent and well-bred ! 
 
 The Gilberts, of course, had to live very simply and 
 unfashionably in the little old house on Warwick Lane ; 
 but this fact strangely enough, as has been intimated 
 - did not appreciably interfere with their being invited 
 everywhere, and knowing everybody. The winter 
 Lorrie was nineteen, for instance, the first winter she 
 was "out," there could be no question of a debutante 
 ball or tea or dinner dance, such as the other girls in her 
 set were treated to, as an introduction to society. Nev 
 ertheless, Lorrie went "out"; she poured at the re 
 ceptions, she danced at all the germans, she went to 
 the Charity Ball for the Training-school for Nurses; 
 she was seen constantly in her little, cheap frocks 
 one white embroidered net worn over a pink or blue 
 China silk slip, turn about amongst all the gauze 
 and lace and satin plumage, apparently having as good a 
 time as anybody, with her pretty, waving brown hair, 
 and her bright eyes and cheeks. Sometimes it was 
 Mrs. Gilbert chaperoning her daughter, in her old black 
 grenadine with the jet passementerie down the front ; 
 sometimes the Professor himself might be noticed wait 
 ing patiently about in corners, with a vague, resigned 
 look, absently polite as if he might be inwardly con 
 jugating a Semitic verb while he answered your remarks 
 about the weather. His dress-coat was the same he 
 had worn at the commencement ball when he graduated 
 from Dartborough Institute, Virginia Samuel Gil 
 bert, 68. By what his wife regarded as a special dis 
 pensation of Providence, Samuel never outgrew that 
 coat ; in middle life he retained the spare, angular, and 
 bony figure of his youth. 
 
 There were only the two children Lorrie, who was 
 the elder by a year and a half, and Robert. Perhaps 
 
52 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 their mother, in her secret heart, considered the small- 
 ness of the family another dispensation. Mrs. Gilbert 
 was a devout Episcopalian, and would have taken un 
 complainingly whatever it pleased her God to send; 
 but He Himself knew that their income had always 
 been a tight fit, and was getting tighter as the 
 cost of living advanced, and the children grew up. 
 Lorrie, indeed, for all her spirits and girlish delight in 
 society, and that spice of coquetry from which, sad to 
 relate, more than one young man had already suffered - 
 Lorrie was, after all, a generous, right-minded sort of 
 young woman, and had wanted very much at one time 
 to study shorthand and go into an office, by way of 
 lightening the family burdens. It was a sane and prac 
 tical idea; but the Virginia-born father and mother 
 could not bring themselves to accept it favorably to 
 accept it at all. Their particular generation did not 
 easily emancipate itself from the traditions of their 
 particular State. Even when the point came up of send 
 ing Bob to college, which, plan as economically as they 
 might, would strain them to the last notch, Professor 
 Gilbert would not listen to his daughter s proposal. 
 
 " Robert must have his education. But better let 
 him go without than sacrifice one child to the other, 77 
 said the father. And then he added, unconsciously 
 betraying a much stronger feeling, "It s a poor apology 
 for a man who can t take enough care of the women of 
 his family to keep them out of offices, I have always 
 thought." 
 
 "Father, you re hopelessly archaic, and antediluvian, 
 and behind the times, and out of date ! " said Lorrie, and 
 laughed and kissed him bet ween her adjectives. "You re 
 primeval, and Probably Arboreal - 
 
 "father s just right! " cried Bob, stoutly. "It would 
 be just the same as my taking your money that you d 
 worked hard for, and going off to have a good time with 
 it, Lorrie. I think I see myself !" 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 53 
 
 " You re not going to college just for a good time, 
 Robert; remember that!" said the Professor, a little 
 anxiously. But Bob, who was always prone to san 
 guine and brilliant dreaming, had already begun to 
 explain eagerly what he meant to do. 
 
 " As soon as I m through it s only four years, any 
 how I m going to get out and hustle, you ll see ! I 
 mean to make money I mean to take care of you all. 
 I won t have Father and Lorrie and you, Mums, work 
 ing around and scratching and saving the way you do 
 now. You just wait !" he declaimed, striding up and 
 down, with sweeping gestures, his hair tumbled, his 
 young face aglow. Mrs. Gilbert watched him, in 
 finitely proud and tender. Of course he was very 
 young and self-confident and boastful, but his ideals 
 were high they were clean, they were true, thought 
 the mother. If your young men have not the vision, 
 the country perisheth; but her Robert had it, she 
 was sure. 
 
 Professor Gilbert, on the other hand, lacking the 
 maternal insight, had had his moments of doubt 
 and perplexity, and angrily hushed misgivings, about 
 his son, before this ; and they crowded thickly upon 
 him now. The college they had selected was an in 
 genuous coeducational establishment situated on a 
 classically named body of water not far from a simi 
 larly classically named town in the State of New York. 
 Some notion that the youth would be better away from 
 home during this part of his schooling, or that the 
 foreign atmosphere would have a stimulating effect 
 on him, moved the elder Gilbert to send Robert these 
 four or five hundred miles instead of entering him at 
 the University alongside the paternal Chair. Was it 
 possible that the father, in his heart, feared his own lack 
 of control over his son, or his too easy clemency ? 
 The truth is, that to Samuel, the breath of whose nostrils 
 was study, labor, the conquest of difficulties, Robert 
 
54 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 offered a painful and disheartening enigma; with all 
 his experience of youth, the Professor found himself 
 unable to solve it. Bob was not a dull boy, nor a bad 
 boy, nor a lazy boy ; he was simply and incurably boy. 
 He could have yawned his head off over the Dead 
 Languages ; all the poetry of both ancient and modern 
 worlds left him cold ; he cared no more to read history 
 than to read his mother s cook-book; he kicked his 
 feet and stared out of window in the class at mathe 
 matics. With all this, Robert, to the slightly bewildered 
 relief of his parents, made no such poor appearance in 
 their world, being not in the least uncouth, nor, on the 
 surface, at any rate, ignorant. The young fellow was 
 ready enough in talk, gay, mannerly, and agreeable ; 
 nobody ever took a joke better, or was more amiably 
 amused at his own blunders. " Never mind, Dad," 
 he used to say, buoyantly, throwing an arm around 
 his father s shoulders, stooped over the desk; "I can t 
 construe worth a cent, and if a hen-and-a-half laid an 
 egg-and-a-half in a day-and-a-half, I don t know what 
 the sum would be, and whether old King Cole signed 
 the Bill of Thingummys in the year Twelve hundred- 
 and-go-to-sleep or not, you can t prove it by me. But 
 never mind ! I m going to make good, anyhow. I m 
 going to come out even. You ll see!" And after a 
 serious lecture from the Professor to which the lad 
 always listened dutifully and respectfully he would 
 go off to skate, to play ball, to lounge and read a novel, 
 to smoke a cigarette and try a game of pool at the estab 
 lishment of some dubious Mike or Pat (alack ! alas !), 
 to join some party of young people at the Zoo, or the 
 Canoe Club to do anything under the shining sun, 
 except his work. "I can t understand it!" Professor 
 Gilbert would complain to his wife in their worried 
 private moments; "Bob looks and talks like a gentle 
 man s son I never caught him in a lie in my life 
 yet he doesn t seem to have the faintest idea of per- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 55 
 
 sonal responsibility. And he can t add, and spells 
 judgment with an e !" 
 
 By what despairing labors, or what shrinking use of 
 his own name and influence, the elder Gilbert got his 
 son through the entrance examinations at Eureka 
 College, one can only guess ; possibly the standards 
 of that institution were not mercilessly high. Robert 
 went off in fine feather ; erelong letters came back 
 brimful of zest for the new life. Such fun ! He had 
 been initiated into the B. K. E. everybody belonged 
 to a fraternity, you know you had to belong to a 
 fraternity why, if you didn t, you weren t in any 
 thing, and couldn t have any good times at all. He 
 would have felt awfully if he hadn t been invited to 
 join ; but two or three different frats had come 
 after him. It sounded big-headed for him to say 
 that ; but you couldn t help being glad the fellows 
 liked you, you know. He liked them all ; they were 
 splendid fellows, every one of them. He was learning 
 to box; pretty nearly everybody boxed or did some 
 kind of athletic stunt ; he was going to save up and buy 
 a pair of boxing-gloves. He had wanted to try for 
 the team the track team, you know he found 
 he wasn t heavy enough for foot-ball or the crew; he 
 believed he would go in for the short-distance, say the 
 hundred-yard-dash, or perhaps hurdles ; several of 
 the men had advised him to. He could get on the Glee 
 or Mandolin Club, too, lots of the fellows had told him ; 
 only he didn t like to be borrowing some other fellow s 
 banjo all the time, so he couldn t get very much practice, 
 but he meant to save up and buy one for himself. 
 "It would be great if I could go on tour with the club 
 during the holidays, wouldn t it?" he wrote excitedly. 
 "They have the time of their lives. Every town they 
 go to there re always either some Eureka men, or some 
 belonging to the same frats, and they can t do enough 
 for you. It looks just now as if the expense would 
 
56 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 kind of oversize me, but I think maybe I can make it 
 yet, by saving here and there you watch little Robbie, 
 the Wonder of Eureka College, in his Peerless Per 
 formance of Piling up the Scads!" . . . " There s 
 a man in the Glee Club that s a special friend of mine, 
 though he s a good deal older, about twenty-four, I 
 think, and I m such a kid. That s what they all call 
 me, you know, Kid Gilbert. I think I told you about 
 him before ; it s Phil Cortwright, the same fellow that 
 was so nice about telling me about rooms, and the right 
 sort of fellows to know, and all that, when I first got 
 here. He was the one that got me into the B. K. E. 
 He comes from Paris, Kentucky, and I believe his people 
 are in the whiskey business, or race-horses, but you 
 know they don t think anything of that down there - 
 I mean they think it s all right and perfectly gentle 
 manly. Anyhow, Phil s a cracker jack fellow, and if 
 the Glee Club comes to Cinti., I want to make it 
 pleasant for him. I d like to have him stay at the house 
 if we can. It won t be any trouble, you know, because 
 we ll be out all the time. Tell Lorrie to stir up the 
 girls, so he ll be invited places. I bet they ll all like 
 him; Cort s a good deal of a fusser, and an awfully 
 clean-cut, good-looking fellow, and dances like a dream, 
 all the girls here say. ..." And the letter ended 
 with dear old Dad and Mums, he wasn t doing any 
 great things in class, just sort of tailing along with the 
 rest, but don t worry, he d make it up before the end 
 of the year. 
 
 "Stir up the girls ! Goodness, they don t need much 
 stirring up about a man. Everybody s saying there 
 aren t half enough men to go around, this winter," 
 Lorrie commented, on hearing her brother s commands ; 
 " shoals of girls coming out Leila Dennison and I 
 were counting up the other day, and there re eighteen. 
 But last year there were only ten, and everywhere 
 you went there were always about forty girls to one 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 57 
 
 man, so the debutantes don t seem to make much 
 difference. What s Bob s friend s name?" And that 
 afternoon when Mrs. Gebhardt and Nathalie called 
 for Lorrie, in the elegant Gebhardt equipage, bay 
 horses, dark green liveries, and all the rest of it, Mrs. 
 Gilbert overheard Lorrie as she put on her things 
 swiftly expounding to the other girl, perched on the 
 bed: ". . . No, he s older than Bob. I like the men 
 to be old, don t you ? Bob seems to think he s awfully 
 nice. Maybe some of the girls across the river know 
 him ; anyhow, he s from Kentucky I ll ask some of 
 them. Bob says he s good-looking but you can t 
 tell, men s ideas of good-looking are so funny. And 
 Bob says he s a wait a minute, I ll have to look at 
 the letter again Cort s a good deal of a fusser - 
 do you suppose that s the latest for spoony? I d hate 
 that! . . . Oh, Nat, isn t this fashion of separate 
 waists to wear with a black skirt the grandest thing 
 that ever happened ? I ve made up all of my old stuff 
 in waists, and one skirt does for them all ! Oh, I know 
 it doesn t seem so wonderful to you, but 7 can t have 
 tons of clothes," they went chattering down the stairs. 
 
 Perhaps Robert had laid out his plans on too large 
 a scale, or had not had leisure enough for even a single 
 one of the things he meant to accomplish ; at any rate, 
 when he came home for the holidays at the mid-year, 
 he was not yet a member of any of the organizations 
 for which he had proposed to qualify, and was still 
 occupying the not at all exalted position in class which 
 he had described. After all, however, as the young 
 fellow argued good-naturedly, there was plenty of 
 time; Dad knew that he wasn t any highbrow, Dad 
 didn t expect himtos/mie; he would come out about 
 even with the run of em in the end ; he was as good as 
 the average. So why be a grind ? 
 
 Why, indeed ? The town was full of young college 
 
58 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 men ; you saw the fresh faces, you heard the rough 
 music of the boys voices at every turn goodly sights 
 and sounds. It was not a moment for sermonizing; 
 everybody wanted them to have a good time, every 
 body was bent on giving them a good time. In the 
 middle of the festivities, the Eureka Mandolin and Glee 
 Club arrived on their "tour" - Rah, rah, RAH! 
 U-ree-KAH ! etc. Bob rushed down to the train 
 and bore the much-heralded Cortwright home in 
 triumph; not home at once, to be sure, for they had 
 to stop at "The Mecca" to have a high-ball, and stop 
 at Smith s to pick out some neckties, and stop at Andy s 
 for a game of pool, and attend to a dozen and one mat 
 ters of like importance before finally taking the Elm- 
 hill car. It was a cold and sunny winter day at about 
 that hour of the afternoon when any number of 
 carriages were hurrying to and from luncheons, mat 
 inee parties, receptions, and what-not. They sped 
 by with clouds of picture hats, furs, and white gloves, 
 extraordinarily warm-looking and radiant. And no 
 doubt it secretly pleased Mr. Robert Gilbert not a 
 little as the two young men strode along, to be con 
 stantly taking off his hat in response to smiling salutes 
 from all these rich and dainty cargoes. Rob was no 
 snob, but hang it, a man can t help taking a pride in 
 his own people, you know, and he liked to show them 
 off to Corty ! The latter young gentleman preserved 
 a kind of appreciative immobility; he was twenty- 
 four and a man of the world, who had seen something 
 of life, and ahem ! of women. Nevertheless, he 
 was not above glancing into a mirror in the drug-store 
 window as they passed and noting anxiously that his 
 overcoat set without a wrinkle. He was tall, slim, 
 straight, and straight-featured, a satisfying example - 
 according to his own ideas of the type that a certain 
 eminent artist in black-and-white was just then busily 
 bringing into vogue. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 59 
 
 " Hello, there s Lorrie now!" said Bob, suddenly. 
 Another carriage had gone by. Bob looked after it. 
 " Somebody s taking her somewhere," he said ex 
 planatorily; " Lome s generally on the dead jump." 
 
 They resumed their walk. l The one with the auburn 
 hair is that your sister ?" 
 
 "No that wasn t Lorrie; her hair s brown, and 
 she s always got it kind of loose and wavy. Lorrie 
 has beautiful hair. No, that red-headed one is a Miss 
 Jameson. I don t know whether she s come here to 
 live, or only visiting one of the girls. You ll meet em 
 all at this dinner of the Gebhardts to-night, and the 
 other places, you know." 
 
 "Gebhardt? That s a kind of German-sounding 
 name. You have lots of Germans here, haven t you ?" 
 Cortwright said fastidiously. 
 
 "Yes. The Gebhardts are American-born, though; 
 they re just as American as you or I ; Mr. Gebhardt s 
 at the head of a bank here. They ve got a beautiful 
 place out on Adams Road." 
 
 "Money to burn, I suppose?" 
 
 "Yes, I guess so oh, of course they must have," 
 said Bob, vaguely. It had never occurred to him to 
 notice ; he was not interested in the Gebhardt s finan 
 cial status, nor, in fact, in anybody s. Young Cort 
 wright was of a much more practical turn ; he viewed 
 with a more or less appraising eye the carriages and 
 girls Bob pointed out to him, and the handsome, sober, 
 rather old-style residences which at that date decorated 
 our hilltop suburbs. "You know I m expecting to 
 go into business here or in Chicago wherever there s 
 the best opening, of course," he confided sagely to his 
 junior; "but wherever it is, I m going to know the 
 moneyed crowd, you bet. It s the only way to get 
 along." 
 
 "Well, that lets me out, if you ever settle down here. 
 You won t know me /" said Bob, with his ready laugh. 
 
60 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 And the other, after an instant of confusion, laughed 
 too, and clapped him a staggering blow on the back. 
 "You are a kid, Gil./ he said. 
 
 This last conversation took place in Bob s bedroom 
 (the one at the back over the kitchen, a shabby and 
 homely little room like all the rest of the shabby, 
 homely, dignified house) while they were dressing for 
 the dinner; and as Cortwright, having finished first, 
 went downstairs, he repeated to himself that Gilbert 
 was a kid, but a good sort for all that, and a regular 
 little Who s- Who-in-Society ; anybody could see the 
 family weren t just what you d call rolling in coin, but 
 that didn t count so much after all, outside of New 
 York ; the old Professor was a nice old mossback ; and 
 Bob s mother reminded Philip of his own, who had died 
 when he was a little fellow the young man, for all 
 his ingrained worldliness, thought of her with a mo 
 mentary flush of sentiment that did him credit. He had 
 not yet met the sister that the Kid was always bragging 
 about and upon this Mr. Cortwright, straightening 
 his fine, square shoulders, and feeling for the final time 
 to see that his white tie was accurately in place, passed 
 into the living-room, whence he had already heard cer 
 tain girlish sounds. 
 
 A young lady dressed, or, one might say, overdressed, 
 in a delicately elaborate evening toilet of Nile green 
 chiffon, covered with beaded embroidery, fairylike lace 
 festoons and knots of ribbons, who had been sitting 
 in the low chair by the hearth, jumped up with a faint 
 scream at sight of him. Never was fright more over 
 whelming considering the very slight occasion for 
 it or more prettily displayed. She clasped her slim 
 hands together, and gazed at him with wide eyes of the 
 most beautiful deep and clear violet blue ever seen. 
 "Startled fawn style!" said Philip to himself, know 
 ingly; he had not gained that reputation of being an 
 expert and successful "fusser" without practice. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 61 
 
 "What stunning red hair! But I thought Bob said 
 the red-headed one wasn t his sister/ went through his 
 mind as he delivered a glance nicely compounded of 
 admiration and apology, and began, "Miss Gilbert ? " 
 
 "Oh, no, indeed, I m not Lorrie," interrupted the fawn, 
 still in a charming flutter ; she dropped her eyes before 
 the young man s, which, to tell the truth, were suffi 
 ciently bold, and fidgeted with her frills and laces. 
 " I m it s I m Miss Jameson I came over to go 
 with Lorrie to-night, you know I didn t expect to 
 see any strangers - 
 
 "You didn t, hey? Come off!" thought the experi 
 enced Philip, sceptically, though the lovely shell-pink 
 of her cheeks had not altered, and the blue eyes were 
 quite childishly candid and open as she faced him with 
 this statement. "I startled you bolting in this way? 
 I m awfully sorry," he said, and once more allowed his 
 gaze to wander appreciatively over her a gaze which 
 Miss Jameson apparently did not in the least resent, 
 although she could scarcely fail to be conscious of it. 
 "I ll have to introduce myself, if you don t mind. I m 
 Bob s friend, Cortwright you may have heard 
 him- 
 
 "Oh, Mr. Cortwright! oh, of course! Why, I 
 didn t know you were here yet ! They weren t ex 
 pecting you to-day, were they? When did your train 
 get in?" And with these guileless inquiries, Miss 
 Jameson reseated herself, turning her head so that her 
 profile, exact and finished as a cameo, was exhibited to 
 him in full relief against the dark and dingy old iron 
 mantelpiece. Cortwright, who himself possessed a 
 good figure and no small talent for posing, forgot all 
 his own tactics to stare at her unrestrained ; he had 
 never seen so entirely pretty a woman. No wonder 
 she liked to show herself off, he thought ; she was 
 pretty all over; the calculated grace of her attitude 
 brought out sweet, exquisite curves and outlines of a 
 
62 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 yielding suggestion that set the young man s senses 
 tingling. He did not rebuke himself, not being, per 
 haps, particularly conscientious on that score, and feel 
 ing, moreover, a cynical suspicion that she was fully 
 aware of this powerful feminine appeal counted con 
 fidently on it wielded it as a familiar tool. He knew 
 something about women, and he had met her sort be 
 fore ! Their eyes met. Cortwright, with a spectacu 
 lar haste, lowered his to her foot an enticing foot 
 in a high-heeled satin slipper and all but transparent 
 Nile green stocking. 
 
 Why, we got in in the afternoon a little late on 
 account of the snow in the mountains, you know," he 
 said, answering her last remark elaborately. 
 
 "Oh." 
 
 There was another silence ; then another interchange 
 of glances. Cortwright began to feel uneasily that the 
 scene ran some risk of becoming ridiculous. She 
 couldn t expect him to start holding hands, or teasing 
 for a kiss right off ? That would be a bit too strong, 
 although, to be sure, there are girls but not in a 
 house like this among this kind of people 
 
 "It s awfully cold, isn t it ?" said Miss Jameson. 
 
 "Yes, but I like it, don t you ? So bracing ! " 
 
 "Yes, it is bracing." Again the conversation halted. 
 The young lady appeared to have an exceedingly shal 
 low run of small talk ; yet she was anything but bashful. 
 She wore her unusually low-necked ball gown, and 
 languidly uncovered her round, tapering ankles, with 
 an air of complete self-possession. Cortwright looked 
 and looked with a kind of luxuriance. "I like summer 
 better than winter," said Miss Jameson, playing with 
 an elegant trifle of a fan she carried on a slender chain 
 threaded with pearls that hung and swung below her 
 knees. "It s so much warmer." 
 
 "Gets almost too hot, though, in this locality some 
 times." 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 63 
 
 "Yes, it does, doesn t it ?" She looked at him under 
 and through her long, thick lashes this time ; and this 
 time Mr. Philip gazed back at her ardently, not think 
 ing it worth the trouble to go through his former 
 pantomime. This was what she was after ; and he had 
 always found it worked well to meet them halfway, he 
 said to himself. She was as softly accommodating 
 as a cushion ; and it sufficed for her that he was male. 
 But in another moment this most promising flirtation 
 was all off in Philip s own phrase because Bob 
 came breezing downstairs into the parlor; and after 
 him Miss Gilbert, who turned out to be no such beauty 
 as the other girl, though she was nice-looking enough, 
 and who gave him a firm little hand, and looked at him 
 out of a pair of straight and steady brown eyes, with a 
 frankness and simplicity which were on the whole rather 
 refreshing. 
 
 " We re so glad to have you here, Mr. Cortwright. 
 It s so nice to know Bob s friends," Lorrie said sincerely. 
 "We drove past you and Bob, this afternoon did 
 you see us? There wasn t time to stop and speak," 
 she added innocently. And Cortwright, glancing swiftly 
 into Miss Jameson s face, experienced a not unnatural 
 glow of conceit, as he knelt down to put on the latter s 
 furry party boots. Well, he was a fine-looking fellow ; 
 she wasn t the first woman that had found it out, and 
 made an opportunity to meet him ! 
 
 Then they all bundled off to the Gebhardts dinner 
 dance, and the ensuing "whirl of gayety, " as the 
 Society Jottings column in the Sunday supplement 
 described it. There were so many girls and such 
 pretty ones, and so much good eating and drinking, and 
 so fine a dancing floor that Cortwright lost sight of 
 Miss Jameson after the first two-step. He hardly had 
 time for any one girl in particular. At this party and 
 at others, to Bob s immense pride and delight (he was 
 so unreservedly proud and delighted, in fact, that the 
 
64 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 older man was at times a little annoyed and almost 
 made ashamed by it), Corty made a highly successful 
 impression in their society. He was undeniably hand 
 some, he dressed well, he could talk, he could dance, 
 he could rattle off any amount of ragtime on the piano, 
 and whistle and sing all the latest " coon songs " and airs 
 from the popular operas. The men liked him; he 
 spent freely, and was an all-around good fellow, they 
 voted. It was with a real reluctance that the young 
 people saw him go when his time was up ; and his last 
 act on the day of his departure, after the Wattersons 
 breakfast at the Country Club, was to entertain a dozen 
 or so of his youthful hosts and hostesses at the vaude 
 ville performance they were having that winter down at 
 the old Pickrell Opera House. I grieve to state that 
 the party under Mr. Cortwright s leadership behaved 
 with regrettable indecorum, notably when Mdlle. 
 Patrice came on for her serpentine dance and the cal 
 cium-light machine in the gallery threw an illuminated 
 picture of the United States flag accompanied by the 
 legend La Libertad de Cuba all over her and her gauze 
 draperies as she serpentined about the stage, a spectacle 
 they singled out to welcome with applause fit to raise 
 the roof. The " Libertad" of this island was some 
 thing everybody was hearing a good deal about in those 
 days. 
 
 Miss Jameson was not one of the guests on this occa 
 sion ; as it happened, Cortwright had seen her only once 
 or twice after that initial party. He divined that, for 
 some reason, she was not always welcome everywhere in 
 Lome s set, but was far too wise to ask why. For all 
 that, Philip did not forget her, and therefore pricked 
 his ears one day at a fragment of talk concerning the 
 young lady between Bob and his sister. "Say, Lorrie, 
 who is this new skirt, anyhow ?" the brother demanded 
 inelegantly; "I don t remember ever to have met her 
 before, and yet they say she lives here, and she talks as 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 65 
 
 if she always had. You know who I mean Miss 
 Jameson your friend Paula. She said she wouldn t 
 mind if I called her that kind of floored me for a 
 minute. I hadn t asked to, you know. 77 
 
 11 Why, yes, you do know her, too, Bob. We all went 
 to kindergarten together to Miss Banning when we 
 were little don t you remember ? You ought to 
 know Paula Jameson perfectly well." 
 
 "Well, I don t hold on ! I believe I do, too. She 
 must have been the little girl with the flossy sort of 
 clothes that always had whole boxes of chewing-gum 
 in her desk oh, yes, I know now. But where s she 
 been all the while in between ? Nobody seems to know 
 her much nowadays. When I asked some of the girls 
 the other day, they all rather sniffed, and said she was 
 hanging on to you, and trying to get in. Leila said : 
 Well, if I was Lorrie, I d let her go. If a girl has 
 lived here all her life, and by the time she s nineteen 
 nobody knows her, why, there s no use anybody else 
 trying to push her. That kind of missionary work 
 doesn t pay. Aren t girls just the sweetest things to 
 each other, Cort?" 
 
 "Oh, don t talk like that, Bob/ said Lorrie, a little 
 troubled ; "Leila doesn t really mean all that, you know. 
 There s nothing the matter with Paula, only well, 
 her mother has never gone out here and doesn t know 
 many people, and that makes it hard for Paula, you 
 see. And then living in hotels and boarding-houses all 
 the time must be horrid ; nobody lives in a hotel, here 
 nobody. I think poor Paula has a hard time." 
 
 "Why, she dresses out of sight, doesn t she ? That s 
 what all the girls say. I guess she s too pretty that s 
 what s the matter," said Robert, shaking his head pro 
 foundly. 
 
 u You know better, Bob Gilbert you re just teas 
 ing - 
 
 "Is Miss Jameson so pretty?" said Cortwright, in a 
 
66 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tone of slight surprise. He thought it diplomatic never 
 to express admiration for one girl to another girl. "It 
 seemed to me she lacked animation a little. Didn t 
 talk much, you know." 
 
 "She doesn t need to talk she can just look" said 
 Bob. "Why, yes, Cort, she s a stunning beauty. 
 Funny you haven t noticed it. Don t I tell you that s 
 the reason all the girls are so down on her? Wow, 
 look out for Lorrie !" He riotously dodged an imagi 
 nary thunderbolt ; and Mrs. Gilbert came mildly in to 
 see what all the noise was about. 
 
 The visit, the holidays, came to an end ; all the young 
 people vanished in a twinkling, Cinderella-fashion, when 
 the tocsin sounded ; no more tearing off from luncheon 
 to card-party, from card-party to dinner, from dinner 
 to cotillion, no more coming in at four o clock in the 
 morning, and yawning down to breakfast at noon. 
 Bob s father and mother felt with a formless disquiet 
 that they had scarcely seen the boy at all ; there had 
 been no time for the long, intimate, kind talks they 
 had planned, not one quiet evening, not one meal in 
 private. Perhaps a tear or two fell and damaged 
 Robert s shirts as Mrs. Gilbert folded them into the 
 trunk ; it had all been so hurried and noisy and hilari 
 ous too hilarious that night while that young Mr. 
 Cortwright was here, and the boys had come home at 
 dawn, and the cabman came up the steps with them, 
 and Samuel himself had to go down and let them in 
 the mother thought of that night with shrinking. Young 
 men must be young men, of course, but she got up 
 suddenly from the midst of the clothes strewed all 
 about, and went and took from her desk a tintype of 
 Robert when he was four years old, in his first funny 
 little breeches, with a top in his hand, and stood looking 
 at it a long while. He had been her little boy then - 
 all hers. Mrs. Gilbert put the picture down with a sigh, 
 and went back to her packing. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 67 
 
 Bob did actually get through his Freshman year and 
 pass the examinations without serious mishap, somehow 
 or other ; and returned to Eureka the next fall, a Sopho 
 more, as exuberantly sanguine and care-free as ever. 
 His letters, which were not so regular as they had been, 
 and very much briefer, now began to be filled with a 
 disconcerting variety of schemes and dreams relating 
 to his career upon leaving college vast fortunes he 
 would acquire by manoeuvres based upon all sorts of 
 airy possibilities. His friend Cortwright, it seemed, had 
 already finished, and was now entering upon brokerage 
 and insurance in his home town. Cort was a fine busi 
 ness man splendid a hustler always right on 
 the spot and such a good sport, too. Bob guessed 
 he was making a lot of money ; if Dad only had a little 
 loose money, Cort could double it for him on the stock 
 market, Bob was sure. You see Corty always had 
 inside information, that made it perfectly safe ; and, 
 besides, he was pretty sharp ; it took somebody pretty 
 sharp. Robert didn t believe Phil would stay in Paris 
 long ; he was already talking of moving to some bigger 
 place and maybe would come to Gin. Wouldn t that 
 be bully ! There was more in the same strain over 
 which the parents exchanged worried glances. It was 
 different from all that wholesome chatter about frats 
 and athletics ; the boy talked too much about money ; 
 what was all this jargon of " fliers" and "sure things" ? 
 And as for classes ! Professor Gilbert girded himself 
 up, and wrote a letter sternly reminding Robert of his 
 age, his duties, the value of his time and education ; and 
 suffered tortures of anxiety and self-reproach during 
 the weeks that went by before any answer came. Have 
 I hopelessly antagonized him?" thought poor Samuel, 
 wretchedly ; " why didn t I let him alone ? But I said 
 nothing but what I ve said over and over again, and 
 Bob never got hurt, or angry, or sulky at it. Something 
 else must have happened. I know Bob s all right 
 
68 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 but you can t tell anything about boys." Daily and 
 hourly these contradictory formulas chased each other 
 through the unlucky father s mind ; he could not share 
 this trouble with his wife ; he scarcely dared face her 
 across the table, where she sat with eyes as clouded as 
 his own. How many fathers and mothers have known 
 this pitifully small tragedy this bootless fright and 
 care ! All for the sake of some selfish lout of a boy who 
 forgets or neglects to write them a letter now and then ! 
 - as superior-minded or childless people will remark 
 with amusement and disdain. 
 
 In the end, Lorrie, who had a certain affectionate 
 understanding of her brother s character, though her 
 own was so different, was visited by an intuition on 
 which she acted in her usual prompt and direct fashion. 
 11 Dearest Bobs, I m afraid you are bothered about your 
 allowance," she wrote. "I don t see how you get 
 along on it, because you must have to do certain things, 
 you can t get out of doing them ; and you haven t got 
 much to do with. I should think even with the greatest 
 care, you d get behind sometimes ; and then it s always 
 so hard to get straight again " and so on without a 
 word about duty and ambition and self-sacrifice, which 
 indeed were subjects Lorrie would have considered alto 
 gether too lofty for her. She got a reply by return post 
 full of bad spelling and contrition and confession and 
 promises of amendment in Bob s big, loose scrawl, the 
 pages decorated with one or two blobs and smears which 
 looked as if Master Robert, in spite of his sex and his 
 twenty years, had had to wipe his eyes at times over this 
 composition. The lad was really honest, really loving. 
 Yes, he acknowledged, he had "got in bad" ; he couldn t 
 tell Dad ; Dad never could see things his way. But 
 it was like her to guess it. She always understood, 
 somehow ; there wasn t anybody like her no fellow 
 ever had such a sister. Would she tell Dad and Mums 
 for him now ? He hoped he could get through without 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 69 
 
 asking them for any more money ; they were so good, 
 and scraped and pinched and stinted themselves to give 
 him what they did, and his allowance would have been 
 plenty enough for anybody but a fool, and he wasn t 
 worth what they did for him. His friend Cortwright 
 was going to fix up some kind of a loan for him (Phil 
 was in that business, you know), get him some money 
 so he could pay the fellows and the other people he owed, 
 that is ; and afterwards Bob could pay the loan off by 
 degrees, and he guessed it would be all right. Cort 
 wright was an awfully good fellow. But Bob couldn t 
 make the exams this year he was way behind - 
 would Lorrie tell Father that, too ? And he was going 
 to take a brace from this minute right on he wasn t 
 going to have anything like this happen again just 
 give him a chance, and he d prove it he was going to 
 get even, you see ! 
 
 It is a sorry task to write or read of these years of 
 Robert s a sorry and a wearisome one to rehearse the 
 schedule of failure and disappointment and folly let 
 us leave it ! In the middle of his third term (by which 
 time Professor Gilbert was perceptibly grayer and more 
 stooped, and his wife looked ten years older) the young 
 man came home. One of the first persons he fell in with 
 was Van Cleve Kendrick, who must have been scrub 
 bing along in the shoe factory, the distillery, Heaven 
 knows where, all this while, and acquiring experience 
 of a very different order from Robert s. Cortwright 
 was here, too, with Steinberger & Hirsch down on Third 
 Street. And I suppose that meeting reported in the 
 opening chapter must have taken place somewhere 
 about this date 92, or was it 93 ? How time flies ! 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MAN OF THE HOUSE 
 
 MR. GEBHARDT of the National Loan and Savings 
 Bank had first come into contact with the Van Cleve 
 family on the occasion of one of their numerous transfers 
 of property, or some other of those varied financial 
 operations in which they were almost constantly engaged 
 before young Kendrick put his unwelcome hand to the 
 helm. As the banker was a busy man, daily attending 
 to a great many affairs and seeing a great many people, 
 it was rather odd that he should still retain, in common 
 with everybody else who had ever met them, a distinct, 
 even vivid, recollection of every member of the family ; 
 but so he did, and he had no difficulty in "placing" 
 Van Cleve when the latter came hunting for a job. The 
 young man, who made this move, as he had made every 
 other that directly concerned himself, without informing 
 his people, much less consulting them, approached Mr. 
 Gebhardt quite unsupported. It would not have oc 
 curred to him to speak of his family, even had he been 
 aware that the banker knew them, or anything about 
 them. And it was with measurable surprise that, upon 
 giving his name, he observed Mr. Gebhardt to consider 
 a moment and then heard him say: " Van Cleve? 
 There were some Van Cleves shareholders in the old 
 Cincinnati, Paducah, & Wheeling Packet Company 
 that failed here about ten or fifteen years ago. I re 
 member meeting them at the time when we made an 
 effort to get some of the heaviest owners together and 
 see what could be done. Any relation ?" 
 
 70 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 71 
 
 Van explained. 
 
 " Indeed, you don t say so? Yes, those were the 
 people. I remember them all very well. Your grand 
 mother was a very fine-looking woman at that time, 
 Mr. Kendrick. Is she living still? Ah! Your uncle 
 was a general in the Confederate army, I think. No ? 
 Ah! You re all living here now, you say? Well, now 
 what has been your previous business experience, I 
 should like to ask?" And a few days thereafter, Mr. 
 Gebhardt, happening to meet Major Van Cleve on the 
 street, not only recognized him at once, but stopped 
 and spoke very pleasantly, referring to the new recruit 
 at the National Loan. 
 
 "Ah, yes, so I understood from Van," said Major 
 Stanton, affably, nodding at the other with a humor 
 ously wry smile. He spoke confidentially. "The fact 
 is, Mr. Gebhardt, Van Cleve doesn t really need to 
 work. We wanted him to go to college, but nothing 
 would satisfy him but trying a business career first. 
 It distresses the ladies, my mother and sister, a good 
 deal. But I say to them : t Why, it s his whim for the 
 Lord s sake let the boy try it ! Most people would be 
 glad to see a young man s natural wildness take this 
 turn. I tell you, it might be a damn sight worse ! 
 Major Van Cleve had never uttered an oath in his 
 mother s presence in his life, and it was now some years 
 since the family resources had permitted his having more 
 than a couple of dollars spending-money in his pockets 
 at one time all of which did not prevent his making 
 these statements with a perfectly clear conscience. 
 He had a romantic imagination, and the priceless gift 
 of believing the romances he imagined. Mr. Geb 
 hardt, if he felt some doubts, was still, perhaps uncon 
 sciously, impressed by the fact that the military gentle 
 man s appearance supported, gave a sort of color and 
 atmosphere to his large talk ; he did not seem to be in 
 the least poor or pinched. The Van Cleves had the 
 
72 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 secret of that ; they contrived, on next to nothing, and 
 almost without effort, to look fashionable, opulent, and 
 leisurely all excepting Van Cleve himself. 
 
 "Your nephew seemed to me a bright, practical 
 young fellow/ the banker remarked; "he gave the 
 impression of wanting money and being willing to work 
 hard for it." 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes, that s very characteristic," said Major 
 Van Cleve, indulgently. "Van Cleve reminds me con 
 stantly of a story my father used to tell which he had 
 heard from his father, who was a very successful attorney 
 in New York City in the old days, seventy-five years 
 ago, or thereabout, you know. He went out one morn 
 ing to stick up a sign on his office door-post, Boy 
 Wanted. While he was doing it, he felt a tug at his 
 coat tails, and, turning around, here was a ragged, 
 barefoot urchin of twelve or so. Please, sir, you don t 
 need that sign no more. Don t, hey ? says my grand 
 father, astonished, why, I want a boy! No, sir, 
 you don t, not no more. I m the boy ! Now that was 
 exactly like Van Cleve. He d have done that very 
 thing. And that boy, Mr. Gebhardt," the Major con 
 cluded with suitable weight and emphasis; "that boy 
 was John Jacob Astor !" Mr. Gebhardt, after a barely 
 perceptible pause, received the anecdote with such 
 cordial appreciation that Stanton s opinion of his parts 
 and personality rose several degrees. 
 
 The National Loan and Savings was not a large 
 institution, though reputed very solid. It was housed 
 in an old-fashioned brick building on one of the streets 
 up towards the Canal, amongst similarly plain, worka 
 day surroundings ; and its depositors, as Van Cleve 
 found out soon after his entrance, were mostly laboring 
 folk. They came in there in streams the first of the 
 month and on Saturdays, when the bank was kept open 
 till nine o clock at night to accommodate them with 
 their pay envelopes. Van, from behind the brass 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 73 
 
 netting of the bookkeeper s cage in the rear, could see 
 them filing up ; and, being an observant youth, before 
 long could identify them all young women stenog 
 raphers young men clerks like himself market- 
 gardeners master carpenters and bricklayers - 
 thrifty servant-girls in feathers and cheap furs, but with 
 always a fraction of the week s wages in their showy 
 imitation leather purses nice old German women 
 with black shawls, and mysterious little black-lidded 
 baskets, and clean, brave old faces under their bonnets 
 of black straw and bugles one swarthy, excitable 
 man who used to come with a small boy interpreter 
 and who carried a greasy bag full of dimes, nickels, and 
 pennies, an Italian shoeblack from somewhere down at 
 the end of Sixth Street, as Van Cleve learned. The 
 half-dozen directors themselves were drawn from these 
 ranks old Mr. Burgstaller, the retired toy merchant 
 who looked like Santa Claus s twin brother himself - 
 old Mr. O Rourke, now also retired, but who had for 
 years conducted the grain and feed store on Wayland 
 Street opposite the market-house these were of them. 
 They all had such an air of age and experience that Van 
 Cleve might have lost heart to observe from example 
 how long was the way he had to travel ; but the young 
 man was not of that temperament. " Lord, if I thought 
 I d have to wait till I was seventy to get to be a bank 
 director, I d quit right here!" he said to himself 
 scornfully. And he noticed with approval that the 
 President of the National Loan was much younger 
 than any of his advisers ; Mr. Gebhardt could not have 
 been more than fifty. 
 
 He was a self-made man, and as such commanded 
 Mr. Kendrick s highest respect ; whether he altogether 
 and always liked his employer, the young fellow was 
 not quite certain ; Van was slow to form a liking for 
 anybody. "Mr. Gebhardt is all right only I don t 
 know that I much fancy all that glad-hand business," 
 
74 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 he would reflect when, as sometimes happened, he saw 
 the President come forth and circulate among his de 
 positors, let us say, on one of those busy and crowded 
 Saturdays, in a genial, informal way, conversing with 
 many of them in the tongue of the Fatherland, and dis 
 playing a hearty personal interest, which Van Cleve, 
 for the soul of him, could not believe to be always very 
 deep or very sincere. Van himself was frankly en 
 grossed in his own business ; he could not understand 
 how any man could waste time on another man s 
 concerns unless they were intimately connected with 
 his own; and rather than look upon Mr. Gebhardt s 
 attitude as sheer altruism something in the com 
 mercial world to be at once laughed at and distrusted - 
 Van Cleve chose to call it a piece of policy. " After 
 all, he s got to stand in with these people. Their little 
 dabs of money are what he s founded his bank on. He 
 knows more about getting along with em than I do; 
 and being a good mixer is a kind of an asset in this 
 business," he would argue to himself shrewdly. How 
 ever, Van did not make the mistake, as might have been 
 expected, of attempting to be a "good mixer" himself; 
 he knew that he had no talent that way. Like many 
 another boy of his years, he was the queerest mixture 
 conceivable of youthful egotism, pride, ambition, com 
 mon-sense, absurd cynicism, and real sentiment. 
 
 Mr. Gebhardt, on his side, extended that paternal 
 sympathy of his to Van Cleve the same as to the others, 
 whether influenced or not by the fact that the young 
 man undeniably did do the work assigned him remark 
 ably well, and exhibited in all things an iron integrity. 
 There were no sons in the Gebhardt household, only a 
 tribe of pretty, fair-haired girls, with a pretty, fair- 
 haired mother looking like a sister to the rest, who used 
 to come down to the bank in any one of several hand 
 some family vehicles with their dashing team of bays, 
 and carry the father off in a whirlwind of chattering 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 75 
 
 and laughter and caresses. Van Cleve had met them 
 indeed, Mrs. Gebhardt and Natalie, who was the oldest, 
 and the only one "out," had a calling acquaintance 
 with the ladies of Van s family ; but as Mr. Kendrick 
 took not the slightest interest in young women and never 
 put himself out for anything but the most perfunctory 
 civilities, it is not surprising that they should recipro 
 cate whole-heartedly. On the contrary, they were quite 
 enthusiastic about Bob Gilbert. Robert and his friend 
 met nowadays not infrequently in a business way ; 
 and Mr. Gebhardt, having come across the Professor s 
 son once or twice, had the curiosity to ask somebody 
 what that young Gilbert was doing? The man he in 
 quired of, who happened to be Mr. Max Steinberger, 
 laughed. 
 
 " Looks like I ought to know," he said; "why, he s 
 with us. He s got the job young Van Cleve no, 
 that s not his name I mean the young fellow you 
 took on up at your over-the-Rhine dollar-shop we ve 
 got Gilbert in his place." 
 
 "Is he any good?" 
 
 "Good enough. How s yours ? " 
 
 Gebhardt, who was never known to utter an unkind 
 or uncharitable criticism of any one, commended Van 
 Cleve warmly. "You did a little better on the deal 
 than Leo and myself, I guess," said the other, hearing 
 him. And they fell to talking about the proposed 
 bond issue and promptly forgot both boys. But one 
 day a while later, Mr. Gebhardt took occasion to ask 
 his junior bookkeeper what was the real reason he 
 had wanted to leave the brokers. 
 
 "I somehow suspected at the time that you weren t 
 dissatisfied wholly on account of the salary," he 
 said. 
 
 "Well, Mr. Gebhardt, I thought I was worth more," 
 said Van, obstinately reticent. Then he looked up 
 and, meeting his employer s eye, thawed a little. "No, 
 
76 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 I didn t like it," he confessed. "Too much spend and 
 too much souse/ said he, succinctly. 
 
 "What, Steinberger and Leo Hirsch? Why, I m 
 surprised to hear you say that ! I had no idea 
 
 "I mean the the office force the office in general," 
 Van Cleve explained hastily and not too clearly; "I 
 don t mean Mr. Steinberger or Mr. Hirsch themselves. 
 They ve got the money to play the races and all the 
 rest of it, all they choose, as far as that goes. And 
 of course they both take a drink now and then ; but I 
 wasn t talking about them. They re Germans, anyhow, 
 and could hold a barrel, either one of em, without its 
 phasing them - and at this point Mr. Kendrick, 
 abruptly remembering the nationality of the gentleman 
 he was addressing, halted in a fine beet-red confusion. 
 But Gebhardt only laughed ; he liked or seemed to 
 like the young man s bluntness. 
 
 All this while, how were his elders supporting Van s 
 persistent "whim" of making his own living and in 
 cidentally a not inconsiderable part of theirs, to which 
 they had yielded so painfully in the first place ? Why, 
 they were supporting it with the most astonishing 
 patience ! They had resigned themselves to the fact 
 that this world belongs to the young people. Nobody, 
 at least, will dispute the truth of that axiom who has 
 lived to the middle years or a little beyond, and of a 
 sudden found himself being taught, cared for, gov 
 erned, and set in order by some competent and cock 
 sure son or daughter of twenty or thereabouts. Per 
 haps, upon this discovery, the wisest plan is to abdi 
 cate at once with what grace and good-humor we can 
 muster; but sometimes the change of position has 
 come about by such slow and imperceptible degrees 
 that we have been deposed, lo, this long time, before 
 we suspect it, and it s too late for action of any kind. 
 The king is dead ; long live the king ! 
 
 This last phenomenon is what had taken place in 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 77 
 
 the Van Cleve household during the two or three 
 years succeeding that dramatic day when Van Ken- 
 drick grew up. No one of them knew how or when it 
 happened ; no one exactly resented it ; perhaps the 
 family were only conscious of his ascendency when 
 their affairs came to one of those crises that were for 
 ever occurring. Nevertheless, it would have been 
 glaringly apparent to any outsider that the young Van 
 Cleve, with his lanky, undeveloped figure and his smooth 
 chin, and flat, straight, smooth upper lip on which he 
 was desperately cultivating half a dozen scattering 
 bristles, with his youthful voice which had just settled 
 into a rather harsh bass, and his uneasy reticence, and 
 the amazing seriousness with which he took himself 
 most of the time it would have been apparent to 
 any observing person, I say, that this more or less 
 callow young gentleman was the head of the House of 
 Van Cleve, for all his callowness. Outward and visible 
 signs declared it, if nothing else. Van sat at the end 
 of the table and carved the meat nowadays; he read 
 the paper over his coffee-cup of a morning while his 
 uncle meekly got through breakfast without that 
 literary entertainment ; he took his hat and slammed 
 the hall door behind him and went off down town to 
 the office with his peers; the family accounts were 
 submitted to him; the women came to him for their 
 money ; the servants were trained to regard his tastes 
 - "Mrs. Van Cleef she say, Marta, Mr. Kendrick he 
 don t like those biscuit/ shust like she d say, Marta, 
 der Herr Gott, He don t like those biscuit/" their Ger 
 man maid remarked acutely ; these were a few of the 
 straws showing what way the wind blew. Possibly Van 
 himself had a clearer conception of the position than 
 any of the others, although the Fates had conspired to 
 put him. there it was none of his doing; to accept 
 responsibilities was natural to him, and he was not at 
 all disposed to be arrogant or overbearing in his leader- 
 
78 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ship ; the privilege of bullying a lot of women and one 
 feeble elderly gentleman did not attract him. The 
 young fellow knew very well that he was the strongest 
 member, in truth, the only strong member of the family ; 
 he put it, privately, in his practical and literal way, 
 that he was the only one who had ever earned a cent, 
 or displayed a particle of common-sense about either 
 saving or spending it ; yet he took no great credit to 
 himself on that account. Van Cleve could not, for 
 the life of him, have understood how any man in the 
 same circumstances could have acted otherwise. He 
 had to take care of them Grandma and Uncle Stan 
 and all of them, didn t he ? By Jove, he why, he 
 had to, you know ! There wasn t any getting around 
 that. They couldn t do anything for themselves ; 
 while, as to him, work didn t worry him any. He had 
 to work, anyhow, didn t he ? Do you suppose anybody 
 was going to give him his living and a good time for 
 nothing ? Not much ! 
 
 According to these fairly cool and accurate or as 
 Van would have called them himself level-headed 
 views, did Mr. Kendrick pursue his career. The family 
 got used to his queer youthful maturity; they got 
 used to the idea of his being steady and successful as 
 if it were the most everyday thing in the world for a 
 young man to be steady and successful ; they got used 
 to being dependent on him, and Van Cleve, on his 
 own side, got used to it, too. He directed the dis 
 position of what little money they had left from the 
 original inheritance, and added his own to it, and kept 
 the old strong box with "J. VAN CLEVE" on the top 
 of it in his closet in his own room and carried the keys 
 unquestioned. Mrs. Van Cleve sometimes said with a 
 sigh that he reminded her of his grandfather; but as 
 the late Joshua had been a spry, dry, little man with 
 a hard jaw, and as bald as a turnip at less than twenty- 
 five years of age, she could not have discerned much 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 79 
 
 physical resemblance. By a coincidence the likeness 
 most struck her about the first of the month when the 
 bills came around ; Van Cleve did not always see all 
 of them does any lady ever show the man of the 
 house all her bills ? and perhaps the grandmother 
 recalled the days when she had quakingly presented 
 the milliners and dressmakers statements to her 
 Joshua (who, nevertheless, was reasonably liberal to 
 his family), or, dreadful to relate, smuggled them out 
 of his sight and knowledge. Times were altered, and 
 she and Mrs. Lucas were both of them good, upright, 
 self-denying women who passed by the most enticing 
 shop windows and bargain counters resolutely, and 
 turned and mended and cut over their clothes and re 
 modelled their old hats, and made hash for Monday 
 dinner out of Sunday s joint with the utmost gallantry 
 and cheerfulness. As has been hinted, they clashed 
 seriously with Van Cleve only when the question arose 
 of one of those indisputably wise, well-considered, and 
 profitable changes which everybody in the house, ex 
 cept Van himself, was eternally planning. 
 
 "That Elmhurst Place house is only thirty-seven- 
 and-a-half a month only two dollars and a half 
 more than this the rent s practically the same," his 
 aunt argued about six months after their enthusiastic 
 installation at No. 8 Summit Avenue; "and no com 
 parison between the houses no comparison ! It s 
 just exactly what we were hunting for last summer 
 when we had to take this. Of course it was rented 
 then, Elmhurst Place is so desirable. And that s why 
 I m so anxious to speak for it at once, before anybody 
 else snaps it up. I d better see the agent to-day, 
 hadn t I, Van?" She looked at her nephew with an 
 odd mingling of persuasion and command ; Van Cleve, 
 the women said to one another, was so hard to manage 
 at times; it was so hard to make him understand. 
 Now he swallowed the last of his coffee and folded up 
 
80 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 his napkin with a maddening deliberation before 
 answering. 
 
 "No, I think not, Aunt Myra. I think we d better 
 not move. That two-dollars-and-a-half difference in 
 the rent just about pays the water rate. It s not quite 
 the same thing, you see. Besides, it would cost a lot 
 to move. What s the matter with this house, anyhow ? 
 You liked it well enough at first. 7 
 
 All three ladies gave a gentle scream of consternation. 
 "Why, Van! This house! Why, you know we just 
 took it because we had to go somewhere /" 
 
 "And we didn t know what a state it was in that 
 awful pink and green and blue wall-paper on the back 
 bedroom !" 
 
 "I m afraid the place will fall down over our heads 
 before we can get out of it ! Three of the door 
 knobs and I don t know how many window-catches 
 are all loose and waggly /" Everybody began to de 
 claim vigorously, if without much sequence ; it was 
 really impossible to think immediately of all the reasons 
 against living a minute longer in this unspeakable house. 
 
 "Oh, I guess they ll fix those things for us. It s 
 not going to fall down right off, anyhow ; we d better 
 stay and give it another chance," said Van Cleve, 
 placidly, returning to his paper. 
 
 "Well, but ever since those horrid people moved 
 next door, the tone of this neighborhood has lowered 
 so that s my main objection to staying here," Mrs. 
 Van Cleve remonstrated; "the woman had a shawl 
 airing out of one of the upstairs back windows yester 
 day morning. Think of it ! A great, coarse, red shawl 
 hanging right in the window ! I ve never lived next 
 door to anything quite so common as that before !" 
 
 Van, behind the newspaper, studying the market 
 reports, gave no sign of having heard her. "He s 
 Joshua all over!" the grandmother said inwardly, 
 divided between exasperation and a kind of pride; 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 81 
 
 "he used to sit just that way and not answer me time 
 and again !" She was silent a little, perhaps thinking 
 of old days ; but the others persevered with reproachful 
 vehemence. 
 
 "We could take that money, that sixty-five dollars 
 we got from the old farm the other day, and use it for 
 the moving, so it wouldn t cost you anything, Van 
 Cleve," said Evelyn, who had a talent for this style of 
 argument. "I m sure it isn t healthy here. There s 
 a great big damp spot in one corner of the yard when 
 ever it rains. I m going to speak to the doctor about 
 it. Mother oughtn t to stay in a humid atmosphere ; 
 her nerves will give out. It takes ever so much nervous 
 energy to stand the colds she has, and of course the 
 low quality of the air right here must bring them on." 
 
 " Never mind me, Evelyn; never mind me I ll 
 soon be well my cold isn t anything," cried out Mrs. 
 Lucas, though, indeed, a sudden wild terror started in 
 her large, beautiful dark eyes; she was very easily 
 frightened about herself and her state of health, and 
 the merest suggestion of any need for doctors sent 
 before her mind in dismally dramatic procession a 
 dozen appalling pictures of suffering, decline, death 
 agonies, the hearse, the coffin, the ghastly open grave ! 
 She began with a note of almost frenzied appeal in her 
 voice : " Van dear, do put down that paper and listen. 
 I think it s more important than you realize for us to 
 get away from this house and neighborhood, and it 
 will be money well spent to move. You re just as fine 
 and strong and splendid as you can be, Van you 
 know we all know that you re a dear, noble fellow," 
 said Mrs. Lucas, stirred by a real and generous emotion, 
 her sweet, hysterical voice breaking a little ; she was 
 sincerely fond of the young man; "but you don t 
 realize how young you are; you haven t had the ex 
 perience I ve had. You re not so well able to judge as 
 I am. I think it s our duty to move. We all think 
 
82 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 so, and two heads are better than one, you know, 
 Van." 
 
 " Depends on the heads, "said Van Cleve, flippantly, 
 unmoved by these powerful representations which, as 
 was provokingly apparent, he was not even going to 
 answer. Instead, he got up, taking out his pipe, and 
 went over to the mantel for a match. 
 
 "I wish I wish you wouldn t do that, Van," said 
 Mrs. Joshua, distressfully; "I promised your dear 
 mother for you that you wouldn t touch tobacco nor 
 liquor before you were twenty-five. It was a sacred 
 promise, Van." 
 
 Van Cleve looked down at her, humorous and for 
 bearing; he stuffed the tobacco down into the bowl. 
 "Oh, bosh, Grandma !" he said with profane cheerful 
 ness ; and stooped and kissed the old lady s cheek, and 
 walked off unimpressed. He was guiltless of diplo 
 macy; but, strangely and illogically enough, at this 
 speech and the rough, boyish caress, Mrs. Van Cleve 
 surrendered without terms, struck her colors, and went 
 over to his side incontinently ! 
 
 "Well, I daresay Van s right about it, Myra," she 
 said as the door closed behind him. "There s no real 
 reason why we should move. And anyhow Van Cleve 
 ought to have the say he s taking care of us all 
 he s the best boy that ever lived!" Her old face 
 trembled momentarily. 
 
 "Oh, of course! Van Cleve is always right !" Eve 
 lyn proclaimed satirically ; she remained alone to fight 
 the battle with the older lady, for Mrs. Lucas had 
 already dashed into the hall after her nephew, who was 
 in the act of putting on his overcoat. 
 
 "Van," she said tensely, stopping him with one arm 
 in the sleeve ; "I want you to let me telephone about 
 that Elmhurst Place house and get the refusal of it 
 for a day, anyhow just for to-day, Van, so that you 
 can see it." Her voice rose: "I want you to let me do 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 83 
 
 that. You don t know anything about the house. If 
 you could see it, I know you d think differently. It s 
 so much nearer the Art School, for one thing. Evelyn 
 wouldn t have near so far to walk. She s not strong, 
 you know, Van Cleve ; and I m afraid of that long 
 walk for her. I m afraid it takes her strength so that 
 she can t do her work properly. The other day when 
 she came in her hands were perfectly numb with the 
 cold; you must have noticed it at dinner !" 
 
 "Well, they weren t so numb but that she could 
 work her knife and fork all right," said Van, with a 
 brutal grin; "when they get too bad for that, I ll 
 begin to worry!" And then, seeing the look of out 
 rage on his aunt s face, he added hastily and with 
 earnest kindness; "now look here, Aunt Myra, you 
 know you re just feeling a little restless, that s all 
 that s the matter. You often feel that way, you 
 know. This house is all right. Now don t let s talk 
 any more about this, will you ? You know we can t 
 afford to move around. And if any extra money comes 
 in, like that from the farm last week, we ought to save 
 it. We can t go spending it on foolishness. Now 
 let s try to be satisfied and stay here. I ll see if I 
 can t get them to change that wall-paper you hate so," 
 added poor Van, unconsciously pathetic in his efforts to 
 appease her. 
 
 "Restless!" ejaculated Mrs. Lucas, indignantly. 
 "Oh, well, I suppose it s useless for me to talk. I 
 might die in this horrid damp hole and Evelyn be 
 hopelessly crippled for life from that walk, and you 
 would still insist that we were just whimsical and rest 
 less /" But Van Cleve was gone. 
 
 Mrs. Lucas returned to her domestic rounds in 
 abysmal low spirits. Her cold was getting steadily 
 worse she could feel it growing on her ! The air of 
 the house was positively saturated with moisture - 
 particularly in the back bedroom with that pink-blue- 
 
84 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 green abomination on the walls. It would be her fate 
 to die here, she knew it, she was convinced of it ! And 
 the Elmhurst Place house did have such a beautiful 
 bay-window in the hall, and two hardwood floors 
 downstairs ! She was ill in bed when Van Cleve came 
 home that evening. Evelyn rushed up and down 
 from the sick-room with tragically repressed grief; 
 Major Stanton sat around in corners out of the way, 
 looking more uncomfortable than alarmed ; Mrs. Van 
 Cleve poured the coffee in reproving silence. And when 
 the doctor reported that it looked as if Mrs. Lucas 
 might be going to have grippe, Van Cleve felt like an 
 assassin. It was in vain the unlucky youth told him 
 self that his aunt might have had grippe anywhere, in 
 any house, and that even if he had consented to their 
 moving to Elmhurst Place the very next day, it could 
 hardly have spared her this attack. He felt wretchedly 
 that her illness was all his fault everything was all 
 his fault everybody was being made sick and un 
 comfortable and unhappy by Van Cleve Kendrick and 
 his mean desire to save a little money ! 
 
 The next time anybody went to call on the Van 
 Cleves, they had moved. They had been over on Elm 
 hurst Place for a month, and just loved it y they declared. 
 Evelyn said that her mother had been on the verge of 
 a dreadful attack of influenza, but they got her away 
 from that polluted air on Summit Avenue just in time, 
 and she began to mend at once. To be sure this was 
 only two squares off, but there was the most amazing 
 difference in the atmosphere her mother s case 
 proved it and really that other house had gotten to 
 be perfectly awful, you know. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 MOSTLY IDLE TALK 
 
 THAT there was really something a little unusual 
 about the Van Cleves always excepting young Ken- 
 drick, as I have repeatedly stated is shown by the 
 fact that in two or three years, more or less, they had 
 become as firmly established socially as if they had 
 lived here all their lives, without anybody ever hinting 
 that they were trying to "get in" or " sniffing" deroga- 
 torily, as people did about that unfortunate Jameson 
 girl. The Van Cleve women were a very different 
 stamp. Evelyn and her mother of course the old 
 lady did not go out much were invited about a good 
 deal ; they were bright, they had the proper manners, 
 and they were pretty sure to make themselves enter 
 taining sometimes unintentionally. The single thing 
 in the way of their popularity was that it was not easy 
 to tell of these ladies who their friends were, since they 
 changed almost as often as they changed houses ; one 
 day they would be embracing people with a warm 
 passage of Christian names and terms of endearment 
 - and the next news you had, they had ceased to 
 speak to So-and-So ! She had behaved in such an 
 underhanded, deceitful, treacherous way about hiring a 
 cook she had intimated that Mrs. Lucas s delicate 
 health was all nerves or hysteria, did you ever hear of 
 anything so monstrous? she was vindictively jealous 
 of Evelyn, etc., etc. Yet they were not without some 
 sound and stable attachments, as for the Gilberts, for 
 instance, with whom they never had any grave falling 
 
 85 
 
86 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 out. This, however, may have been partly because of 
 Van Cleve, who, besides being not nearly so quick to 
 make new friends nor so violently enthusiastic about 
 them, was very much more steadfast to the old ones. 
 To be sure, the intimacy of the feminine Van Cleves 
 with Lorrie and her mother was of a somewhat fitful 
 character and subject to wax or wane at any moment 
 without notice ; but at one time Miss Lucas was run 
 ning over to the Warwick Lane house every day. She 
 insisted on helping them with their home dressmaking 
 and millinery ; she suggested charming rearrangements 
 of their furniture ; she painted a portrait of Lorrie 
 an amazing water-color portrait wherein Lorrie appeared 
 with a wide, fixed stare goggling at you out of a 
 jungle of chocolate-tinted hair. Mrs. Lucas pro 
 nounced it marvellously accurate and a masterpiece, 
 whether considered as a likeness or merely a picture. 
 Lorrie herself laughed and said she supposed you never 
 really knew what you looked like to other people, and 
 were always surprised and disappointed to find out. 
 Bob remarked ruthlessly that those eyes reminded him 
 of two buckeyes in a pan of milk. Van Cleve, upon the 
 work of art being paraded before him, was silent - 
 unwisely, as it turned out, for the severest criticism 
 could not have roused Evelyn or her mother more. 
 
 1 Well ? Well ? Aren t you going to say anything ? 
 demanded the artist, tartly. 
 
 "Why, it it looks something like her," said Van, 
 feebly. In fact, the thing did have a sort of ghostly 
 resemblance to Lorrie. But what portrait-painter 
 wants to be told that his creation "looks like" the 
 original ? 
 
 "It was intended to look like her/ Evelyn said with 
 fine scorn. "But I didn t expect that you d think it 
 was good. No need to ask you !" 
 
 "That s so, Evie. If I don t say anything you get 
 mad, and if I do you get mad, so there doesn t seem to 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 87 
 
 be much need your asking me, sure enough/ said 
 Van Cleve, with his unshakable good humor that the 
 women found so hard to "put up with," as they them 
 selves sometimes complained to one another. 
 
 "Of course you don t think any picture of her could 
 be good enough," flashed out Evelyn, jerking the draw 
 ing-board back into its corner. "We all know what 
 you think about Lorrie Gilbert, Van." She gave 
 him a savagely significant glance. 
 
 "I know you get excited and say a lot of things you 
 don t mean sometimes," Van retorted, coloring, how 
 ever, with temper or could it have been some other 
 feeling ? 
 
 "The idea! She s at least a year older than you 
 are at least! And she s engaged to that Mr. Cort- 
 wright, anyhow or as good as engaged !" the young 
 lady pursued, and had the satisfaction of seeing, or 
 fancying she saw, her cousin wince. "That s what 
 everybody says." 
 
 "I don t know what you re talking about I don t 
 know anything about Miss Gilbert s affairs," Van 
 Cleve stuttered, turning redder than ever. He was 
 fairly routed, and got up and stalked out of the house, 
 followed by her inquisitive mockery. Once outside, he 
 said something much stronger a distressingly strong 
 word of one syllable did Mr. Kendrick utter ; and 
 he pulled his hat down over his brows with a morose 
 gesture as he tramped away, without his pleasant 
 whistle for once. 
 
 It must have been after this that there occurred one 
 of those intervals of coolness towards the other family 
 on the part of the Van Cleve ladies which people were 
 accustomed to witness. The Gilberts themselves were 
 quite unconscious of it ; they were not looking out for 
 slights or indifference, and did not know how to quarrel 
 with anybody. But Evelyn s visits ceased for a while, 
 and perhaps Van Cleve himself did not go to the Pro- 
 
88 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 fessor s house in the evenings so often. Mrs. Lucas 
 confided to those who were in high favor just then that 
 she was rather glad of it ; she didn t want to be un 
 charitable, but she could not honestly say that she 
 thought Bob s was a good influence for Van Cleve. Of 
 course Van had great strength of character and power 
 of resisting temptation^ still young men and here 
 she would break off, giving her audience a wonderfully 
 sagacious, warning look. My old friend, Mr. J. B. B. 
 Taylor happened to pass through the city just then 
 on his large orbit of travel and inspection J. B. has 
 something to do with a concrete construction company 
 - and I recall a little talk we had on this very subject. 
 It began by my mentioning his last visit, and the group 
 of gentlemen we had met lunching at the Saint Simon ; 
 and I reported some observations regarding Van Cleve s 
 family which caused J. B. alternately to smile broadly 
 and wickedly, and anon to grunt "Huh!" in a pro 
 found manner. When I had finished : 
 
 "Well," said he, "that Kendrick boy is something 
 of a boy, I judge considerable of a boy. The fact 
 is, Gebhardt spoke to me about him, just in the 
 ordinary course of conversation, you know, but when 
 he found that I knew something of the young man, 
 why, he warmed up and said some very nice things. 
 It seems they gave him a raise at the National Loan the 
 other day ; they think a great deal of him. From what 
 I hear, Kendrick s the getting-ahead kind one of 
 these long-headed, hard-working fellows that knows 
 he can t pick any money off of trees, and expects to 
 buckle down and make it. That s a pretty good spirit 
 for these days with all this get-rich-quick feeling in 
 the air. And, speaking of that, I ve got an impression 
 that our friend Gebhardt himself is a little given that 
 way towards experimenting on the get-rich-quick 
 lines, I mean. He s a visionary fellow; I wouldn t 
 trust his judgment very far. Of course I know he s 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 89 
 
 been quite successful with his little bank, but there s 
 some luck about things like that. If Gebhardt s a self- 
 made man, he didn t pay enough attention to his 
 cupola." And here J. B., evidently feeling that he had 
 allowed himself to run into some indiscretion, abruptly 
 changed topics. " What s become of those other people? 
 That pin-headed masher you know what was his 
 name ? And the other boy ?" 
 
 I informed him that Mr. Cortwright was still here, 
 in business ; I was not certain how successful, but he 
 seemed to have money enough ; he was considered very 
 handsome, and er well, a little inclined to be 
 er sporty you know ; and he was still something 
 of a " masher," to use Mr. Taylor s own elegant phrase. 
 In fact, at one time or another, Mr. Cortwright had 
 been sentimentally attentive to every girl in society, 
 but here latterly he had settled down on Miss Gilbert, 
 and people in general thought this would be a go, at 
 last. 
 
 "Well, I m glad she isn t my daughter," J. B. com 
 mented briefly; "Gilbert, you say? That was that 
 boy s name, I remember now. Is he around still?" 
 
 "Yes, it s the same family. Yes, he s here and 
 working. He s been a little wild ; they say now he s 
 drinking. I don t know how true it is may be 
 nothing but gossip," said I, not without reluctance. 
 I liked Bob Gilbert. I never met anybody that didn t 
 like him. But, with the most charitable disposition 
 in the world, I still would have been obliged to acknowl 
 edge that one never heard anything creditable about 
 Bob, whereas report concerning his friend, that young 
 Mr. Kendrick (nobody thought of him as a boy any 
 longer), justified all that J. B. had said. J. B., indeed, 
 felt a real interest in the latter s fortunes ; and he took 
 Van Cleve and the Major (yes, the Major, flowing 
 whiskers, antebellum airs and all !) and the present 
 writer to the Saint Simon next day, and entertained us 
 
90 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 regally at luncheon. And he listened with the most 
 appreciative courtesy to Major Stanton s story about 
 his great-grand-aunt, or some other female ancestor, 
 replying to Bishop Whipple s warnings concerning the 
 future life : "Why, Bishop, you and I don t need to be 
 afraid of the Judgment Day, I m sure. It s going to 
 take them a long while to get down to the W s and V s, 
 you know! " ha, ha! I came across the same sprightly 
 anecdote in an old joke-book the other day, attributed 
 to Walpole, in conversation with John Wesley. " Why, 
 Mr. Wesley," says Horace; "I m sure you and I 
 needn t be afraid of the Judgment Day " etc., etc. 
 
 How much truth was there in the rumors that had 
 been circulating somewhat as above reported for the 
 last year or so? To begin with, those sharp hints 
 levelled by Miss Lucas at her cousin, how near the mark 
 did they come? Van Cleve had first met Lorrie Gil 
 bert years before when he was nothing but a big, 
 gangling boy chum of her brother s, and she, although 
 so nearly his own age, already a grown-up young lady. 
 In that far-off time Van looked upon her with both 
 shyness and indifference. Asked if he thought her 
 pretty or bright, he would have replied that he didn t 
 know he hadn t thought about her at all he didn t 
 care for girls, and never stayed around where they were, 
 if he could help it. As it happened indeed, have we 
 not seen it happen under our own eyes ? he did not 
 have much chance to improve or outgrow his deplorable 
 tastes, for that summer was the end of Van Cleve s 
 playtime, and really the end of his boyhood. He could 
 spend no time, still less money, on girls, he who had 
 his family to take care of and his way to make in the 
 world. As he grew older, it became his habit of mind 
 to regard marriage, for a man in his position, as sheer 
 insanity, and falling in love only a milder form of the 
 same affliction. Both must be postponed until he 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 91 
 
 arrived at the locality which he called to himself, Easy 
 Street. In some vast, indefinite future, when he felt 
 himself " pretty well fixed/ and when he could get 
 Grandma and the rest of them comfortably settled 
 somewhere or somehow, so that they would not be 
 quite so much on his mind, when Evelyn would be 
 married, perhaps, and when he could allow them a 
 reasonable income on which they could have a little 
 fun, you know, though, of course, he would have to see 
 that they didn t do anything foolish with it in the 
 future when Van planned that all this should happen, he 
 sometimes rather diffidently speculated about a home 
 for himself and Somebody. He never divulged these 
 plots and visions even to Bob, his nearest friend ; he 
 was very much ashamed of them ; he had no notion of 
 complaining about his responsibilities. And as to that 
 other dream, he had never even named his Somebody ; 
 to dream is silly enough, but to dream of sharing your 
 life with a person who doesn t exist, seemed to Van 
 Cleve the utter abyss of silliness. His prospective 
 wife was so far a delicious myth ; notwithstanding the 
 fact that she was to have brown hair with gold lights 
 in it, hair that waved a little nicely, and big brown eyes, 
 and a fair complexion with a good deal of color in it, 
 and a short nose, straight, but set on so that you were 
 not quite certain whether it did not tilt upward ever 
 so slightly ; and she would have a very pleasant laugh, 
 and a pretty round waist, and and, in short, any 
 body in whom Van Cleve had confided would have 
 recognized, by the time he got through, a surprisingly 
 good likeness of Miss Lorrie Gilbert ! 
 
 The young man did not suspect it himself. When 
 he went to the house, he thought in all honesty it was 
 to see Bob. He took a meal there at least once in the 
 week ; Mrs. Gilbert was so used to him she sometimes 
 called him "son" forgetfully ; Lorrie and he sat on the 
 porch summer evenings, or by the sitting-room hearth 
 
92 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 in winter, so completely at home together that they 
 could be silent when and as long as they chose, unem 
 barrassed ; it was "Lorrie" and "Van" as a matter 
 of course, and the girl openly regarded him with almost 
 the same feeling as she did her brother, save that she 
 listened and deferred to him far more. Only when 
 Cortwright s name was brought up, or that debonair 
 gentleman came to call, which he was beginning to do 
 with ominous frequency, did the two other young people 
 feel any constraint. Lorrie, in her third or fourth 
 season, had seen something of the world, and been not 
 undesired by young men; her novitiate was over. 
 Nevertheless, she had a way of blushing and brightening 
 at Cortwright s appearance which to any experienced 
 onlooker would have been full of meaning. Van Cleve, 
 at least, saw it with a dull pain of resentment. He 
 told himself that he never had liked Cortwright. "I 
 saw enough of him down at Steinberger s ; you can t 
 fool me about that sort of fellow ! But, hang it, I 
 believe girls like for a man to have the name of being 
 fast !" Van used to think angrily; "you see so many 
 nice, good women married to em. It s not so smart to 
 booze and bum, and chase around after women and 
 horses I can t see what any decent woman is think 
 ing of. I suppose there isn t a man on earth but that s 
 done some things he s ashamed of but Cortwright ! 
 Why, he isn t fit to touch Lome s skirt !" 
 
 Of course there was nothing personal in this. Van 
 Cleve was convinced ; no, merely on principle, simply 
 and solely in behalf of abstract morality, did Mr. 
 Kendrick disapprove of Mr. Cortwright. To have told 
 him he was jealous would have been to invite a righteous 
 indignation. In the meanwhile, whenever Cortwright 
 chanced to call at the same time, his arrival was the 
 signal for a sudden fall in the social barometer. It was 
 not Cortwright s fault ; he was always gay, courteous, 
 ready with a joke, a story, a turn at the piano, anything 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 93 
 
 to make the evening go off well, inimitably good-look 
 ing and at ease, in becoming contrast to Van Cleve, who 
 would sit grumpily smoking or grumpily unsmoking, 
 answering in curt and disagreeably plain words, and, 
 after making a wet blanket of himself generally, would 
 get up and go off in pointed hurry. I fear Mr. Kendrick 
 was not poignantly regretted on these occasions. " You 
 seem to take life so seriously, Kendrick. Don t you 
 believe in people having a good time as they go along ? 
 Cortwright once asked him. Cortwright, on his side, 
 met Van Cleve with unvarying good temper and civility 
 - for which, you may believe me, poor Van liked him 
 none the better. 
 
 " Nobody but a prig objects to people having fun/ 7 
 he retorted, scowling; "if I m serious, it s because I m 
 built that way, I suppose. But I never thought it any 
 of my business what other people do." He looked hard 
 at the other. 
 
 "That s lucky for the rest of us," Cortwright said 
 with his easy laugh; "you ve got such a severe eye. 
 Hasn t he got a severe eye, Miss Jameson?" And 
 upon this, while the young lady was still looking 
 sideways at him under her lashes, and smiling just 
 enough to show a charming dimple in the corner of her 
 mouth, Van unceremoniously took himself off. He 
 "hadn t much use" (to quote him again) for Miss 
 Paula Jameson, either, and often wished impatiently 
 that she would stop her everlasting running to the 
 Gilbert s. 
 
 As for that derogatory tittle-tattle about Bob Gil 
 bert, sad to admit, it was not without foundation. 
 People were beginning to shake their heads over him, 
 and to tell one another that it was too bad ! They 
 said that there was nothing really wrong with the young 
 fellow there wasn t any real harm in him, only - 
 it was probably not all his fault the way boys are 
 
94 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 brought up has a good deal to do with it Professor 
 Gilbert was a fine man, a splendid scholar, and all that, 
 but what time he was not absorbed in class work, the 
 poor old gentleman was mooning over his researches, 
 his essays, monographs, what-d ye-call- ems he had 
 no control whatever over his son, and never had had ! 
 Of course, Mrs. Gilbert and Lorrie could do nothing 
 with Bob two women, both of them too devoted 
 to him to see where he was going. That his destina 
 tion was the one popularly known as "the dogs/ 
 everybody was prophesying. Too bad ! Of course he 
 might be merely passing through the "wild" stage 
 inevitable to youth ; he might straighten up yet 
 it was to be hoped. 
 
 Van Cleve, who knew all about Bob s failings, who 
 had very likely known about them long before they 
 became public talk, never had anything to say on the 
 subject. He would not condemn his friend, but neither 
 would he take the other s part. He would say nothing 
 at all. There was a hard streak in the young man; 
 he was genuinely fond of Bob, yet he avoided his com 
 pany these days, took care never to be seen on the street 
 with him, got out of his way and kept out of his way, 
 whenever it was possible. "I can t have him coming 
 round here smelling like a distillery, and asking for me. 
 It would queer me for good with some of these solid 
 men," Van thought; "I can t risk it. And what good 
 would it do him for me to hang on to Bob, anyhow ? 
 I can t tell him anything but what he knows already ; 
 he s got plenty of sense, if he ll only use it. But if a 
 man s going to make a fool of himself, he s going to 
 make a fool of himself, so what s the use?" 
 
 Perhaps he did not fully convince himself by these 
 arguments ; but in fact there was no longer much need 
 for him to put his theories in practice. Robert was 
 drifting naturally into his own class of idlers and ne er- 
 do-weels, and young Kendrick had less and less occasion 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 95 
 
 to dodge his compromising company, they saw each 
 other so seldom, except at the house. Sometimes, even 
 when at home, Bob was not visible; he had had one 
 of his wretched headaches all day, so that he was 
 obliged to keep his room, Mrs. Gilbert would report 
 so guilelessly that Van Cleve, in spite of his cultivated 
 coldness, winced with pity and a vicarious shame. 
 He noticed that she was looking a great deal older 
 nowadays; there had been a time when you could 
 scarcely tell her back from Lome s if you happened to 
 be walking behind her on the street it was different 
 now. And when it came to Professor Gilbert, it 
 sounded perfectly natural to call him an old gentleman, 
 as we did a moment ago, although he had not yet 
 reached the sixties ; he was thinner and bonier than 
 ever, and wrinkled and bent like Father Time himself. 
 He, Sit any rate, understood the headaches, Van Cleve 
 would think, regretfully reading the older man s haggard 
 and weary eyes ; and Van wondered with a recoil so 
 strong it surprised himself if the poor father had ever 
 had to go out at night and hunt for Bob bring him 
 home get him to bed and sobered up eh, you 
 know ? Good Lord, that was pretty bad pretty 
 bad! 
 
 These offices Van Cleve had performed himself once 
 at least. He was much more irritated than scandalized 
 - in the beginning of the adventure, that is to find 
 Bob drunk and clinging to the lamp post, in the starry 
 winter cold, on his own way home at two o clock in the 
 morning. What was the notably steady youth, Mr. 
 Kendrick, doing out of his bed at that hour? Have 
 no fear, ladies and gentlemen ! In the pursuance of 
 his career of industry and virtue, he had been to the 
 weekly meeting of the Central Avenue Building and 
 Loan Association, in which he held the position of 
 secretary. The proceedings closing about eleven 
 o clock, Mr. Kendrick had allowed himself a single 
 
96 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 chaste mug of musty ale, and a game of pool (a quarter 
 apiece, loser pays for the table) in the company of some 
 of his fellow-officials, and when he started home, an 
 hour or so later, there was a block on the Central- 
 Avenue-and-John-Street line. Already the returning 
 theatre-goers had sped their several ways ; the streets 
 and Government Square and the Fountain had taken 
 on a look of Babylonian solitude and desolation. Van 
 Cleve waited for his Elmhill car, within the triangular 
 portico of a corner drug store, where stood another 
 similarly belated gentleman; and they smoked in 
 silence, shrugging and stamping to keep warm. Van 
 remembered forever afterwards how a carriage had 
 rolled by ; how he glanced up mechanically as it passed 
 into the contracted illumination of the arc-light, and 
 saw the occupants. He stared; a monosyllabic ex 
 clamation was jerked out of him by stark surprise. 
 "Hungh!" he ejaculated unconsciously. The way 
 farer who shared the vestibule thought his own atten 
 tion was being challenged, and obligingly responded. 
 " Peach girl, wasn t she?" he said; and further volun 
 teered; "that hair was a ten-blow, though. Fellow 
 likes it that way, I guess." Van Cleve grunted non- 
 committally, and they lapsed again into silence. Van 
 could never forget this trivial bit of talk, either ; he had 
 a photographic impression of the whole incident. 
 
 The car came at last ; and Kendrick got on and paid 
 his fare and rode to his own corner, pondering, part of 
 the time with a sour smile. "None of my affair, I 
 suppose," was the sum of his reflections. Strictly 
 business his own business ! had been his motto 
 this long while. He swung himself off the rear step 
 at Durham Street (they moved to Durham Street in 
 the autumn of 96, 1 believe) and, turning towards home, 
 on the next corner, casually observed a hatless individ 
 ual sustaining himself with difficulty against the post 
 across the way. "There s a drunk," Van thought; 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 97 
 
 and then something about the figure drew him to look 
 again with a foreboding interest. He stood still to 
 watch it. There appeared a night-watchman from one 
 of the neighboring apartment buildings and entered 
 into altercation with it. Van crossed the street quickly 
 and went up to them. 
 
 "G wan now, I don t want to run yuh in/ the night- 
 watchman was saying benevolently; "yuh gotta git 
 a move on, that s all. Yuh can t stay aroun here, see ? 
 Don t yuh know where yuh b long?" 
 
 "Hello, Bob !" said Van Cleve. 
 
 The other stared at him fishily. Bob reeked to 
 Heaven ; his clothing exhibited signs of a recent ac 
 quaintance with that classic resort of the drunkard, 
 the gutter ; his hat had fallen off, and his face showed 
 grimy and discolored in the lamplight. He smiled 
 vacuously. " J Lo!" he said at last thickly; " s oP 
 Van Cleve ! Lo, Van, ol top, how s shings ?" 
 
 "Party a friend o yourn?" inquired the night- 
 watchman. 
 
 "Yes, I know him," said the young man, surveying 
 Robert disgustedly. 
 
 "Know where he lives?" the night-watchman sug 
 gested; "I been tryin to git it out o him. I hadn t 
 otter leave m job, or I d took him to his home, f he s 
 got any." 
 
 "It s all right. I ll attend to him," said Van Cleve, 
 shortly. He got hold of Bob by the arm. "Here, I m 
 going to take you home, Bob," he said. "Look out, 
 you ll fall. That s not your hat. Here, don t you 
 try to get it, I ll get it - The night-watchman, 
 however, had already captured it out of a pool of half- 
 frozen slush ; he rammed out the dents in the crown 
 with his fist, gave it a wipe with a bandanna, and put 
 it back with some nicety on the head of its owner. 
 
 "All right now, sport !" said he, falling back a step ; 
 and then shook his head to observe Van Cleve s manner 
 
98 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 with the drunken man. "Careful, mister! Yuh 
 wanter handle em real easy/ he warned, as Van 
 Cleve started to march the other away ; l i they re 
 kinder hard to manage, if they git soured at yuh, 
 y know!" 
 
 "I m not drunk s pose you shink I m drunk!" 
 said Bob, indignantly. He held back. "I do wanna 
 g home yety Van not yet. Dammit, Van, can t 
 y unnerstan , ol fellow ? I do wanna go home shee 
 Lorrie - all at once he began to blubber feebly. 
 "Lome s bes girl ever was bes sister ain t 
 she bes sister ever was, Van ?" 
 
 "You ve got to go home, you know, Bob," said Van 
 Cleve, urging him along ; " come on, now. It s all right ; 
 Lorrie won t know. We ll get in without her knowing 
 I hope to God !" he added to himself wretchedly. He 
 had seen men drunk before ; had laughed at them many 
 times on the stage and elsewhere; had probably once 
 in his life, himself, taken quite as much strong drink as 
 was good for him, like more than one temperate and 
 sensible young man. So now he was not shocked ; 
 Bob was Bob, and, whatever he did, immutably his 
 friend ; but an impatient anger and distress over 
 whelmed Van Cleve at the thought of Lorrie. He got 
 Bob home somehow ; it was a sorry but after all not 
 so very difficult a task. The unlucky young fellow s 
 natural gentleness and tractability survived even in this 
 degrading defeat. Wine in, truth out ; but that enemy 
 could bring nothing brutal or obscene to the surface of 
 Bob s mind ; its shallow waters were at least clear. 
 Van got him home somehow, protesting, plaintively 
 apologetic, spasmodically gay, and got him up into the 
 porch with as little scuffling and noise as was possi 
 ble. The house was dark. "They re all asleep !" Van 
 thought in relief ; and succeeded in keeping Bob quiet 
 while he went through his pockets for his night-key. 
 Before he could find it, however, a little light gleamed 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 99 
 
 over the transom, the door opened almost soundlessly, 
 and Lorrie stood there. 
 
 She had a glass hand lamp and held it up, gazing 
 around it into the dark ; she seemed unnaturally tall in 
 a white wrapper that drew into folds about her feet ; her 
 long, dark hair divided in two wide braids lay smoothly 
 on either side of her face and down over her breast. 
 The young man was reminded startlingly of some 
 painting or image of a madonna he had once seen, 
 long ago. 
 
 "Is it you, Bob?" Lorrie said in a whisper; "won t 
 you try not to wake Mother Van Cleve!" Even in 
 her surprise, she governed her voice. 
 
 "I ve brought him home, Lorrie I I found him 
 on the street," said Van, hanging his head. But after 
 her first exclamation, the girl scarcely seemed to take 
 account of him. Her eyes passed over Van Cleve and 
 fell anxiously on her brother, huddled on the old, rickety 
 porch seat ; she came a step out of the doorway, shiver 
 ing as the cold struck her, and clutching together her 
 light draperies. 
 
 "Thank you I I m glad it was you, Van," she 
 said brokenly, yet with a self-control that astonished 
 the young man ; he looked at her, touched and reverent, 
 as she went on with the same painful strength: "I m 
 glad it was you but won t you won t you please 
 go away now ? I can take care of him now he s home. 
 I can t go out and find him I just have to wait - 
 that s really the the worst of it, you know. And I 
 don t want Mother to know. If you ll just go away 
 now, Van Cleve, I can manage him. I m afraid you - 
 you might make some noise, and wake them up you re 
 not used to it, you know," said poor Lorrie, simply. 
 
 "I m not going away, and you re not going to take 
 care of him," said Van Cleve in his harshest manner 
 though he, too, tried to speak under his breath. He put 
 her aside, and took Bob by the shoulder. "Stand up, 
 
100 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Bob ; you know you can stand up if you try/ he com 
 manded savagely. 
 
 "Don you tush my sister!" said Bob in his 
 thick accent. The fancied offence to Lorrie roused 
 him in an extraordinary fashion ; he shook off the 
 other s grasp, and got upon his feet unaided. "You 
 shan t talk that way to Lorrie, I don t care if it is 
 you, Van !" he said quite distinctly; and then equally 
 unaccountably slipped back to his former state. 
 "Leggo me! Whash doin ? G upstairs m self," he 
 asserted, mumbling, hiccoughing, wavering. Van 
 Cleve seized and steadied him ; the lamp cast a shak 
 ing light over them and over Lome s white face and 
 cold, trembling hands; it was a piece of cheap and 
 squalid tragedy. 
 
 "Please, Van Cleve, I can take care of him, truly " 
 she began again, imploringly. 
 
 "You shall not!" said Van, roughly. She obeyed 
 him this time, meekly following with the light while 
 Van Cleve propped, pushed, and dragged the other up 
 stairs to his own room, got some of his clothes off and 
 deposited him in the bed, where he lay quite stupid now, 
 and erelong sleeping noisily. His two guardians went 
 cautiously down again. The Gilbert family dog 
 had come to look on, head on one side, wrinkling its 
 honest brow in uncomprehending doggish curiosity and 
 anxiety; it sniffed at Van s hand inquiringly, recognized 
 him, and retired satisfied to its nightly bivouac across 
 the threshold of Mrs. Gilbert s bedroom. Lorrie 
 stood with her lamp at the door to light the young 
 man s way out. 
 
 "What is it? Is that you, Lorrie? Are you sick? 
 What is the matter?" Mrs. Gilbert waked up suddenly 
 and called. It was a miracle she had not waked sooner. 
 Van Cleve looked at Lorrie, utterly disconcerted. 
 
 "Nothing at all, Mother; nothing s the matter," 
 she called back pleasantly and composedly. "Dingo 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND i HIS FAMIL* 101 
 
 Deemed to want to get out, and then when I let him out, 
 he began to scratch and whine and make such a fuss, I 
 had to get up and let him in again." 
 
 "Oh, I thought that is- Mrs. Gilbert paused; 
 there was a moment of blank silence it was singularly, 
 curiously, blank and silent. "I thought I heard some 
 body on the stairs I must have been dreaming," said 
 Mrs. Gilbert with a kind of hurried distinctness and 
 emphasis. " Never mind me, dearie I I would 
 have waked anyhow - her voice ceased suddenly. 
 
 " She doesn t know, Van you see she doesn t know," 
 Lorrie whispered; it was an appeal. Van Cleve 
 heard the two women lying to each other with wonder 
 and pity. As he looked at Lorrie, on a sudden, for the 
 first time, he saw her face quiver. She put up her hands 
 to hide it, and leaned against the wall, sobbing but 
 still noiselessly. Van Cleve felt desperately that he 
 would give his right hand, he would give a year out of 
 his life, to take her to him and comfort her but what 
 comfort would she get from him? To go away and 
 leave her in peace was the greatest kindness he could do 
 her ! He lingered an instant, helplessly, dumb ; even 
 without the risk of detection, he would have been at a 
 loss what to say ; so they parted at last without a word. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 TREATS OF SUNDRY AFFAIRS OF THE HEART 
 
 ALTHOUGH the skeleton in the Gilbert family closet 
 was by way of being uncloseted nowadays, was indeed 
 rattling its joints and stalking abroad in the full glare 
 of noonday to the horror of all temperate and well- 
 behaved persons, there was at least one who remained 
 unaffected by the spectacle. The young lady whom 
 people generally referred to as "that Jameson girl/ or 
 "that little Paula Jameson " must have known as much 
 about Bob s miserable failing as anybody ; but, drunk or 
 sober, good or bad, weak or strong, it was apparently all 
 one to her. She continued to make what the other girls 
 vowed was a "dead set" at the young man. It was 
 impossible to believe, according to them, that she 
 haunted the house so persistently out of fondness for 
 Lorrie. Everybody knew (they said) that she had begun 
 her attentions to Bob s sister long ago in the hope of 
 "getting in"; and Lorrie was so dear and sweet she 
 never had the heart to get rid of her, to say nothing of 
 the fact that that would have been a job, because Paula 
 was too thick-skinned to take a hint or feel any or 
 dinary rebuff. But now ! it was plain to be seen that 
 she was after Bob. And she would probably get him, 
 too he was a good deal taken with her. Mercy, 
 nobody else wanted him ; still, it was rather a pity, he 
 was so nice when when he was all right, you know. 
 The family were all so nice, and Lorrie was lovely, 
 and they would hate such a connection, though of course 
 they would stand it on Bob s account. 
 
 102 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 103 
 
 What was it that was the matter with Miss Jameson, 
 then? Merely her manners? Our society is not 
 snobbish ; doubtless there were people in it no brighter 
 nor better-bred than Paula Jameson, and certainly 
 not nearly so pretty ; but it would not swallow her ; it 
 would have none of her nor her mother. Yet they were 
 really inoffensive creatures. Mrs. Jameson, to whom 
 at times the girl showed a somewhat disquieting resem 
 blance, was a large, vivid, extraordinarily corseted and 
 high-heeled lady, about forty-five years of age, with the 
 same kind of auburn hair as her daughter s, invariably 
 arranged in the latest fashion, or even a little in advance 
 of the latest fashion; and with a fondness for perfum 
 ery and for entire toilettes in shades of purple, lavender, 
 heliotrope, and so on, parasols, gloves, silk stockings, 
 suede shoes, all elaborately matched, wherewith she 
 might frequently be seen upon the streets, bearing her 
 self with a kind of languid chic the word she her 
 self would have used. She was a widow ; and the late 
 Mr. Jameson Levi B. Jameson, Plumbers Supplies, 
 Sewer-Pipe, Metal Roofing, Etc. having got together 
 a reasonable fortune in his time, she and Paula were 
 very comfortably off, or would have been if the taste 
 for purple costumes and similar tastes in which Paula 
 also had been trained had not kept them in perpetual hot 
 water, spending and retrenching with an equal thriftless- 
 ness. They lived at private" hotels or fashionable 
 boarding-houses here and there, and went to the theatre 
 a great deal; idling through the rest of their time in 
 shopping, or having their hands manicured and hair 
 dressed, or giving the French bulldog his bath, or 
 yawning over the last lurid novel with a box of choco 
 late drops in the rocking-chairs of the roof garden or 
 lounge. Their circle of acquaintances was not large ; 
 Mrs. Jameson had no social traditions nor aspirations, no 
 hobbies, no recreations, no aim in life at all except to be 
 the best-dressed woman in any assembly, to keep her 
 
104 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 weight down to a hundred and thirty-five pounds, and 
 never to miss her tri- weekly " facial" at the beauty 
 parlors she patronized. Paula had never seen her 
 mother do anything, had never known her to be in 
 terested in anything but the above subjects, although, 
 to do her justice, Mrs. Jameson was fond of her daughter 
 and gave almost as much attention to Paula s wardrobe 
 and figure and complexion as to her own. It was not 
 strange that the girl could conceive of no different nor 
 more elevated an existence ; that is a rare character, the 
 sages tell us, that can be superior to environment, and 
 Paula was not a rare character ; she was not especially 
 endowed in any way, except physically. She had been 
 curled, scented, arrayed in slippers too tight, and sashes 
 too wide, and hats too big, like a little show-window 
 puppet, ever since she could remember; had been 
 kissed and petted and admired by other hotel-dwelling 
 women, and noticed and flattered by men until it was 
 natural that the pretty red-gold head should be occupied 
 with Paula s self, with her beauty and her " style" arid, 
 above all, her irresistible attraction for every trousered 
 human being she saw, to the exclusion of all else. 
 Why not? She was attractive. She had no talents 
 nor accomplishments; but she had been to two or 
 three of the most select and fashionable schools ; she 
 spent infinite pains on her dress with charming results ; 
 she could not talk at all, but she could always look, as 
 Bob Gilbert himself had said; she was very pliable 
 and good-tempered, ready to laugh at any joke she 
 could understand, and to enter into any plan ; what 
 more could have been asked of her, or why should she 
 not have been satisfied with herself ? 
 
 Why little Miss Paula should have taken the fancy 
 she apparently did to the Professor s daughter, who 
 made her own clothes and trimmed her own hats, who 
 could cook a dinner or play a two step with equal 
 facility, who had ten times more sense and a hundred 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 105 
 
 times more heart, who was five years older, and more 
 mature at twenty-three than Paula would be at fifty 
 why the girl should have taken such a liking to Lorrie, 
 it was for a long while impossible for the latter to guess. 
 But Miss Jameson attached herself to Lorrie with the 
 funny perseverance of a home-seeking kitten, would 
 come to see her, would write her notes by the ream, and 
 telephone by the hour, if she had been allowed this last 
 indulgence. Lorrie was too humane to throw her off, 
 which, besides, as the other girls hinted, was no easy 
 matter ; and Miss Gilbert grew finally to feel a sort of 
 maternal fondness and a certain responsibility for the 
 childish, pretty young creature, even after the other 
 had ingenuously and quite unconsciously revealed the 
 secret of her devotion. "It s so nice for you having a 
 brother a grown-up one, I mean like Bob, isn t 
 it ? There re always such a lot of men coming to the 
 house all the time so nice ! You have ever so many 
 more men than any of the other girls. It s just lovely 
 here there s always somebody!" she said one day, 
 and wondered why Lorrie, after a moment s meditative 
 pause, looking at her oddly the while, suddenly broke 
 into a little laugh ; all her face twinkled ; she laughed 
 and laughed. 
 
 " What s funny ? What s the joke ? " demanded Paula, 
 lazily interested; she picked up a hand-glass, and 
 moved closer to the window. 
 
 1 i The people that walked in darkness have seen a 
 great light!" said Lorrie, profanely, reducing her 
 expression to one of prodigious gravity on the instant ; 
 and Paula at the bureau, painstakingly examining a 
 minute speck on the right side of her chin which she 
 dreaded might be the beginning of a pimple, did not 
 attempt to follow her friend s abrupt changes of mood. 
 Besides, Lorrie, like nearly everybody else, was forever 
 making speeches which Paula found it too fatiguing even 
 to pretend to understand. 
 
106 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 For my own part, I should not have fancied Miss 
 Jameson much, after this naive revelation of character. 
 To run after and cultivate another girl, because she 
 happens to be popular with the young men of her circle ! 
 There is a kind of silly calculation about it. But 
 Lorrie was only amused ; she took a mischievous delight 
 in drawing Paula out, and would repeat their conversa 
 tions to her mother afterwards, fetching a smile even 
 to the older woman s troubled face. They were kind- 
 hearted ; they would say "Poor Paula !" to each other 
 in the very midst of their laughter. 
 
 "Of course all the men aren t nice; but it s nice to 
 have them come to call on you, anyhow " (thus Miss 
 Jameson, according to Lome s report) "I d feel 
 awfully if I never had a caller. There s a girl at The 
 Alt.- (the young lady s abbreviation of "The 
 Altamont," that being the name of the caravanserai 
 which sheltered the Jamesons at the moment) " that 
 I don t believe has ever had a bit of attention in her 
 life not the least, little tiny scrap! I d feel awfully 
 in her place, wouldn t you ? Momma I mean Mama 
 - Mama says any girl that hasn t had a proposal before 
 she s twenty is & freak. I said to her, Well, that lets 
 me out ! I m safe, anyhow ! Momma Mama simply 
 screamed ; she s been telling everybody in the hotel. 
 I don t care. It s true, you know. I m going on 
 twenty-three, and I ve had four I mean not counting 
 college boys when you re away in the summer and all 
 that. I never count them, though lots of girls do. I 
 don t care for boys I d rather have men. One of 
 mine has stacks of money ; he s in the shoe business in 
 Springfield, Massachusetts, and used to come around 
 and stop at The Alt. regularly four times a year, getting 
 up trade at the stores, you know. He don t come any 
 more, though, since I turned him down. I don t 
 think the shoe business would be very stylish, somehow, 
 do you? It wouldn t be like saying your husband 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 107 
 
 was president of a bank, or something. He did give 
 me lovely things, though." She sighed reminiscently. 
 "He gave me my silver toilet-set all except those 
 two big cologne bottles with the silver deposit on 
 cut glass. Another man gave me those. I priced 
 them afterwards at Dormer s and they re fifteen 
 dollars apiece. Isn t it funny how men just love 
 to spend money on you? I had a fellow once that 
 gave me the cutest little watch one of the real little 
 ones, not any bigger than that, you know, dark 
 blue enamel with pearls all over it, and a little flure- 
 de-lee pin to match too cute for anything. I ll 
 show it to you some time when you re over. I wish 
 you d come over ; you always say you will, and then 
 you never do." 
 
 "You don t mean to say you took those men s pres 
 ents?" ejaculated Lorrie, ungrammatically. 
 
 "Why, yes. Why? Wouldn t you have? They re 
 lovely things they re all real, you know, the pearls on 
 the watch and everything. I wouldn t have em a 
 minute if they weren t. I hate anything common. But 
 wouldn t you have taken them ? The men were simply 
 gone about me, you know, just crazy." 
 
 "Mother wouldn t have let me," Lorrie stammered, 
 trying, in her quick humanity, to make some explana 
 tion that might not hurt the other s feelings. But 
 Paula looked at her with no feeling more pronounced 
 than surprise. 
 
 "I should think you d take em, and just not tell her," 
 she remarked ; "you can always say you saved up and 
 bought em out of your own money, or some girl in 
 Seattle or somewhere way off sent em to you. 
 Momma don t know about all my things. I like to 
 have presents from men. I can t see there s any harm 
 in it." A curious hardness came into her face; she 
 eyed the older girl with something like cunning, an 
 expression as uncanny on Paula s soft, dimpled features 
 
108 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 as it would have been on a five-year-old baby s. Didn t 
 anybody ever give you anything?" 
 
 "No," said Lorrie, shortly, annoyed. 
 
 "Pooh, you just won t tell. I think you might me, 
 though I wouldn t give you away. You ve had 
 ever so many men awfully gone on you, everybody says. 
 I love to hear them talk and go on that soft way, don t 
 you ? I think you might tell me. There s V. C. K. - 
 you know who I mean you needn t pretend you 
 don t." 
 
 "V. C. K. ? Oh!" said Lorrie, crimsoning; "please 
 don t say things like that, Paula. He s just Bob s 
 friend. It doesn t seem fair to a man to to talk like 
 that. Even if it were true, it sounds it sounds " 
 she stopped, hampered for words the other could under 
 stand without offence ; she could not say to Paula that 
 it sounded cheap and common. "I wouldn t do it, 
 if I were you," Lorrie said finally. 
 
 "Seems to me there s a lot of things you won t do," 
 Paula said suspiciously. "Everybody knows it 
 about Van Kendrick, I mean. He comes here to see you. 
 He isn t such a tremendously good friend of Bob s ; 
 they don t go around together nearly as much as they 
 used to." 
 
 Lorrie did not answer ; her face clouded unhappily. 
 
 "Well, if he hasn t ever come right out and asked you, 
 I suppose it s because of his family," suggested Paula, 
 comfortingly, misreading the other s silence and look 
 of trouble; "I suppose he thinks he can t afford to get 
 married. I don t like him much, anyhow. He s 
 always so so well, so grumpy and grouchy, you 
 know. He always shoots right by you on the street, 
 and just grabs off his hat and jabs it on again as if he 
 was afraid for his life to stop and speak for fear he d 
 have to ask you to go to lunch with him, or pay your 
 car fare or something. He never does offer to take a 
 person anywhere, to the theatre or anything. He s 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 109 
 
 awfully stingy. Oh, I don t suppose he s that way 
 with you. But I just hope you won t take him, 
 Lorrie." 
 
 "I told you there wasn t any question of that," 
 said Lorrie, not too amiably. She was tired of listening 
 to all this dull, distasteful stuff. If she was not at all 
 in love with Van Cleve Kendrick, she still thought 
 him a deal above Miss Jameson s criticism. Paula only 
 shrugged, and turned her attention to her ringer nails. 
 After a while she said, without raising her eyes, 
 "Mr. Cortwright s getting to come pretty often, too, 
 isn t he?" 
 
 "Not any more than anybody else," said Lorrie; 
 and now she, too, kept her eyes down. 
 
 "I thought he seemed to be here every time I hap 
 pen to come over in the evenings, you know," said 
 Paula, who indeed "happened" to come over in the 
 evenings two or three times a week with striking regu 
 larity ; there crept into her eyes that same look of 
 babyish sharpness that had showed there a while before. 
 "I noticed it because two or three times he s taken me 
 home," she said explanatorily. 
 
 "Yes?" said Lorrie, engrossed in her embroidery. 
 
 "Why, yes, don t you remember ? It was when Bob 
 was out or sick, so he couldn t," said Paula, more 
 explanatorily still. She went on quickly with a good 
 deal of emphasis : "I just said to myself, Well, if I d 
 known you were going to be here, I d have stayed home ! 7 
 You know I don t like Mr. Cortwright, either, Lorrie I 
 don t like him a little bit !" She paused, slightly out of 
 breath, glancing narrowly into her companion s face ; 
 but Lome s eyes were still lowered, and at the moment 
 she was matching two skeins of pink floss with elaborate 
 care, so that if Miss Jameson had counted on these 
 statements making some visible impression, she was 
 disappointed. "I just hate him !" she announced vig 
 orously. 
 
110 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 " Oh, poor Mr. Cortwright !" said Lorrie, with a kind 
 of absent-minded laugh, deciding on the darker shade at 
 last. 
 
 The other girl scrutinized her silently. "Do you 
 like him?" she suddenly demanded. 
 
 "Oh, yes. He s always been very nice to Bob, you 
 know/ said Lorrie, maintaining her light tone, but 
 furious inwardly to feel the red coming into her 
 cheeks. It was ridiculous to be dragging in Bob this 
 way to account for every man that came to the house ; 
 she began to laugh, a little nervously. 
 
 Paula looked at her again uncertainly. "Well, I 
 hate him !" she repeated ; "I ve never even asked him 
 in when we got to The Alt., or asked him to call, or any 
 thing." Again Paula considered, or, at least, had the 
 appearance of considering, though it would have been 
 hard to believe that any operation of so much conse 
 quence was going on behind that lovely, inanimate 
 mask. "He don t like me, either Mr. Cortwright 
 just hates me, I know it," she said, eying Lorrie ex 
 pectantly. "He just took me home those times 
 because he had to." Lorrie made an inarticulate 
 sound of dissent, and went on with her fancy work 
 assiduously. 
 
 "Does he ever say anything to you about me ? " asked 
 Paula. 
 
 "Why, yes no I don t know sometimes I 
 suppose we talk about everybody once in a while - 
 said Lorrie, rather confusedly. Mr. Cortwright had 
 not been overcomplimentary in his references to Miss 
 Jameson. But the latter, who candidly liked to occupy 
 the limelight and the centre of the stage, and in general 
 would rather have heard that she had been severely 
 reviewed, even lacerated, by the gossips, than that they 
 had passed her over with no notice at all, nevertheless 
 looked not disturbed at the neglect Lorrie implied. 
 
 "Mr. Cortwright don t like me," she insisted again. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 111 
 
 According to legend, two pairs of ears should have 
 been burning pretty smartly while the above conver 
 sation went on ; we may imagine that the first gentle 
 man- under discussion, could he have overheard Miss 
 Jameson, would have dismissed her estimate of his 
 character easily enough, however angered or annoyed 
 by the rest of the discourse. Van Cleve was not of a 
 temper to be much ruffled by the accusation of stinginess 
 and rudeness. Very likely it was near the truth; 
 and he himself might have explained that he didn t have 
 any time for attentions to girls, and his money came 
 too hard to be spent plentifully. He had a use for every 
 dollar; and by Somethingquitestrong, if that young 
 lady had ever made a dollar, she d think differently ! 
 Also he would have said with a red face that that 
 was all rot about himself and Miss Gilbert. As for 
 Cortwright, the fact is, "poor Paula" had hit upon the 
 truth itself in those. last remarks of hers, for he had 
 confessed as much to Lorrie ! The girl bored him to 
 death, he had said with great plainness and energy. 
 Pretty, of course, but there was absolutely nothing 
 to her ! He did wish she d give up this running after 
 Bob, and let the house alone. He, too, spoke of the 
 times he had been obliged to take her home he 
 couldn t get out of it, you know didn t want to be 
 rude, but really ! He was lightly and humorously 
 eloquent on the subject of Miss Jameson. 
 
 "I think you are a little hard on poor Paula," 
 Lorrie remonstrated, coming to the defence more 
 out of sex loyalty than from any feeling for the 
 other girl. "You ought to make allowances for the 
 way she s been brought up. It s perfectly pathetic 
 when you stop to think about it. No real home, and 
 no real mother - 
 
 "What! No mother? Oh, come now, Miss Gilbert, 
 you surely know Mrs. Jameson, don t you? You ve 
 seen her, anyway ? Ah, I see, that s it ! You do 
 
112 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 know Mrs. Jameson !" said the gentleman, meaningly, 
 with a lazy laugh. 
 
 "I didn t mean to say that I didn t say that exactly. 
 I meant her mother doesn t isn t well, she s not 
 like some mothers, you know," said Lorrie, lamely, 
 between her habitual desire to be charitable, and a 
 strong disapproval of Mrs. Jameson. Cortwright 
 understood her and laughed again. 
 
 "Mrs. Jameson isn t much like your kind of mother," 
 he said ; and added, " there aren t many like you among 
 the daughters, either, for that matter," with the faintly 
 caressing emphasis of which he had the secret. It made 
 Lome s face grow warm even in the dark, as they sat 
 on the porch f a midsummer night. They were sitting 
 in their customary positions ; that is, Lorrie leaning 
 back against the pillar, with her white skirts flowing 
 down, and her small, capable hands for once idle in her 
 lap ; and Cortwright, on the step below, bending 
 towards her in one of those cavalier attitudes into which 
 he fell more or less unaffectedly; he was naturally 
 graceful in his movements ; and the sword and mantle 
 of the cavalier day would have set upon him as suitably 
 as its light and swaggering morals. Sometimes his 
 hand or foot touched hers accidentally or tentatively ; 
 but as to any of the sentimental advances which he was 
 reported to practise, the young man seldom attempted 
 them with Lorrie Gilbert. The fellow that tried to 
 kiss her would get his, he sometimes thought in his 
 profanely modern speech; and was startled to feel a 
 thrill of anger, resentment, jealous desire, dart through 
 him at this purely speculative person s act. He was 
 beginning to be much more in earnest than he had ever 
 dreamed of being ; certainly than he had ever been before 
 with any of the women he had encountered throughout 
 his easy, conquering, not too scrupulous, career. Also 
 he was perfectly well aware that rumor bracketed 
 their two names; and let it go undenied, keeping 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 113 
 
 silence but smiling in a style calculated to support 
 the talk, if anything. In reality, it at once flattered 
 and disconcerted him; he was not sure that he was 
 so much in earnest as all that, he said to himself, half 
 complacent and half alarmed. Getting married, you 
 know ! And, anyhow, what did she think ? What 
 did she think ? For the first time in his life, a healthy 
 self -distrust invaded him. The very candor of Lome s 
 liking at once defeated and spurred him on. And 
 now, as he sat beside her, sensing, as often before, to 
 his own wonder and enchantment, an ineffable comfort, 
 restfulness, and content, physical, spiritual, he did not 
 know which, in her presence and nearness, a sudden 
 small anxiety overtook him. 
 
 "I imagine Miss Jameson tells you all about her love- 
 affairs what he said and what she said, and all the 
 rest of it," he said ; " she s had a good many, probably." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Lorrie, indulgently ; and she laughed. 
 Cortwright was relieved at her tone and laughter. 
 Even if Paula even if any girl, hadn t enough sense 
 to keep her mouth shut, she would have enough cun 
 ning, he thought, secure in his knowledge of the sex. 
 
 " After all, it would be a pretty good thing if Bob 
 fell in love with her. It would do him good to get his 
 mind set on some girl, I believe," he said, in a kind, 
 elder-brother fashion that touched Lorrie deeply. 
 
 " That s what I ve often thought," she said impul 
 sively; "that s what I ve often longed for. Mother 
 and I we can t do much he s too used to us a 
 man doesn t seem to care much what his mother and 
 sisters think about him. He knows they re going to 
 love him, anyhow. But if Bob would only get to caring 
 for some girl Paula or anybody if he d only - 
 instead of - Lome s voice failed ; all the pain and 
 worry of these past few months when things, already 
 so bad, seemed to be getting so much worse, suddenly 
 knotted together in her throat. She turned her face 
 
114 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 away, sternly resolved to control herself. "I m getting 
 silly and hysterical, laughing one minute and wanting 
 to cry the next!" she thought impatiently. Indeed, 
 she had been under a hard strain for some time now. 
 
 The man, who knew well enough what the trouble was, 
 looked at her and then down, a little shamed, a little 
 humbled. Bob s misbehavior surely could not be laid 
 to his door; but a sharp regret stung him. "Men 
 don t deserve to have sisters and mothers and and 
 wives!" he declared huskily, not conscious of the 
 irrelevance of the words until they were out ; and both 
 of them were awkwardly silent an instant. Cortwright 
 looked into her face again, and saw that the brown 
 eyes shone suspiciously in the moonlight, as with un 
 shed tears. He gave an exclamation. 
 
 "Don t do that, Lorrie, don t! I I mean, don t 
 worry about Bob so!" he stammered, moved by a 
 genuine, self-forgetful sympathy and pity. He took 
 her hand ; he kept on with reassuring and comforting 
 words. "Bob s all right he s going to come out all 
 right. He ll get over this running around, you know, 
 and er and coming in late at night, and er 
 and all that. Why, there re lots of fellows worse than 
 Bob" 
 
 "I know that, Mr. Cortwright, but that doesn t 
 make it any easier, said Lorrie, brokenly ; she swallowed 
 hard, and went on without looking at him. "I m sure 
 Bob wouldn t wouldn t do anything wrong, even 
 when he s when he s that way, you know. But it s 
 been so long now it seems as if maybe he never would 
 get over it. That s what frightens me. It began 
 when he was only a little boy; he used to drink the 
 peach-brandy. Sometimes he drank it all up. When 
 I found out, I never told Mother, and I never said a 
 word to him. I d go and fill the jug up with syrup. 
 I suppose it was wrong, but I I didn t know any 
 better. To this day, I don t know whether Mother 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 115 
 
 knows or not. I should just as lief stick the carving- 
 knife into her as ask or tell her. She might think it 
 was her fault because of having the peach-brandy 
 around, you see She drew her hand away quickly ; 
 she was frightened at her own loss of self-control, 
 frightened at her sudden longing to cry her troubles 
 out on the young man s shoulder. 
 
 "Oh no, no, don t get to thinking things like that. 
 That s morbid, that s foolish!" Cortwright urged, 
 honestly moved ; and none the less because the peach- 
 brandy episode seemed to him an ordinary boyish 
 crime, fit only to be laughed at ; its very littleness 
 touched him. "It isn t anybody s fault. Nearly all 
 men have some kind of a time Eke this. Bob will 
 come around all right. Why, he s a fine fellow, a 
 splendid fellow he s going to be all right - he 
 uttered these consolations with entire sincerity, even 
 if, in reality, he had no convictions about Bob what 
 ever, and would have acknowledged to another man 
 that the outcome of young Gilbert s career was very 
 dubious. He felt with a strange tangle of emotions, 
 surprise, conceit, satisfaction, and something as near 
 to real tenderness as he could entertain, that this sad 
 business about Bob brought Lorrie and himself closer 
 together than a year of visits and attentions and frank, 
 pleasant intimacies had been able to do. And now, as 
 always when he was with her, Lorrie unwittingly 
 called out all that was best in him. He was very 
 gentle, governing his impulses in honest respect, made 
 a great many fine forcible promises to "look after Bob," 
 to "see if he couldn t do something with Bob," to "get 
 Bob to straighten up," etc. ; and went away from her 
 at last in a very noble, protecting, ardent, and exalted 
 state of mind, highly unusual and agreeable. He was 
 resolved to straighten up, not only Robert, but Philip 
 Cortwright, too. For such a girl, a man ought to be 
 willing to do anything ! He would cut out that other 
 
116 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 affair altogether ; it would begin to tire him pretty soon, 
 anyhow; he would go on the water wagon himself, 
 drop the ponies, marry Lorrie, and settle down ! And 
 doubtless Lorrie went upstairs to her room soothed and 
 sustained and full of trust in him ; doubtless, too, she 
 blushed to face herself in the glass when she thought 
 of certain passages, certain intonations of "his" voice, 
 certain expressions in " his "eyes ; and combed out and 
 braided her long, thick, waving crop of brown hair in 
 a pensive mood which had nothing to do with that 
 unfortunate Robert ; and maybe sat awhile by the 
 window with her chin propped on her hands staring 
 and star-gazing and dreaming while the family snored 
 unromantically all about her, before she slipped into her 
 own little bed. 
 
 At the same time, not many squares away, another 
 acquaintance of ours may have been indulging in a 
 very similar style of meditation, and surveying what 
 she could of the night and stars from the window of 
 her bedroom a stuffy hotel bedroom that commanded 
 a much better view of the rear roofs and fire-escapes 
 and the windows of other stuffy bedrooms than of 
 anything celestial. Within are odors of toilet waters 
 and stale roses ; you may hear a bell-boy padding 
 along the corridor accompanied by a chinking of ice- 
 water pitchers ; near at hand the elevator grinds 
 slowly up, and anon grinds slowly down. The young 
 lady in a heavily embroidered lavender crepe kimono 
 somewhat too roomy for her it is part of her mother s 
 wardrobe, in fact has been stealthily reading and 
 rereading a number of little notes received with sundry 
 boxes of candy or perhaps with those other more costly 
 " presents" for which she has a weakness; she has by 
 heart every word of those notes. They are "soft" 
 and sugary enough even for her taste, and fascinatingly 
 seasoned besides with hints of mystery, secrecy, and 
 caution. This affair quite puts in the shade the honest 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 117 
 
 gentleman of the shoe business and others who have 
 been vulgarly plain and above board about their ad 
 miration and their hopes ! It has progressed from 
 chance meetings at first to meetings that were not by 
 any means chance, on her part at any rate, later ; and 
 now to risky little appointments, delightful stolen 
 moments, subtly planned encounters exactly like a 
 play ! Indeed, was there ever a finer figure for a 
 matinee hero seen on any stage than the individual 
 signing himself hers, Phil ? 
 
 Momma no, deliver us ! Mama calls crossly and 
 drowsily from the next room to know what on earth 
 she is doing, and why doesn t she go to bed ? The 
 light is right in the older lady s eyes, it appears. So 
 the younger springs up dutifully and turns it out; 
 and lies down ; and is soon sleeping sweetly as becomes 
 her youth and innocence, and her stainless, untroubled 
 conscience. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE INDUSTKIOUS APPRENTICE 
 
 "THE rolling stone gathers no moss/ 7 and "The 
 setting hen never gets fat" are two worthy old prov 
 erbs not less true, it would seem, for being diametri 
 cally contradictory ; and liable, like most proverbs, to 
 excite the retort that everything depends on the in 
 dividual. For instance, there was Van Cleve Kendrick, 
 after some five years at the bank, as solid a fixture as 
 its marble steps or safe-deposit vaults, the very reverse 
 of a rolling stone ; yet no supine and starveling setting 
 hen, for all that. On the contrary, the young fellow 
 was considered unusually active, shrewd, self-reliant, 
 and capable ; his integrity was above question ; his 
 ability such as to put him "right in line for promotion," 
 according to what people heard. Indeed, the presi 
 dent of the National Loan, Mr. Gebhardt himself, was 
 the original source of this rumor. He was an enthu 
 siastic man, a big, blond, fine-looking man with the 
 heavy beard and roving, distant blue eyes of a Viking, 
 and when he came out with one of his strong encomiums 
 about "my young friendt Van Cleef Kendrick" in his 
 deep and melodious bass voice with the faint German 
 accent which he always betrayed in moments of earnest 
 ness or excitement, the effect was very impressive and 
 convincing. But even without Mr. Gebhardt s indorse 
 ment, Van Cleve would probably have earned the same 
 reputation. At twenty-seven years of age, Mr. Ken 
 drick held eight shares in the National, on which he 
 had paid a third of what he had borrowed to buy them ; 
 
 118 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 119 
 
 he had six hundred dollars laid by ; he was drawing a 
 salary of twenty-three hundred a year, and making a 
 little "on the side/ in the management of various 
 small savings and bits of real estate for half a dozen or 
 more of those same honest hucksters, seamstresses, 
 dairymen, and so on 1 whom he had used to watch 
 coming in with their deposits Saturday nights ; he had 
 put his cousin Evelyn through the Art School, and 
 given her an extra twelvemonth of study in New York ; 
 he had been supporting a family for years, if not in 
 luxury, certainly in ordinary comfort. At twenty-seven, 
 also, Van s hair was thinning a little on the temples, 
 there was a hard line at the corner of his flat, straight 
 mouth, another between his eyebrows. Since he began 
 to work, he had seldom had, and never asked for, a 
 vacation, even of a week, even of a day ; Sundays and 
 holidays he looked upon as a more or less unnecessary 
 evil. There he stuck at his desk or at and about 
 kindred desks and offices, cool, steady, briefly civil, 
 ageing before his time, an edifying example of American 
 thrift and industry yet I know one person, at least, 
 to whom there was something not far from pathetic in 
 the spectacle. Youth s a stuff that can t endure ; and 
 what was Van Cleve doing with his, he who had almost 
 forgot how to play, who took his leisure so rarely and 
 grudgingly, who made friends among men old enough 
 to be his father, and never looked at a woman except 
 to get out of her way ? What was he doing with these 
 beautiful, unreturning days, and what, what would he 
 be doing at sixty or seventy-five? He was providing 
 
 1 1 never quite understood how Van Cleve came to be so well ac 
 quainted among these people ; but a remark of my laundress, a 
 respectable colored woman whom I have employed for years, throws 
 some light on the point. "Mistah Kendrick? Lawzee, I knows 
 him; I ve knowed him evah sence he was a beginnah, befo dey done 
 had de trouble at de bank, yass m ," she said; "I used to peek 
 through dem little gold wires, an see him settin there, figurin , an 
 dat young man was p intedly so pernicious at his duties, it tracted 
 me, yass m ." 
 
120 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 against that very time ! "It s a bad thing to be old," 
 he used to say in his dry and cold way; his manner 
 may have inspired confidence and respect, but it was 
 never gracious; "it s a bad thing to be old," says 
 Joshua Van Cleve s grandson; "but it s the worst 
 thing that can happen to be poor and old !" 
 
 The young man, with all his harshness, took care 
 not to betray any such opinion to his family, all of 
 whom, setting aside Evelyn, were well under way in 
 years ; if old age would not find them in poverty, that 
 was owing solely to Van Cleve s own efforts, a fact, 
 however, of which he never would have dreamed of 
 reminding them, even if he himself had fully realized 
 it. He was of the temper to work hard and direct his 
 affairs with economy and prudence, without any need 
 or incentive whatever ; and it was with a kind of 
 satirical patience that he received, or rather endured, 
 the devotion and admiration of his domestic circle. 
 "Why, Grandma, you ve got me down fine, haven t 
 you? And of course you re a pretty good judge of 
 men at your time of life and with all your ex 
 perience!" he would say, in reply to the old lady s 
 half -tearful eulogies: "I m a hero and a saint, and 
 the biggest thing on top of the ground. You say 
 so, and you ought to know. My services to the 
 bank are invaluable; I don t believe they could find 
 more than forty or fifty bright young men to fill my 
 place, in case - 
 
 "Oh, don t talk that way, Van!" cried his Aunt 
 Myra, aghast at this suggestion ; "if you should lose 
 your position !" Her eyes roved wildly over the 
 pretty, comfortable room ; in a trice she saw it a garret, 
 a hovel, an almshouse, and herself and Evelyn starv 
 ing in rags! "You you don t think they re going 
 to discharge you, do you, Van Cleve?" she said, 
 trembling. 
 
 "Why, not that I know of. I guess I ll stay with 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 121 
 
 the job a while yet," said Van, amused, reading her 
 easily, perhaps somewhat contemptuously ; he knew 
 his aunt to be a sincerely good woman, and he supposed 
 that all good women contrived to be not at all self- 
 indulgent, yet thoroughly selfish, after her fashion. 
 "Don t fly off the handle that way/ he said; "I ll 
 always manage to take care of you somehow or other, 
 Aunt Myra." 
 
 "Well, I hope / count for something" interposed 
 Evelyn, haughtily ; "I expect to do something with my 
 brush. I think I ve shown there s something in me 
 already, for that matter, getting a picture in the 
 Women s Art League Exhibit with that awfully critical 
 jury that refused some of the most famous artists in 
 Ohio- 
 
 "And Ohio s the banner State for artists, too !" said 
 Van Cleve, wagging his head solemnly. 
 
 "Well, but it s so, Van Cleve, you needn t belittle it 
 that way. You don t know how much it means. 
 Everybody keeps saying to me, Why, your reputa 
 tion s made now, Miss Lucas ; you ve reached the top / 
 They don t have to say it, you know, so I know they 
 mean it. And I ve told you how jealous some of the 
 failures are girls that used to be in the same classes 
 with me here, and ever so many of the women that are 
 considered pretty high up that couldn t get their 
 pictures in, you know; why, the very fact that they 
 are so jealous of me just shows there s something in my 
 work, doesn t it, Mama? They say the meanest, 
 cat-iest things, like hinting that Mr. Keene he s on 
 the jury, you know, the most important one of them 
 all is crazy about me, and would let any old daub 
 in, if he thought I did it. Of course, I wouldn t admit 
 to anybody that he is" said Evelyn, with becoming 
 reticence; "but I do him the justice to know that his 
 feeling about me doesn t make the slightest difference ; 
 he s too great an artist and too fine and noble to let 
 
122 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 anything personal influence him. But he told me him 
 self that I need have no fears for the future - 
 
 "All right, Rosa Bonheur, you get busy with your 
 brush and stave off the poorhouse when the time 
 comes, will you ? In the meanwhile, I may as well 
 keep on working," said Van Cleve, cutting her short 
 with the good-humored indifference his cousin found so 
 exasperating. Many a genius has suffered thus from 
 a lack of appreciation in the family ; and I fear Evelyn 
 was no fonder of Van Cleve because he had contributed 
 to her artistic education with unhesitating liberality, 
 perhaps at the cost of some scrimping and self-denial ; 
 nor did she like him any the better for having forgotten 
 all about these sacrifices, or for holding them of no 
 moment. Yet she was not ungrateful ; all that she 
 wanted was for him to take her seriously and he 
 refused to take her seriously ! It was obvious that he 
 left her and her talents and her achievements out of 
 his reckoning altogether; the girl could have forgiven 
 an offensive scepticism more easily. 
 
 " All you think about is money, Van Cleve Kendrick ! " 
 she burst out angrily ; " that s the only standard you ve 
 got. If I sold a picture for seventy-five or a hundred 
 dollars, you d believe I could paint you d think I 
 was worth while!" 
 
 " You bet I would !" Van Cleve agreed heartily, if 
 somewhat absently ; he had got out his fountain-pen, 
 and, sitting at the little old-fashioned black walnut 
 desk in the corner of the dining-room, was running 
 over the monthly bills which Mrs. Lucas always col 
 lected together and bestowed in a certain old Japanese 
 lacquer box to await pay day. " Oughtn t there to be 
 a bill here from Doctor McCrea?" said Van, looking 
 up ; "he generally sends it at the half year." 
 
 No one answered immediately ; and to his surprise 
 Van Cleve detected a conscious glance pass among the 
 three women. His grandmother spoke at last. "Eve- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 123 
 
 lyn has arranged about that bill," she said proudly 
 and at the same time rather timidly; "it was forty- 
 five dollars, and Evelyn went to see the doctor and 
 arranged to pay it herself." 
 
 Van Gleve turned his light gray eyes on the girl. 
 "How?" he asked. " How are you going to pay it ?" 
 He looked interested. "Did you save it up yourself, 
 Evie? By George, that s pretty good !" 
 
 "Never mind, Van dearest, we didn t want to bother 
 you with it ; we weren t going to say a word to you about 
 it," his aunt cried out, in a hectic excitement. "You re 
 always so splendid and honorable, we knew you d pay 
 the doctor and go without a new spring suit and you 
 ought to have a spring suit, you said so yourself the 
 other day. And we couldn t bear to have you dis 
 appointed ; it s a perfect shame the way you deny 
 yourself all the time, and you have all of us hanging 
 around your neck like millstones." Her eyes filled 
 up; she almost sobbed the next words. "So Evelyn 
 thought out a p-plan, and she went to see the doctor, 
 and you tell him, Evie oh, Van, she is the noblest 
 girl!" 
 
 "I simply suggested that I could pay him with a pic 
 ture, Van," said Evelyn, not without complacency. 
 "I told him that I had three that had been exhibited 
 and very highly spoken of, and he could have his 
 choice. You know any one of them is worth ever so 
 much more than his bill, Van," said Evelyn, earnestly ; 
 "but of course I didn t tell him that right out in so 
 many words. Only I thought it wasn t any harm to 
 let him know that they were very valuable, and that 
 he wasn t getting cheated. He said he didn t know 
 much about pictures. So I just told him in a general 
 sort of way, you know, what I would ask for these, 
 and I could see he was perfectly astonished and very 
 much impressed. I m going to send the pictures over 
 to-morrow for him to pick out. It s that View of 
 
124 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Paradise Park by Moonlight/ and Over the Rhine/ 
 and that lovely Bend in the River ; Fort Thomas " 
 
 "Have you got his bill?" interrupted the other; 
 and, the document being produced, Van Cleve silently 
 folded it away in his letter case alongside the rest 
 with an expression that somehow disconcerted the little 
 assembly. 
 
 "I think you d better give up this this arrange 
 ment, Evelyn/ he said unemotionally. "I ll send the 
 doctor a check to-day. I d rather you didn t pay 
 any bills that way." 
 
 "Why, Van, why not?" Evelyn protested; "oh, of 
 course, I see! You think my paintings aren t worth 
 forty-five dollars. You think they aren t worth any 
 thing. You don t realize that my pictures are just 
 the same as money." 
 
 "Maybe so. You couldn t pay the butcher with 
 em," said Van Cleve a remark that momentarily 
 silenced argument. He rose, the three women staring 
 at him hurt, angry, bewildered. "Now look here, 
 Evelyn," he said, not unkindly; "you re not to do 
 anything like this again, you understand me? I m 
 not saying anything against your pictures ; they may 
 be worth all you claim. But they aren t the same as 
 money, not by a long sight. I look after a little piece 
 of property for a man that s a marble-cutter over here 
 on Gilbert Avenue ; what would you think if he offered 
 to pay me with a statue of Psyche, hey ? Now I know 
 you want to help me, but that s not the way to do it 
 - to go and bunko somebody into taking one of your 
 pictures in return for his work that he s trying to 
 make his living by. Sell your picture first, and do 
 what you want with the money 
 
 "Stop, Van Cleve ! Don t you see you re breaking 
 her heart !" Mrs. Lucas screamed, starting to her feet 
 and rushing to throw her arms around her daughter; 
 both of them were sobbing vehemently. "How can 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 125 
 
 you talk so ? How can you be so brutal ?" She faced 
 him in tragic indignation. "If it had been any other 
 man, anybody but you, Van Cleve, I d say he ought to 
 be horse-whipped / " 
 
 " Don t, Mother darling, don t ! Now she ll have one 
 of her heart attacks Van, how could you !" pro 
 claimed Evelyn in her turn ; Mrs. Van Cleve ran for 
 the smelling salts ; the maid whirled in from the 
 kitchen ; there was a terrifying to-do ; in the midst of 
 it, the young man, who was not unfamiliar with this 
 sort of scene, made his escape. He was so little moved 
 by the distress he left behind that he even grinned to 
 himself as he took his way down town, thinking, "I d 
 like to have seen McCrea s face when Evie handed 
 him that gold brick!" Apart from performances of 
 this nature, which were likely to be annoying, Mr. Van 
 Cleve attached scarcely any importance to what 
 women said and did ; all women, he supposed, were 
 hysterical fools ahem ! well, not that exactly, but 
 ill balanced and excitable and reasonless all but one, 
 that : Van had seen enough of Lorrie Gilbert to 
 know mat she, at least, could control herself and act 
 to good purpose when need arose. 
 
 He thought about Lorrie a good deal these days, 
 tried to put her out of his mind, and found it returning 
 to her again and again with a commingled pain and 
 pleasure which he now at last understood. As usual he 
 was ruthlessly clear-eyed and clear-headed about it, 
 ruthlessly plain spoken with himself. He knew that 
 he was nothing to Lorrie ; she had never encouraged 
 him ; if Van Cleve had ever assumed a definitely lover- 
 like attitude, she would have denied him with real 
 distress and regretted keenly the lost friend ; and, be 
 sides, she was credibly reported engaged to another 
 man. Van worked harder than this other man, and 
 he made as much money ; if not so ornamental to the 
 community, he was a deal more useful ; he was the 
 
126 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Good Apprentice and the worthy steward ; but he 
 could not marry. Even had Lorrie been as much in 
 love with him as he with her, he could not have asked 
 her to marry him. His sense of duty and his hard 
 pride would have restrained him. "I m not going to 
 ask any girl to live with my family I m not going to 
 put that on her, and I m not going to ask her to wait 
 for me/ either/ was his idea; "I don t want anybody 
 taking a chance on me. What would that be, anyhow, 
 but hinting to her to hang on till some of my people 
 died off and left me a little freer ? Not for me ! When 
 I m making ten thousand a year will be time enough 
 for marrying. Lorrie ll be a grandmother by that 
 time, most likely ! Oh, well !" he sometimes finished 
 with a touch of his harsh fun. Mr. Kendrick did not 
 lack a gift of philosophy; and it was equally charac 
 teristic that he never for an instant doubted he would 
 some day make that ten thousand a year and much 
 more. 
 
 In the meanwhile, life was not uninteresting even to 
 a hopeless lover a lover, that is, with as hard a head, 
 and as staunch a digestion as this hero s. This very 
 day, when Van caught the next down-going car, he 
 found its crowded passengers reading the latest news 
 from the insurrection in that neighboring West Indian 
 island of which we were beginning to hear so much 
 in those days, and conclamantly airing their views on 
 the subject. "DOOM OF HAVANA SEALED ! GENERAL 
 GOMEZ CAPTURES THE WATERWORKS !" one man read 
 out of the paper; "that settles it, boys!" he an 
 nounced with much solemnity; "the Spanish ll have 
 to give up now. They can t get any washing done !" 
 And everybody laughed, and another remarked that 
 he had never understood the Spanish were very strong 
 on laundry work, anyhow. Van Cleve, clinging to his 
 strap, listened inattentively ; this kind of talk was rife 
 that winter had been going the rounds, indeed, for 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 127 
 
 the past year. Do we not all remember it? The 
 United States ought to interfere No, sir, what busi 
 ness was it of ours? Let em take care of their own 
 troubles; we had enough to keep us busy with ours 
 already , Well, the first thing you know, some other 
 nation would come along, Great Britain, for instance, 
 and settle the whole business by taking Cuba away 
 from Spain once for all. How would we like that ? 
 If the island belonged to anybody, it ought, logically, 
 to be us. Well, I m against imperialism on principle. 
 This talk about the Monroe Doctrine is all bosh. 
 We ve never had occasion to butt into anybody else s 
 quarrel. Look how Cleveland put his foot in it with 
 that Venezuela fuss --Yes, but this was different; 
 think of those wretched Cubans, the awful oppression, 
 the fiendish inhumanity. Pshaw, you don t know 
 how much of that is just newspaper stories. Still, you 
 will allow they ve some cause for complaint, you ll 
 allow that ? Then if somebody knocked down a woman 
 and began beating her to death on your front porch, 
 wouldn t you run out and stop it? --Huh, and if 
 somebody came into your office with a billy and ordered 
 you to stop bossing your office boy, what would you 
 do? Better quit making bonfires of niggers all over 
 the country before we went around blowing off a lot of 
 hot air about inhumanity, I guess, etc., etc. Maceo 
 Weyler McKinley concentration camps filibus 
 ters the " Commodore" expedition do we not all 
 of us remember it, I say ? 
 
 Mr. Kendrick was among those who were against 
 intervention when he thought about Cuba s troubles 
 at all, which was seldom. Of late he had been giving 
 a stricter attention than ever, if that were possible, to 
 the National Loan s affairs. He thought they were in 
 danger of " going to sleep" at that institution, to use 
 his own words, notwithstanding the fact that to out 
 siders, at least, it seemed to be prospering greatly. 
 
128 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 The simple old building itself had recently been re 
 modelled at a handsome cost, with all the new devices 
 for heating and lighting and convenience within, and a 
 grand, flourishing portico of columns without ; you 
 might see the plain citizens who were its patrons sur 
 veying with awe the new marble stairs, and the figures 
 of " Commerce" and " Industry" in the triangular 
 brow above the doors, and the bronze tablet set into 
 the corner-stone with the mystifying legend A.D. 
 MDCCCXCVI. Van Cleve did not wholly approve of 
 the changes, being by nature severely opposed to any 
 sort of show ; but he could not deny that the bank 
 took in a number of fresh accounts about that time 
 which may have been due in large part to the increased 
 majesty and solidity of its appearance. Still Van was 
 critical ; he had not been with the Loan and Savings 
 all these years for nothing, and he had gone a long way 
 since his early days in the office when he had felt an 
 unquestioning respect for his elders and a readiness to 
 learn of them. "This bank is Julius Gebhardt," he 
 used to say to himself shrewdly; "he is the National 
 Loan and Savings, body and bones, hide, horns, and 
 tallow. Every one of the directors is a back number. 
 They keep on electing themselves over and over again, 
 and when they come trailing in here Monday mornings 
 it looks like an overflow meeting from the Old Men s 
 Home. I ll bet they do just what Gebhardt says, and 
 half the time they don t know what he s saying. Of 
 course he s used to it, but it s a pretty big responsibility 
 for one man. He knows the banking business as well 
 as the next man, I suppose, but nobody s infallible. 
 The trouble with him is he s one of these fellows that 
 don t know how to get work out of other people - 
 and more in the same strain, proving to Van s own satis 
 faction, at any rate, that there was one man who also 
 knew the banking business, whose judgment, if not 
 infallible, was very nearly so, who did know how to 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 129 
 
 get work out of other men, to wit : Van Cleve Ken- 
 drick. If he had owned a few more shares, say twenty 
 instead of eight, Van was confident he would be on the 
 board, and what was more, would probably be cashier 
 in place of Schlactman, who was in ill-health, and 
 talked of moving to Colorado. In fact, Mr. Gebhardt 
 had hinted as much, in his big, warm-hearted, almost 
 fatherly way. He liked Van Cleve and did not hesi 
 tate to show it. The cashier s salary was three thou 
 sand. "I d have a use for it," Van thought, with a 
 grim smile. 
 
 The family had lately been showing signs of their 
 perennially recurrent restlessness, which Van recog 
 nized from ancient acquaintance. To be sure, a change 
 of houses was about due, as they had lived in the 
 present one upwards of a year. Once in a long while 
 it crossed Van Cleve s mind that he might some day 
 surprise them by putting his foot down on all this 
 foolishness ; but the time never came. He always had 
 too much to do and too many things on his mind to 
 burden himself further by futile attempts at argument 
 with his household ; he knew beforehand every word 
 they would say, and lacked the patience to listen ; it 
 was easier and infinitely more peaceful to let them have 
 their own way. As for discussing his plans and pros 
 pects with them, of confiding to them all that about 
 the bank and the president and his methods, and Van s 
 own opinions, the young man never dreamed of such a 
 thing. They could not have understood a word of it ; 
 they were devoted to him heart and soul, but they 
 could not speak his language, nor live in his world. 
 The Office and the Street were his real home, and 
 under his own roof he had companions, but no com 
 panionship. 
 
 He had forgot all about the morning s disturbance, 
 by dinner-time when he reached home ; and was only 
 reminded of it by finding the house as yet unlighted in 
 
130 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 a kind of symbolic gloom, and everybody tiptoeing 
 about in an impressive anxiety. " Mother has been 
 very ill, Van Cleve," Evelyn told him with a species of 
 reproachful resignation; "it has been an unusually 
 sharp seizure. Doctor McCrea couldn t understand 
 this attack at all, and kept saying she must have had 
 some nervous shock. But of course we didn t tell him 
 about this morning," said Evelyn, magnanimously. 
 "It doesn t make any difference about me, Van, but 
 I hope you won t be so cruel again to poor Mother, 
 who only wanted to help you and give you a pleasure." 
 
 "Well, that s so; I m sorry about that," said Van, 
 troubled; "I forgot how easy Aunt Myra gets sick. 
 But you know, Evelyn, I can t have you doing things 
 like that, if only for the looks of the thing. These 
 doctors all keep a pretty good line on who can pay 
 them and who can t ; they ve got to. Doctor McCrea 
 knew I could afford that bill ; it wasn t exorbitant - 
 
 "Doctor McCrea was very much disappointed!" 
 his cousin interrupted triumphantly. "I explained 
 to him in a tactful way, so as not to put you in a bad 
 light, and he said, Oh, don t I get any picture then? 
 and I could see he didn t like it at all, though he gave 
 a kind of queer laugh. / couldn t say anything, of 
 course." 
 
 Van Cleve grunted, but was otherwise silent, after 
 the exasperating fashion he had of allowing Evelyn 
 the last word, and the peculiar barrenness of victory. 
 "And there s something else, Van something you 
 ought to know. The doctor says that Mother - 
 she was beginning importantly ; but was checked by 
 a look from her grandmother. 
 
 "Dinner s ready, and we d better wait till afterward 
 to tell Van Cleve about that," interposed the old lady, 
 hastily, remembering other days and the late Joshua. 
 It was always advisable to feed a man first. And 
 accordingly after the meal, during which everybody 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 131 
 
 was painstakingly amiable and lively, she herself re- 
 introduced the subject. 
 
 "The doctor thinks that your Aunt Myra ought to 
 be in a different climate, Van Cleve. I have been 
 thinking it myself for some time, and when I spoke of 
 it this morning, he said at once that I was right, and 
 that a change was good for everybody. He said if 
 she could go away for a while, it would undoubtedly 
 make her feel better - 
 
 "Then I explained with perfect frankness, because 
 that is ahvays best," Evelyn interrupted, "that we 
 couldn t take trips South and all that sort of thing, 
 which I could see he was about to suggest. Oh, 
 Doctor McCrea I said, We can t be running off on 
 jaunts that way just for pleasure. We have to make 
 a permanent move. And, besides, we ve been here for 
 seven years now, and I think Mother ought to get out 
 of it for good. The Ohio Valley climate never has 
 agreed with her, and now she is fairly saturated with it, 
 and you can see she s losing ground every day. He 
 said, Oh, I think you exaggerate, but of course you 
 know he said that just to soothe me and keep me from 
 being frightened - 
 
 "You mean to say you want to get up and leave here 
 - you want me to quit my job, and look for another 
 somewhere else," said Van Cleve, unmoved as usual. 
 
 "But if it s a question of Mother s health, Van Cleve 
 
 )) 
 
 "You can always get something to do you re not 
 appreciated in the bank, anyhow. You could get Mr. 
 Gebhardt to transfer you to some other bank ; they do 
 things like that all the time, don t they ? Mr. Gebhardt 
 thinks so highly of you, he d do anything for you, Van 
 -you could go anywhere on his recommendation, 7 
 cried Mrs. Van Cleve. 
 
 "Where d ye want to go now?" said Van Cleve, 
 coming to the point with his disconcerting directness. 
 
132 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Evelyn began eagerly: "Why, I thought at once of 
 New York. I could look after Mother, and still go on 
 with my professional career. It would be an ideal 
 arrangement - 
 
 "I never heard New York talked up much for a 
 health resort," said Van Cleve. 
 
 "Well, a health resort isn t what she needs, you know. 
 It s the complete change that would be so beneficial. 
 Doctor McCrea was enthusiastic; he said it couldn t 
 possibly do her any harm, and would probably be just 
 as good for her as anywhere. And you know New 
 York is so interesting, Van. I loved it when I was study 
 ing there. I have such clever, stimulating, exceptional 
 friends. The change in the social atmosphere alone 
 would brace Mother right up, I know - 
 
 "New York is a wonderful city," said Major Van 
 Cleve; "I remember General Grant making that very 
 remark to me once when we were walking up Fifth 
 Avenue ; we were both of us just back from the War, but 
 it was before he had been elected to the Presidency. 
 He turned to me and said : Well, Mage - that was 
 his nickname for me New York is a marvellous 
 place, isn t it ? Rather odd that he should have died 
 and been buried there afterwards, I always thought." 
 
 Van Cleve let them talk ; he was not angry nor out 
 of patience ; he was only sourly amused. This was 
 Van s day a fair sample of all his days. People who 
 happened to be pretty well acquainted with the family 
 used to repeat around a saying of Bob Gilbert s that 
 always brought a laugh from the men, whatever the 
 women thought of it. I suppose it was really dread 
 fully coarse. " S shame!" says Bob, who was about 
 three parts drunk, with tearful vehemence; " s shame 
 zose Van Cleves. Kept Van s nose grindstone years 
 always will keep it - - s shame. Know what they all 
 need ? Spankin - - hie ol lady an all of em - 
 need spankin - " reiterated Bob with dark and frown 
 ing emphasis. "Goo spankin !" 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN WHICH WE GIVE A DOG A BAD NAME 
 
 I DO not remember whether it is recorded that the 
 Industrious Apprentice ever took the Idle Apprentice 
 aside, and pointed out to him the folly of his ways, 
 scolded him heartily, and pled with him to reform. 
 A man must have a tolerably good conceit of himself 
 who will undertake to direct another man how to live, 
 even though this other may be as notoriously in need 
 of direction as was Robert Gilbert. Van Cleve hesi 
 tated and shrank before the task. He told himself 
 that he had too stiff a job doing his own duty to be 
 qualified to preach theirs to other people. Was he his 
 brother s keeper, anyhow ? It was impatience and in 
 dignation that roused him to hunt Bob out and lecture 
 him, at last. Van thought the world was too kind, 
 too stupidly kind, to this culprit ; it liked him too well ; 
 it was ruinously soft-hearted; it kept on giving him 
 a chance when it should have brought him up with 
 a round turn ! And all this in the face of the strange 
 fact that Robert himself asked no quarter; he never 
 offered any excuses; he was the most amiably un 
 ashamed and unrepentant sinner on earth, and the most 
 incurably sanguine. "Never mind, Van, old man, 
 don t worry yourself so over me. I hate to see you 
 so worried!" he said affectionately, when the sober 
 Mr. Kendrick had painfully got through with his 
 exhortations. "I m going to come out all right, you 
 see if I don t. I ll get out even, don t you worry." 
 
 133 
 
134 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "You re always saying that, Bob," said Van Cleve, 
 glumly; "you know very well you can t keep up this 
 gait and come out anywhere but behind. You re 
 ruining your health, and spoiling your chances, and 
 making your people unhappy. You ve got plenty of 
 sense, Bob, and I can t see why - 
 
 "Well, I m glad you ll allow me that much, anyhow ! " 
 said Bob with the utmost good temper. He met his 
 friend s severe gaze with one full of amusement, in 
 superable nonchalance, honest affection. "You re not 
 much of a preacher, Van ; your heart s not in it. You 
 don t really want to reform the bad little boy and make 
 him a good little boy, and have him sign the pledge 
 and all that, in the interest of virtue and respectability 
 not a bit of it, you time-serving old utilitarian, you ! 
 You only - 
 
 "Oh, good, bad that s not what I m talking about !" 
 interrupted Van Cleve, with a movement of irritation ; 
 "I don t want you to make an everlasting fool of your 
 self, that s all ! All this drinking and having a good 
 time with the boys, what does it amount to ? Can t 
 you see there s nothing in it ? You can t keep on with 
 that all your life. Why, why damn it, Bob, there s 
 nothing in it! Can t you see that?" 
 
 "There ! Didn t I say that was the way you felt !" 
 Bob stated, grinning. He made an extravagant dis 
 play of surprise. "Why, Van Cleve, it looks to me as 
 if you were trying to get me to settle down and work 
 like yourself ! And I used to think you had a sense of 
 humor ! Now Phil Cortwright says - 
 
 "Oh, cut it out !" said Van, scowling. 
 
 "All right, just as you say," the other retorted 
 tolerantly. 
 
 "I m only talking because I because I I think 
 a lot of you, you know, Bob," said Van Cleve, looking 
 down, chewing hard at the end of his cigar, mortally 
 abashed by this sentimental admission. The sight 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 135 
 
 moved Bob as no amount of arguing or hectoring could 
 have done. 
 
 "Why, of course I know that, Van !" he cried out. 
 The moisture sprang into his eyes ; he wiped them 
 unaffectedly. " Why, I know that, my dear old fellow ! 
 You re all right everything you say is pretty near 
 right, I guess/ 7 he said incoherently. He pulled him 
 self together and went on with more steadiness, even 
 earnestness for him. "You see, Van Cleve, I ve 
 got a different way of looking at it from you. I believe 
 in in well, I believe a man s life s his own to do 
 what he wants with, so long as he doesn t harm any 
 body else. Well, then / don t harm anybody else, do 
 I ? Suppose I do well lush some off and on, and 
 - and all that, you know all the other things you 
 say why, it doesn t hurt anybody but me, does it? 
 If I m willing to take the consequences, why, it doesn t 
 need to worry you any. I don t ask anybody to suffer 
 for it but myself. Then where s the harm? I m not 
 responsible for any one else, and nobody else needs to 
 feel responsible for me. That s the way I look 
 at it." 
 
 "Do the family look at it that way, too ?" Van Cleve 
 asked. 
 
 "The family ? Oh, well, they of course they think 
 more or less as you do, and the rest of the representative 
 citizens," said Bob, smiling, but for the first time a 
 little restive under his friend s eye. "Hang it, you 
 goody-good people don t know how funny and incon 
 sistent you are !" he burst out in a sort of good-natured 
 impatience. "There re plenty of respectable old skin 
 flints walking around town this minute that gouge and 
 grind and pile up the dollars and do more mischief 
 in a day than I can in a year, and because they pass the 
 plate in church, and go home to bed with the chickens, 
 and never drink anything stronger than cold tea, you 
 hold em up to me for models 
 
136 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "I wasn t holding up any models. You re dodging, 
 Bob," said the other, gloomily. 
 
 But Bob had returned to his thesis. "Of course 
 I don t mean to keep it up all my life, as you were 
 saying. I can stop whenever I want to when I 
 get tired of it. In the meanwhile I m not hurting 
 anybody but myself, and I m not hurting myself 
 anything to speak of. And I ll pay that score myself," 
 he repeated, rather grandiloquently. 
 
 "I don t know whether a man can do that or not," 
 said Van Cleve; "pay for himself, I mean. Looks to 
 me sometimes as if everybody got assessed for him all 
 around." 
 
 Robert had left Messrs. Steinberger & Hirsch 
 some while before this date, those gentleman having, 
 in fact, intimated that his services were no longer re 
 quired. Even their not unduly exalted standards were 
 too high for the young man, it seemed. "We liked 
 him, too," one of the partners was reported to have 
 expressed himself ; " we liked him first-rate but he s 
 no good. We gave him a thorough try out, but he ll 
 never be any good !" and Mr. Hirsch chalked his cue, 
 and tried a shot and missed, and perched himself once 
 more on the tall-legged chair in the billiard room of 
 the Business Men s, while the regular after-luncheon 
 game proceeded. "I m sorry for his folks," he ob 
 served; "Max and I stood for it a good deal longer 
 than we would have for most, on their account nice 
 folks nice old gentleman, the Professor but that 
 boy - he gave a negative twitch of the head, and 
 abandoned the subject. 
 
 The next news was that young Gilbert had got a 
 berth on the Record-World, which was a penny sheet 
 that used to come out in six or eight successive editions 
 of an afternoon with detonating head-lines, every 
 smallest event decorated with the most lurid purple 
 patch conceivable. For a while the young man was 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 137 
 
 quite faithful to his duties, perhaps finding in the haste 
 and tension of the work almost enough of the false 
 excitement he seemed to crave. As invariably hap 
 pened, everybody in this new world liked him ; they 
 liked him even after they, too, had begun to shake their 
 heads over him even when they, too, had to " speak 
 to" him. In the end, like all the rest of the friends he 
 was constantly making and constantly disappointing, 
 they also acknowledged that Bob was indeed "no good." 
 He had some fine, warm-blooded virtues ; he was loyal, 
 generous, and humane ; he was curiously clean-minded 
 and simple with all his gross self-indulgence. But 
 they agreed sorrowfully he was not over clever ; 
 he could not be depended on for half an hour ; he did 
 not know the meaning of duty and ambition ; put him 
 to the test, in short, and you would find Bob Gilbert 
 pretty nearly worthless. 
 
 The family accepted the unhappy fact with a plain 
 and prosaic dignity, as do almost all families ; we 
 may observe them often, perfectly unheroic individu 
 ally, yet displaying collectively not a little heroism. 
 No doubt they all got used to it in the course of time ; 
 and of course the Professor and his wife had realized the 
 truth from the first, even when Lorrie was doing her best 
 to shield them from it. Van Cleve told her so in his 
 hard, matter-of-fact way. "It s no use, Lorrie," he 
 said; "you can t keep this thing about Bob dark. 
 Your mother s probably known all along. I shouldn t 
 wonder if she thought she was keeping it from you all 
 the while you thought you were keeping it from her. 
 I don t know why women make believe that way. 
 It doesn t do any good. Might as well look at things 
 square in the face." 
 
 "You don t understand men can t understand," 
 said Lorrie, sadly; "why, Mother and I can t talk 
 about it, even now, to each other. We keep on pre 
 tending. Why, you yourself have never talked about 
 
138 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 it like this before, and yet you knew, you must have 
 known about Bob for two or three years, even if you 
 didn t know before that. Is that why you haven t 
 you haven t been with him so much ?" 
 
 "Well, Bob s never around where I am, you know," 
 said Van Cleve, a little lamely ; it was not easy to 
 explain his position to Bob s sister. "I m busy 
 
 I haven t any time to hunt him up. I m sorry, but 
 
 
 
 "But you ll have to let Bob go ?" Lorrie finished for 
 him, unable to keep the bitterness out of her voice. 
 "I m sorry, too, Van. You re one of the people that 
 can do the most with him that he pays the most 
 attention to. If his own friends give him up but 
 I daresay you are right. You can t sacrifice your 
 own interests you have yourself to think about 
 and your own future, and you can t be burdened 
 with Bob." 
 
 "Yes, I ve got to think about myself I m always 
 thinking about myself," Van Cleve agreed with her 
 dryly. Her words stung him to the quick ; he was 
 conscious of a certain truth underlying their unkind- 
 ness and unfairness. He was constantly thinking 
 about Van Cleve Kendrick s affairs and prospects - 
 he was thinking about himself, but surely, surely not 
 wholly for himself ! That very morning Evelyn and 
 his aunt had begun again with their New York plan. 
 They had written to a dozen friends and fellow-students, 
 wonderfully able, astute persons, and got all manner of 
 reports, figures, and estimates pointing unanimously 
 to the fact that it was incalculably cheaper and healthier 
 to live in New York than anywhere else on the face of 
 this globe ! Two hundred would move them beauti 
 fully "You know we re very good managers, Van, 
 dearest." "Two hundred, hey? You must think I 
 get my money from the pump !" he had said in vain 
 jocularity. Now a sudden melancholy invaded the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 139 
 
 young man ; what was he but a money-making machine ? 
 he thought dispiritedly. Even Lorrie believed that 
 that was all he cared for even Lorrie ! 
 
 As for Lorrie herself, did she know how she hurt 
 him? She was a tender-hearted, good woman, and 
 shrank from inflicting pain on anybody; but even a 
 tender-hearted, good woman may sometimes take ad 
 vantage of her position to visit some of her own unhappi- 
 ness on another s head. And Lorrie would have been 
 more than a mortal girl not to have suspected her power 
 over the young fellow. At any rate, swift contrition 
 and a desire to make amends took hold of her. "That 
 sounded horrid, but I didn t mean it that way, you 
 know/ she said hastily and penitently; "it s only 
 that I do wish you have such an influence over Bob 
 - if he was only out of that that atmosphere he s 
 got into if he was with people like you - 
 
 "Oh, influence!" Van broke in harshly; "I tell you, 
 Lorrie, this talk about unfortunate surroundings 
 and bad influence and good influence makes me 
 very tired. Any fellow that s too weak-kneed to resist 
 evil influence is too weak-kneed to be bolstered up 
 much by good ones. Not you nor I nor the Almighty 
 can make a man go crooked any more than we can 
 make him go straight; he s got to do it himself. I 
 got into bad company- I wasn t directed right - 
 Nobody looked after me - pooh ! That s the old 
 eternal incessant yawp of folly and feebleness and 
 guilt you don t want to begin excusing Bob that way. 
 Of course I know you will forgive him and keep on 
 forgiving him, no matter what he does " 
 
 "And what kind of a sister would I be, if I didn t?" 
 cried Lorrie with a great deal of spirit. "I don t at 
 all believe what you say, Van. People are different. 
 We can t all be pillars of strength. Mr. Cortwright 
 says - " she stopped short. "Well ?" she said sharply ; 
 for Mr. Kendrick s countenance had assumed an ex- 
 
140 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tremely forbidding and unpleasant expression at the 
 sound of that name. 
 
 "Bob started quoting Cortwright at me, too," he 
 said acridly. " That s where he s got his precious 
 theories about irresponsibility, and all the rest of it. 
 I recognized the brand." 
 
 "Oh ! Then you don t think Mr. Cortwright is the 
 proper sort of friend for Bob to have, is that it ?" said 
 Lorrie, in an ominous calm. 
 
 "Well, I don t, Lorrie, since you ask me. I think 
 that association has been the worst thing in the world 
 for a fellow of Bob s disposition," said Van Cleve; 
 and he was honest and disinterested in saying it. "I 
 believe Cortwright s influence - 
 
 "I thought you said just now that influence had 
 nothing to do with it," said Lorrie. And Van Cleve 
 had no answer, alas ! His own words confounded him. 
 He was sure he was right ; right in his theory, right 
 about the facts, but no juggling would fit the two to 
 gether ! 
 
 The interview ended rather stiffly on both sides; 
 Lorrie went upstairs after the young man had left, with 
 a fire-red spot on each cheek. "The idea of his hinting 
 that about Philip!" she thought with an anger no 
 criticism of herself could have aroused; "Phil never 
 says a word about him. And he s tried and tried, and 
 done his best for Bob. What did Van Cleve Kendrick 
 ever do, I d like to know ? He s ashamed of the way 
 he s abandoned Bob, that s all he s ashamed and 
 - and jealous, that s what made him talk that way !" 
 
 And that was all Mr. Kendrick got for his inter 
 ference. It would have darkened his skies enough to 
 know that he had offended Lorrie or hurt her ; but not 
 long after a piece of news descended upon him like 
 another blight news which, by the way, was already 
 common property, and seemed to have travelled around 
 to everybody before reaching him, who was secretly 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 141 
 
 the most concerned. Even Major Van Cleve knew it ; 
 even Mr. Gebhardt referred to it negligently, having 
 probably been informed by Natalie or the other Geb 
 hardt girls ; and it had a paragraph all to itself in next 
 Sunday morning s Society Jottings "The engage 
 ment is announced of Miss Laura Gilbert, daughter 
 of Professor and Mrs. Gilbert, who has been a great 
 favorite ever since she made her bow to society two 
 or three seasons ago, to Mr. Philip Cortwright. Mr. 
 Cortwright is a Eureka College man, a member of the 
 old Cortwright family of Kentucky - etc., etc. 
 "Two or three seasons ago!" ejaculated Miss Lucas in 
 high contempt and indignation upon reading the above 
 lines; "Lorrie Gilbert s been out for ten years. She 
 was going everywhere when we first came here to live. 
 But of course the society reporters have to say some 
 thing agreeable, or nobody would tell them anything." 
 
 Van Cleve heard the announcement silently, with as 
 indifferent a face as he could manage. "I chose a good 
 time to tell her I didn t approve of Cortwright tact 
 ful and opportune in me, wasn t it?" he remarked in 
 wardly, with savage irony. The next time he saw her 
 there were others about, and a good deal of joking 
 allusion going on, and it would undoubtedly have been 
 the proper moment for Mr. Kendrick to have ten 
 dered his compliments upon the happy event ; but, in 
 point of fact, he did nothing of the kind ; he kept silence 
 - and it may be Miss Gilbert liked him just as well 
 for saying nothing and looking morose; she was only 
 human after all. 
 
 In truth, Lorrie was human enough to be very happy 
 these days, in spite of the skeleton in the family closet. 
 It would be hard for a girl yet in her twenties, engaged 
 to be married to a very handsome, devoted, popular 
 (or, at least, well-known) young fellow, with whom she 
 is quite openly and genuinely in love it would be 
 a hard matter, I say, for any girl to be seriously un- 
 
142 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 happy in these circumstances. Of course, they were 
 not to be married for a while yet Philip s business, 
 etc. But Lorrie was profoundly busy, hemstitching, 
 embroidering monograms, looking out for bargains 
 in household linens, and so on ; you came upon her at 
 the counters, turning over piles of dainty goods, rosy, 
 thoughtfully excited, measuring off on her neat fingers, 
 sagacious, sweet, wholesome, about this as about every 
 thing. It was understood that perhaps next year - 
 her mother s wedding-day had been the tenth of June ; 
 if Lorrie should be married next year, the tenth of 
 June, eighteen-ninety-nine, it would be thirty years to 
 the day, after her mother remarkable fact ! That 
 would be the last year of the century, too another 
 remarkable fact ! 
 
 "No, it won t be the last year. Nineteen hun 
 dred s the last year," said Cortwright, laughing. He 
 recited the hundred-pennies-in-a-dollar argument which 
 people were making use of to convince one another on 
 this often disputed point. "Why, you wise, practical 
 little person, who would have thought you would have 
 had to have that explained to you ? " he said fondly. It 
 pleased him singularly to catch her tripping ; he liked 
 to feel even so trivial a superiority, for there were 
 many moments, when, as secure as he was in his own 
 conceit, he was a little afraid, a little abashed in the 
 presence of this girl whom he was to marry ; sometimes 
 he wished uncomfortably that Lorrie were not quite 
 so good! "Why won t you let me kiss you?" he once 
 said to her aggrievedly, in the first hours of their be 
 trothal. "You belong to me now. I wouldn t be 
 a man if I didn t want to. Most girls like it I mean 
 I always supposed they did I always understood 
 so. How can you be so so cold ?" He put an arm 
 around her, at once masterful and beseeching. "Please, 
 Lorrie I-i You know you really like want me to - 
 he murmured with lips very close. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 143 
 
 " You can kiss me, but not not my neck that way/ 7 
 said Lorrie, backing off, turning scarlet, troubled rather 
 than angry. "I I don t like to have you kiss my 
 neck for indeed it was some such intimate caress 
 which he had already attempted that had led to this 
 scene. The young woman shrank from it indefinably ; 
 she shrank from the act and the look in her lover s 
 eyes. Cortwright obeyed, resenting what he called 
 inwardly her prudery, even while clearly conscious 
 that it was precisely that quality about her which most 
 strongly attracted him. She wasn t cheap, he thought, 
 with an exultant thrill ; and naturally coveted her the 
 more. 
 
 This news of Lorrie Gilbert s engagement created 
 only a mild stir socially, having been expected any 
 time these two or three years. It was supposed to be 
 a very suitable match ; Lorrie might have done better, 
 doubtless she had never lacked attention from men, 
 some of whom had been better off in the worldly way, 
 and perhaps more "settled." than Mr. Cortwright. 
 But the latter, ever since he came here, had always been 
 well enough received and well enough liked and was 
 doing well enough, as all agreed, in his business ; and it 
 looked as if he was very much in love with Lorrie, and 
 certainly she was over head and ears in love with him. 
 People in general were glad to hear anything pleasant 
 connected with the poor Gilberts, who had had so much 
 that was sad and discreditable to endure from that 
 ne er-do-well, Robert. It had gotten to the pass that 
 their friends seldom even mentioned Robert nowadays. 
 The girls whom he used to know, who came to see 
 Lorrie and gave her engagement luncheons and engage 
 ment presents of little silver candlesticks, and orna 
 mental spoons and after-dinner coffee-cups, who were 
 already planning linen showers, and chattering to her 
 about the lovely four-room suites in the new apartment 
 buildings, those girls never asked after Bob. They 
 
144 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 never invited him to their homes any more ; they 
 contrived not to see him on the street. How could 
 they? He had got to looking so seedy and run-down 
 and dissipated, they said. Nobody would want to 
 be seen with him nobody could afford to be seen 
 with him ! The last appearance he made in society 
 had been when he went to call on one of the girls so 
 " tanked/ as she afterwards described his condition in 
 indignant slang, that he didn t know what he was 
 doing, and her Uncle George, who providentially 
 happened to be staying there for the Christmas holi 
 days, had to get him away out of the house, and take 
 him back to the Gilberts ; and when Papa (who had 
 been in Chicago) got home and heard about it, he said 
 never to let that young man speak to her again ! It 
 was a universal taboo, excepting on the part of Miss 
 Paula Jameson, whom Bob continued to visit in his 
 ostracism more often than ever before. At the moment, 
 however, he was deprived even of that resource, for 
 Paula went to Palm Beach with her mother in March ; 
 conceivably, Robert was the only person that missed 
 her. The young lady had never counted at all, 
 socially ; she had no friends, and heard from and wrote 
 to nobody, not even Lorrie. " She s got such awfully 
 hotel manners !" was a criticism I once overheard from 
 some other young lady; "and the way she simply 
 fastened herself on to Lorrie Gilbert ! I suppose she 
 found she couldn t get in after all, because she doesn t 
 stick to Lorrie so much now, but it used to be, really 
 - !" She ended these somewhat cryptic sentences 
 in a tone conveying all the scathing disapproval of 
 sweet-and-twenty. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 REMEMBER THE MAINE! 
 
 THAT winter about ten years ago, wasn t it ? all 
 the world of our town, as of a hundred other towns all 
 over the country, went about its business and pleasure 
 as usual without the slightest suspicion that a tremen 
 dous national event was going to take place, though this 
 will doubtless seem to our descendants to have been 
 abundantly foreshadowed. Couldn t we see it coming ? 
 Is it possible that we never saw it coming? We did 
 not, oh, younger generation. The world, Lome s 
 world, the Van Cleves world, your and my world, was 
 bringing its daughters "out" at dances and dinners 
 and teas, and going to its clubs and Symphony concerts, 
 and to the Yale-Harvard Game, and the Horse-show, 
 and the Junior Prom., when it could afford these 
 latter diversions, and complaining about its servants 
 and the high cost of living, even as it does to-day. 
 Every morning the world got up and read in its news 
 paper about Zola and Dreyfus with a kind of indignant 
 amusement ; it read about the last murder, the last 
 divorce, the last serum discovery and Edison inven 
 tion; and perhaps wondered indifferently if these 
 mechanical piano players and motor vehicles they were 
 experimenting with would ever be of any practical 
 value ! It also read that the Spanish minister whose 
 name it considered unpronounceable and therefore out 
 landish had resigned, following some unpleasantness 
 at Washington; "Dupuy de Lome, gone home, no 
 more to roam !" the comic editor facetiously chanted ; 
 L 145 
 
146 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and that a bomb had exploded in the Hotel Inglaterra 
 in the city of Havana, and another bomb in the 
 mayor s office ; and that one of our big battleships had 
 been sent down there to protect American interests. 
 
 Then came the morning of the 16th of February 
 with some appalling news. Bob Gilbert s paper, being 
 an afternoon one, did not get that " scoop"; but it 
 made a gallant effort and came out at noon with 
 mighty head-lines and exclamation points, with columns 
 of information or misinformation, with pictures of the 
 unfortunate vessel, her captain and officers, and com 
 plete details about the Maine s size, " displacement," 
 " armament/ cost, and previous career. Bob himself 
 fell into the wildest state of excitement ; it kept him 
 sober for a week ! He wanted to organize a body of 
 militia, wanted to telegraph all sorts of incendiary 
 messages to our Ohio congressmen and senators, to 
 our Ohio President himself, wanted to rush down to 
 Cuba and lend his whole strength to avenging our un 
 lucky brave lads. To be sure, he was not the only one 
 who lost his head and fumed and fretted and girded 
 at the Administration, and denounced the investiga 
 tions as cowardly and farcical delays. "Ten thousand 
 Ohio troops could be landed in Cuba in three days !" 
 the papers proclaimed ; we lived to know better, and, 
 dismal to relate, not one single Ohio troop or trooper 
 ever struck a blow on the island, or for it, but at least 
 the will was not lacking. Within a week of the dis 
 aster there were militia-companies drilling furiously 
 all over the State, and all over every other State in the 
 Union ; there were fiery speeches on the floor of every 
 Legislature ; at a matinee performance in Daly s 
 Theatre in the city of New York, the entire audience, 
 acting on some inexplicable spontaneous impulse, arose 
 and sang the Star-Spangled Banner, the orchestra 
 joining in with equal fervor ; and at a big public ban 
 quet, while the temper of the Administration still 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 147 
 
 seemed to be for peace, the Assistant Secretary of the 
 Navy got up and made a speech of such strength and 
 significance that everybody present nudged his neigh 
 bor, and one gentleman went so far as to say to the 
 presiding genius of the gathering, "Mr. Hanna, may 
 we please fight Spain now?" So, at any rate, the 
 newspapers reported. 
 
 "Who is he ? That Navy man, I mean ? " old Mrs. 
 Van Cleve asked, when this item was read out to her ; 
 her eyes had been failing lately ; and Evelyn gave the 
 name. 
 
 "Humph! I m not much wiser now than I was 
 before !" the old lady remarked. I am afraid we did 
 not know as much as we should have about the public 
 servants, either their names or stations. 
 
 Mr. Van Cleve Kendrick, so far as was known, made 
 but one comment on the situation. "I guess we can t 
 get out of it without a fight ; and if we do have war, 
 wheat ought to jump some," he said ; and studied the 
 market reports and gave closer attention to business 
 than ever, these days. The news that troops of the 
 regular army had actually been ordered to Key West, 
 that some millions of dollars had been voted for "de 
 fence," that the Oregon had started for Cape Horn and 
 Atlantic waters, that the Vizcaya had anchored off 
 Manhattan Island (to the terror of the unprotected 
 Manhattanese !), the talk about the Philippines, with 
 consequent searchings of the map, and the Pacific 
 Squadron, the withdrawal of the United States consul 
 from Havana, and of Mr. Woodford from the Embassy 
 at Madrid all this news and all the heroic excitement 
 of the times affected Van Cleve not in the least. The 
 young man was not unpatriotic ; he had as much pride 
 and spirit as any of his fellows, and, it cannot be doubted, 
 heard the songs and speeches and saw the massed 
 soldiery under the banner of his country with an 
 honorable stirring of the heart. But whatever befell, 
 
148 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and, like the rest of us, he had a hearty belief in the 
 power of our arms and an unshakable expectation of 
 success, Van must still stay at home and make a 
 living for himself and those dependent on him. Not 
 his would ever be adventure and glory, nor for him 
 the " bright face of danger"; and though he would 
 probably have done his duty manfully on the pitched 
 field, he recognized (perhaps with regret) that the 
 homespun career was the one for which he was best 
 fitted. He was in odd contrast to that time-honored 
 warrior, Major Stanton, who, if his age and state of 
 health had not prohibited it, as he was careful to assure 
 everybody, would have been the first to offer himself 
 to the Cause. "It s hard for us hard! We old 
 fellows that went out for the Union in sixty-one 
 hard to be shelved now !" he would say with a mag 
 nificent break in his voice, and wagging the grizzled 
 whiskers sadly. It was an impressive spectacle, and 
 Major Van Cleve was very popular on all political- 
 military occasions, where, indeed, he cut an admirable 
 figure and exercised handsomely his fine gift of elo 
 quence. Once or twice he appeared in his pathetic, 
 old, faded, blue uniform of the Nine Hundredth Ohio, 
 with prodigious effect. Van Cleve did not attend these 
 assemblies ; and was rather gruff and short with the 
 people who spoke enthusiastically to him about his 
 uncle s imposing presence and oratory. 
 
 Van Cleve s family, by the way, were going to New 
 York to live ! The news created an interest in their 
 set of acquaintances hardly second to that roused by 
 the international complications. They had a dozen 
 reasons for going, any one of them unanswerable - 
 Mrs. Lucas s health, the possibility of much greater 
 economy in living, in such a city as New York, one 
 can live any way one chooses, as is well known, a 
 wider sphere for Evelyn, a more appreciative public, 
 and a thoroughly artistic atmosphere they recited 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 149 
 
 all these arguments with their customary fervor and 
 certainty. Evelyn had gone East ahead of the others 
 and found an apartment, three rooms with one large 
 room that would just do for a studio and sitting-room 
 with a folding bed, you know ; it was on a street just 
 off of Washington Square, in one of those old-fashioned 
 New York houses remodelled and turned into flats 
 so picturesque I They would only need a few things, 
 and expected to get beautiful pieces of furniture, old 
 mahogany and so on, second hand, for a song; it was 
 merely a matter of knowing where to go, and Evelyn 
 and her artist friends of course had made a study of 
 that. Nobody could justifiably accuse these ladies of 
 extravagance or imprudence ; they counted their 
 pennies with the utmost care, and were adepts in 
 all the feminine arts of saving and management. It 
 developed that Van Cleve was not intending to move 
 with them; they explained that he couldn t give up 
 his position here, of course ; but equally, of course, 
 they wouldn t be so selfish as to walk off and leave 
 him without knowing that he was perfectly comfort 
 able; and accordingly a wonderful, ideal, Elysian 
 boarding-house had been discovered where they kept 
 such a table, and he would have such a room, so large, 
 light, and sunny ! 
 
 Van had made no comment on these arrangements ; 
 the women, indeed, wondered and were aggrieved at his 
 unsympathetic silence ; it was true that he gave them 
 ungrudgingly whatever money they asked for, and in 
 fairness it must be said they asked for as little as pos 
 sible, but he paid no heed to their explanations, he 
 took no interest in the plans they made either for 
 themselves or for his own comfort. He would not 
 even go to look at the matchless boarding-house. 
 " Why, I suppose it s all right, if you say so it ll be just 
 as good as home," he said, cheerfully indifferent. 
 
 " Van Cleve, how can you say such a thing ? As if any 
 
150 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 place could be the same as your own home!" they ex 
 claimed in reproachful chorus ; nor could they at all un 
 derstand why he laughed. They said to each other that 
 Van Cleve was getting more and more wrapped up in 
 his affairs it would end by making him hard and 
 selfish he might even become miserly ! 
 
 It is strange to think that such small doings as these 
 can go on side by side with the great stirring business 
 of the nation on the edge of war, and receive within 
 their own circle quite as much attention. People did 
 not cease to be interested in spring wardrobes and 
 summer trips, in weddings and new houses and house- 
 cleaning and the Musical Festival ; everybody, I re 
 peat, thought and talked as much as ever about these 
 things that month of April, as if nothing of moment 
 had been going forward. And on there at Washington, 
 the debate about arbitration and intervention rumbled 
 on, and the Senate recognized Cuba, and the President 
 called out the troops, and the Ultimatum was issued 
 and forestalled ; and that energetic Assistant Secretary 
 of the Navy resigned and set about forming his regi 
 ment of Rough Riders. The last did really touch us 
 closer, for here and there we heard of some prospective 
 recruit or aspirant for that body, somebody s cousin or 
 brother, some young fellow at Harvard or ranching it 
 out West ; one of the rumors credited that young Cort- 
 wright, Phil Cortwright that was with Steinberger 
 & Hirsch, Lorrie Gilbert s Mr. Cortwright, with 
 ambitions in that direction. Nobody was surprised to 
 hear it ; he was a dashing sort of fellow and would make 
 a first-rate cavalryman any man that came out of 
 Kentucky could ride and shoot, for that matter. Cort 
 wright could probably get a commission with ease ; at 
 any rate, he was going to Washington to make a try 
 for it, everybody presently understood. Washington 
 was brimming over with gentlemen of like aims from 
 every part of the country, and there was a great pull- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 151 
 
 ing of wires ; but Cortwright knew the congressman 
 from this district personally ; he was related to the 
 senior senator from Kentucky ; and, moreover, some of 
 us had a private idea that the Ohio candidates might 
 not impossibly be the favored ones. 
 
 Lorrie, looking a little pale, but sweetly resolute and 
 cheerful, confirmed the report. "Yes. He s going. 
 He thinks he ought to ; he wants to do his duty - 
 she said with a beautiful pride in her hero ; she had no 
 conception of the tinsel and spot-light allurements this 
 martial drama held out for him, as for nine-tenths of 
 the other young fellows ; and, for the matter of that, 
 when this brave, eager, self-centred restlessness over 
 takes a man, is there a woman on earth who can hold 
 him? Something of the glamour bedazzles the femi 
 nine eye, too; she is to be the star, the solace, and 
 inspiration just as she was five hundred years ago when 
 the knight went forth with her favor on his helmet ; 
 and perhaps "I could not love thee, dear, so much, 
 loved I not honor more," is the most potent argument 
 ever addressed to her. 
 
 "I d go myself with the Red Cross, you know - 
 if Mother thought she could get along without me. 
 But she wants me here, and there will be plenty of 
 women that can go," said Lorrie, who never had to 
 explain to anybody that she wanted to do her duty. 
 "Bob s going, too not with the army his paper s 
 sending him. He s quite wild about it," she told 
 people. They were liable to remark to one another 
 afterwards that Bob would be no great loss whatever 
 became of him, but the way those things generally 
 turned out, a fellow like Bob came through it all scot- 
 free without a scratch or a day s sickness, while any 
 number of fine, useful men succumbed right away to 
 the hardships or the enemies bullets ! 
 
 Robert, however, showed a disposition to straighten 
 up, under all the excitement, queerly enough ; he took 
 
152 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 himself with gratifying seriousness in the capacity 
 of war-correspondent to the Record-World, and was 
 too absorbed in preparations for the campaigning 
 to spare any time to his former disreputable com 
 pany and diversions. In the beginning, with some 
 idea of enlisting, he had gone and got himself 
 examined at the recruiting station for the regular 
 army. " Those are the fellows that are sure to 
 go, you know, 7 he said cannily ; and he came away 
 a little chop-fallen at being rejected by the doctor 
 and sergeant. "Said my teeth were defective! Did 
 you ever hear of anything so fine-drawn as that?" he 
 told Van Cleve in a comical indignation. "I said to 
 the sergeant, Why, my teeth are as good as yours. 
 I ll bet I can beat you chewing any day ! He had 
 the worst old yellow grinders you ever saw. He just 
 laughed." 
 
 " Teeth, hey?" said Van Cleve, looking the other 
 over with his shrewd, hard gray eyes; "they must 
 make a pretty searching examination." 
 
 "Oh, yes, you have to strip, of course. They measure 
 you and test your lungs, and you have to come up to 
 some standard they ve got. The doctor said I was a 
 little too light too thin for my height, you know, 
 but I don t think that would have made any trouble. 
 I told him I d make it my business to get heavier, and 
 he kind of laughed. He asked me how long I d had 
 this cough, too it s nothing but a cold I ve had off 
 and on this winter and I noticed him thumping 
 around my chest ; that shows you how particular they 
 are. That s all right, too ; I m not kicking about that. 
 They ve got to have sound men physically in the army. 
 But teeth piffle!" Robert ejaculated disgustedly. 
 "Well, as long as I m going anyhow, for the paper, 
 I ve got the laugh on em. But to be with the army 
 itself would be more fun." 
 
 Van Cleve listened to him with an extraordinary 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 153 
 
 inward movement of affection and pity ; there were 
 times when he felt old enough to be Bob s father. 
 "Well, you want to fatten up and and get rid of 
 your cold so as to be in first-class shape, because it s 
 bound to be a good deal like hard work part of the 
 time, anyhow," he advised Robert. But when they had 
 parted, he shook his head over the teeth episode. "I 
 shouldn t wonder if they said that to every poor devil 
 they reject, rather than tell him right out what the 
 matter is with him," he opined sagely; and wondered 
 if the humanity of doctors was not sometimes ill- 
 judged. It did not need a doctor s experience to see 
 at a glance what sort of a fellow Bob was ; the pace he 
 went was beginning to tell on him; and even if he 
 behaved himself, he was not of the type wanted in the 
 United States army. 
 
 Bob s mother and sister, who had awaited the ver 
 dict in terror, were too much relieved to sympathize 
 with him ; his position was likely to be exciting and 
 hazardous enough, anyhow, they thought. Mrs. Gil 
 bert was never seen to shed a tear, or heard to utter a 
 word in opposition ; she used to follow him to the door 
 whenever he left the house, and watch him every step 
 of the road, if he went no farther than the corner or 
 across the street. When he was at home, she would 
 be forever visiting his room on slight errands, even 
 slipping in like a small, gentle, noiseless ghost at any 
 hour of the night, to look at him while he slept, as she 
 had when he was a little boy in his crib years ago. 
 All the things he liked to eat were constantly on the 
 table ; and the mother even went so far as to rout out 
 a photograph of Paula Jameson in a striking pose like 
 a variety actress, a photograph that Mrs. Gilbert cor 
 dially detested, and restore it to the place on Bob s 
 bureau, whence she had removed it in a temper six 
 months before! "I want him to remember every 
 thing pleasantly," she said to Lorrie. Robert himself 
 
154 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 was quite unconscious or unobservant of these efforts, 
 though he was kind after his fashion. 
 
 " Don t you worry, Moms, correspondents never get 
 hurt. They don t have to stand up to be fired at, you 
 know they can run like rabbits, when they get 
 scared, and nobody blames em," he said, in a laugh 
 ing but sincere attempt to reassure her. " There s no 
 Roman soldier, nor boy-stood-on-the-burning-deck about 
 me. I ll bet the first volley I hear I ll establish a new 
 world s record for the running high jump. I ll land 
 somewhere in the next county, and I won t get back 
 till New Year s!" 
 
 "No, you won t run, Bob ; you d never run away in 
 the wide world!" cried his mother, flushing all over 
 her pretty, faded face; and though she joined in the 
 laugh against herself, the flush remained. The Vir 
 ginia woman remembered the Shenandoah and the 
 guns of Chancellorsville. It was with faces of resolute 
 calm that she and his sister kissed the young man good- 
 by the morning he started for Tampa and "the front" ; 
 his father wrung his hand ; the little boys of the neigh 
 borhood hung around, and scrabbled for the honor of 
 carrying his suit case ; Mrs. Gilbert watched him down 
 the street for the last time ; and he swung on to the 
 rear platform of the trolley car, and his figure lessened 
 in the distance waving his new Panama hat. Down at 
 the Louisville and Nashville station, here was Van 
 Cleve Kendrick, that stoic and cynic and temperance 
 lecturer, with a box of cigars and some kind of wonderful 
 confection in leather and nickel plate combining a 
 a knife, fork, spoon, cup, flask, and goodness knows 
 what else, for camp use ! He thrust the gifts confusedly 
 upon Bob while they bade each other good-by. "Well, 
 so long, Van!" -"Here s luck, Bob!" it was a 
 simple ceremony. The train-shed was crowded with a 
 great rush of arriving and departing travellers, not a few 
 military-looking gentlemen with military-looking lug- 
 
PUS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 155 
 
 gage among them, for these were war times. On Bob s 
 own train, there were a score of newspaper men bent 
 on similar business jolly fellows all; his kind, gay, 
 boyish face shone on Van Cleve from the midst of 
 them ; the train pulled out ; and Van walked off to the 
 office, perhaps envying them a little. 
 
 In the meanwhile Lome s Mr. Cortwright got his 
 appointment, according to his confident expectation, 
 and came back to her in high spirits. He had seen and 
 had interviews with the President and the Secretary of 
 War; he was to " report for duty" at such and such a 
 place, such and such a date; he was planning his 
 baggage ; he had his photograph taken in uniform for 
 Lorrie ; the girls used to see it standing on her dressing 
 table, looking more than ever reckless and handsome, 
 and said to one another that it was a pity he hadn t 
 always been in the army, it seemed to suit him so well 
 somehow, he appeared to so much advantage as a 
 military man. Some of her friends may have even 
 envied Lorrie her romantic position; and in truth I 
 am not sure that in spite of her miserable moments of 
 apprehension for him, these last few weeks may not 
 have been the happiest Lorrie had ever spent with her 
 lover. He had never been so devoted, so thoughtful 
 and tender; and when the dreaded time of parting 
 came, spoke to her in a fashion that became him well, 
 gravely and manfully. " You re a deal too good for 
 me, my dear ; it makes me ashamed to see you care so 
 much," he said, with real humility; the depth of her 
 feeling, for the first time revealed, surprised and touched 
 and a little awed Philip. "I I almost wish you 
 didn t care so much," he stammered nervously; and 
 he did not offer to kiss her neck now, but instead took 
 her hand and laid it against his lips with something 
 like reverence. " I wish I wish !" He was silent, 
 looking down in a swift, passing, useless pain and shame 
 and regret. After all, he told himself, he wasn t much 
 
156 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 worse than the next man men couldn t help some 
 things and anyhow that life was all over and done 
 with forever for him now no use bewailing the 
 spilled milk the thing was to live straight from this 
 on, and be worthy of this splendid girl. Lorrie and he 
 would be married they would have children ! 
 He kissed her and held her close in honest pride and 
 tenderness. 
 
 "I m not going to be silly any more I didn t 
 mean to be silly at all only I c-couldn t quite help 
 it," said Lorrie, bravely, swallowing the rest of her 
 sobs, and raising her head from his shoulder. "And 
 you may not be in any battles, anyway !" she added, 
 so naively hopeful that Cortwright laughed aloud. 
 
 " That s right, little woman. I m going to come 
 back all right," he said gayly ; "but when it s over, I 
 believe I ll stay in the army; I could get into the 
 regulars, I think. A lot of the volunteer officers did 
 after the Civil War, didn t they ? I ll stay in the army 
 and end up a Major-general. That ll be better than 
 pegging along with old Leo Hirsch, hey? Give me 
 one more kiss, Mrs. Major-general !" 
 
 He went off buoyantly, with his head up and a free 
 step, in his familiar, carelessly graceful style; and 
 Lorrie, standing on the steps, looked after him, strained 
 her eyes after him as every woman has looked and 
 strained her eyes some time in her life after some man 
 since this world began its journey through the stars. 
 It happened to be a Sunday morning, the first of May, 
 very leafy, green, fresh, and warm ; people were coming 
 home from church, and children skipping on the pave 
 ments. Lorrie thought she would remember it to her 
 last hour. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 MRS. AND Miss JAMESON AT HOME 
 
 THAT date of the first of May, eighteen-ninety-eight, 
 was to be a much more memorable one even than poor 
 Lorrie, restlessly following her sweetheart on his jour 
 ney, through all the wan watches of the night, dreamed. 
 For, by dawn of the next day, when he and many an 
 other girl s sweetheart, and hundreds of husbands and 
 brothers besides, were long miles to the south, or 
 already there down on the Gulf, there went blazing 
 through the country the tidings of the battle in Manila 
 harbor. The newspapers screamed jubilantly, and for 
 once acceptably ; a generation may not witness more 
 than one such event. Old Glory flapped triumphantly 
 from a thousand flagstaffs, fireworks roared and bon 
 fires flamed. Remember the Maine! No danger, 
 they d remember it now fast enough! "I can t help 
 feeling sorry for poor old Spain !" Bob Gilbert wrote 
 from Tampa, to the touched amusement of the family ; 
 that was like Bob, they thought fondly, like his good 
 nature, his pliant humanity. 
 
 The young man was for a while very diligent about 
 writing ; Lorrie has a bundle of his war letters locked 
 away in a drawer this minute. They have got to look 
 ing worn and dust-soiled in these ten years, and the 
 ink which Bob managed to scatter about in such pro 
 fusion with his great, sprawling, loose-jointed hand that 
 always had such a schoolboy air, is faded to a kind of 
 rust color; and I suppose they are not written in a 
 
 157 
 
158 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 very high literary style, being merely the headlong 
 scribbling full of fun and nonsense and spirit you might 
 expect from Bob. He was plainly so well suited with 
 his present life, its cinematograph changes, its rough- 
 and-ready shifts, even its physical hardships, that one 
 could not but feel a certain hopefulness for him. Bob 
 was keeping straight ; maybe he had found himself at 
 last, and this was all he needed to make a man of him. 
 It had been a toilsome trip, he wrote ; everything dis 
 arranged or " congested 7 by the army trains, nothing 
 running anywhere on schedule time, all kinds of delays, 
 eat whenever you got a chance, and sleep if you dared ! 
 Tampa, of course, was chockful ; he was bunking with 
 some other newspaper men in the office of the Daily 
 Mail, corner of Twiggs Street (address him there). 
 They slept on the floor. Tell Moms not to worry ; he 
 had a blanket, and there was a place where they could 
 wash up, and it was too roasting hot for anybody to 
 catch cold ; his cough was almost gone. As for Florida 
 - give him little old Ohio ! The tropic scenery didn t 
 come up to specifications. For one thing, the palms 
 were a fizzle. Instead of being a nice, tall, smooth, 
 tapering trunk like a porch column, they were all 
 swelled out in the middle like an Adam s apple on a 
 giraffe "I wouldn t give one of our buckeyes for the 
 whole outfit of palms in Florida !" . . . " Every thing 
 down here is Plant s or Flagler s ; they own the State 
 between them. You ought to see the Tampa Bay 
 Hotel, the one Plant spent so many millions on. It 
 looks like Aladdin s Palace done in cake or butter or 
 something, like the models of the World s Fair build 
 ings the chef at the Queen City Club made one New 
 Year s, don t you remember, Lorrie? All the high 
 chief muck-a-mucks are staying there, and have their 
 offices and headquarters ; I saw Lawton and Roosevelt 
 together. ..." "The other night two or three hun 
 dred army mules that they ve got in a kind of mule 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 159 
 
 barracks down at the foot of Franklin Street, got loose 
 somehow and went stampeding in close formation 
 through the town, like Bedlam letting go. Every 
 body turned out and thought the Spanish were 
 coming !" 
 
 During succeeding days, the correspondence fell off; 
 but that was only natural, considering the progress of 
 the events which Robert had been detailed to watch. 
 Even Lome s other letters, which had at first been of a 
 daily regularity, gradually ceased to come, although 
 Lieutenant Cortwright must have had time to spare, 
 for he had complained bitterly of the state of inaction 
 in which the Army was being kept, while the Navy was 
 "right on the job," and " some thing happening every 
 day" ; and he railed at the Administration, and proph 
 esied disastrous failure for a campaign conducted with 
 so notable a lack of spirit and "push." Lorrie thought 
 with a kind of adoring and delighted terror how brave 
 and reckless and altogether demigod-like her hero was. 
 It was her brother s opinion, too, that the Navy was 
 getting all the best of it. "They landed some marines 
 at a place on the coast somewhere, called Cienfuegos, 
 and had a fight don t know how much of a one. 
 It s the talk here that the troops are to be embarked 
 to-morrow everybody perfectly crazy to go, of 
 course, but only the regulars and the 70th New York, 
 and perhaps some of ours to be taken. The censorship 
 is something fierce; not half that goes on gets in the 
 papers ; he just blue-pencils it, you know, even private 
 telegrams ; I believe they look at all of the messages 
 going either way, they want to spot the cipher ones 
 presumably. . . . The Porter brought in another prize 
 ship this morning, I heard. That must make about 
 the twentieth ; I ve lost count. Wish I was a midship- 
 mite or a bo sun tight, or a somebody with a cheerily 
 my lads, yo ho ! This prize business is as easy as roll 
 ing off a log. Saw Cort again yesterday. Nothing 
 
160 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 doing in his regiment ," Bob wrote in one of the last 
 letters they had from him. 
 
 Spring flowered abundantly; the noisy, joyous- 
 fearful days went by with new wild reports for almost 
 every hour of them. The State troops began to be 
 more and more restless and aggrieved at Chattanooga 
 and the other points of concentration. Nothing ma 
 terial seemed to be happening in Cuba. The Oregon 
 arrived happily and joined the blockading squadron; 
 more prizes were pounced upon and victoriously herded 
 in. On the other hand, the Spanish men-of-war and 
 the torpedo flotilla about which such dire misgivings 
 had been aroused in the beginning, vanished from the 
 face of the waters ! They were at Cape Verde, they 
 were at Porto Rico, they were at home, whence they 
 had never departed, they were hiding in some corner, 
 they were scouring the high seas, they were nowhere at 
 all! And "Quo Vadis hades Cadiz navies ?" blithely 
 inquired the comic journalist, who was as much to the 
 fore as ever. To the ordinary laymen and non-com 
 batant, the host of American gentlemen of letters, 
 short-story writers, long-story writers, magazine con 
 tributors, and newspaper correspondents appeared to 
 be the strongest and most active force at this moment 
 menacing Cuba. 
 
 Notwithstanding their presence and efforts, it was 
 June before the location of the unlucky " Cadiz navies" 
 was ascertained to be the harbor of Santiago. Towards 
 the end of the month Lorrie got a letter from her 
 brother the first in two or three weeks written 
 from Key West, in the wildest spirits. Bob had been 
 cruising on one of the press boats, the Milton D. 
 Bowers, right off the coast of Cuba right among the 
 Fleet ! So-and-So of Such-a-paper and So-and-So 
 of Such-another were on the boat ; he named the 
 journalistic giants with pride. He was to go again in 
 a few days ; it depended on what happened. He had 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 161 
 
 been too busy to write sorry ! but tell Moms he 
 had not yet been in the slightest danger, and wasn t 
 likely to be unless he deliberately went after it, and 
 you might trust little Percival not to do that. And he 
 couldn t tell them where to address their letters, he 
 had no idea where he might be within a few hours ; 
 better send to the Tampa address, as heretofore. 
 
 Lorrie read the letter to her mother, both of them 
 smiling and interested and uneasy as they sat in the 
 side porch in the summer morning under the honey 
 suckle vine which was all fragrant and thick with 
 bloom ; and old Dingo, spread out peaceably in the 
 patch of sunlight at their feet, stirred and cocked up 
 his good brown head and ears as she finished. "I 
 believe he knows we were reading something from Bob," 
 said Lorrie. She spoke to the dog. "Yes, you re 
 right, it s Bob s letter. Look, Dingo, Bob s letter!" 
 
 "I m more afraid of those dreadful camp diseases 
 and the water they have to drink than of anything 
 else," said the mother, with her anxious, sweet face. 
 "He doesn t say anything about how he s living now. 
 Do you suppose he has had to sleep on the decks or 
 out of doors somewhere, with his clothes on ? Bob 
 isn t very strong, and he he doesn t always take care 
 of himself." 
 
 It was the only way in which the two Gilbert women 
 ever hinted to each other of Bob s chief failing. Lorrie 
 looked worried; she had more than once wondered 
 how it was with Bob down there in the camp where 
 men must be living every way and any way ; in spite 
 of her common-sense, and his excuses, the increasing 
 gaps between his letters obscurely alarmed her. Philip s 
 letters were scanty, too, but then there were reasons 
 why Philip could not write ; his duties 
 
 Dingo growled again amicably, and rose, wagging; 
 and a shadow came across the plot of sunshine. Mrs. 
 Gilbert gave a jump and exclamation ; she was nervous 
 
162 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 these days, and the unexpected appearance of a visitor 
 startled her unduly. "Why, Paula !" she ejaculated 
 the next moment ; " where did you drop from ? Why, 
 we didn t even know you were in town ! Why, Paula ! 
 You came stealing up like a little ghost. When did 
 you get back ? Did you have a nice time ?" 
 
 "It was in the paper Sunday, Mother ; didn t you see 
 it?" cried Lorrie; and sprang up and would have 
 kissed the other, but that Paula, who after her sudden 
 arrival had stood for a second quite motionless staring 
 abstractedly at both of them, now stooped or turned 
 aside and dropped down into the nearest chair with 
 out making any movement to return the salute. Lorrie 
 was still standing almost awkwardly, in her surprise. 
 One might have said the girl had intentionally evaded 
 her. Paula was arrayed in her familiar style of over- 
 ornamentation, the pale blue fabric of her dress all 
 but obscured by embroidery and cascading laces ; 
 through the sheer folds of the waist there was visible 
 yet more embroidery threaded with pink ribbons, 
 delicately enticing. Her hat was a cloud of flowers, 
 butterflies, rhinestone buckles, chiffon rosettes ; she 
 had correct white silk gloves, correct white canvas 
 shoes ; enough must have been spent on the toilette, 
 one would have supposed, to make even Paula su 
 premely happy, but she did not look happy. Her 
 Dresden-china face wore a fretful and tired expression 
 oddly out of place on it. 
 
 "We got back Saturday; they didn t get the right 
 day in the paper," she said in a wearily complaining 
 voice ; "and they said we d been in Atlantic City ever 
 since we left Palm Beach, and we hadn t at all. We 
 were in Atlantic City, but we ve been in New York 
 for four weeks. I wish we hadn t come home. I didn t 
 want to come home. There isn t anybody here I want 
 to see. Isn t it horrid and hot ? Oh, I am so tired !" 
 
 Lorrie and her mother of whose greeting and ex- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 163 
 
 tended hand Miss Jameson had taken no notice - 
 surveyed her in a momentary silence, each thinking 
 the same thought with a certain compassion ; namely, 
 that the poor child had never been taught any manners, 
 and not being clever or observant or perhaps fine- 
 natured enough to acquire them of herself, the lack 
 would show more and more as she got older. The pause, 
 brief as it was, startled her self-consciousness. 
 
 " What s the matter? What are you both looking 
 at me that way for ? Don t I look all right ? Do I 
 -don t I is there anything the matter with me?" 
 she demanded sharply, darting a glance full of suspicion 
 from one to the other ; and straightened her figure 
 with an effort ; she had allowed herself to droop heavily 
 in the Professor s wide, rough, old splint-bottomed 
 chair. And she began to make nervous, fluttering 
 gestures about her hair and flowery hat and laces and 
 ribbons. "Do tell me if I don t look right anywhere !" 
 she entreated. 
 
 "Your dress is all right, my dear; it s so pretty we 
 couldn t help staring at it, that s all. And your hat 
 is on straight, don t worry!" said Mrs. Gilbert, 
 hastily, a good deal amused at this characteristic 
 anxiety. "But you do look tired, Paula," she added 
 in a kind concern ; you must have been doing too 
 much." 
 
 "Oh, no that is, maybe I have, I guess but 
 I ll I ll be all right in a little," Paula said, fingering 
 her dress mechanically; "it s only being tired that 
 makes me look this way - 
 
 "Travelling around so much is really hard work," 
 suggested Lome, sympathetically. 
 
 "Yes, that s it. I hate to look ugly, though. 
 Do you think I m getting fat?" She turned her 
 eyes to Lorrie, with so tragic an inquiry that the 
 older girl, kind-hearted as she was, could hardly keep 
 back her laugh ; fat was the utter abhorrence, the 
 
164 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 abominable thing, the secret enemy and terror of the 
 Jamesons, mother and daughter. 
 
 "Why, no, Paula, you re not a bit fatter," Lorrie 
 made haste to assure her ; "that is, just a little, maybe ; 
 you re always nice and round and no bones showing, 
 you know. But I think you re thinner in the face, if 
 anything." In fact, Paula s small, regular features 
 did looked rather pinched, and she was unnaturally 
 sallow. 
 
 "I m tired," she repeated, prodding at a crack in 
 the porch floor with the ferule of her expensive lingerie 
 parasol. "I didn t want to come back to this old 
 town, anyhow," said Paula, jabbing at the floor petu 
 lantly. She raised her head with an abrupt motion ; her 
 face suddenly flushed, all but her tightly drawn lips, which 
 kept an unwholesome lead color. For the instant she 
 was almost homely; it was startling. "Lorrie," she 
 said, in a high, accusing tone. "I never knew you were 
 engaged. I never knew until I got a copy of our paper 
 and saw it in the Jottings, when we were in Atlantic 
 City ; I never knew. When did it happen ? It didn t 
 say when it happened. Did it happen before I went 
 away ?" She leaned forward ; her eyes and whole face 
 burned. 
 
 "Why why I I don t know- stammered 
 Lorrie, taken aback at the other s fevered interest. 
 "I don t remember whether you were still at home 
 or not." 
 
 "Well, anyhow, you know when it happened, I 
 should hope. You know when he asked you," said 
 Paula, with a violent impatience. Lorrie and her 
 mother felt the same inward recoil ; for the first time 
 Paula seemed to them actually coarse. Her shrill 
 voice was coarse ; her eager, persistent curiosity was 
 coarse. "When was it?" she reiterated imperatively. 
 
 "In in the winter it was some time in the win 
 ter," said Lorrie, at last, with difficulty. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 165 
 
 "Oh!" Paula relapsed into the chair with a move 
 ment of her shoulder indicating open disbelief. "I 
 don t see why you don t want to talk about it." And 
 after a second of angry silence, she burst out, vehemently 
 reproachful: "Why didn t you tell me, Lorrie? You 
 knew you were going to be engaged to him. You 
 knew you were going to say yes the minute he asked you. 
 You knew he d ask you ; you had it all fixed up, you 
 know you did. Why didn t you tell me ? I think 
 you re mean you you it wasn t fair. You ought 
 to have told me at the very first. I think you re a 
 mean old thing, Lorrie Gilbert !" She choked off, 
 her lips working, her eyes fastened on Lorrie with an 
 unimaginable fierceness. It was plain to the other 
 two women that Paula had brooded herself into a fury 
 over this silly grievance, like the spoiled child she was ; 
 she might have been funny, but for the fact that there 
 is always something a little dreadful about the anger 
 of a fool. 
 
 "I didn t think you d care so much, Paula," Lorrie 
 said, kindly setting herself to appease the girl; "and 
 besides, I didn t tell anybody particularly, you know. 
 It was announced so that everybody would know all 
 at once 
 
 "Is that your ring? Did he give you that ?" Paula 
 interrupted hoarsely, thrusting her hand out suddenly 
 and seizing the other s. 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 Paula examined it closely for a minute. "I guess 
 it s a real diamond," she said at length, dropping the 
 hand as unexpectedly as she had snatched it. All at 
 once, she seemed to have forgot her complaint ; indeed, 
 she was by nature too amiable or too indolent to keep 
 herself in such a state of ferment for any length of time. 
 "Has everybody gone away?" she asked. "To that 
 old war, I mean? Your brother went, didn t he?" 
 
 "Yes. Bob s at Key West, now," said Lorrie in 
 
166 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 the vigorously cheerful style she always adopted in her 
 mother s presence. 
 
 "I heard Mr. Cortwright went, too/ said Paula, 
 working the parasol tip around and around in a knot 
 hole, intently. 
 
 "Yes. Campaigning seems to suit him. He s been 
 very well, and enjoying himself!" Lome s mother 
 answered this time ; and now it was her turn to assume 
 the artificial confidence ! Neither of them was in the 
 least deceived by it ; but if mothers and daughters 
 should cease to practise these gallant and tender hypoc 
 risies, what would be the use of mothers and daughters, 
 or of women at all ? 
 
 "Do you know where he is, all the time?" Paula 
 asked, worrying the knot hole. 
 
 "Why, of course. He s at Tampa with the troops, 
 unless they ve been moved and nobody knows what 
 they are going to do from one hour to the next : but 
 that was the last we heard." 
 
 "He he writes to you, I suppose ?" 
 
 "To me?" said Mrs. Gilbert, with a little indulgent 
 smile; "I m afraid, my dear child, I m very much 
 afraid he s never given me a thought ! But Lorrie has 
 been getting a letter every day, strange to say !" She 
 gave her daughter a look full of affectionate mischief 
 and fun. Lorrie colored faintly; she wished Phil 
 would write every day. 
 
 "Are you sure all your letters get to him? How do 
 you address them?" Paula said next. 
 
 "Why, to his regiment, you know." 
 
 "Well, I I supposed so; I wasn t sure," Paula 
 said. She abandoned the porch floor, laid the parasol 
 across her lap, and began an equally automatic and 
 earnest fidgeting with the bit of pompadour ribbon 
 elaborately knotted on its handle. 
 
 "Are you still getting ready to be married, Lorrie? 
 Mr. Cortwright might get shot in a fight, you know," 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 167 
 
 she said shrilly and distinctly; and looked up as the 
 other winced and paled with an extraordinary watch 
 ful curiosity. About the speech and manner there was 
 that childish brutality not unnatural to Paula; it 
 repelled, partly because one felt the hopelessness of 
 trying to illuminate her. A child might mature, might 
 learn, but this girl, never ! There went through Mrs. 
 Gilbert s mind, even in the midst of her distress and 
 indignation, a weird fancy presenting Paula as one of 
 the Psyches, the Undines, the lovely creatures without 
 a soul that figure in countless old-world legends. " She s 
 hardly responsible !" thought the mother, with a kind 
 of impatient pity. 
 
 "Well, I I try not to think about that," Lorrie 
 said with an effort. 
 
 "I don t see how you can help thinking about it 
 I m sure I would. I wouldn t know whether to go on 
 with my clothes or not," said the other. She eyed 
 Lorrie with a return of her morbid interest. " Don t 
 it make you feel awfully when you think of the times 
 he s kissed you ? He did kiss you, didn t he ? " 
 
 Lorrie sat, turning white and red, incapable of a word ; 
 and it was Mrs. Gilbert who answered in a cold voice, 
 stiffening to her very marrow: " Please don t, Paula! 
 It s not necessary to talk about about things like 
 that." 
 
 "I suppose not. It s no use, anyhow," Paula as 
 sented dully. There was another silence. "I wish 
 we hadn t come back !" she burst out again. "I wish 
 we d stayed in Florida. Then we d have been right 
 near it the War, you know we d have seen them 
 all all the soldiers and everything we d have seen 
 her face puckered together, she put up her hands 
 with a frantic movement ; the parasol slid down un 
 heeded. Paula began to rock herself back and forth, 
 and the other two women saw to their fright and 
 pain that her slender shoulders were heaving vio- 
 
168 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 lently; it was like seeing a bruised humming-bird in 
 torments. 
 
 " Mercy ! Why, Paula why, what is the matter ? 
 Don t you feel well ? Are you sick ? What is it that 
 hurts you ? Tell me where it hurts ! Don t cry that 
 way!" cried out Mrs. Gilbert, all her anger dissolved 
 in kindness ; she ran to the girl with little soft, purring 
 ejaculations, and took the pretty, trivial, bedizened 
 figure into her maternal arms. " There now, there now ! 
 Tell me what s the matter !" 
 
 "Oh, I m tired I m sick oh, I wish we d never 
 come back!" sobbed Paula, wildly. Lorrie and her 
 mother exchanged a glance above the flowered hat. 
 For goodness sake ! Crying and broken-hearted this 
 way because she hadn t seen the army ! both thought. 
 But after all, that was just like poor Paula. They 
 tried to comfort her with much the same means they 
 might have employed had she been eight years old ; 
 and Paula sobbed on with long, shuddering gasps and 
 moans like a child, sitting rigid between them, not 
 yielding to their caresses. 
 
 "I ll go back with you you re not well enough to 
 go by yourself that long, hot walk. I ll just go along 
 with you," Lorrie assured her, when they had got her 
 somewhat quieted at last ; they rescued the parasol, 
 and straightened Paula s frills, and dabbed her face 
 and eyes with soothing cold water, and fetched the 
 talcum powder and the smelling-salts, and, in short, 
 performed all the hundred and one small offices women 
 find necessary to such an occasion. "Maybe it would 
 be better if you lay down a little while don t you 
 think?" they suggested kindly. 
 
 "I c-can t lie down in this d-dress," said Paula, 
 pitifully; "it would spoil it. No, you don t need to 
 come, Lorrie. You don t need to come with me. I 
 can go by myself. I don t want you to come I" She 
 spoke with hysterical entreaty, looking at the other 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 169 
 
 with something like fear, almost as strong as aversion 
 in her blue eyes that were ordinarily blank and beauti 
 ful as a mountain lake. 
 
 "Oh, now, don t be a goose !" said Lorrie in good- 
 natured and sensible command. u We can t let you 
 go off feeling this way. It s no trouble ; I haven t got 
 a thing to do. S-sh, now ! Don t say another word. 
 I m going!" 
 
 Paula submitted as unexpectedly as she had rebelled, 
 and dragged feebly down the steps, her arm interlocked 
 with Lome s, who walked beside, hatless in the uncon 
 ventional summer style of our suburbs, erect and firm, 
 with all her chestnut-colored hair ruffling and shining 
 in the sun. Lorrie was not a tall woman nor of strong 
 build, yet in contrast to her companion she produced 
 a surprising effect of superiority; perhaps it was not 
 wholly physical ; one might have fancied that a greater 
 dignity of spirit in her had magically become visible. 
 Mrs. Gilbert herself, looking after them, wondered 
 aloud. "Why, I didn t realize Lorrie was so so 
 she mused, and turned and went back into the house 
 without being able to find the proper adjective. 
 
 The two girls went on slowly and silently, the elder 
 in a good deal of private anxiety, as she noted her 
 charge s color wane, and her hollow eyes, and the un 
 wholesome moisture clinging around her taut lips. 
 In fact, Paula s strength barely held out for the journey, 
 and it was with unmeasured relief that Lorrie at length 
 beheld the sprawling, decorated fagade of the hotel 
 looming ahead of them. She got the other up the 
 steps, helped by a porter who chanced to be passing, 
 and grasped the situation ; all the bell-boys stared with 
 wondering looks, alert ; and an expensively dressed 
 woman with gray hair strolling along the corridor gave 
 the couple a leisurely survey, and, after they had gone 
 by, turned and looked after them with shrewd and 
 sinister curiosity. Mrs. Jameson, rather cross at being 
 
170 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 roused from her regular morning nap, which formed a 
 part of the exercises in physical preservation and im 
 provement about which she was always most systematic, 
 came to the door of their room, in a flowing white 
 neglige, embroidered with garlands of lilac, wisteria, and 
 what-not by some Gallic artist of the needle, with 
 lilac-hued ribbons floating and intermingling with its 
 flounces. Rich odors accompanied the lady ; indeed, 
 they gushed out of the darkened bedroom (which was 
 littered with other ribbons, and wilted flowers, and 
 wrapping-papers, and odd slippers, and a bath towel or 
 two, and a pair of pink brocade corsets draped over the 
 back of a chair) in a volume Lorrie found almost suffo 
 cating ; and Paula, who nevertheless must have been ac 
 customed to this atmosphere, reeled against her com 
 panion. 
 
 "Well, I must say, Paula- her mother began, 
 sharply; she checked herself at sight of the visitor. 
 "Oh, Miss Gilbert! Do excuse my hair, please. I 
 always put it up on kid curlers this way, you know. I 
 don t approve of curling-irons, they re so bad for the 
 hair" 
 
 "Let me get Paula to the lounge, please, Mrs. Jame 
 son; she s not feeling very well," Lorrie interrupted her 
 ruthlessly ; she had to push the surprised woman aside 
 to enter. 
 
 "I d like a drink of water," said Paula in a vague, 
 distant whisper. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson stood stupefied and entirely useless as 
 Lorrie briskly and largely by main strength got her 
 daughter to the sofa, opened her dress, threw up the 
 window, ran and came back with a tumbler of ice water 
 and a fan all in five seconds and with an ease, noise- 
 lessness, and certainty of movement such as Mrs. Jame 
 son had never witnessed in her life. "Why, why 
 what is it? What s the matter with Paula?" she re 
 peated two or three times, trailing ineffectually up and 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 171 
 
 down in Lome s wake. She stopped by the sofa. 
 " Are you sick, Paula?" 
 
 "I m afraid it s this heat," said Lorrie, kneeling and 
 fanning swiftly. "Just sip the water, Paula, just a 
 little at a time. That s right yes, you can swallow 
 it see ! that s right. It s better for you a little 
 at a time. Now lie down flat. No, let me take away 
 the cushion, Mrs. Jameson ; she ll feel better with her 
 head low." 
 
 "Is it the heat, Paula ?" asked her mother, helplessly. 
 "Do you think it s the heat ? I don t know what to do 
 for a heat-stroke. What s best, Miss Gilbert?" 
 
 "I think she d better have a doctor," said Lorrie; 
 "there s one in the hotel, isn t there ? I ll get him " 
 She was on her feet with the words. 
 
 "No, no, I don t want him, I don t want any doctor !" 
 said Paula, faintly, struggling upright with wild eyes. 
 She clutched desperately at Lome s skirts. "I won t 
 have the doctor, Lorrie ; I won t, I won t!" She began 
 a kind of weak screaming. 
 
 "He s old school the one in the hotel is and 
 we ve always been homeopathic the medicine is 
 so much easier to take- " Mrs. Jameson explained 
 feebly. Lorrie looked at her, at the sick girl crying 
 and writhing on the sofa, at the hot, untidy, perfumed 
 room, with a sudden overmastering repugnance; the 
 next instant she chided herself sternly for it. 
 
 "I ll get any other doctor you want, Mrs. Jameson," 
 she compelled herself to say with gentleness; "Paula 
 must have somebody you can see that for yourself." 
 
 "Well, Doctor Booth- Mrs. Jameson said, hesi 
 tating ; she was interrupted by Paula s high-pitched 
 wailing. 
 
 "No, don t oh, don t oh, please don t!" She 
 beat the ah- with her hands. "I ll tell I ll tell oh, 
 please !" 
 
 Lorrie sped down the hall, the hysterical screeches 
 
172 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 sinking to hysterical chokings and mutterings within 
 the room behind her. She planned quickly. Doctor 
 Booth s office, fortunately, was only about half a dozen 
 squares away ; he could reach the hotel in a few min 
 utes ; but if he was not in, she would call up the next 
 nearest who would that be ? Doctor Livingston - 
 he was "old school," but pooh! what difference did 
 that make ? It was getting on towards noon, not a 
 very good hour to go in search of doctors. She debated 
 whether she had not better take it on herself to tele 
 phone for a trained nurse, too, since it was plain that 
 foolish, scared woman in the lavender embroideries 
 would be absolutely of no account in a sick-room, and 
 Paula might be going to be seriously ill for some time. 
 Lorrie associated Florida with malarial germs, and New 
 York and Atlantic City with incautious eating and 
 drinking ; poor water typhoid over-fatigue all 
 the alarmist reports of the day crowded into her mind. 
 And then the sound of her own name, distractedly called, 
 arrested her with her finger on the button to summon the 
 elevator. Miss Gilbert ! Miss Gilbert ! 
 
 Mrs. Jameson rushed up, gasping ; her face was ash 
 color the fine lines and crows feet in it showed merci 
 lessly ; but she had forgot all about them, she forgot 
 her kid curlers and her negligee, even with the elevator 
 man imminent in his cab. She ran and grasped the 
 front of Lome s white shirtwaist with trembling hands, 
 on which all sorts of rings and jewels glittered keenly. 
 " Don t get the doctor !" she managed to get out in a 
 strangled whisper. "For God s sake, don t ! That is, 
 if you could get one no, no, don t !" She paused 
 breathlessly, in a tortured indecision, terrible to see on 
 her doll-featured face. Lorrie stood, sorely perplexed, 
 genuinely alarmed. 
 
 "But, Mrs. Jameson !" she began to protest. 
 
 "Is there a doctor here that nobody knows that 
 nobody ever has that isn t anybody s doctor ?" de- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 173 
 
 manded the older woman, holding her fiercely. "If 
 you did know of one - 
 
 "Why, no how could I why, what for - 
 why - " Lorrie was utterly bewildered. 
 
 "No, no, don t call anybody, then !" reiterated Mrs. 
 Jameson, releasing her. "I don t want anybody, do 
 you hear? I won t have anybody. I m her mother, 
 and I don t want any doctor for her, and it s none of 
 your business, do you hear me?" she said with stifled 
 violence. She thrust her face almost into Lome s. 
 "Don t you dare !" All at once she became a bel 
 dame, a vulgar fury, a dishevelled hag before whom the 
 young woman shrank in some feeling not far from 
 terror. 
 
 Lorrie went home, a little shaken by the morning s 
 experiences ; very likely she was already somewhat 
 overstrained by these recent trying weeks. "Mother," 
 she said gravely, as the two ladies sat down to their 
 luncheon ; "I m afraid I ve been doing that poor Mrs. 
 Jameson an awful injustice all this while. She is very 
 much fonder of Paula than I thought just as fond as 
 other mothers are of their children just like you ! 
 Of course she didn t act the way you would if I were 
 suddenly taken sick, but she s just as frightened and 
 anxious. Why, do you know, when she finally did 
 realize that Paula was sick, she why, she was just 
 like a crazy woman !" 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN WHICH WE PACK OUR VALISES 
 
 DURING all this time, the unimpressionable Mr. 
 Kendrick worked along, according to his habit, as has 
 been recited, paying only a passing attention to the 
 history-making in progress around him. Van himself 
 was making, not history, but what was much better 
 worth while, from his point of view, Money yes, 
 Money with a capital letter. Old Joshua Van Cleve, 
 who, if popular sayings can be listened to, must have 
 had occasion to turn over more than once in the quar 
 ter century or so since he went to his last grim bed, at 
 witnessing the loose-handed administration of his 
 worldly goods Joshua, I say, might at last rest in 
 peace ; his grandson was a chip of his own solid and well- 
 hewn block ! The rest of us, for that matter, could also 
 behold the fine moral spectacle of Virtue getting its due 
 handsomely, constantly offered to us in romance and 
 melodrama, but seldom, alas, upon this real and mun 
 dane stage. If ever a man deserved to succeed, it was 
 Van Cleve ; and he did succeed. The Good Apprentice 
 prospered, for once, as all Good Apprentices should. 
 He was shrewd, he was cool, he was just, he wasun- 
 fathomably patient; and without question his whole 
 heart was in the work. Mr. Kendrick had nowhere else 
 to bestow it ; so that steady and reliable organ beat, 
 presumably, only for himself. 
 
 It is true he was very good to his family, indulging 
 their whims as far as he was able, supplying their wants 
 with the utmost liberality, and rarely inquiring how they 
 
 174 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 175 
 
 disposed of the funds which he poured into that ap 
 parently bottomless hopper. " They re mighty good 
 women all of em, even Uncle Stan ; he s about the same 
 as a woman," Van used to reflect humorously; "good 
 and kind, and I guess they ve got as much sense as most 
 women that aren t nearly so nice, either, by jiminy !" 
 saying which he would methodically file away their 
 letters asking for money, or acknowledging the receipt 
 of it, in the drawer he used for that purpose. In time 
 there got to be a stack of these documents. . . . " Dear 
 est Van : Your noble, generous, splendid check came 
 this morning. You dear old fellow, I m so afraid you 
 went without something yourself, to provide us. What 
 would we not all give to take this burden off of you ! 
 But never mind, Van darling, some day it will all be 
 made up to you, that is my devout belief." "My dear, 
 fine boy : We cannot bear to say anything to you about 
 money after all your superb generosity to us, but when 
 I have laid the facts before you, I think you will see 
 this is an imperative emergency. Since I had grippe last 
 winter, the doctor has constantly urged our getting out 
 of New York, and now he enthusiastically indorses our 
 Tarry town plan. Of course, it will be a little extra ex 
 pense to move there, but once there, the cost of living is 
 much less, and the air will be beneficial to us all. . . . ; 
 etc., etc. Van Cleve used to skim through this part 
 with a highly irreverent inattention ; he knew from 
 experience that towards page three the ladies would 
 finally come to the point, "get down to business"; 
 that is, divulge the amount they wanted. The young 
 fellow acquitted them of anything like conscious 
 hypocrisy ; there was nothing mean nor shabby about 
 them; they were honestly fond and proud of him, he 
 knew, honestly sorry that they must be dependent on 
 him. He supposed all women (except one, perhaps) 
 to be the same. And anyhow, were they not his kin ? 
 They belonged to him ; and he wouldn t give a Some- 
 
176 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 thing for a man who couldn t take care of his women, 
 and give them what they wanted ! He had all their 
 letters tied up in packets, year by year, and labelled 
 in his neat, square handwriting: "M. V. C. Lucas 
 5/19/ 98, $75. Answd. 5/28/ 98." "E. Lucas 7/15/ 
 02, $50" and so on. Don t they ever write to you 
 about anything but money?" was once asked of him. 
 "Oh, yes. But that s the only important thing." 
 
 Being now a bachelor at large upon the world, the 
 young gentleman sometimes forsook his boarding- 
 house of an evening and made a call, or recreated him 
 self at the theatre or at the club which he had recently 
 found he was able to join ; indeed, this last was probably 
 his most favored resort, for, except with other men, 
 Van had no great social gift. The girls, in general, 
 were glad enough to see him, even when he forgot that 
 he had come to visit them, and got to talking politics 
 or the stock market with their fathers ! Almost any 
 sensible girl would have been ready to like Van Cleve, 
 would have appreciated his plain good qualities, and 
 have shown him a not discouraging face; but unluck 
 ily the young man had no idea of this amiable disposi 
 tion on their part. I fear Mr. Kendrick was not at all a 
 ladies man. They appeared to him mostly as pretty, 
 decorative creatures, sharing doubtless the funny and 
 occasionally irritating forcible-feeblenesses of his own 
 womenkind. It was a matter of increasing wonder to 
 him that any man should voluntarily elect to spend his 
 life with one of them. "Well, it wouldn t be all roses 
 for any girl that had to live with me /" he sometimes 
 retorted upon himself, satirically honest. Van never 
 admitted even in this privacy that there was always an 
 exception lurking in the back of his mind. There was 
 one girl heigh-ho ! He believed he could have lived 
 with her and made her happy. 
 
 It was to her house that he went in the hot summer 
 night of the day of Paula s ill-starred visit there. Van 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 177 
 
 Cleve, too, had had a letter from Bob ; and found no 
 difficulty in persuading himself that it would be a kind 
 ness to take it over for the family to read. Of course, 
 Lorrie didn t care particularly about seeing him - 
 he knew that; and news from the man she was engaged 
 to was all that really interested her, nevertheless . 
 So Mr. Kendrick left his fellow-boarders on the porch, 
 with their rocking-chairs and their fans, and journeyed 
 over to Warwick Lane in the face of an ominous cloud- 
 bank all along the western horizon, intermittently 
 streaked and splashed with lightning. Lorrie was 
 sitting, as usual, on the Gilbert front steps, alone in the 
 sultry dusk ; all the front steps up and down the little 
 suburban street were thus decorated at this hour, and 
 you might hear the young people s laughter, and a 
 banjo twanging here and there; everybody hadn t 
 gone to the War. As he came up the walk, Van, 
 through a lamplit square of window, could perceive the 
 Professor bending over a sheaf of writing examina 
 tion-papers, very likely and Mrs. Gilbert darning a 
 stocking on the other side of the table ; the two tired 
 gray heads showed distinctly. 
 
 The family had also heard from Robert, Van Cleve 
 learned, and his own news was of no later date. He 
 and Lorrie agreed that the trip seemed to be doing Bob 
 good, and he was getting a lot of fun out of it, anyhow ; 
 his letters were so happy. "I don t believe it s the - 
 the sort of fun that will harm him, either, do you, Van ? " 
 the girl asked earnestly. "Of course there re all kinds 
 of men in an army a camp like that, but they must 
 be mostly all right, or they couldn t stay in the army." 
 
 "They re under pretty strict discipline the regu 
 lars, that is, I believe," said Van Cleve, trying to be 
 diplomatic. "Anyhow, it suits Bob better than any 
 thing he has ever tried. He was crazy to go, and it 
 wouldn t have done any good to have kept him at home." 
 During and since the excitement, Lorrie and Van had 
 
178 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tacitly agreed to forget their differences over Bob 
 to bury the hatchet. The old friendly confidence was 
 restored ; and if another person s name would be for 
 ever cropping up, Van Cleve realized with a twinge that 
 this was natural and inevitable. Her lover was con 
 stantly in Lome s mind, and it was right and proper that 
 he should be; then how could she help talking about 
 him? 
 
 " That s what I tell Mother, but she can t help worry 
 ing, you know," said Lorrie, answering his last speech ; 
 "I wish Bob could be more with with Mr. Cort- 
 wright, but they don t seem to have seen much of each 
 other. The camp s perfectly huge, they say, swarming 
 with men. And then Philip Mr. Cortwright must 
 be on duty a great part of his time/ the girl added, with 
 a note of pride; "he said in one of his letters he wouldn t 
 have much chance to look after Bob." 
 
 Van Cleve, who still kept to his ideas doubtless 
 unfair and prejudiced ones about the benefit Robert 
 might receive from an association with this gentleman, 
 did not reply for a moment. Then he spoke, overlook 
 ing Mr. Cortwright. "I suppose if we could be there at 
 Tampa or Key West and see it, we d laugh at the 
 notion of finding or looking out for anybody. It must 
 be an awful mix-up," he said wisely. 
 
 There was a pause while the thunder began to rumble 
 overhead. 
 
 "Do you suppose cannon sounds like that?" Lorrie 
 said. 
 
 "Don t know. I ve a notion it s shorter and boomier, 
 somehow not quite so much like a lot of empty 
 hogsheads rolling downstairs," Van suggested. "Your 
 mother was near some of the battle-fields in the Civil 
 War, wasn t she ? She must know what sort of noise 
 the guns make." 
 
 "Yes, but I don t like to ask her. I think it pains 
 her to be reminded of it." 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 179 
 
 They glanced at the open window. 
 
 "How old your father and mother are beginning to 
 look, Lome," Van said involuntarily; the knowledge 
 came to him with an unwelcome shock. 
 
 "Do you think so?" she said, troubled; "they 
 haven t been well, either of them ; and Bob s never out 
 of their minds for one instant, you know. It does seem 
 as if we d had so many upsetting things happen lately ; 
 and when people get older, they can t stand them so well. 
 Now to-day Paula Jameson - Lorrie gave him some 
 description of the girl s seizure. "I hope it s nothing 
 serious, but it certainly was enough to frighten anybody 
 to see it it was so sudden," she concluded. "Mother s 
 been what she calls as nervous as a witch all day. I m 
 glad she didn t have to have anything to do with Mrs. 
 Jameson, anyhow - - Van, it was awful ! That poor 
 thing was completely frightened out of what little sense 
 she has is that somebody coming in ?" 
 
 The visitor was Mrs. Jameson, walking fast. "Gra 
 cious ! Suppose she heard me ! I hope I wasn t 
 speaking very loud !" Lorrie ejaculated inwardly, panic- 
 struck ; and greeted the other in a fluster that made 
 Van Cleve smile in the dark. "Why why good 
 evening, Mrs. Jameson. A er how is Paula?" 
 And then, as the girl s mother came up and stood 
 breathing hurriedly and excitedly without a word, 
 Lorrie added in quick alarm ; "she s not worse ? She s 
 not going to be very sick ? What is it ? A a fever ? 
 Not a fever, I hope?" 
 
 Mrs. Jameson spoke at last in a hasty, fluttering voice, 
 catching herself and swallowing at every other word. 
 "No, it s not that she s better that is, she she ll 
 be better I don t know who s that?" she cried out 
 shrilly, and darted a step forward, peering into the 
 shadow where Van Cleve sat. "Is that your brother? 
 Is that you, Bob Gilbert ?" 
 
 "Why no, Bob s not home he s gone away he s 
 
180 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 with the troops down in Florida didn t Paula tell 
 you?" Lorrie explained, a good deal startled, as Van 
 Cleve got to his feet and came into the light, himself 
 somewhat surprised. Mrs. Jameson fell back unstead 
 ily and stared at him. "It s Mr. Kendrick, Van Cleve 
 Kendrick, you know. Why, I was sure you knew Van 
 Cleve," said Lorrie. "Paula knows him." And she 
 asked again, unconvinced: "Is Paula better? Can t I 
 do something for her?" 
 
 "Oh, I ve met Miss Jameson lots of times " Van 
 was saying, a little embarrassed. 
 
 "Oh, yes, yes I I beg your pardon, Mr. Ken 
 drick, of course I couldn t see who it was I beg 
 your pardon - Mrs. Jameson said in a manner that 
 so laboriously parodied her accustomed artificial graces 
 that the others observed it with a kind of incredulity. 
 She put up a hand to her bare throat, as if to help the 
 control of her voice. "I I thought for a minute 
 your brother might have come back, and and I 
 wanted to see him on business a a little business," 
 she said to Lorrie. 
 
 "I m sorry Bob s not home- Lorrie stammered, 
 confounded by this statement ; "I can give you his 
 last address, though, but we re not sure where he ll 
 be - " she was going on to say, when Mrs. Jameson cut 
 her short with a sudden wild ejaculation and gesture ; 
 she threw out both hands as if she rent and tore away 
 some bond, resigned some struggle with a need stronger 
 than herself. "It don t make any difference !" she 
 said loud and harshly; "where s his father? I want 
 to see his father. Is he here ?" 
 
 Father f repeated Lorrie, blankly. The request was 
 stranger, if that could be, than the first. Professor 
 Gilbert had never met, had never even seen, Mrs. Jame 
 son in his life ; it was impossible to imagine their having 
 a single interest in common, a single thought or feeling. 
 "Father f Why yes, he s here he s in the house. Do 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 181 
 
 you want I mean, shall I call him I mean, won t 
 you come in?" 
 
 11 1 want to see your father," said Mrs. Jameson again, 
 vehemently. "Is that him in there? That gray- 
 headed man ?" She advanced into the full light, show 
 ing a face and figure in uncanny disorder ; she had a 
 black lace dress and black hat flung on anyhow; tag- 
 ends of lavender ribbon and white edging stuck out 
 inappropriately about the corsage; the plumes of her 
 hat swept and bobbed and dipped over her big white 
 neck and shoulders that showed fleshily under the figured 
 net draperies ; and wisps of her red hair blew or hung 
 stringily out of curl about her. The two young people 
 looked at her almost appalled ; for terror and misery 
 stared out of the woman s eyes, and walked in this 
 slattern finery, on those pinched, French-heeled slip 
 pers. "The poor thing has gone out of her head, sure 
 enough! Paula must be going to die !" both of them 
 thought. For an instant they stood helpless, not know 
 ing what to do or say. 
 
 "I want to see your father," said Mrs. Jameson, 
 moving towards the door, still with that air of having 
 thrown down all barriers. She turned quickly. i You d 
 better go away ! " she said, her glance comprehending 
 them both. "Why don t you go away ? I want to see 
 him by himself." 
 
 "But Mrs. Jameson, father can t he doesn t - 
 he won t know who you are just wait a minute 
 only a minute, won t you?" Lorrie expostulated, 
 trying to gather up her own wits, and to speak 
 soothingly and with composure; "hadn t you better 
 sit down here, and and let me get you something ? 
 You you re nervous, you know. Can t you tell me 
 what it is ? Is it something about Paula ? Tell me, 
 won t you?" 
 
 Mrs. Jameson shook off her hands. " Let me alone ! " 
 she said savagely ; and thrust them both aside and went 
 
182 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 into the house. Lorrie and Van Cleve hesitated behind 
 her, each questioning the other s face. 
 
 "That s just the way she was to-day when she found 
 how sick poor Paula was ! " whispered the girl. Uncon 
 sciously she laid a hand on his arm. " Mercy, I m glad 
 you re here, Van ! What do you suppose is the matter ? 
 She acts as if she might do anything ! And yet she 
 said something about Paula s being better !" 
 
 "Oh, she s just frightened, I guess," said Van Cleve, 
 reassuringly. Mrs. Jameson s manner reminded him 
 of his aunt s when that lady reached a high pitch of 
 excitement. "You ll find there s nothing much wrong," 
 said the young man, wagging his head knowingly, as 
 he followed her. The storm was rising noisily, clapping 
 the doors, and sending the Professor s papers scurrying 
 all about the room. There came a dash of rain. 
 
 "Lorrie! Van! Better run and close the win 
 dows!" Mrs. Gilbert called out. She dropped her 
 work and ran to the door. "Come in, children, both of 
 you ! Is there somebody else out there ? I thought I 
 heard somebody Mrs. Jameson !" 
 
 The other shouldered past without heeding her. 
 "Is that Bob Gilbert s father? Are you his father ?" 
 she demanded. 
 
 Professor Gilbert, who had been gathering sheets of 
 foolscap from under the fender where they had blown 
 and lodged, straightened up, smoothing them in his 
 hands, and turned around. He pushed up his glasses 
 and green shade to survey her amazedly. 
 
 "My name is Gilbert, madame," he said, recovering ; 
 and made a little courteous, old-fashioned gesture of 
 apology. " Er who is it, if you please ? " 
 
 "It s Mrs. Jameson, Sam you know --Paula 
 Jameson s mother you know Paula," Mrs. Gilbert 
 interposed hastily. "My husband, Professor Gilbert, 
 Mrs. Jameson," she added conventionally, notwithstand 
 ing her surprise ; she supposed that the other had run 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 183 
 
 in for a refuge from the rain. And " Won t you sit 
 down?" said the hospitable little lady, seeking to put 
 the guest at her ease. Still Mrs. Jameson did not 
 move or speak ; and in the silence, Lome s mother 
 suddenly sensed impending calamity. "How is Paula ? 
 Is she ? It s not serious?" she asked quickly. Her 
 eyes searched the other mother s face, and whatever she 
 divined there, stark horror all at once laid hold of her. 
 "Merciful Heaven, isn t she going to to get well? 
 She she s not going to to - " she could not finish. 
 
 Mrs. Jameson glanced at her impatiently. She 
 made a movement towards the Professor, then checked 
 herself as it seemed unwillingly, and looked around on 
 the others. "I said for all of you to go away. Then, 
 as nobody moved immediately in the common bewil 
 derment, she threw out both hands again in a parox 
 ysm of impotent anger. i i My God, won t anybody listen 
 to me?" she screamed out violently, and stamped the 
 floor; "I know I m acting queer I know it as well 
 as you do ! But I m not crazy not yet, anyhow !" 
 And with this outburst she seemed on a sudden to repos 
 sess herself ! It was as if some unimaginable flood of 
 desperate emotion had deluged and devastated her soul 
 and rushed on, leaving her to the ultimate calm the 
 calm of defeat. She went up to Professor Gilbert and 
 spoke steadily. "I have come about your son. I mean 
 the one that s called Bob. I want you to send for him 
 to come back. He s got to come back here." 
 
 "Bob? You mean Bob?" said the father, uncom- 
 prehendingly ; "you want him to come back? But 
 madame, I - - I don t understand. What is the matter ? 
 Why ?" 
 
 "Because he s ruined my girl that s why!" said 
 Mrs. Jameson ; and as Professor Gilbert moved with 
 an inarticulate sound, she repeated the words. 
 
 There was a speechless moment. Outside the storm 
 roared past and shook the four corners of the house; 
 
184 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 but for the people in the Gilbert sitting-room, silence 
 engulfed the universe. Mrs. Jameson stood haggardly 
 in the midst of them, her hand clutching at her throat ; 
 she was spent utterly and could feel and think no further. 
 For that matter, thought was beyond the others, too ; 
 nobody was thinking; their minds stood still, clogged 
 with formless protest. Van Cleve, who more than any 
 one present had the habit of self-mastery, was the first 
 to recognize that Mrs. Jameson was not insane ; she 
 was most tragically sane, and she believed herself to 
 be telling the truth. It might be monstrous it 
 was monstrous but it explained and justified her. 
 After another chaotic instant, Lorrie came to the same 
 realization ; strangely enough, her first coherent thought 
 in that flash of miserable illumination was not of her 
 brother, not of Bob s guilt or innocence, but of Paula. 
 Lorrie understood now ; sick horror and pity surged 
 over her. 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert spoke, grasping at her first definite 
 idea; it was more like an impulse uttered than a 
 thought. "My son never did that thing. Our Bob 
 never did that/ 7 she said. 
 
 " Will you send for him ?" said the other mother. 
 
 "Mrs. Jameson," said the Professor, collecting him 
 self; "I I cannot believe I do not mean that I 
 doubt you I mean I I - He stopped ; then 
 made another effort. "I trust you will not misunder 
 stand me I trust you will bear with me when I say 
 I can t believe I don t believe my son would so 
 wrong He had to stop again. 
 
 "Would Paula lie about it ? What for ?" said Mrs. 
 Jameson. 
 
 The rest looked at one another, groping for an answer. 
 Suddenly Mrs. Gilbert became aware that her daughter 
 and a young man were in the room a young unmarried 
 man and woman. "You oughtn t to be here, Lorrie 
 you and Van," she said distressfully. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 185 
 
 Van Cleve obediently turned to the door, in a turmoil 
 of shame and sympathy ; but Bob s father interposed 
 quickly. "Van Cleve Van! Don t go! You re 
 Bob s friend don t go ! " 
 
 "Oh, mother, it doesn t make any difference noth 
 ing makes any difference except whether this is true or 
 not. That s all that matters!" said Lorrie. They 
 looked at her. It was so. Nothing mattered but the 
 truth. The kindly, well-meant screens and shams of 
 daily intercourse were all abolished ; there they stood, 
 men and women, with their miserable knowledge, like 
 people around a corpse. 
 
 "Did she did Paula tell you so?" Mrs. Gilbert 
 asked, unconsciously clenching her hands together. 
 " Did she say it it was Bob? " 
 
 "Yes. I made her tell me. She didn t want to, but 
 I made her. Will you send for him ?" 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert put out a hand blindly and caught hold 
 of a table and clung to it, trembling. It was that little 
 old table with the decanter of peach-brandy, and the 
 thing rocked over now, struck against the wall, and went 
 smashing unregarded to the floor, and the heavy, gummy 
 liquor splashed and ran down over the wall in a thick 
 stream. That was like the stain on the family honor ; 
 it would never come off. 
 
 "I cannot believe it," Professor Gilbert said again. 
 "Bob has been w^ild he has been wild, but he 
 he - torturing doubt appeared on his face ; his eyes 
 sought Van Cleve s in unhappy appeal. "Van Cleve, 
 you ve always been his friend you know him better 
 than anybody much better than I. I ve never 
 known how to to do right with Bob," said the father, 
 humbly. "Do you believe it ?" 
 
 The young man hung his head ; he too had been 
 thinking that Bob was wild, was weak. "All that talk 
 about never harming anybody but himself, what does 
 that amount to? If a fellow lets go of himself one 
 
186 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 way, he s bound to let go of himself other ways/ 7 he 
 thought gloomily. "But if he did do this, by God, I 
 know it wasn t all Bob s fault!" Aloud, he could 
 only say huskily, "Mr. Gilbert, I don t want to 
 believe it." The words sounded as hard as his hard 
 face looked, yet they were uttered with real suffer 
 ing. 
 
 " Are you going to send for him ? " said Mrs. Jameson. 
 
 There was another unhappy silence ; they could hear 
 the water rustling along the gutter and down-spout at 
 the corner of the porch ; the storm had come, and burst, 
 and passed since they had been in this room, and not 
 one of them had noticed it ; and it was not yet ten min 
 utes ! Mrs. Gilbert at last spoke, raising her head. 
 "Bob shall come back, Mrs. Jameson," she said, firmly 
 and clearly. "He must come back. If he if they 
 have done wrong, it will be righted. Young people 
 don t always seem to know they don t mean to be 
 wicked, they re just foolish - She paused, fighting 
 for self-control ; and before their mental vision there 
 rose the picture of the pretty, little, soft, silly girl, the 
 reckless, good-natured, self-indulgent young man. It 
 was sad, it was shameful ; but was it so very strange, 
 was it wholly their fault? "Why weren t you taking 
 better care of your daughter, woman ?" the one mother 
 wanted to cry out. "And why didn t you put better 
 principles into your son, Ellen Gilbert?" Conscience 
 inquired sternly. "It shall be made right Bob shall 
 make it right we want it as much as you do," Mrs. 
 Gilbert began again. She turned to her husband with a 
 fevered eagerness. "We ll telegraph him can t we 
 telegraph? I mean to-night now at once; can t 
 we?" 
 
 "If if we knew where he is," said the Professor, in 
 helplessness. He took off the eye-shade and spectacles 
 which he had been wearing all this while, and laid them 
 down under the lamp with nervous and shaky move- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 187 
 
 ments ; on a sudden, he seemed to have become an old 
 man old and infirm. "Let me think I have to 
 think a little," he said, brushing a hand across his eyes. 
 
 Lorrie went to her mother s side with an anxious look 
 into her face, and picked up Mrs. Gilbert s hand and 
 began to stroke it gently. "Bob wouldn t come any 
 how for a telegram, mother. How could you tell him 
 what was the matter?" she said quietly. "What 
 could we say in a telegram, or even a letter? Never 
 mind, mother dear, one of us will go and find him and 
 bring him home. Never mind ! " 
 
 "I was thinking of that," said her father, with his 
 drawn brows. "I could I see you at the bank to 
 morrow, Van Cleve?" 
 
 "No, no, you don t need to. I have money I have 
 plenty of money -- I can get more !" Mrs. Jameson cried 
 incoherently ; her woman s mind rushed forward to an 
 understanding while Van Cleve was yet wondering what 
 the Professor meant to do, or wanted at the bank. She 
 snatched out an ornate purse of gilded and wrought 
 leather, with chains and trinkets dangling from it and 
 tried to force it on him. "See, there s plenty take 
 it all take it ! I ve got more I can get more 
 it s my own money, you know. Don t wait for any 
 banks, or letters, or anything ! You ve got to get him 
 here soon please don t wait ! " Suddenly her features 
 quivered ; she dropped all the money at his feet and 
 shrank back, covering her face, and a heavy sob shook 
 her. The two men were inexpressibly touched by the 
 sight, by the pitiful offering and the two women, 
 strange as it would seem, not at all. Yet they were both 
 good, tender-hearted women. Lorrie stooped and 
 painstakingly recovered the bills and silver and pennies 
 that had scattered in every direction. 
 
 "We don t want this, Mrs. Jameson," she said 
 coldly, returning it. 
 
 The other gazed at her affrightedly through her 
 
188 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tears. "I didn t m-mean any harm !" Paula s mother 
 quavered. " I m sorry to m-make trouble. I m going 
 to take Paula away somewhere, so nobody will know 
 about it, but I c-couldn t help - she broke down 
 again. Her brief flame of courage and resolution had 
 burned out ; she could only plead and whimper weakly 
 
 now. 
 
 u 
 
 If you could manage it with your bank people, 
 Van ? I don t know much about business methods. 
 I have never been obliged to to raise money hurriedly 
 before," said Professor Gilbert, in a pathetic anxiety; 
 "my my personal note ?" 
 
 " That s all right, Mr. Gilbert," Van Cleve said, in 
 ordinately relieved at the introduction of this safe, 
 commonplace, familiar subject ; he felt as if his feet 
 were on solid ground at last. "I ll get the money for 
 you, any amount you say I ll fix all that - 
 
 " You can t go, father," Lorrie interrupted. "You 
 can t get away now. You d have to explain - 
 
 Her father s glance turned to the examination-papers. 
 "I don t know- he murmured; "I could make an 
 arrangement, I think - 
 
 "I will go," said Lorrie. 
 
 Her father and mother stared at her, startled. Mrs. 
 Jameson, crumpled into a chair, ceased her moaning to 
 gaze up at the girl in awed admiration and wonder. 
 That a woman could speak or act with any sort of 
 promptness, energy, or decision, coolly as if it was her 
 habit, seemed to Paula s mother something abnormal ; 
 she did not like Lorrie and was afraid of her, yet trusted 
 her devoutly. It was Van Cleve who began to protest. 
 
 "Why, Lorrie, you can t do that! You can t go 
 running around trying to hunt up Bob. You haven t 
 any idea what sort of places you might that is, he 
 might you don t know what you re talking about. 
 It s no place for women - 
 
 "How about the nurses?" said Lorrie; "Miss Rodg- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 189 
 
 ers you know ? At Christ s ? Miss Rodgers is 
 going. She s going this week. She spoke to me the 
 other day about it, because she d heard I had said I d 
 like to go with the Red Cross. I could go with her." 
 
 " You can t ! It s insane ! " 
 
 "Van s right, Lorrie ; you oughtn t to think of going," 
 said Mrs. Gilbert in alarm. 
 
 "Mother, you know Bob would listen to me he d 
 pay more attention to me than to anybody else. I can 
 do more with Bob than anybody else more than you 
 or father - 
 
 "That s true," said Professor Gilbert with a kind of 
 groan. 
 
 "Lorrie, don t talk that way as if Bob had to be 
 made!" said her mother, tremulously; "Bob will do 
 right, as soon as soon as he knows. I know he will. 
 Bob s not bad. He may have been wild ever so 
 many young men are but he s always done right 
 in the end, or or tried to. You know he has," said 
 the poor mother, breaking down at last in her turn ; 
 " you oughtn t to talk that way about him your own 
 brother and everybody s so against him, anyhow ! " 
 
 It was late when Van Cleve went out and called a 
 carriage and put Mrs. Jameson into it to take her home 
 a silent and dreary journey, although the poor 
 woman herself would probably have talked eagerly, in 
 the relief and reaction of the moment, if she had had the 
 slightest encouragement. "Do you think Miss 
 Miss Lorrie ought to go that way by herself ? Do you 
 think she really will, Mr. Kendrick?" she asked him, 
 timidly. "I d be afraid of my life. I don t see how 
 she dares. She s very unusual, isn t she?" Mrs. 
 Jameson added, remembering that she had heard 
 something about the young man s devotion in that 
 quarter, and with some idea of making herself agree 
 able. To her dismay, he scowled. 
 
190 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Miss Gilbert won t be by herself/ he said briefly. 
 
 "I know. That Miss Rodgers that nurse, of 
 course - " said Mrs. Jameson, hastily, perturbed. Van 
 Cleve made no comment, glowering silently out of the 
 carriage window at the night scene of shining wet 
 pavements, tracked with lights, and the hurrying trolley- 
 cars with their soaked storm curtains pulled tight. After 
 a while, Mrs. Jameson ventured again, even more ner 
 vously than before, - 
 
 "Mr. Kendrick, you you won t tell anybody?" 
 
 "Tell anybody ?" echoed Van Cleve, not understand 
 ing. 
 
 "About us about Paula about this evening?" 
 faltered Mrs. Jameson, leaning forward and clutching 
 at his knee in her anxiety. "You won t tell ? " 
 
 "No, I won t tell," said the young man, recoiling 
 throughout his whole being. What was the woman 
 made of? Or what, in Heaven s name, did she think 
 he was made of ? 
 
 "I m ever so much obliged. You re doing a great 
 deal for us. I m awfully obliged," said Mrs. Jameson, 
 weakly, conscious of a certain inadequacy about these 
 phrases ; but her pinchbeck vocabulary afforded noth 
 ing better. Van Cleve left her at her hotel, and paid 
 the cabman and went off home. He went upstairs to 
 his boarding-house room, and got a travelling-bag out of 
 the closet. 
 
PART II 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH WE CONCENTRATE AT TAMPA 
 
 ON a hot, wet, stifling day of June it was the 
 twenty-fourth or towards that date - a train from the 
 North got into the station at Tampa, Florida, some six 
 or seven hours late, as was not unusual, and discharged 
 its passengers upon the cinder esplanade which was al 
 ready crowded with men in uniform, men out of uniform, 
 dogs, boys, crates, barrels, mules, colored women, drays, 
 boxes labelled "6th Regmt. U. S. Inft. Rush" 
 " Lieut. W. W. Branscombe, 3d. Penn. Vol. Cav. 
 Personal," and so on. The train discharged into the 
 middle of all this, and of the proportionate uproar and 
 bewilderment, a little party of travellers, some of whom 
 we ought to be able to recognize by this time. The 
 girl in the gray coat-and-skirt suit with the pretty face, 
 rather tired and pale just now, and with an anxious look 
 in her brown eyes, which roam about as if there were 
 somebody whom she half expects and half dreads to see 
 that is, of a surety, Miss Lorrie Gilbert. And there 
 is an active, alert, well-built woman a head taller and 
 five years older than Lorrie who must be the trained 
 nurse, Miss Rodgers from Christ s Hospital, sent down 
 here to the kindred military establishment at Tampa, 
 or Key West, she herself is uncertain which. But for 
 her, I suppose the presence of that tall, raw-boned, 
 
 191 
 
192 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ungainly young man (V. C. Kendrick, you may read 
 the initials on the end of his suit-case), I say but for Miss 
 Rodgers, his presence in company with Miss Gilbert at 
 this distance from home would undoubtedly be a scan 
 dal; however, let Mrs. Grundy possess her soul in 
 peace, Lorrie and Van are not eloping, and they are 
 sufficiently chaperoned. There is even another trained 
 nurse along, some subordinate of Miss Rodgers s, the 
 stout young woman with the fine complexion Van 
 Cleve never can remember her name. Mr. Kendrick 
 displays great promptness and efficiency in getting his 
 ladies off the car, in accumulating their belongings, and 
 marooning the party safely upon a reef of luggage out of 
 the crowd and the torrid sunshine, while he starts off to 
 find a conveyance and incidentally whatever informa 
 tion about the town he can pick up. "Say, Jim, git 
 on to Brigham Young in the blue sack-suit !" a lounging 
 khaki-clad gentleman with a toothpick in one corner of 
 his mouth, and 52d Mich. V. I. on the front of his 
 slouch hat observes to another, facetiously noting Van s 
 activities ; by good luck, the latter does not hear him. 
 
 "They say the train goes on somewhere across the 
 river and backs right up into the grounds of the Tampa 
 Bay Hotel," says Miss Rodgers, staring about her ; " isn t 
 that the limit for you, though ? I never heard of a 
 train running around hunting up hotels before. Look, 
 that must be a Cuban ! No, I don t mean him I 
 mean him the one that looks like a mulatto, only he 
 isn t. That s what we re fighting for !" 
 
 The other nurse remarks in a strain of cheerful fatal 
 ism fostered by three days and nights of travel beset 
 with surprises and uncertainties, that you can t tell 
 what you may have to go up against down here; 
 you ve just got to take it as it comes. And, " Was your 
 brother going to meet you here, Miss Gilbert?" she 
 asks with interest. 
 
 "No. I I don t even know where he is, you see. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 193 
 
 I couldn t send him word. I ll have to look for him/ 
 says Lorrie, nervously, plucking at the edge of her veil. 
 The two nurses exchange a glance behind her back. I 
 believe they are not less sympathetic for being devoured 
 with curiosity. They know all about her engagement ; 
 trained nurses always know who is Who in Society and 
 What is being done ; they study the Jottings column 
 as devoutly as the Testament. These two think that 
 Lorrie is as sweet as she can be, and no wonder she s 
 frightened to death about her feeonsay going off to the 
 army ; they have offered freely to bet each other that 
 she s ten times more upset about him than about her 
 brother. But what is it that s wrong about the brother, 
 anyhow ? They can t make it out, but (again they bet) 
 there s something behind it. Wasn t there some talk 
 about his being a dope-fiend, or something? One of 
 them heard it when she was nursing that typhoid case 
 on the North Hill ; the Gilberts go with all that swell 
 North Hill crowd, you know. They bet once more 
 that that is the reason Mr. Kendrick came down with 
 them to Tampa ; that girl couldn t manage any dope 
 case by herself ! The question had agitated them for 
 all these three days ; nothing to be got out of Mr. 
 Kendrick ; he said he just thought he d spend his vaca 
 tion taking a look at the army, but pooh ! You couldn t 
 fool them that easy ! "I m glad he s along, anyhow," 
 Miss Rodgers confided to her associate. " I tell you, it 
 certainly is nice sometimes to have a man around to 
 look out for you and kind of run you. I ve been my 
 own boss so long, I didn t realize how nice it was. 
 And Mr. Kendrick never gets fresh and talky you 
 know he never gets that way. That s what I like 
 about him." 
 
 "Yes, but he s kind of stiff and and distant, more 
 than anybody needs to be," said the stout girl, not with 
 out resentment; "do you suppose there s ever been 
 anything between him and Miss Gilbert?" 
 
194 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Well, if there ever was, he s good and got over it 
 now. You d think they were married, he pays so little 
 attention to her," said Miss Rodgers, with a half- 
 laugh ; and her companion s face cleared. 
 
 Lorrie Gilbert will never to her final breath forget 
 these hideous days ; sometimes even now, years after 
 wards, she will live over in dreams the frenzied hurry 
 of her departure, the grief and suspense and, worst of 
 all, the 4 intolerable need of deception that drove and 
 harried her. Paula s secret, Bob s secret, laid them 
 all under its shameful bondage; honorable men and 
 women, they had to sit down together ignobly and 
 concert falsehoods wholesale. All the story must hold 
 together, and they must take care not to contradict 
 one another ! She must pretend that she was going 
 as a nurse, and of course, incidentally, to see Bob - 
 oh, yes, she would see Bob ! Her father and mother 
 must pretend that they approved of it. VanCleve 
 (since he would insist on accompanying her party) 
 must pretend that he wanted a vacation trip ! She 
 could not meet a girl friend, she could not answer the 
 telephone, or write a note without an adjusting of her 
 mask and a renewed conning of her role and there 
 were so many friends to see, and telephone-calls to 
 answer and notes to write when people heard of her 
 project. They made a nightmare about her with their 
 kind admiration and wonder and respect ; she listened 
 to her own easy lies with loathing, yet believed with 
 the whole force of her soul that she was doing right. 
 And when she guessed that, in spite of her, there were 
 those, like the two nurses, whose suspicious curiosity 
 was not satisfied, terror possessed her utterly. It was 
 the same with her mother, with her father. I doubt 
 if Paula Jameson ever felt a tenth part so guilty as 
 any one of the upright, blameless people caught in 
 the meshes of her wretched intrigue. Certainly she 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 195 
 
 did not exhibit much gratitude in return for all their 
 care and worry. 
 
 Lorrie had gone to see the girl, finding her silent and 
 strangely self-possessed or self-contained now. She did 
 not complain, and she made no excuses for either her 
 self or Bob ; in fact, she would not speak of the young 
 man at all, out of some perverse notion of loyalty or 
 self-sacrifice, Lorrie guessed. " You ll see she won t 
 say right out it was him you can t make her say it 
 right out," Mrs. Jameson explained to Lorrie in a 
 voluble whisper outside the door. "She just cries if 
 you ask her about him. It took me hours to find out 
 w r ho it was the other day. My, I can understand that, 
 can t you? Any woman can understand that! I 
 believe she s sorry now she told me or let me find out, 
 rather. But you just go on in and talk to her, anyhow ; 
 don t mind the way she acts. She it s the way she 
 is she ain t well and and she ain t going to be 
 well for a while yet, you know, Miss Gilbert," said Mrs. 
 Jameson, shamefacedly. "I m going to take her away 
 - I ve found a place down in the country. There s 
 a good doctor there, and I can telegraph for a nurse 
 any time. I ll give you the address, in case but 
 we don t want to bother you or your folks any more 
 than we can help, Miss Gilbert. You ve been just as 
 kind as can be. And I know you re going to do every 
 thing you can to get your brother back - her voice 
 failed. It went to Lome s heart to see the poor woman 
 so humble and grateful. Mrs. Jameson had aged a life 
 time in the last few days ; her red hair was twisted up 
 in a loose knot, regardless of its accustomed puffs and 
 braids and carefully set undulations, and of the gray 
 streaks that were beginning to show in it here and there ; 
 her corsets were relaxed for the first time in twenty 
 years ; she was puzzling over a Butterick pattern with 
 the scissors in one hand and yards of incalculably fine 
 lawn spread upon the bed before her, when Lorrie was 
 
196 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ushered in. "It s queer, the things are so little, but 
 they re just as much trouble to make as if they were 
 big. I used to sew pretty well, too, once," she sighed, 
 looking at Lorrie with wholly maternal eyes. 
 
 She kept out of Paula s room, during this visit, with 
 a delicacy nobody would have expected of her ; it was 
 better for the two young women to be alone. Lorrie 
 told the other what they were doing; she assured 
 Paula with strong emotion that everything would be all 
 right ; that Bob would come back to her ; that when 
 he realized the wrong that he had done, how foolish 
 and selfish he had been, he would be the most anxious 
 of them all to make it right. "He s not bad he s 
 not a bad man and of course he he cares for you, 
 Paula," said Lorrie, shrinking from the word, even the 
 thought, love, in such a connection. Of course Bob and 
 Paula must be in love, after their fashion, the girl had 
 concluded ; but she recoiled from what seemed to her 
 the animal ugliness of it. Yet Lorrie was no nun in 
 spirit ; she was a warmly living woman who more than 
 once had been conscious of riotous impulses in her 
 own young blood, wakened by a touch, a look; but 
 she could not imagine herself mastered by them. The 
 natural cleanliness and strength of her character were 
 reenforced by all her environment and education. There 
 were unfortunate women, and there were, undoubtedly, 
 brutes of men ; but that they should exist in her own 
 class and caste had been a thing inconceivable hitherto. 
 Try as she would, the sympathy she wanted to feel and 
 show for Paula was forced and unreal, and perhaps the 
 other girl felt it to be so. She sat unresponsive to all 
 Lome s feverish earnestness. 
 
 "That Mr. Kendrick knows. I don t see why 
 Momma had to let him know. I think it was real 
 dumb of her," she said sulkily ; "she ll go telling some 
 body else, if she don t look out." 
 
 "Why, it just happened so your mother couldn t 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 197 
 
 help his knowing and anyway he s just like a brother 
 to Bob, you know, Paula. He ll never say anything/ 
 protested Lorrie, quickly, repelled. Paula s mother 
 was doing the best she could for her, poor thing ! 
 
 "I don t like him. I don t see why she had to tell 
 it before him," Paula repeated, shrugging peevishly ; 
 and she let Lorrie kiss her and go away with hardly 
 another word. 
 
 It is likely that Van Cleve, who, as he would have 
 frankly owned, cared nothing for the Jameson women, 
 mother or daughter, was as much disturbed over his 
 unfortunate knowledge as Paula herself ; he would 
 have been thankful to have been out of the whole miser 
 able business. But being involved against his will, 
 he meant to see it through. What made the situation 
 serious for the young man was the way it affected 
 Lorrie. Van exhausted every argument, he suggested 
 half a dozen other plans, he lost his temper and fumed, 
 to no avail ; nothing he could say or do would persuade 
 her out of going on what he considered about as wild 
 and foolhardy a quest as any woman could undertake. 
 He said to himself in despair that she was just like his 
 Aunt Myra for all the world ! Reason was not in 
 women. And could anything equal the supreme con 
 fidence with which Lorrie and her mother spoke of her 
 ascendency over Bob! That was all very well; she 
 might be able to manage Bob when she got hold of 
 him, but first get hold of him! In what unspeakable 
 state, and in what unspeakable camp, troop-ship, 
 slum of Tampa or Key West, or even Cuba, if she got 
 that far (which Heaven forbid !) might she not find him, 
 after a search among hundreds of men in scores of 
 such places! And when he had painted the prospect 
 in as lively colors as he could muster and announced 
 that she should not go without his protection, Mrs. 
 Gilbert added the last straw to his burden of impatience 
 by looking alarmed and dropping various carefully- 
 
198 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 worded hints about impropriety ! "If Lorrie can stand 
 the things she s going to see and hear, alone, in a place 
 full of all kinds of men, she can very well stand one man 
 going down on the same train with her, even if she does 
 unfortunately know him/ he said severely; and Mrs. 
 Gilbert had no answer. 
 
 He who had never asked for a rest or favor before 
 had no difficulty in getting this ; Mr. Gebhardt, indeed, 
 dismissed him heartily with many exhortations to 
 have a good time, and burlesque warnings against 
 enlistment. In fact, Van Cleve, heartless as it may 
 seem, did have a fairly good time ; he could not keep 
 Bob s misdoing and the nature of their errand before 
 his mind constantly. He enjoyed the change and 
 bustle and the humors of the road ; and he thought 
 Miss Rodgers and the other nurse, the pudgy one - 
 he could not remember her name were nice women, 
 even if they did ask too many questions. They were 
 quick-witted, jolly, sensible, and refreshingly oblivious 
 of any kind of impropriety in his companionship. In 
 numerable were the cigars he smoked, the games of 
 cards he took a hand in, the stories he heard and told, 
 in the " smoker" while the train screeched and rattled 
 across the sweltering Southern countryside. At Mont 
 gomery he got a cinder in his eye, and Miss the fat 
 girl, whatever her name was got it out for him with 
 signal gentleness and dexterity. "The fellow that 
 gets you will be lucky/ said Van, and wondered at the 
 way she blushed and giggled; "I mean gets you for 
 a nurse, you know/ he added; she turned redder 
 still and flounced off, and would hardly speak to him 
 the rest of the day, as he vaguely noticed ; and decided 
 with regret that he must have made himself offensively 
 familiar. As the young women had remarked, he 
 kept himself rather aloof from Lorrie, while doing 
 everything he could think of for her comfort in his 
 awkward way, heaping her seat with magazines and 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 199 
 
 books and baskets of fruit, opening and shutting win 
 dows, fetching and carrying her wraps and bags, eagerly 
 and diffidently kind. Miss Gilbert, I am bound to say, 
 received all of this from him without effusive gratitude, 
 quite coolly and as a matter of course. She was used 
 to Van Cleve, whose attentions always took a practical 
 form; and between her brother and her lover poor 
 Lome s mind was too filled with anxiety and unhappy 
 forebodings to spare Van any thought. The young 
 man knew it ; he accepted his portion with his habitual 
 iron philosophy. "If she just doesn t kill herself with 
 worry and excitement, that s all I ask!" he thought; 
 and sometimes fell to wondering uneasily and shrink- 
 ingly what Lorrie was going to say to Bob when they 
 finally reached him. "Nobody s heard Bob s side yet. 
 He couldn t do anything but deny it, anyhow. It s 
 the girl s word against his well, I don t know I 
 don t know - Van Cleve mused, with his narrow gray 
 eyes drawn up, and the hard line at the side of his 
 mouth showing distinctly "I feel mighty sorry for 
 that poor mother of hers, anyway !" he always finished. 
 
 The town of Tampa is of sufficiently ancient a foun 
 dation to have figured in our history a good while 
 before the year 98 ; and General Shafter s men and 
 his ordnance and his mules and his wagons and every 
 thing else that was his, even the transports that lay 
 off Port Tampa, were not by any means the first that 
 this unmartial-looking burg had seen. It knew at 
 first hand all our bloody struggles with the Seminole 
 and other savages of the peninsula; there is, indeed, 
 an old fort or the site of one hereabouts, and many of 
 the streets bear the name of some stout Indian fighter 
 of those old years. Nothing could be less picturesque 
 or more peaceful than its aspect nowadays; and the 
 late military occurrences are well-nigh as completely 
 forgotten as the early ones. Yes, they are forgotten 
 
200 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 even by that very large body of residents who, one 
 would think, should remember them best, those whose 
 race we took up arms to benefit, the Cuban gentry whom 
 you may find by the hundreds engaged at rolling tobacco 
 and kindred occupations in the score or more of huge 
 establishments on the outskirts of the city. I doubt 
 if there is one of them who knows any more about 
 General Shafter than he does about General Andrew 
 Jackson; the battle of San Juan Hill means exactly 
 as much to them as the battle of Agincourt ; and when, 
 visiting Tampa in the interests of history, I asked one of 
 these patriots (to whom I was referred for information) 
 if he could tell me something about the Santiago cam 
 paign or the reconcentrado camps, he looked upon me 
 blankly, and at length answered in a brilliant American 
 style that he would prefer something easier in the way 
 of a question. "Ask me something easy! 7 were his 
 exact words; and also: "Naw, I don t know nothin 
 about it see ? I wasn t there betcher life !" says 
 he, with thankful fervor, almost equal to that with which 
 he later accepted a trifling recognition of his services 
 in showing me over the factory. This gentleman 
 appeared to have been perfectly assimilated. 
 
 The place was full of an exhilarating noise and color 
 that day when Lorrie reached it; the wide streets, 
 unpaved and ankle-deep in sand, wherein the army- 
 wagons had worn all manner of holes and trenches, 
 were jammed with people ; it seemed as if there were 
 flags and groups of white tents at the end of every 
 vista, and bugle-calls sounding every hour ; across the 
 river, there were pennants streaming from the minarets 
 of the great hotel; exotic trees and flowers bloomed 
 with fantastic exaggeration in all the dooryards; and 
 a band somewhere in the offing was playing vigorously 
 "My gal is a high-bo n lady," it proclaimed in 
 splendid time and tune. Something of the sanguine 
 excitement communicated itself even to Lome s troubled 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 201 
 
 spirit ; and Van Cleve, after he had got them all safely 
 installed in a boarding-house (on Florida Street, a com 
 mon-looking little frame building which is still there, 
 for I saw it the other day when I was in the town) 
 that had been recommended to Miss Rodgers by some 
 Red Cross authority, had all he could do to persuade 
 the girl to stay there quietly while he himself went out 
 and made inquiry for her brother. "I ll find Bob if 
 he s in Tampa, and I ll bring him to you, Lorrie, but 
 you ve got to stay here so I ll know where to find you. 
 This is no place for women to be tagging around after 
 a man/ he said at last shortly, quite unconscious of 
 the harshness of his manner. 
 
 "Yes, Van, I ll I ll do whatever you say," said 
 Lorrie, meekly. All at once she began to feel un 
 necessary and troublesome; and after he had gone, 
 crept off to the cramped, little stuffy boarding-house 
 bedroom, and cried miserably to herself with her face 
 in the pillows. Van meant well, she knew that ; about 
 everything that mattered, he was as good and kind as 
 could be, and thoughtful too, but but Philip would 
 not have spoken to her that way ! 
 
CHAPTER II 
 IN WHICH A CERTAIN KIND OF NEWS TRAVELS FAST 
 
 THE efficient Mr. Kendrick, starting out to explore 
 Tampa in search of his friend, had no very clear idea 
 where to go or whom to ask, for all his efficiency. Upon 
 applying to the heads of Bob s paper, a measure he 
 had had the forethought to take before leaving home, 
 he had been told that they did not know where the 
 young man was, and furthermore they added with 
 some strong qualifying adjectives that they did not 
 care ; as far as the Record was concerned, there was 
 one war-correspondent less in Tampa or at the front, 
 the management having dismissed (they said " fired") 
 Gilbert a few days previously ! 
 
 " Why, wasn t he doing all right ?" Van Cleve asked, 
 and was immediately conscious, with a kind of angry 
 sinking of the heart, of the needlessness of the question. 
 
 " Doing all right?" repeated the authority whom he 
 addressed and whether this was the editor-in-chief 
 or some other editor, or what position he occupied, 
 Van, who had never been inside a newspaper-office 
 before, was entirely ignorant ; but the other man spoke 
 like one of the powers. "Doing all right? Say, you 
 know Gilbert, don t you? Well, then !" he made 
 a gesture. " What s the use ?" 
 
 What was the use, indeed? Van Cleve came away 
 in a very gloomy mood ; he had not the courage to tell 
 Lorrie ; the family had enough on their minds already, 
 and they would learn this only too soon, anyhow. He 
 felt an unhappy certainty that Robert would not come 
 
 202 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 203 
 
 home because of being thus deposed ; on the contrary, 
 he was much more likely to stay with the army loafing 
 and drinking till his money gave out, and then getting 
 somebody to stake him until that resource was ex 
 hausted, too, after which he might possibly beat his 
 way home, or write for help thus thought Van Cleve, 
 out of temper and out of heart. 
 
 He went out now through the crowds and around to 
 the corner of Tampa and Twiggs streets, where was 
 the home of that journal to whose care Bob s mail had 
 been directed. The place was in a prodigious rush of 
 business, messenger-boys and reporters tearing back 
 and forth, and bulletins tacked up outside about which 
 people were standing three and four deep in the glare 
 of the sun with the thermometer at ninety. There was 
 a little entry with offices on the ground-floor opening 
 off of it on either hand. Van Cleve pushed his way 
 in, and, feeling himself a nuisance, began on the first 
 person he could reach, a shirt-sleeved lad, pounding 
 away on a typewriter in the corner with his collar and 
 tie undone, and the moisture beading off his chin. He 
 did not even look up when Van spoke. 
 
 " Gilbert ? Ump !" he made a negative motion with 
 his head and at the same time contrived to twitch it 
 in the direction of the other side of the room. "Ask 
 the boss." 
 
 The boss was a stout man, chewing the butt of a cold 
 cigar, and dictating to a young woman stenographer, 
 with his foot cocked or braced up on the rung of her chair. 
 He stared and considered. "Gilbert? R. D. Gilbert? 
 No, I don t remember him. How is that, anyhow?" 
 he said to the stenographer vaguely. "Do you know 
 anything about any Gilbert?" 
 
 She did not ; and they both eyed Van Cleve with a 
 sort of fatigued hostility, the man gnawing at his cigar, 
 the girl with her hand poised above the wri ting-pad. 
 
 "The man I mean is a war-correspondent for a Cin- 
 
204 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 cinnati paper- Van Cleve began again; "he had 
 his mail - 
 
 "Sa-ay, how many correspondents d ye think we ve 
 had here, son ?" said the fat man, in benevolent irony ; 
 "one or two? You ve got another think coming. 
 Anyway, they re all gone now. They went with 
 Shafter two weeks ago. Don t you get to see the 
 papers in Podunk?" 
 
 "I was going to say he had his mail sent here, so I 
 thought possibly you d know something about him," 
 Van explained. "Don t you have the rural free 
 delivery in Tampa?" 
 
 "Oh ! Well now, Mr. Soyer attended to that, didn t 
 he, Jennie ? I can have somebody look that up, if 
 you ll wait we re kind of busy - 
 
 It appeared, however, upon inquiry, that Mr. Soyer 
 had gone out to the encampment at Tampa Heights; 
 he had gone down to St. Petersburg ; he had gone over 
 to the Hotel to interview somebody ; in fine, Mr. Soyer 
 was not to be found. Anyway, the probabilities were 
 that the man the gentleman was looking for was in 
 Cuba that s where he ought to be if he was on his 
 job. What paper did Van represent ? 
 
 "I m not representing any paper. I m only trying 
 to hunt this fellow up, because he s wanted at his home. 
 Sickness," said Van Cleve, truthfully enough. It had 
 occurred to him that he did not want to be taken for 
 a private detective in search of a criminal an aspect 
 which the inquiry gave signs of assuming ! 
 
 "Sickness, eh? Too bad! Because you re not 
 going to have one easy time finding him," said the other, 
 perfunctorily, and resumed his dictation. 
 
 Van Cleve walked out again, baffled. He went up 
 to the other newspaper-office. There nobody had ever 
 heard of Bob, either ; but they suggested that he go 
 down to Key West and wait until one of the Associated 
 Press boats, which were constantly "on the jump" 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 205 
 
 between Cuba and the mainland, came in. His friend 
 might be on any one of them. "What regiment was 
 he with ? You might trace him that way. Most of 
 them asked to be assigned to some particular regiment, 
 you know/ somebody told him. "They were all 
 going and getting permits or credentials, you might 
 call em, from the staff officer that had it in charge - 
 Lieutenant Miley, I believe it was." 
 
 1 All right. Where ll I find Miley ? He might know, 
 or have it listed somewhere," said Van, promptly. But 
 the others began to laugh. 
 
 "Lord love you, man, Miley s gone to Cuba ! Now 
 the thing for you to do is to go on down to Key West, 
 and just scout around for those despatch-boats, like 
 I m telling you - they advised him earnestly, with 
 a good-natured interest. Van Cleve gratefully shared 
 the three cigars he happened to have on hand amongst 
 them, and lingered awhile listening and asking ques 
 tions, and hearing mostly that pleasingly free criticism 
 of war proceedings at which civilians and onlookers 
 are invariably so apt. As he left, they repeated their 
 assurances. "There ll sure be a battle before long; 
 our fellows have landed, you know. And the minute 
 anything happens, the press-boats will be coming in, 
 thick as flies. All you ve got to do is to wait - " and 
 so on. He was not aware of having been any more 
 communicative about himself and his business than 
 was necessary, and later received a shock at reading 
 under the caption, "Personals. Arrivals in Tampa," 
 that Mr. and Mrs. Kendrick of Cincinnati, and party 
 were stopping at the Holt House ! 
 
 Our friend had consumed most of the afternoon in 
 this fruitless business, and now faced homeward or 
 boar ding-house ward in a disagreeably puzzled and 
 undecided frame of mind. "Nice time Lorrie would 
 have had down here by herself!" he remarked in 
 wardly ; and then reflected with chagrin that her efforts 
 
206 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 could scarcely have been more futile and ill-directed 
 than his own. He did not know whether to go to Key 
 West or not ; if the discharge had arrived in time, 
 Bob might not have left with the army after all ; he 
 might be right here in Tampa; the plain truth was, 
 Bob s whereabouts was a matter of pure guess work. 
 Van found himself exasperated by the inability to take 
 some kind of definite action ; never before in the whole 
 of his narrow, resolutely ordered, undeviating career 
 had he hesitated over his course or waited upon another 
 person s pleasure. By and by he fell in with Miss 
 Rodgers and the other nurse who had gone out to dis 
 cover what they might about their own assignment 
 and were returning in a state of irritation similar to 
 his own. 
 
 "It s the worst mix-up you ever saw !" Miss Rodgers 
 complained volubly ; nobody can tell us who the 
 surgeon is, or where he is, that we re to report to. They 
 don t seem to know anything about their own business, 
 so I suppose it s not to be wondered at that they don t 
 know anything about ours. We ve asked about forty 
 dozen adjutants and captains and brigadier-generals 
 and quartermasters, and not one of em can even give 
 us a steer in the right direction. They keep telling 
 us that the hospital-ship was the Olivette, or that Miss 
 Barton has gone to Cuba with her ship, and anyway 
 we re too late to be of any use! I know all that/ 
 s d I to the last one ; if you d just listen to what I m 
 telling you a minute, s d I, and then I said it all over 
 again. Tin going to the military hospital here or 
 wherever you need nurses, and he just looked wild- 
 eyed, and said in that case we d better see Major 
 Thingummy or Colonel What s his name !" 
 
 The stout young woman chimed in : "It made me so 
 tired having em say they didn t know where the 
 hospital was, I just said to one: Well, for mercy s 
 sake, why don t you get a pain in your toe or a case of 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 207 
 
 appendicitis and find out! He looked just as mad for 
 a minute, and then he kind of laughed." 
 
 "Well, it s all very nice to laugh but I m here to 
 nurse sick men, I m not here to chase around tra-la-ing 
 with well ones," said her superior, impatiently. She 
 was a conscientious, hard worker, and had all the pro 
 fessional s contempt for incompetence and waste of 
 energy. "If I couldn t run an army better than this, 
 I d take a back seat and let somebody do it that 
 could!" 
 
 "They re pretty nearly all volunteer troops, you 
 know. The regulars are better managed, I guess," 
 Van reminded her. 
 
 "The Lord help em if they aren t !" retorted Miss 
 Rodgers, fervently. It gave Van Cleve a queer sense 
 of comfort to hear the two hearty, capable women; 
 and that they should be knocking about the camp among 
 all the crowds and sights and sounds which he had so 
 peremptorily forbade Lome s essaying, nowise offended 
 him. Lorrie was different ; these nurses could stand 
 anything. For that matter, they themselves expected 
 little or nothing of her. "These society girls !" 
 the fat little nurse had remarked to Van Cleve privately 
 with a knowing smile ; she did not finish, but it was 
 amazing with wiiat a world of tolerance, of patient 
 and good-natured superiority, she charged the three 
 words. Van Cleve understood ; he was somewhat 
 surprised to note how confidential Miss er no 
 use, he could not get her name ! had become with 
 him in the few days of their acquaintance. Seldom, 
 in fact never before, had any girl displayed so much 
 taste for his society. And now, studying his face, she 
 said quickly : 
 
 "You didn t find your friend Miss Gilbert s 
 brother you couldn t find him, Mr. Kendrick ? I m 
 so sorry." 
 
 "Better luck to-morrow perhaps," said Van, trying 
 
208 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 to speak carelessly. As usual, when the name of Miss 
 Gilbert s brother came up, the nurses asked no questions, 
 sending each other a brief, warning glance. Something 
 was wrong about that brother, they knew it ! 
 
 They went back to Lorrie at the Holt House and had 
 their supper, during which meal Van Cleve performed 
 what was for him a prodigy of dissimulation by re 
 ferring to his bootless search in a casual, off-hand manner 
 with no hint of any difficulties and with a matter-of- 
 course air of expecting success at any moment. And 
 he further gave it as the result of his observations that 
 this war was going to turn out a picayune business after 
 all a deal of cry and no wool ! The Spanish were 
 notoriously much better at running away than fight 
 ing ; witness their puerile conduct when our boats 
 shelled their forts and coast defences which they in 
 variably abandoned almost without striking a blow; 
 witness Dewey s capture of Manila without the loss 
 of a man ; witness the Spanish fleet scuttling into 
 Santiago harbor to hide like a parcel of frightened cats ; 
 witness this and witness that ! They might do a little 
 bushwhacking perhaps, but stand against the advance 
 of our army ? Never ! The minute our troops landed, 
 every Spaniard in the neighborhood probably beat it 
 for the tall timber, and left his gun behind these 
 were Mr. Kendrick s graphic and humorous words. 
 According to him there would be no danger, no wounds, 
 no fever, no anything of any consequence ; war was 
 the most delightful occupation of the human race, and 
 he seriously regretted that he had not enlisted so as to 
 see some of the fun. He gave a burlesque rendition 
 of his interviews with the newspaper-men that sent 
 Miss Rodgers and her colleague into fits of laughter 
 and even succeeded in brightening up Lorrie ; he made 
 amiable jokes about the eating, which indeed was very 
 poor ; he entered into affable converse with the darky 
 waiter at their table ; in short, never was there so 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 209 
 
 light-hearted and care-free a person as he. The nurses 
 were immoderately entertained ; they had not known 
 that Mr. Kendrick was so lively and easy easy as an 
 old shoe ! As for Lorrie, for whose sole benefit Van 
 Cleve was painfully going through this exhibition, the 
 girl ended by being at least half convinced by it, and 
 her spirits rose proportionately. Knowing Van as she 
 did, she could not have believed him equal to so much 
 humane hypocrisy ; the young man, when he had time 
 to think, listened to himself with astonishment. "By 
 Jove, I m doing as well as Uncle Stan ! I come by it 
 rightly, I guess !" he thought mirthlessly. 
 
 After this they all went together to the Tampa Bay 
 Hotel, upon the motion of that indefatigable entertainer, 
 Van Kendrick, who seemed determined that nobody, 
 including himself perhaps, should be alone for any 
 length of time, or have a moment for thought. " Never 
 mind letters, Lorrie ; you haven t got anything to write 
 about, and you ll have plenty of time after a while," 
 he ordered her. " You want to get out and see all this. 
 It s a very remarkable thing, really, and it won t happen 
 again in our time. Come along now." In fact, there 
 was something very exhilarating in the lights and noise 
 and movement, and the curious sense of nearness to 
 all the other people, so many thousands of them. To 
 feel one s self alone in a crowd is a dreadful experience, 
 but nobody could feel alone in this crowd, not even in 
 the bedecked corridors of the Hotel, which the news 
 papers said were " thronged with celebrities." Van Cleve 
 got his party four rocking-chairs around a teakwood 
 stand in a corner encompassed by the bronze jardinieres 
 and Chinese cabinets and ormolu mirrors and marble 
 statuary and astounding tapestries and oil-paintings 
 with which the establishment is well known to be pro 
 fusely furnished ; and there they were all sitting when 
 for a final dramatic touch an old acquaintance happened 
 upon them, amongst all the aliens. 
 
210 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 This was Mr. J. B. B. Taylor, of all men in the world, 
 and he has since described the meeting with a good 
 deal of interest. "I wasn t much surprised," he says; 
 "you weren t surprised to meet anybody in Tampa 
 those days. The ends of the earth came together there. 
 And then, you know, I m eternally on the move and 
 running into people, anyhow. Just a minute before 
 I had come across a man I knew, a Japanese, some kind 
 of an attache at their legation in Washington that 
 his government had sent down to follow our army 
 around, I believe a little Mr. Takuhira a nice 
 little fellow. He d been educated over here, and that s 
 how I came to know him, meeting him at the Harvard 
 Society banquets, once in Philadelphia, I remember, 
 and two or three times after that Chicago, Denver, 
 I can t recall the other places class of 90 he was, 
 a very pleasant fellow I think he s back in Japan 
 now, in some big position over there. He knew a great 
 many of the newspaper-men of course he spoke Eng 
 lish perfectly and they called him Take-your-hair-off ! 
 But I was going to tell you about Kendrick. I was 
 standing talking to Takuhira when I caught sight of 
 him ; here he was with Miss Gilbert, whom at that time 
 I didn t know at all, and two other ladies that I d 
 never seen before either, with some lemonades in front 
 of them, listening to the music and watching the crowds 
 and the epaulets and uniforms and all the rest of it, just 
 as if it were the most natural thing in the world for 
 them to be there. Van Cleve looked a good deal 
 older than the last time I saw him, and do you know 
 my first thought was : Why, those aren t his own 
 people ! I d know the Van Cleve ladies anywhere, 
 and those aren t any of them, and what s become of 
 the Major? Can Van possibly have got married and 
 annexed another family to take care of ? Then he saw 
 me, and got up and spoke right away." 
 
 So J. B. was introduced to the assemblage, and Mr. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 211 
 
 Takuhira, too ; and if the little Oriental gentleman was 
 confounded at the spectacle of a single young man in 
 company with three single young women voyaging 
 about the country a thousand miles from home, un 
 questioned, and evidently entirely respectable, he was 
 by far too mannerly to show it. " Take-your-hair-off 
 was used to American ways," J. B. said ; "and of course 
 the Red Cross explained everything, anyhow. You 
 saw dozens of nice girls going around by themselves. 
 I think Van Cleve was glad to see us ; he looked fagged 
 out, and, after we joined them, sat back and let us do 
 the talking as if he wanted a rest. Miss Gilbert and 
 Takuhira got on together wonderfully; it turned out that 
 they had some mutual friends , people they both 
 knew, that is anybody s a friend when you meet 
 away from home Boston and Washington people, 
 and I believe some army and navy men. The two 
 nurses talked mainly to me ; they looked at Takuhira 
 as if he were some kind of educated chimpanzee, and 
 I m sure that s how they classed him. That youngest 
 nurse was rather making eyes at Van Cleve, I thought, 
 but he didn t seem to be conscious of it at all ; it was 
 rather funny. He told me he was down on business, 
 and then caught himself, and said : That is well, 
 I m taking a vacation I m making a vacation of it, 
 you know. I thought he didn t look much like a man 
 taking a vacation, but, of course, it was no affair of mine. 
 Van Cleve has always seemed to me a serious, literal, 
 all-work-and-no-play sort of young chap ; his life has 
 made him that way, I suppose. I asked him about the 
 family, and he said they d gone to New York just before 
 Christmas, and stayed there all winter, but moved out 
 to the country somewhere in Connecticut when the 
 hot weather came on. They re always moving around, 
 you know." 
 
 They sat there talking, J. B. said, until quite late; 
 and it was after they had all said their good nights, 
 
212 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and the others had been gone some time, and he himself 
 was upstairs in his room getting ready for bed, that on 
 a sudden, a tremendous racket broke out in the streets 
 of the town across the river, quickly spreading to the 
 hotel side, bells ringing, whistles tooting, people run 
 ning and yelling, and by and by guns or fire-crackers 
 beginning to go off deafeningly. He hustled himself 
 into some clothes again and ran out, meeting in the 
 halls other half-dressed men, none of whom knew what 
 was happening; they were guessing everything from 
 a fire-alarm to Spanish gunboats coming up to shell 
 Port Tampa! Takuhira joined them. "He was the 
 least interested man present, you might have thought/ 
 J. B. said afterwards with a laugh; "but, by George, 
 he was the first to suggest that the telegraph-office was 
 the place to inquire ! And he added, as calm as Buddha, 
 that very possiblee the boats mide have come outt ! 
 He meant Cervera s fleet, of course. It sounded so 
 queer in his precise, grammatical way of talking, and 
 with no more expression on his face than if he had been 
 carved out of old ivory, with jet eyes. All the rest of 
 us gesticulating and shouting like lunatics !" 
 
 As they were hurrying over the bridge, they ran into 
 some men and boys who wildly reported that there 
 had been a battle ; there had been fighting at Santiago, 
 and our boys had whipped, of course. In the town the 
 streets were full of hurrahing people, and all the bells 
 and sirens were going madly; it was just before the 
 Fourth, so there was a plentiful supply of cannon- 
 crackers and bonfire material besides. J. B. and the 
 Japanese attache made for a newspaper-office; the 
 crowd was so wedged together outside it was impossible 
 to get through, and on the skirts of it they fell in again 
 with Van Cleve Kendrick; Van had taken his ladies 
 to their hotel and was on his way to the cot he had 
 secured in a rooming-house when the excitement began. 
 Nobody seemed to know whence the information came, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 213 
 
 but everybody was sure it was correct. Victory ! 
 Hurrah ! There ll be a hot time in the old town 
 to-night ! 
 
 " I suppose it s true ?" Van Cleve asked the man next 
 him. "How did they get the news ?" 
 
 "Why, it was telegraphed from Jacksonville, I 
 believe " 
 
 "Jacksonville!" ejaculated J. B. "They could make 
 up pretty nearly any story and send it here from 
 Jacksonville !" 
 
 "No, no, it s a wire from Key West," somebody else 
 volunteered. Mr. Takuhira, however, told Van Cleve 
 in his neat English that he understood most of the news 
 was always sent by despatch-boat from Kingston, or 
 by the cable off Cienfuegos which we had picked up 
 after bombarding and destroying the Spanish station 
 there. Presently the crowd in its constant shifting 
 allowed them to press farther in ; bulletins were already 
 posted, but the heads and hats were so thick in front 
 of them that only the topmost lines could be seen from 
 the edge of the sidewalk by a tall man like Van Cleve 
 or J. B. Taylor. Those nearest the boards began 
 obligingly to pass back bits of information. The first 
 fight of the land forces had occurred at a place called 
 Las Guasimas; the Rough Riders and Tenth Cavalry 
 (all of them dismounted) had been engaged ; they had 
 driven the Spaniards back after a stubborn resistance ; 
 it was not possible at the moment of writing to estimate 
 the loss on either side, but the Spaniards had been the 
 most severe ; of the United States troops engaged, the 
 following were known to have been killed : 
 
 "Captain Allen Capron it says Captain Allen 
 Capron," repeated the man in front of Van Cleve, 
 turning; "d ye know any of em?" he asked paren 
 thetically. 
 
 "I know one man," said Van, outwardly calm at least, 
 "Much obliged. Can you read any more ?" 
 
214 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 " Can t read any. It s this fellow in front of me that s 
 telling me ; I can t see a thing. . . . Sergeant Hamil 
 ton Fish. Know him ? " 
 
 Van Cleve shook his head. The man went on : 
 "He says there s a war-correspondent killed don t 
 see what a war-correspondent was doing up in front 
 on the firing-line, do you?" 
 
 Van Cleve heard his own voice saying, "What was 
 that man s name?" 
 
 "I didn t catch it wait a minute. . . . Say, say 
 that over again, will you ? Hey ? It was a fellow by 
 the name of Marshall. Friend of yours ?" 
 
 " No," Van said, with almost as much effort as before ; 
 he was trembling with relief, and at the same time 
 adjuring himself impatiently not to be a fool ; there 
 must be a hundred correspondents in the field besides 
 Bob. 
 
 "Here, now you can get in and read em for yourself, 
 if you re quick about it," said the other, good-naturedly, 
 squeezing aside, as the crowd swayed open momentarily. 
 Van Cleve edged forward, and the aisle closed up on 
 the instant. The two men immediately in front of 
 him were stooping to read the last items at the bottom 
 of the manila-paper sheet, one of them copying rapidly 
 into a notebook. Van craned over their shoulders. 
 
 The list of the dead came first. He read : " Cort- 
 
 wright, shot through the heart." 
 
CHAPTER III 
 KEY WEST 
 
 THE triumphant din went on more or less exuber 
 antly until the small hours of that night at Tampa. 
 The news flashed to the four corners of the country, 
 and thousands read it next morning at their comfort 
 able breakfast-tables, with unbounded martial pride 
 and satisfaction ; and numbers of honest, good-tem 
 pered citizens who had never quarrelled with a neighbor 
 in their lives, and who sang lustily in church every 
 Sunday great words about Peace and Mercy and 
 Patience and Brotherly Love, gave the children a 
 quarter to buy fire-crackers with which to celebrate, 
 and went out to their fields or factories or offices, 
 telling one another it was just what they had expected 
 and predicted from the start, that our men were the 
 best all-around fighters in the world, invincible in open 
 battle ; and as for this guerilla style, why, they could 
 fairly eat the other side up at that ! That was our nat 
 ural way of fighting ever since the pioneers went into 
 business against the Indians ! And it was a pity about 
 the poor fellows that were killed, but war wasn t any 
 picnic, we all knew that, and so did they when they 
 went into it. 
 
 These, too, were the sort of reflections that would 
 undoubtedly have occurred to Van Kendrick, who 
 differed not at all from the average American man, 
 if he had been at his normal occupations, under normal 
 circumstances ; and it is conceivable that he would 
 have learned of the other man s death had it been an 
 ordinary one in bed after an ordinary illness, with no 
 
 215 
 
216 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 shock nor regret. But as it was, he presented a face 
 of such ghastly consternation to the two gentlemen, 
 his acquaintances, who were still hovering on the edge 
 of the mob when he pushed his way out to them, that 
 they both observed it, even by the artificial light, and 
 exclaimed aloud with concern. Moreover, when Van 
 Cleve told them, they were almost as much shocked as he. 
 
 "Good Lord, you say it s the man Miss Gilbert s 
 engaged to ? The poor girl ! Why, that s that s 
 a dreadful thing !" J. B. said in horror and compassion. 
 He shook his head solemnly. " It s the women that bear 
 the brunt of it, after all," he said in a lowered voice, 
 thinking of his father who had fallen gallantly at Shiloh, 
 of the grave in the little old Kentucky churchyard, and 
 his mother s face when she went to lay flowers there. 
 "Poor girl ! Poor thing ! Do you have to go and tell 
 her ? Do you think you d better ? " 
 
 "It may not be the same man. It is written Blangk 
 Cortwright, I thingk you said?" the Japanese gentle 
 man pointed out practically. 
 
 "Yes, I know I thought about that. This man s 
 name is Philip, so there s a chance still. There might 
 easily be some other Cortwright in the regiment. But 
 do you suppose there s any way of finding out?" said 
 Van Cleve, in a haggard anxiety. "The uncertainty 
 only makes it worse for her, you know," he added, out 
 of his not inconsiderable experience with womankind. 
 
 They all three looked at one another blankly. "All 
 you can do is to wait, I m afraid," said J. B. at last. 
 As they walked away, a sudden recollection prompted 
 him. "Cortwright? Why, I ve met him, haven t I? 
 Oh, yes, I remember perfectly now. I remember hear 
 ing about that engagement. I never had - had any 
 use for that young man, Mr. Taylor was on the point 
 of saying, but checked himself. Cortwright might 
 be dead. The same feeling restrained Van Cleve even 
 from admitting to himself that the fate of Lome s lover 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 217 
 
 was, personally, a matter of entire indifference to him ; 
 he knew that at heart he did not care what became of 
 Cortwright, one way or the other ; but he was des 
 perately sorry for Lorrie. She thought Cortwright was 
 a hero, poor girl ! Probably he did not lack the physi 
 cal courage which is the least and commonest of man s 
 gifts ; and if he had borne himself well and died doing 
 his duty, why, the best of us could achieve no more and 
 make no finer end. 
 
 Van Cleve s own endowment did not include any 
 thing like tactfulness or capacity for expressing sym 
 pathy, a fact of which he was ruefully conscious ; and 
 he carried this heavy news to Lorrie without the dim 
 mest idea of how to " break it gently," as people say, to 
 her. Van thought and I am not sure, on the whole, 
 that he was not right that bluntness might be the 
 best mercy. As it happened, however, she had already 
 heard ; the plump nurse came out of the room with 
 a gravely warning and important carriage, and stopped 
 Van Cleve on the threshold. 
 
 "No, she didn t faint, and she hasn t been crying or 
 anything," she whispered in answer to his questions ; 
 "but she gave up right away that it was true. She 
 says she doesn t believe there was another Cortwright. 
 Oh, Mr. Kendrick, isn t it awful?" she wound up, not 
 without some enjoyment, in spite of her real kindness of 
 heart and desire to help. 
 
 "Ask her if she ll see me, will you, Miss er- 
 Van said. He was wondering whether to tell Lorrie 
 what he intended to do next ; whether, indeed, she would 
 be in a fit state to hear or consider his plans. 
 
 "My name isn t Miss Urr urr , Mr. Kendrick, 
 I m Miss Crow," said the nurse, bridling a little and 
 mimicking him roguishly; "I do believe you ve been 
 forgetting it right along. Miss Crow, now do try and 
 fix me in your mind." 
 
 "All right that is, I mean, I beg your pardon 
 
218 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 much obliged/ 7 said Van Cleve, clumsily, in his preoccu 
 pation ; at his best, he would have been a mortally 
 unpromising subject for a flirtation, and now he scarcely 
 looked at the young woman, scarcely heard her. "If 
 you ll just ask Miss Gilbert if she minds speaking to 
 me a minute ?" 
 
 Lorrie herself came to the door, and stood before the 
 young man with eyes that seemed very large and 
 bright and of soundless depth, in her white face. 
 "Have you found Bob, Van Cleve ?" she said quite 
 steadily. "That is what we must do, whatever comes, 
 you know that." Van Cleve felt something bravely 
 self-forgetful in her speech and manner that touched 
 him more than all the tears she could have shed. 
 
 He took her hand. "I m sorry about this this 
 other thing this report, Lorrie. But don t forget 
 it may not be he. It may be some other man. I hope 
 to Heaven it is !" he said, and meant the words. It 
 made no difference who and what and how unworthy 
 Cortwright might be, all Van Cleve s dislike and jeal 
 ousy of him were swept away by an unselfish tenderness 
 to see the woman he loved so stricken. 
 
 She looked at him, tensely composed, with a kind of 
 distance in her gaze, as from some far height ; it almost 
 frightened Van Cleve, this spectacle which he had never 
 before witnessed, of the essential loneliness of sorrow. 
 "I think it is Phil. I think he is dead," she said. 
 
 "Oh, you oughtn t to make up your mind to it that 
 way, Lorrie it s only a report they re all the time 
 making mistakes- Van Cleve began, awkwardly 
 trying to reassure her. Lorrie made a little nervous 
 gesture as of renunciation, with her two shaking hands. 
 
 "If it is so, it s for the best I thought of that last 
 night when I heard it would be a noble way to die, 
 Van Cleve it would be the way of his choice - " she 
 said in a pathetic exaltation, before which the young 
 man stood silent and somehow shamed. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 219 
 
 Van Cleve, having by dint of persistent inquiry made 
 reasonably sure that Bob had at any rate left Tampa, 
 now planned to go on down to Key West, as he had 
 been repeatedly advised ; he had made up his mind to 
 go to Cuba too, if need be, and through the good offices 
 of Mr. Takuhira, who was supplied with credentials or 
 some unknown instruments of power everywhere, and 
 who showed himself very active and useful, the trip 
 might be arranged. The attache himself had received 
 orders from his chiefs to reach the army or fleet before 
 Santiago without delay ; everybody was expecting 
 news of a big engagement on land or sea, perhaps both, 
 at any moment. Lorrie must stay in Tampa, Van de 
 cided, until she heard from him ; the two nurses, who 
 had finally got themselves officially recognized, would 
 look after her, as far as their duties allowed ; at least 
 she would not be without a soul she knew in the place. 
 They had ceased to expect her to act the part of volun 
 teer nurse with which she had begun, and Van himself 
 had ceased to play his own. It would have been better 
 never to have attempted that petty farce, he thought ; 
 of necessity it would sort ill with the tragedies of these 
 days, and soon or late they must abandon it. Lorrie 
 acquiesced to everything he said ; for the time all the 
 spirit had gone out of the girl. 
 
 "Do you believe she ll ever get over it ?" the younger 
 nurse questioned ; and prophesied that Miss Gilbert 
 never would, recalling many instances of broken-hearted 
 spinsters who had remained angelically faithful to an 
 early love to the end of their days. She was in a fever 
 of romantic interest, and felt as if they were "living in 
 one of Marie Corelli s works," as she confided to her 
 senior, adding that she "wouldn t have missed it for 
 anything !" 
 
 "Oh, yes, she ll get over it. Person has to, you 
 know," returned Miss Rodgers, who was of an eminently 
 prosaic temperament. "I ve seen a raft of widows and 
 
220 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 widowers that were all broken up right at first, but 
 mercy me, they all got over it ! except some of the 
 real old widows, that is. The men are generally pretty 
 chipper inside of a year. It s not so awful when you 
 come to think about it. Nobody can keep on grieving 
 right along day in and day out, forever. If they do, 
 you can take it from me, something s the matter with 
 em!" 
 
 "Well, I think Miss Gilbert s the kind that would 
 be loyal to the grave. I think it s lovely," said the 
 other, with a sigh. She was at hand, accidentally, of 
 course, when Van Cleve came, the next day, to say 
 good-by to Lorrie; and assured him earnestly that 
 they would take good care of Miss Gilbert "She is 
 the sweetest thing ! And I hope we ll hear from you 
 soon, Mr. Kendrick," said the girl, wistfully. 
 
 "Why, I hope so myself. And I want to thank you 
 very much for everything you re doing you ve been 
 most kind, Miss er Miss Sparrow," said Van, 
 warmly, shaking her hand. He was off without another 
 thought of her, as she dismally knew ; and I believe 
 they have never met since ; when Van Cleve got back 
 to Tampa, Miss Rodgers had been sent down to Eg- 
 mont Key to the army hospital there, and he had no 
 leisure to look up the other young woman. 
 
 So now Mr. Kendrick embarked for Key West, and 
 he did not know how much farther. The vessel on 
 which he and Takuhira secured passage put to sea in 
 the august company of the troop-ship Niagara, now 
 known as Transport No. 16, with seven hundred men 
 aboard to reenforce Shafter before Santiago. And to 
 Van s surprise, this large body of heroes left their na 
 tive shores without any patriotic or sentimental to-do 
 whatever, no flags, no salutes, no crowds of weeping 
 women, no band playing "The girl I left behind me," 
 nothing that even Van Cleve s workaday spirit would 
 have regarded as reasonable and appropriate. A fel- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 221 
 
 low-passenger, going down on business connected with 
 furnishing canned corned-beef to the government, 
 enlightened him. "The good-by-sweetheart business 
 is about played-out," he explained. "You see when 
 the order first came for the army to start, every 
 body went piling down to Port Tampa and gave the 
 boys the biggest send-off they knew how. Well then, 
 the last of the transports had hardly got past the bell- 
 buoys when here came an order for em to come back 
 home ! Day or so after that, they tried it again. That 
 time they only got about three hundred yards down the 
 bay same old song-and-dance ! They just settled 
 right down where they were and waited. It was two 
 or three days after that, I think, before they finally 
 did get off. Looked like starting and stopping was a 
 kind of habit with em Farewell forever forever 
 farewell ! as the song says. Only people get tired 
 farewelling, you know; they can t keep it up that 
 long. Once is enough ; it don t seem to have any point 
 the second time. You can t get a rise out of anybody 
 nowadays." 
 
 It was a fact that Van Cleve himself began to feel, 
 as it were, callous to further excitement ; he had had 
 enough of the alarums and excursions, the sight of 
 fighting-men and armaments. Transport No. 16, which 
 had no time to spare, shortly left them behind, but 
 the waters were full of other shipping, which Van barely 
 noticed. There were moments when the whole ad 
 venture seemed to the young man s naturally slow and 
 cool judgment absolutely insane. What was he, Van 
 Cleve Kendrick, doing in this outlandish environment ? 
 Why, he was going a-knight-erranting, to be sure 
 knight-erranting at the end of the nineteenth century, 
 on a little steamer with a ridiculous comic-opera name, 
 crowded with men, tumbling about under the red-hot 
 sky, with the gulls squeaking in their rear, and the low 
 coasts of Florida simmering there ten miles off ! And 
 
222 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 here, for a final incongruity, was a polite Oriental (in a 
 straw hat and beautifully polished shoes !) at his elbow 
 proffering him a cigar ! He took the cigar ; he smoked 
 and talked with the other men sitting in the narrow 
 shade of the deck-house with their feet propped on the 
 extra chairs. He might have been travelling down to 
 see about tobacco contracts or canned corned-beef for 
 the army like the rest of them, for all the excitement he 
 showed or, indeed, felt ; the commonplace attitude of 
 his mind sometimes puzzled him. Once he overheard 
 one of the commercial gentlemen attempting to beguile 
 Mr. Takuhira, in whom he probably fancied he discerned 
 the well-known simplicity of foreigners, with a garbled 
 version of M. Jules Verne s "Trip to the Moon/ the 
 scene of which is laid in Tampa, and which the narrator 
 solemnly averred to be true. . . . "They sank a whale 
 of a great big gun straight down into the ground so as 
 to aim square up at the moon. And then they had a 
 regular shell made, only hollow and big enough inside 
 to hold the three men, and they fitted it all up with 
 beds, and stuff to eat and drink, of course, and they all 
 got in there, and had a tremendous charge of dynamite 
 or something put in the gun, and got somebody outside 
 to touch her off with an electric wire, and started up 
 towards the moon, same as you would fire off any shell. 
 Fact ! Why, they show you the place where the gun 
 was, right outside the city; it s a regulation trip for 
 sightseers. I m surprised you didn t take that in 
 while you were there 
 
 "He isn t taking it in now," said Van Cleve, in his 
 unpleasant voice. 
 
 "I have read thee story in French which I read. 
 It is a very good story. You tell it very ouell, sir/ 
 said Takuhira, who had listened with the utmost civil 
 interest ; and for some reason the other rose up with a 
 violently flushed countenance and walked away in a 
 hurry, followed by a short bark of laughter from Mr. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 223 
 
 Kendrick, who enjoyed the defeat much more than the 
 victor himself, not a muscle of whose ivory-brown face 
 had moved. Van liked the little Japanese. He him 
 self remembered the trip-to-the-moon story ; it was one 
 of the books he had read with Bob Gilbert that summer 
 at Put-in-Bay ten years ago. He thought of the two 
 boys with a brief sigh ; look at Bob now. Well, look 
 at Bob, and what of it ? Doubts thrust themselves 
 upon his mind, as they had more than once before ; and 
 again he tried to realize the present, and his task. 
 
 Twenty-four hours brought them to Key West, on a 
 hot, noisy morning ; and in the paper Van Cleve 
 bought on the dock he found a final report of the fight 
 at Las Guasimas, much enlarged, with a complete and 
 verified list of killed and wounded. Among the former, 
 " Troop X, Lieut. Philip Cortwright" appeared half 
 way down the page. So poor Lorrie was right in her 
 sad presentiment ; and she too must have seen this 
 last despatch by now. Van read the account of the 
 battle. It did not seem to have been very spectacu 
 lar ; no charging up to breastworks, or hand-to-hand 
 struggle. Our advance had been through a practi 
 cally pathless jungle ; the Spanish used smokeless pow 
 der so that it was almost impossible to locate them - 
 this statement was repeated continually with a child 
 like surprise and indignation ; also their sharpshooting 
 was very good ; they had men posted in the trees ; it 
 had been no such slight skirmish as at first reported. 
 The LTnited States troops had behaved with the great 
 est firmness and daring, as indeed the tale of losses 
 showed ; owing to the scattering nature of the fighting, 
 it was not until after some time and search that it had 
 been possible to get an accurate list of the casualties. 
 Lieutenant Cortwright had pressed forward very 
 eagerly and was one of the first to fall with a bullet 
 through the lungs (not the heart as previously 
 stated) ; he died while being carried to the rear. Mr. 
 
224 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Marshall, the correspondent, had not been killed, but 
 so severely wounded that his recovery was improbable. 
 In another column was the statement that all the bodies 
 found had been buried on the field and could not be 
 removed until after the close of the war if even then. 
 The graves were marked, and whatever small posses 
 sions of the dead men seemed worth while, had been 
 taken charge of, in most cases, by some friend or 
 "bunkie." "Poor Lorrie !" said Van to himself again. 
 And, "This is a strange trick of Fate !" he thought, not 
 without some bitterness in his wonder ; "if Cortwright 
 had lived and they had been married, it s ten to one 
 he d have made her miserable. Here he s died decently 
 and like a man, and Lorrie will revere his memory for 
 a hero and a martyr to the end of her days !" 
 
 If Tampa had been in a seething hubbub, it was 
 nothing to Key West, which felt itself in all but halloo 
 ing distance of the seat of war, and, in the mediaeval 
 phrase, stood within the Spanish danger; the little 
 town of foreign-looking houses and brilliant tropical 
 shrubbery among which one might recognize many old 
 friends of the conservatory uncannily grown and nat 
 uralized, was incredibly crowded ; the hot white 
 streets swarmed with people ; the harbor was jammed 
 with shipping ; the quays in a roaring turmoil. Some 
 body pointed out to Van Cleve the Spanish prizes 
 anchored here and there, a piebald collection of steam 
 and sailing vessels, and told him they were to be auc 
 tioned off at public outcry that very morning. "Some 
 of em ought to go cheap, by their looks," said Van, and 
 the other man laughed. In truth, they were a dirty 
 and down-at-heel set. The transport had touched 
 five hours earlier, and gone on without delay ; another 
 big liner now in the government hire was just stand 
 ing out to sea, loaded with supplies and the army mail, 
 as Van was informed. Every one was eager to talk 
 and answer all his questions, the young fellow found ; 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 225 
 
 there was the same extraordinary feeling of kinship and 
 ready-made acquaintance in the crowds which he had 
 noticed in Tampa. 
 
 In the meanwhile, Mr. Takuhira had entered upon 
 what promised to be a difficult and complicated nego 
 tiation with the authorities over his passage to Cuba, 
 which it appeared even the accredited representative 
 of a foreign power could not accomplish without the 
 consent or connivance of every official in the place, and 
 a truly bewildering display of red tape. Van Cleve 
 left him at the beginning of it, and took his own way 
 to the office of the Key West Sentinel; he could 
 think of no better starting-point for his haphazard 
 search, and here, for once, Chance befriended him. 
 
 The Sentinel was housed and served in much the 
 same style as the Tampa newspapers ; it might have 
 been the same flimsy wooden building, the same clut 
 tered little office-room, opening full on the street, with 
 a white awning over the door, and a manila-paper 
 broadside with " LATEST NEWS FROM THE SEAT OF 
 WAR," skewered on the lamp-post opposite. The 
 same crowd jostled in and out ; the same men chewing 
 unlighted cigars, perspiring in shirt-sleeves with hand 
 kerchiefs tucked inside their collars, hammered on the 
 typewriters, or dictated to other hammerers. As Van 
 had more than half expected, nobody knew anything 
 about a Robert Gilbert, or had ever heard of him, or 
 had any time to listen to or answer questions about 
 war-correspondents. He was turning away when there 
 came in a thin, slow-moving man dressed in soiled 
 white ducks, with a thin, yellow, scrubby-bearded and 
 inexpressibly tired face, who took off his hat and wiped 
 his forehead with a languid gesture, as he leaned against 
 one of the tables, and asked if there was any mail for 
 him. Van Cleve, who could not get by in the higgledy- 
 piggledy little place without dislodging him, hesitated 
 an instant, wondering with that slight inward recoil 
 Q 
 
226 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 which most people would have felt at this date if the 
 other might not be just coming out of an attack of the 
 fever ; he had plainly been very sick recently was 
 sick still, for that matter. The typewriter-girl recog 
 nized him, and got up to search a pigeonhole in the 
 desk alongside her. "You don t look very good yet, 
 Mr. Schreiber," she said kindly; "I don t believe 
 you ought to be out in the sun. It brings it on again 
 sometimes." 
 
 "Oh, I ve had my dose," said the visitor, with a kind 
 of haggard jauntiness ; he was a young fellow, about 
 Van s own age. "Anyway, you might as well be good 
 and sick as half up and half down this way. It s more 
 interesting. Isn t that mine?" 
 
 She handed him a yellow envelope with Gulf 
 States Monthly printed in the corner of it, remarking 
 amiably, "Say, that s a dandy good magazine. I buy 
 a number every now and then only ten cents, you 
 know, and I can t see but what it s got every bit as 
 good stuff in as Century or any of the high-up ones. 
 Are you going to have something in pretty soon ?" 
 
 "I sent em an article and some photographs just 
 before I was taken sick don t know when they ll 
 be out, of course, but I shouldn t wonder if it was in the 
 next issue. They want all their war news to be right 
 up to the minute," he said not without some impor 
 tance ; and added in a slightly lowered and confidential 
 tone ; "want a news item ? For the society column ? " 
 
 "Sure we do. Always. What is it ?" 
 
 "Well then," said the convalescent, unsmiling, with 
 ironic impressiveness, "you may just say that I leave 
 for Cuba to-night or early to-morrow morning on my 
 private yacht, the Milton D. Bowers, which is now coal 
 ing up and laying in a store of provisions, wines, etc., 
 my special extra dry champagne, and my own brand 
 of cigars, at Wharf 8, foot of Cadoodle Street, or what 
 ever the name of it is, down here three squares to the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 227 
 
 right, I mean. Now don t make any mistake ; I don t 
 want to have that telegraphed all over the country 
 with my name spelled wrong. I d nevah be able to 
 show my face in Newport or Tuxedo again, don t you 
 know, they d all make so much fun of me. Beastly 
 bore, don t you know !" 
 
 The stenographer did not laugh, however. " Oh, my, 
 Mr. Schreiber, you ain t honestly going, are you?" 
 she said with concern. "Why, you ain t near well 
 enough yet. I think that s awful reckless." 
 
 Van Cleve did not hear her remonstrances ; he was 
 busy trying to remember where he had heard before of 
 the Milton D. Bowers; it must be the same vessel, for 
 no two that ever sailed the seas would have been christ 
 ened with such a name. Suddenly he recollected. He 
 spoke to the other young man abruptly. "I beg par 
 don, are you one of the war-correspondents?" 
 
 At this unexpected attack, the stenographer jumped 
 with a little scream ; Mr. Schreiber faced about with 
 his fatigued movements, bracing himself by the desk, 
 and eyed Van Cleve inquiringly, a species of jocular 
 hostility or wariness showing on his fever-stricken, 
 youthful face. 
 
 "Yes, I m a correspondent. Aren t you the speedy 
 little guesser, though!" he said lightly, still with an 
 indescribable air of being on his guard. 
 
 "I heard you mention the Milton D. Bowers. That s 
 one of the newspaper-boats, isn t it?" Van pursued. 
 
 "Yes." And before Van Cleve could open his mouth 
 for his next question, the other stuck out a hand and, 
 grabbing Van s, pumped it up and down with exag 
 gerated warmth, exclaiming: "WHY, if it isn t my 
 dear old friend Chauncey Pipp from Hayville, Michi 
 gan ! Howdo, Chauncey? How s the folks?" 
 
 It took Van Cleve a moment or two to perceive what 
 this fantastic performance implied. When he did, he 
 frowned. "Oh, come off ! Do I look like a green goods 
 
228 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 man?" he said impatiently. "I just want to ask you 
 something. I m looking for a man that s been on that 
 boat a correspondent, you understand. I thought 
 you might have met. His name s Gilbert R. D. 
 Gilbert." 
 
 Mr. Schreiber became another man on the instant ; 
 he relinquished Van Cleve s hand, entirely business 
 like and serious. "Why, yes, I know a Gilbert. We 
 were on a cruise together on the Milton D. We got to 
 knowing each other very well," he said, interested ; 
 "I don t know what his first name was, though ; I never 
 happened to ask him. What s your Gilbert like? 
 Tall, light-haired fellow? This one was reporting for 
 a Cleveland paper, I think." 
 
 "No, Cincinnati. My man is from Cincinnati." 
 
 "Well, maybe it was Cincinnati I don t recollect 
 it was Ohio, anyhow. You say you re looking for 
 him?" 
 
 "Yes. It must be the same man. He- Van 
 Cleve stopped himself, glancing at the stenographer, 
 who was an open-eyed spectator. "Here, let s go out 
 side and talk. We re in the way here," he suggested. 
 
 "Well, I call that a funny coincidence !" the young 
 lady ejaculated as they left. 
 
 Outside, in chairs under another awning in front of 
 the saloon across the way, Schreiber said, "You aren t 
 a brother of Gilbert s, are you?" 
 
 "No, just a friend of his and the family s. The 
 man I mean is a heavy drinker. You d know it 
 even if he kept sober while he was down here," said 
 Van Cleve, bluntly. "I didn t want to talk about it 
 before that girl. You saw that." 
 
 "Yes, that s the same Gilbert," Schreiber said at 
 once ; "he s all right, if it wasn t for that. Good fellow, 
 if it wasn t for that. Just can t let it alone, that s all. 
 I don t mind a man taking a drink once in a while 
 Here now, don t do that, that wasn t a hint; I couldn t 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 229 
 
 take anything but mineral water, anyhow I say I 
 don t mind a man taking a drink once in a while, but 
 Gilbert !" he made a gesture "he just can t let 
 it alone. Were you expecting to meet him here?" 
 
 Van Cleve explained. "I ve been looking for him 
 for a week. His paper has let him go, and the family 
 want him to come home. They don t know where 
 he is, nor what s happening to him." 
 
 The newspaper-man nodded with full comprehension 
 of what these statements left unsaid. "Well all 
 right, apollinaris I m afraid you re going to have 
 a hard time finding him because the last I knew he 
 was going to Cuba. I had it all fixed to go myself, 
 only I came down with this blankety-blanked fever 
 instead !" 
 
 "Yellow?" 
 
 "No, it s what they call calenture. It s nothing 
 like so serious as yellow, but you certainly do feel rotten 
 after it. What day of the month is it, do you know? 
 I ve lost count one day s so much like another when 
 you re sick." 
 
 Van Cleve himself had forgotten, and was obliged 
 to refer to the Sentinel, which he was still carrying 
 in his pocket. It was the 30th of June. "Three 
 weeks since I began to feel so bum I had to go to bed ! 
 The army left the next day," said Schreiber, dolefully. 
 "However !" He shrugged away his disappoint 
 ment with one shoulder. "We ve all got to take what s 
 coming to us. I will now proceed to drown my woes 
 in drink!" he announced, reverting to his attitude of 
 defiant levity, and took up the mild tumbler of mineral 
 water with a flourish. "Here s your good health, 
 Mr. ?" 
 
 "Kendrick my name s Kendrick." Van Cleve 
 got out a card and gave it to him, with a word of half- 
 humorous apology. "I suppose you re used to a lot 
 of wild-eyed cranks butting in on you the way I did, 
 
230 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 though. Isn t that so? Newspaper-men have the 
 name of being ready for almost anything." 
 
 "Well, I don t call it particularly the act of a wild- 
 eyed crank to take me out and buy me a drink," said 
 the other, good-naturedly. He looked at the card and 
 read aloud: u Mr. Van Cleve Kendrick," and repeated 
 his toast : "Here s looking towards you, Mr. Kendrick. 
 I haven t got any cards with me, or I d exchange with 
 you. My name s Schreiber, however if you ll take 
 my word for it and I m here for the Gulf States Maga 
 zine partly, and partly on my own. If there s anything 
 I can do for you, I d be glad to." 
 
 Van said that he was much obliged ; and they finished 
 one his apollinaris, the other his Baccardi rum in ex 
 traordinary amity. It was a great place and time for 
 these hit-or-miss fellowships. 
 
 "Funny you should happen to ask me about Gilbert," 
 the correspondent commented; " no, thanks, I 
 can t smoke yet. Oh, wait till you have calenture 
 you ll understand ! I say it s funny you should have 
 picked out me to ask about Gilbert, because I m prob 
 ably the one, single, solitary man in the whole place 
 that could tell you !" 
 
 Van Cleve explained about the Milton D. Bowers. 
 "If I hadn t heard you say that, I d have gone on 
 without speaking. But I just happened to remember 
 Bob Gilbert, you know mentioning that as the 
 name of the despatch-boat he d been on, in one of his 
 letters home. It s an absurd sort of name and stuck in 
 my head on that account, no doubt." 
 
 "It is a queer name, I suppose," said Schreiber, re 
 flectively; "I don t know why, I never noticed that it 
 was queer before. Yes, Gilbert and I were on the 
 Milton D. together. It was an interesting cruise. 
 She isn t a despatch-boat, however; the despatch- 
 boats have these big, high-powered engines, and they 
 get over the ground, or the sea rather, like an express- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 231 
 
 train. The Milton D. s nothing but a sea-going tug - 
 kind of a little bull-tug, you know, very stout and 
 strong, but not at all fast. She could get along well 
 enough to keep up with the transports, and that s all 
 that s necessary." 
 
 "Is that so? How long were you on that trip?" 
 
 "Why, a week or more. We went down by the Isle 
 of Pines, keeping out a good way from Havana on ac 
 count of the fleet, you know. And then we came 
 around by the east end of Cuba. We must have been 
 very near where the army landed the other day. It s 
 a wonderful coast, tall cliffs right to the edge of the sea, 
 no beach at all, and a whacking big surf piling up all 
 around the bases of em. The mountains are all over 
 thick woods, and every now and then you can see a 
 little white streak of a waterfall tottering out like a 
 ghost between them. The sea s almost always very 
 blue, and the surf s white, and the mountains deep 
 green George!" he shook his head in admiration; 
 "it s beautiful, only it doesn t look real, somehow. It 
 makes you think of a drop-curtain." 
 
 "Must have been a great sight," said Van Cleve, 
 with full appreciation. "I didn t think you d have 
 time to look at scenery, on account of dodging Spanish 
 gunboats and so on." 
 
 Schreiber laughed. "Spanish gunboats never both 
 ered us. We had to keep on the hop to dodge our own. 
 They d have eaten us up in a minute." And seeing 
 the incredulity on Van s face, he added with emphasis : 
 "Yes, they would. The fleet s not a very safe neigh 
 borhood for little Milton D. Bowerses, or any other 
 non-combatants. They don t know who you are, and 
 they can t risk stopping to find out. Shoot first 
 and explain afterwards that s their motto ! Those 
 big warships just loaf around the ocean all night 
 long without a sound or a light, and if they run 
 across you Bing ! Dead bird ! They have to, you 
 
232 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 know. You might be a torpedo-boat sneaking up 
 on em." 
 
 Van Cleve pondered this information with a certain 
 stirring of the adventurous longings he had had in boy 
 hood, and had thought long since dead and buried. 
 What St. Louis soap-factory, what distillery, what 
 office-stool and desk, might be their tombstone ! With 
 something of an effort, he got back to the business of 
 the hour. 
 
 "You say you think Gilbert went to Cuba when the 
 troops did?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, positive. They all went. Everybody 
 went but me." 
 
 "How did they get there the newspaper-men, I 
 mean ? Did they have their own boat ? " 
 
 "Well, yes, some of them. Some were on the Asso 
 ciated Press boats, the Goldenrod and the Wanda and 
 the others you ve probably seen their names in the 
 papers. There were a good many on one of the trans 
 ports. You can get to Cuba any old way; it s 
 easier than going from here to New York ! I was to 
 have been on the Milton D., but of course that all had 
 to be put off. They took the route by the north coast, 
 and the Milton D. could do that nicely. It s shorter, 
 and doesn t take so much coal. Coal s a very serious 
 item with these little tin tea-pots." 
 
 Van Cleve surveyed him thoughtfully. "Were you 
 in earnest just now when you were talking about going 
 to-night?" 
 
 The other nodded. "Of course I was in earnest 
 of course I m going. What made you ask?" 
 
 "Why, you re too sick still, aren t you?" 
 
 "Oh, sick thunder!" said Schreiber, in genuine 
 irritation. "No, I m not sick any more. I ll be all 
 right in a day or two, anyhow. Besides, I can t stay 
 loafing here. There s something doing every minute 
 over there, and I don t want to miss any more of it. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 233 
 
 The war isn t going to last forever, you know a few 
 months, or a year maybe, and we may never have an 
 other, not in our time, anyway. If you knew anything 
 about the newspaper game, you d know a person can t 
 worry around over every little pain and ache, when he 
 might be out getting a good story." 
 
 He spoke with a vehemence for which Van Cleve, who 
 was not given to vehemence or excitement himself, 
 rather warmed to him ; Van thought it might be fool 
 ish and exaggerated, but it showed at least the proper 
 spirit with which any man ought to regard his work. 
 "If everybody felt that way about their job, there d 
 be a good deal more done, Mr. Schreiber," he said; 
 "the reason I asked you, though, was that I was 
 wondering if I could make an arrangement to go with 
 you. Would there be room on the Milton D. Bowers 
 for one more?" 
 
 Schreiber stared. " You want to go to Cuba ? Why, 
 look here, are you in the newspaper business after all ? " 
 he asked ingenuously. 
 
 "No, I just thought I d like to go if I got the chance. 
 I d like to see it. If we should happen to run across 
 Gilbert, I d get him to come back with me," said Van 
 Cleve, in as casual a manner as he could put on ; it 
 was not well done, for he had no talent for that sort 
 of deception, but Schreiber noticed nothing. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 ONCE ABOARD THE LUGGER ! 
 
 THE correspondent s full name was Herman Schrei- 
 ber, and he came originally from Blucher, Illinois, as he 
 informed Van Cleve in the course of the negotiations, 
 adding with extreme seriousness that he was of Irish 
 descent. Although he knew nothing of Mr. Ken- 
 drick s character and antecedents, he made no difficulty 
 about accepting him for a companion on the voyage. 
 It is a long way from Blucher, Illinois, to the coast of 
 Bohemia, and very likely on that journey and since 
 dwelling in the last-named locality, Herman had fallen 
 in with much queerer and more questionable associates. 
 " Why, if you want to go, I m sure it s all right as far 
 as Fm concerned," he said with genial indifference. 
 " You ll have to speak to Captain Bowers, but I don t 
 believe he ll object, provided you can rustle the price. 
 He s a Yankee ; comes from New Bedford, or Glouces 
 ter, or somewhere down east, and he s about as mellow 
 as a salt cod. Of course, it ll be rough ; you don t 
 need to be told that. But if you don t mind sleeping 
 with a lump of coal in your ear, and eating hardtack 
 and canned stuff, and going without a shave or clean 
 clothes for a while, why, it s a good deal of fun. The 
 thing is, you see it all, you know. That s the thing, 
 you see it all!" 
 
 He went back to the hotel Key West has, or had 
 at that date, but one with Van Cleve, and there the 
 first person they encountered was Mr. Takuhira, whom 
 the journalist already knew, and saluted as Take-your- 
 hair-off, in a cheerfully informal style. Takuhira s 
 
 234 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 235 
 
 own prospects, as he told them with his equable smile, 
 were very dubious. "I should have gone by thee mail- 
 boat that left this morning. Arrangements had been 
 made, they say," he said and permitted himself a slight 
 shrug. "Unfortunately they omitted one rather de 
 sirable arrangement, that is, to tell me. I did not 
 know anything about it. And now nobody knows 
 anything about me. The government of Uncle Sam 
 has troubles of his own, as you say, without to bother 
 about one Japan attache" 
 
 "D ye have to get there?" said Schreiber. The 
 Oriental gentleman shrugged again. The other two 
 men could not help exchanging a glance, each one won 
 dering and knowing that the other was wondering 
 whether this Japanese would not be quite capable of 
 committing harakiri to satisfy his fanatical Eastern 
 standards of honor, if he failed in his mission. Al 
 most simultaneously they proposed to him their own 
 vessel as a way out of his difficulties. 
 
 " And he won t be the funniest traveller the old tub s 
 carried, either," Schreiber said, after they had, all three, 
 completed the bargain with Captain Bowers, who had 
 been willing enough to take Van Cleve, but inquired 
 a little austerely why it was necessary to ship the 
 chink? He was won over, however, by an argument 
 which Schreiber assured the others in private was al 
 ways irresistible with him ; give Captain Bowers enough 
 (he said) and he d sail his namesake to a very much 
 warmer place than Cuba which Mr. Schreiber speci 
 fied. And he hinted at a sinister past, and at various 
 desperate exploits of the captain s in the way of block 
 ade-running during the Civil War, filibustering in the 
 Caribbean, and so on, which Van Cleve inwardly de 
 cided to discount a trifle. Captain Bowers was a lean, 
 leathery, hard-featured man upwards of sixty, who, 
 indeed, looked quite capable of the dark deeds attrib 
 uted to him ; at some stage of his career, he had lost 
 
236 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 two fingers off his right hand, which, some way or other, 
 strengthened the grim impression. But Van was 
 shrewd enough to know that to the landsman the sea 
 and those who follow it will always be a mystery attrac 
 tive and forbidding in the same breath ; pirate or 
 preacher, the captain would probably have looked the 
 same to him, he thought, with a laugh ; and what dif 
 ference did it make, anyhow ? 
 
 Their craft, Captain Bowers announced, would sail 
 at midnight, a choice of hours which, of itself, savored 
 of deep-sea secrecy and danger, but which, Van Cleve 
 vaguely supposed, had something to do with the tide. 
 It left them all the rest of the day for preparation, but 
 somehow Van never can remember nowadays exactly 
 how he spent that time. He wrote to his Aunt Myra 
 and to the bank, and a long letter to Lorrie. Takuhira 
 was writing, too, on the other side of the desk in 
 the hotel lounging-room, filling page after page with 
 Japanese characters, with what might be called an 
 unnaturally natural rapidity, as facile as Van him 
 self. The latter wondered whether their letters might 
 not be a good deal alike. There they sat, each one a 
 parcel of memories and associations as different as 
 possible, yet doubtless fundamentally the same. Some 
 slant-eyed little lady in a sash might be Takuhira s 
 Lorrie ; and instead of Van s great, muddy river, and 
 bricked, noisy, sooty, well-loved town, the Japanese 
 must be calling up some fantastic vista of bamboos, 
 cock-roofed temples, and rice-fields, and naming it, with 
 as strong a feeling, home. 
 
 Afterwards, to the best of Van s recollection, they 
 went together and got some express checks cashed, 
 and visited a shop where they bought apparel which 
 they dimly conjectured to be suitable for the trip 
 flannel shirts, canvas shoes, a blanket apiece they 
 had no idea what they would need. The little Japanese 
 in a sou wester and jersey, with a bandanna knotted 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 237 
 
 around his neck, cowboy fashion, was a sight for gods 
 and men, but it must be said to Van s credit that he 
 refrained from laughter. He felt too much of a clown 
 in his own sea-farer s haberdashery. One of the last 
 things he remembers doing was going with Schreiber to 
 buy a revolver which the newspaper-man insisted upon 
 as an indispensable part of his outfit. "Got to have 
 a gun," he said seriously. " It s war times where you re 
 going, you know. Even if you only needed it once, 
 you d need it mighty bad." 
 
 "Well, but I never handled one of em in my life - 
 I don t know which end they go off at," Van Cleve 
 objected. "I m not going to mix into any fight, any 
 how not if travelling s good in the opposite direc 
 tion, I know that." 
 
 " Makes no difference. You ve got to put up a good, 
 strong bluff just the same," said his new friend senten- 
 tiously. Van had to yield at length. 
 
 "All right," he said, gingerly stowing the weapon 
 in his hip-pocket; "this is where it s considered good 
 form to carry it, I suppose ? You ll change your mind 
 about my needing it after I ve blown your ear off, or 
 plugged a hole in the boiler. Come on, fellows." 
 They went down to the pier. 
 
 As the compiler of these records knows next to noth 
 ing of the sea, and as it has always been difficult to get 
 anything out of Van Cleve Kendrick about this experi 
 ence, it is plain that we cannot be going to enter upon 
 any thrilling nautical adventures. I could not invent 
 them, and Van never will admit that there were any. 
 It seems that nothing of much moment happened during 
 the first part of the voyage, at least ; their tug was not 
 a rapid traveller, and she labored along prosaically off 
 the northern coasts of Cuba, which were sometimes in 
 sight at a prudent distance for fully forty-eight hours, 
 day and night, without storms or warships or sensa- 
 
238 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tional encounters of any kind. The population of the 
 Milton D. Bowers, meanwhile, crew and passengers 
 alike, lived at inconceivably close quarters in demo 
 cratic freedom and astonishing harmony, and with a dis 
 regard of dirt, discomfort, and inconvenience which 
 any lady who reads these lines would have looked upon 
 with shuddering horror. What would Van Cleve s 
 aunt, what would any of his female relatives have said 
 to the more than dubious bunk and the species of dog 
 house wherein he slept of a night, to the greasy bench 
 amidships at which he sat down to meals, to the ter 
 rific tea and coffee and ships biscuit and canned toma 
 toes and sizzling fried onions which he consumed (with 
 thorough relish !) out of tin plates and mugs and un 
 speakable skillets ? What would they have thought of 
 his shipmates, than whom no stranger company were 
 ever assembled on a boat since Noah went aboard the 
 Ark ? Van Cleve himself got along admirably with 
 them. "They were all right. They were just man, 
 you know, just plain man," he once rather obscurely 
 said, in an effort to describe them ; the astute tolerance 
 of the phrase better describes himself. There was 
 only one of them whom Van felt he never would under 
 stand, and that was Takuhira, between whom and 
 these American men there would forever hang the 
 impalpable veil of race and of habits of mind uncon 
 querably alien. " You can t get on the inside of him, 
 somehow; you can t think his thoughts. It wouldn t 
 make any difference how long you were with him, you d 
 never know him," Van Cleve remarked to Schreiber 
 one day. 
 
 The reporter stared. "What ! Little Take-your- 
 hair-off? Why, he s easy enough to know. Why, 
 I ve never had any trouble knowing him," he declared ; 
 "he s just as white as any man I ever met if he is a 
 Jap." 
 
 "I didn t mean anything against him," said Van Cleve. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 239 
 
 And, seeing that it would be impossible to make Schreiber 
 comprehend what he did mean, he gave up the subj ect. 
 He had observed Schreiber s character, at least, to some 
 purpose. In fact, the newspaper-man afforded a curious 
 and entertaining study. He had been at his work of jour 
 nalism for some years, after having successively tried 
 and abandoned stenography, elocution, commercial trav 
 elling (with a line of notions for a dry-goods concern, 
 he said), clerking in the post-office, and zinc-mining at 
 Joplin. As preparation for the career of letters, he 
 had had the ordinary common-school education, from 
 which he had evidently profited hardly at all in com 
 parison with the extraordinarily wide and also ridicu 
 lously narrow schooling he later received from the 
 world at large. Writing was his profession, yet he was 
 no more capable of a page of good English than of a 
 page of Choctaw T ; but what he wrote commanded a 
 price, and was sufficiently readable. On all the large 
 political and economic and social questions of the day, 
 he had not an idea in his head ; but he knew the names 
 of the " bosses" and of the members of the "machine" 
 and what they did and wanted, in twenty cities, Van 
 Cleve s own among them, and had been going to con 
 ventions and listening to speeches and interviewing 
 eminent "statesmen" (as he called them) for years. 
 He was a perfectly upright man, yet he would sacrifice 
 or distort beyond recognition any fact to make a 
 "good story," a trait of his which Van had been 
 quick to discover. "Get out and get news. If you 
 can t get it, make it !" Schreiber enthusiastically quoted 
 to him as one of the imperishable maxims of an editorial 
 celebrity under whom he had worked ; he was eter 
 nally quoting this authority. And with all his cheap 
 standards, his bondage to catchwords, his jingo patri 
 otism, he displayed not a few of the qualities which we 
 associate with very high and strong characters, among 
 them a devotion to his duty of "getting out and getting 
 
240 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 news" -or making it which touched the heroic. 
 Barely recovered from a dangerous and wearing ill 
 ness, he undertook these not inconsiderable hard 
 ships for the sake of his magazine, single-mindedly, as 
 if there were no other course to pursue ; he was dis 
 tressingly seasick, he could scarcely eat or sleep, the 
 fever came back upon him intermittently, he suffered 
 tortures from sunburn, and he bore it all without a 
 murmur. 
 
 Van Cleve, for his part, had never felt better; and, 
 moreover, turned out a good sailor and acceptable ship 
 mate, lending a hand to the management of the vessel 
 when extra strength was needed, and frankly interested 
 in all her workings and in the crew, whom he found to 
 be not in the least like the sailormen about whom he had 
 read. They were neither so profane nor so simple nor so 
 blackguardly nor so sublimely honest as the pages of 
 Captain Marryat and Mr. Clark Russell had led him to 
 expect. The engineer had been first a motorman in 
 Chicago, then shipped for a couple of seasons so he 
 told Van on a Duluth freighter, then drifted to New 
 York, and worked for a while on the Staten Island 
 boats, etc., etc. His helper was some sort of half-breed 
 Cuban. The cook hailed from somewhere in Connecti 
 cut, he said ; and he also said that he had once cooked 
 in a Maine moose-camp for Colonel Theodore Roosevelt. 
 Van thought he might possibly be telling the truth, 
 although he was not wholly reliable, either with the 
 cook-stove or the whiskey-bottle. "In every sea-story 
 I ever read the cook was a Lascar," Van Cleve said to 
 him one day ; "I feel as if you ought to be, by rights." 
 
 "Well, I ain t. I m Connecticut from the ground 
 up never was farther west than Milwaukee in my 
 life," retorted the other. "Though I did think some 
 of going to the Klondike last year when the rush was 
 on," he added, pensively turning the bacon. "But I 
 ain t Alasker, not me." 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 241 
 
 Captain Bowers, who was standing near, smiled 
 grimly. He afterwards told Van Cleve that he had 
 seen Lascars " plenty of em, in the China Seas, 
 and round the Straits. They wa n t doing any cook 
 ing, though," he said, gazing off to the horizon reminis- 
 cently. Van longed to ask what they were doing. 
 Boarding his ship with cutlasses between their teeth, 
 in some onslaught of demoniac pirate junks ? What 
 ever the captain s experiences in that line, he had no 
 tales to tell about them ; he was a taciturn man. His 
 taciturnity even extended to their chief recreation on 
 board the Milton D. Bowers, a game of cards, which, 
 whenever the skipper took a hand, invariably had to be 
 whist. Unfortunately the ace of spades went over 
 the side in a light blow the morning of the second day 
 out, and thereafter they were obliged to play euchre 
 and call the deuce the ace, which was awkward but 
 effective. They had only the one pack, and that of an 
 incredible age and stickiness, so that the operations of 
 shuffling and dealing required even more than the usual 
 skill ; and to see Captain Bowers do it, with two fingers 
 gone, was a marvel from which Van Cleve, in spite of 
 manners, could not keep his eyes. 
 
 The next day was Sunday, a fact which would have 
 escaped Van s notice had it not been for certain Sab 
 bath-day observances on board; the engineer s helper 
 washed his shirt ; and Captain Bowers shaved in front 
 of six inches of looking-glass tacked up in the cabin, 
 balancing himself nicely to the roll of the boat, and 
 wielding the razor with the same uncanny dexterity, 
 between his thumb and two remaining fingers. Van 
 examined doubtfully his own reflection in the mirror, 
 with a grimy growth of beard and a complexion some 
 what the hue of the inside of an old boot-leg, wherein 
 his small, light gray eyes looked oddly out of place, 
 and came to the conclusion that a shave could improve 
 his looks so little, it was not worth the risk. For al- 
 
242 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 though it was almost a flat calm, the Milton D. Bowers, 
 as she slowly progressed, developed an extraordinary 
 sidelong rocking-horse motion of her own, which would 
 have affected any hand less steady than her captain s. 
 Already in the early morning it was beginning to be 
 unbelievably hot ; the horizon, where no land was just 
 now visible and not another sail or smokestack, swam 
 in a glare of sea and sky intolerable to the vision. 
 " We re good and tropical now," Schreiber said, rearing 
 painfully up from his favorite recumbent posture along 
 the decks, to look at it. "We ought to make Baiquiri 
 by to-night, isn t that so, Captain?" 
 
 " Tain t Baiqum, it s Daiquiri," said Bowers, over 
 his shoulder, as he walked forward. "Yes, I guess so, 
 if we have luck." 
 
 "Is that where we land?" Van Cleve asked. 
 
 "That s where the army landed," said the captain, 
 non-committally. Van felt startled at the sudden 
 nearness of the journey s end. 
 
 However, man proposes ! It was only a short while 
 after this conversation that the engines of the Milton 
 D. Bowers, to the surprise and consternation of her 
 passengers, began perceptibly to lag; they slowed 
 down; they ceased utterly ! A great powwowing arose 
 between the engineer and his assistant; Captain 
 Bowers took a hand; the engineer disappeared into 
 the bowels of his machine, and erelong boiler-factory 
 hammerings and clinkings resounded. Van Cleve and 
 the attache, after offering their help, thought it best 
 to keep out of the way, and refrain from annoying 
 questions; but Schreiber had no such scruples. He 
 made repeated trips to the seat of trouble and at last 
 brought back the doleful information that they were 
 going to be held up for the Lord knew how long ! "I 
 believe it isn t anything very bad, because he says he 
 can fix it, only he doesn t know how long it ll take. 
 This is grand, isn t it? This just suits us. We re 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 243 
 
 not in any hurry to get there ; we don t give a darn 
 if we never see Cuba. I d like to spend a summer 
 vacation right on this spot. The bathing facilities are 
 so good, you know. 7 
 
 "How far are we out, anyhow ?" 
 
 "Too far to swim, that s all I know," said the cor 
 respondent. He resumed his lounge. They all sat 
 awhile in disconcerted silence, until at length some 
 body proposed the cards to pass time away ; and they 
 were on the seventh hand of cutthroat, when Captain 
 Bowers came and joined them. For a moment, this 
 looked encouraging; but to their eager inquiry about 
 the prospects, he would only say that he didn t know 
 it might be two or three hours yet perhaps more 
 he couldn t say depended on what Tom found when 
 he got the jacket off he couldn t say " It s your 
 deal, ain t it, Kendrick? My cut." 
 
 As they were sitting, Van having just dealt, and 
 turned the queen of diamonds, on a sudden, they heard, 
 a good way to the southwest, a dull rolling and booming 
 sound that paused and presently broke out again. 
 
 "Hello!" said Schreiber, looking up and around; 
 "storm somewhere ? " 
 
 Captain Bowers laid down his hand of cards and said, 
 "Boys, that s cannon !" 
 
 In a minute the engineer, chancing to stick out his 
 head for a breath of air, stopped in the act of mopping 
 the sweat from his forehead and arms with a handful of 
 waste, and called in surprise: "What s the matter? 
 D ye see anything ? What did you fellows all jump up 
 that way for?" He had heard nothing in the midst 
 of his own noise and clanging. The rest looked at one 
 another shamefacedly ; they discovered that they had 
 all, on the same unconscious impulse, scrambled to their 
 feet, and were crowding and staring in the direction of 
 the cannonading, as if they might expect to see it, or 
 get nearer to it by the action ! In fact, by some illu- 
 
244 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 sion, the next detonations seemed to them for an in 
 stant much louder. It kept on. They stood a long 
 while listening. Once Schreiber said in a subdued 
 voice : "My Lord, fellows, that sounds like the Fourth 
 of July back home, and it s killing men right along !" 
 Van Cleve, too, had been thinking of that ; and of that 
 evening, scarcely three weeks ago, when he had sat 
 with Lorrie on the porch, and they wondered what can 
 non sounded like. 
 
 The captain looked at his watch and said it was ten 
 o clock ; and one of them asked him where he thought 
 the battle might be going on if they were shelling 
 the city, would we hear it ? He shook his head. " Don t 
 know. Them guns are firing at sea, though, which 
 ever way they re being p inted. The sound comes 
 quicker to you on the water leastways that s what 
 I ve always been told," he said circumspectly. 
 
 "Do you believe the fleet s trying to come out?" 
 Van Cleve and the newspaper-man chorussed in one 
 excited breath. 
 
 "I presume likely," said Captain Bowers. 
 
 He went to speak to the engineer, and Schreiber 
 watched him with a certain admiration. "If he was 
 in a book now, you wouldn t believe in him; you d 
 think he was ridiculously overdrawn," he said to Van; 
 "he doesn t seem possible, somehow, with his tugboat 
 and his chin-beard, and that funny down-east drawl. 
 1 Presume likely ! Like any old New England deacon ! 
 You notice he never swears ? You can t phase him 
 nothing phases him !" 
 
 They tried to resume the game, but even the un- 
 phasable Captain Bowers was not quite equal to that, 
 and after he had attempted to take Takuhira s knave of 
 trumps with the king, after Van Cleve had announced 
 that the deuce of spades had got into the euchre-deck 
 through somebody s mistake and been dealt to him, 
 and after Schreiber had twice neglected to follow suit 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 245 
 
 to the left bower, they gave it up with some sheepish 
 joking. The day wore on. The cannon ceased, and 
 the silence left them all at a higher tension than ever. 
 The cook fished out from somewhere an old battered 
 pair of glasses with a flawed lens, and from that on 
 somebody was constantly on the lookout (though the 
 thing would scarcely carry a hundred yards) sweeping 
 the seas round and round in expectation of no one knew 
 what. At some time in the afternoon they sat down to 
 a belated and half-cooked meal whereat the engineer 
 complained loud and bitterly. He wanted to know 
 what all you dubs (and sundry other unamiable des 
 ignations) were doing, anyhow ? He opined that he 
 was the only man within sight or hearing who was on 
 his job. He intimated highly uncomplimentary doubts 
 as to the mind, morals, parentage, and previous career 
 of everybody on board, especially the cook, which the 
 latter gentleman naturally resented. Captain Bowers 
 had to intervene ; and in the middle of it all somebody 
 cried that the guns were going again, producing peace 
 on the instant, as if by magic ! Afterwards, realizing 
 that there was some justice in his point of view, one or 
 other of them volunteered as engineer s helper, and 
 held a candle, or passed tools, or hung on a wrench at 
 intervals the rest of the day. Van Cleve, for one, was 
 glad of any employment ; his nerves, like everybody s, 
 were feeling the strain. It was dark before they got 
 started. 
 
 It was night, in fact, which came on them with the 
 startling suddenness of the tropics, clouded over, with 
 no stars nor moonlight. The little tug, crowding on all 
 steam, ploughed through the vast, black, watery silence 
 with as much commotion as leviathan, reckless of conse 
 quences. Excepting Captain Bowers and the Japanese, 
 both of whom contrived to keep an appearance, at least, 
 of stolidity, everybody was very much excited, and 
 there was a good deal of random talk and laughing at 
 
246 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 nothing ; also, the cook wanted to sing, and wept when 
 Bowers forbade it and sternly took away his bottle 
 of whiskey. Schreiber expostulated sympathetically. 
 " Why, with all the noise we re making, what s the odds 
 if he does sing, captain? Nobody could hear him." 
 
 " We could hear him," said the captain, with epigram 
 matic force. They all thought this was a prodigiously 
 good joke on the cook; Van Cleve never remembered 
 to have laughed so heartily ! 
 
 "I suppose if we should run into a Spanish ship, they 
 wouldn t do a thing to us?" he said to Schreiber in 
 ironical gayety. 
 
 "Not a thing!" agreed the other. Then he added 
 more seriously : "But they won t be coming this way, 
 you know. They ll make for Havana, most likely 
 if they get away at all." That the Spanish might have 
 won in the contest did not occur to either of them. 
 
 Some while after this, Van Cleve observed a small, 
 steady star very low down near what should have been 
 the horizon, as he judged, if they had been able to distin 
 guish sea from sky ; he pointed it out casually to the 
 captain, who threw a perfunctory glance in the direction 
 and grunted. 
 
 "That s the land," he said ; "that s a light somewhere 
 on shore. You could a heard the surf if you d listened. 
 Hear it now?" 
 
 Van strained his ears, but could make out nothing; 
 the throbbing of their machinery and the loud rush of 
 water alongside overpowered his landsman s senses ; 
 Schreiber affirmed that he could see the coast in black 
 outline against the lesser blackness, but perhaps his 
 fancy helped him. In a little the light vanished, blotted 
 out, no doubt, by some reach of land, for they were 
 both quite sure they felt the vessel veer sharply and 
 change her course. And now, all at once, there came 
 to them a great, hot, sighing breath, offshore, laden 
 (or so they imagined) with earth odors, strange and 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 247 
 
 familiar ; then a cool puff ; then another warm. The 
 feeling of it was curiously welcome ; land is good after 
 the sea. The Milton D. Bowers slacked up ; she had a 
 grotesque air of suddenly remembering something. 
 
 11 Guess the old man thinks we d better go slow here," 
 Schreiber suggested in an undertone ; "he doesn t quite 
 know where he is no lights nor anything. We must 
 be somewhere off Guantanamo, I think." 
 
 He had not finished speaking when there roared up 
 out of the darkness a huge devastating bulk, a thing 
 of terror coming at them like the end of the world. 
 There was a light. Van Cleve for one appalling second 
 beheld a mighty, gray shoulder towering above them, 
 imminent, unescapable. "It looked as high as the 
 Union Trust Building," he said afterwards. It was in 
 reality the bow of the torpedo-boat destroyer Inverness, 
 not considered by naval judges at all a large or powerful 
 vessel. She thundered upon them; the Milton D. 
 Bowers raised a wild screech as from one throat, and 
 went astern in a frenzy ; and the Inverness must have 
 sheered just in the nick of time, or they would all, 
 herself included, have been at the bottom of the sea, 
 and this tale need never have been written. As it was, 
 the glancing blow she struck them sent the poor tug 
 staggering, and there was a blood-curdling noise of 
 splintered wood. When Van got his breath, he found 
 himself in the foolish attitude of clinging to the far rail, 
 and "holding back" with might and main ! They 
 were still afloat ; they were still on an even keel. Near 
 him Schreiber sprawled on the deck, clutching one 
 ankle and cursing voluminously; he had sprained it, 
 falling over a pile of coal, and was in severe pain. Ex 
 traordinary sounds arose from every part of the boat ; 
 somebody was praying in a loud, rapid, fervent voice 
 like a camp-meeting preacher. There was a hail from 
 above. 
 
 "Goldenrod, ahoy! Are you much hurt?" 
 
248 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "This ain t no Goldenrod. This is the Milton D. 
 Bowers," shouted the captain, crossly ; and in a moment 
 Van saw him aft with a lantern over the side, studying 
 the damage. The prayers ceased abruptly ; Van Cleve 
 had a suspicion they proceeded from the cook, but he 
 never knew. Takuhira appeared from nowhere, and 
 helped Schreiber take off his shoe. Up overhead an 
 invisible power manipulated the light this way and that, 
 until the tug lay within its zone ; they could see faces, 
 kindly and concerned and inquiring, peering down at 
 them. A man whom Van, in his ignorance of naval 
 matters, supposed to be a " petty officer," whatever that 
 might mean, repeated the former question. "Are you 
 much hurt ? Need any help ?" he asked. 
 
 Captain Bowers, after further scrutiny, pronounced 
 the Milton D. in no danger. "She ain t started any 
 where, fur s I kin see, jest her side planed off some," 
 he said, and, walking to the engine-house, called in, 
 "All right there, Tom?" 
 
 "I guess so," said the engineer from the depths. 
 
 You ought to have kept out of the way, captain. 
 We can t have anybody gum-shoeing around here, you 
 know that," remarked the Inverness, and made another 
 offer of standing by in case they discovered trouble. 
 Captain Bowers grumpily declining, the officer turned 
 away, probably to report to a superior. Some of the 
 heads disappeared from the rail ; one of those remain 
 ing facetiously invited his mates to come and see the 
 bunch of Weary Willies in the cup-defender. Another 
 wanted to know who the reverend conducting services 
 was? Van Cleve stared up at them in wonder; 
 he had supposed that everybody of the rank and 
 file, at least had to keep mum as a mouse on board a 
 war-ship. They could hear an order given; the big 
 hull vibrated ; the Inverness began deliberately and im 
 pressively to back away. Even in the midst of his 
 suffering, professional zeal awoke in the newspaper- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 249 
 
 correspondent ; he hobbled upright, clinging to Taku- 
 hira s shoulder, and hailed desperately. 
 
 "Kit Wait, will you? What s happened? We 
 heard cannon. What s doing? Was there a fight?" 
 
 The Inverness did not answer ; silence had suddenly 
 fallen on board of her, and all the faces retreated. In a 
 moment the man who had spoken to them first came 
 back, making way at the rail for a tall gentleman in a 
 beautiful, clean, snowy white, tropical uniform, at 
 once cool and radiant in the half-light. He could be 
 seen to look them over with good-natured condescen 
 sion, while the subordinate pointed and explained ; then 
 he nodded, gave the other an order (as it seemed) and, 
 walked away. Schreiber witnessed the pantomime in 
 an agony of curiosity. The first man stepped again to 
 the side; he set a hand to his mouth and cried out, 
 " Newspaper-boat ? " 
 
 "Yes. Gulf States Magazine, Jacksonville Telegraph, 
 Atlanta Post, Charleston Mail!" the correspondent 
 roared back impatiently. None of the last-named papers 
 had any existence outside of his own imagination, as 
 he later informed Van Cleve. "That ought to be 
 enough for you," he added under his breath. "News 
 paper-boat! Take us for a party of Episcopal bishops ? " 
 
 "Well, you can tell em the fleet came out !" 
 
 "Where are they ? What became of em ? What - 
 who which-- ?" Schreiber was fairly inarticulate 
 from excitement ; he hopped madly on one leg. 
 
 "Sunk beached burned up the whole shootin 
 match I" bawled their informant, succinctly. He made 
 a dramatic pause. "Had to chase one of em down the 
 coast a good piece, but we nipped her, too !" The 
 Inverness gathered way, moving off, and the wash she 
 kicked up slapped against the tug, causing it to rock vio 
 lently. He raised his voice, making a trumpet of both 
 hands this time. "Pity you missed it. It s all over but 
 the shouting. There ain t any more Spanish Fleet !" 
 
CHAPTER V 
 BUT TWAS A GLORIOUS VICTORY 
 
 NEXT morning at daybreak, the argonauts steamed 
 into the harbor of Guantanamo, which they found al 
 ready populous with shipping, colliers, transports, light 
 ers, a whole fleet of little vessels of their own caliber, 
 herded together in one place where the Milton D. Bowers 
 herself modestly sought a berth, and half a dozen tall 
 warships. They recognized their friend of the night 
 before, the Inverness, now peaceably riding at anchor 
 on the east side of the channel, close inshore and just 
 opposite some ridges of freshly turned earth which looked 
 like the bunkers on the golf-links at home, Van Cleve 
 thought, but which, he was told, were the intrench- 
 ments of Camp Huntington. All around there were 
 other earthworks and tents, white and blue and khaki- 
 colored uniforms going to and fro, bugle-calls and the 
 smoke of camp-fires, and overhead the flag spreading 
 its brave and cheerful colors on a strong breeze. It was 
 a stirring spectacle ; and though this place is adorned 
 with some of as noble and beautiful scenery as may be 
 found anywhere in the world, I doubt if the travellers 
 made much of it. They were not caring for scenery, 
 and the sight of this armed occupation, vigilant and 
 powerful, and the news of the past night would have 
 distracted them from the most wonderful panorama on 
 the face of the globe. 
 
 They landed, Schreiber insisting on going, too, al 
 though he was limping painfully, with his ankle very 
 much swollen in a rough bandage they had contrived, 
 
 250 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 251 
 
 and went up to a shining little sheet-iron-walled stove of 
 a building which they had found to be the telegraph- 
 office, at the foot of the hill under Captain McCalla s 
 camp of marines ; and here Schreiber had the luck to 
 fall in with two other correspondents, a Mr. Hunter of 
 the New York Planet, and another man whose name 
 Van Cleve did not catch, both of them just from the 
 front with accounts of Saturday s fighting and San 
 Juan Hill. The army had known nothing of the navy s 
 doings, and supposed the cannonading they had heard 
 to be Sampson bombarding the forts at the mouth of 
 the harbor, as he had done before ! " Pshaw, we knew 
 better than that ! " said Schreiber, with mock superiority. 
 "Well, our fellows have too many other things to 
 think about, back there in the jungle," Hunter said. 
 He told them something of the fight, the other man 
 joining in. It hadn t been any such soft snap as the 
 navy boys had, to judge by what you heard. These 
 Spaniards weren t running away, nor dreaming of it ; 
 they were fighters they could shoot, too. "Why, it 
 took Lawton nearly a whole day, nearly the whole of 
 Friday let s see, it was Friday, wasn t it, Jim ? to 
 carry that position at that little town where the church 
 was, Caney they called it nearly the whole day, and 
 everybody thought it wouldn t be but an hour or so ! 
 Well, of course, they outnumbered our fellows. Oh, 
 yes, two to one at least. The Cubans hardly counted ; 
 we did the real fighting. Oh, I suppose some of the 
 Cubans did pretty well, but I didn t see any of em. 
 They weren t near so many of them wounded and killed 
 as we had, in proportion. Bet you, if it wasn t for us, 
 they d be butchering the Spanish prisoners in cold 
 blood right this minute ; that s about what the Spanish 
 and Cubans were doing to each other before we came, 
 you know. Everybody says that s the reason the 
 Spanish fight so desperately; they fully expect to be 
 shot down without mercy, if they get caught. How s 
 
252 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 that for barbarity and ignorance? Did you hear 
 about that poor fellow, Lieutenant Ord of the Sixth ? 
 Did you hear what happened to him ? Why, he got to 
 the top of the hill with the first ones when they charged 
 it (Hey ? Yes, it was the Sixth, and the Rough Riders, 
 and the colored regiment, and parts of other regiments 
 mixed in), and this Ord came to a Spaniard lying there 
 badly wounded, and says : Look out for this man, boys/ 
 or Pick up this fellow and see he gets taken care of/ or 
 something like that. And with that the Spaniard 
 raised up and shot him through the heart ! Suppose 
 he thought Ord was telling the men to bayonet him 
 and finish him. Probably that s what a Spanish or 
 Cuban officer would have done. Eh ? Oh, the men 
 killed him ; about tore him to pieces, they say. They 
 thought a great deal of Ord. Nice fellow, they say I 
 never happened to meet him. But that just shows 
 you what kind these Spanish are ; and let me tell you, 
 we won t any of us have much use for the Cubans, either, 
 by the time we get through with it. Dog eat dog, that s 
 what it is. Uncle Sam s going to be thoroughly sick 
 of this Cuba Libre job before long. All our fine men 
 sacrificed! You ought to see the wounded or rather 
 you oughtn t to see them if you can help it. My God, 
 it s awful ! Awful. War s about what Sherman said 
 it was, I guess." 
 
 They talked on a little excitedly at times, still under 
 the spell of what they had witnessed. Both of them 
 were dirty, haggard, ready to drop with fatigue ; Hunter 
 told Van he had not slept for fifteen hours, most of 
 which had been spent on the way from the battle-field 
 here. It was nothing but a jungle trail, almost impas 
 sable in places, and they had been obliged to tramp the 
 most of it, their horses having given out very soon ; it 
 was next to impossible to get any kind of transportation 
 in the country. Nevertheless, they were starting 
 back as soon as they had had some rest; something 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 253 
 
 might happen any minute, and they didn t want to 
 miss it. Schreiber ruefully cursed his luck ; he realized 
 that they could not be burdened with a lame man, or 
 he would have gone with them, ankle and all. In fact, 
 they earnestly counselled him to keep on by boat to 
 Siboney. " There s nothing more for us in the sea side 
 of the fighting, or we d go back that way ourselves," 
 Hunter explained. " Thing is we want to be on land 
 the whole time now. Yesterday afternoon before we 
 left camp there was talk around that Shafter was think 
 ing of falling back retreating five miles or so into the 
 hills. That would probably be in this direction. But 
 you d better go on to Siboney, and you can follow 
 the army up in case they do move." They were 
 very willing, however, to have Takuhira accompany 
 them ; one of them had met his countryman, Lieu 
 tenant Akiyama of the Imperial Japanese Navy, who 
 was now with the fleet, observing operations. Van 
 Cleve, too, might have gone, but upon hearing his 
 errand, although neither of them, unfortunately, knew 
 his friend Gilbert, they both assured him that Siboney 
 would be the best place to look for him. 
 
 " Everybody s there, or has been there or at 
 Daiquiri. The Red Cross, and the correspondents, 
 and the post-office people, and everybody. That s the 
 place to look for any one. If you can t find him, you re 
 sure to find somebody that knows him, and can put 
 you on his trail," they said. Van began to feel that he 
 was getting "hot," as they say in the children s games, 
 and wanted to go at once and send telegrams to Lorrie, 
 and to his family ; but the gentleman in charge of the 
 station refused, not without a smile. The govern 
 ment, he said politely, had raised and repaired the 
 Haytian cable at this point for its own use, and private 
 individuals, unless in some such capacity as Mr. Hunter s, 
 had no status just then. Of course, if Mr. Kendrick 
 had some life-and-death matter but merely to reas- 
 
254 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 sure his people "I understand!" said Van, cutting 
 him short brusquely, annoyed at himself. 
 
 Afterwards the party all dined together on board 
 the Milton D. Bowers, magnificently, the cook having 
 found means to add some crabs and a basket of mangoes 
 to their ordinary bill-of-fare, which was further en 
 riched by a can of baked beans from some unknown 
 source. "I tell you, the boys at the front would like 
 some of this ! Those beans would look like the 
 Waldorf-Astoria to them," said one of the corre 
 spondents; "all the time we ve been with them, no 
 body s had anything but bacon and hardtack, and not 
 too much of that, poor fellows ! Well, war s war, I 
 suppose!" With which philosophical reflection he 
 fell to heartily. 
 
 At two o clock the Milton D., according to arrange 
 ment, once more set sail ; and Van Cleve bade good-by 
 to these gentlemen, none of whom, I believe, he has 
 ever met since, except the Japanese attache, who 
 turned up a few days later at Siboney in company with 
 Major Shiba, the other military envoy of his country. 
 Mr. Takuhira must have borrowed some of his superior s 
 clothes, or recruited his wardrobe from somewhere, 
 for he was quite immaculate in white ducks and fresh 
 linen, notwithstanding which he shook hands with 
 Van Cleve (who was anything but immaculate in the 
 same blue flannel shirt he had worn for nearly a fort 
 night) with democratic heartiness, and wished him 
 well, and laughed and said "Sayonara! So long, 
 old chap ! " as he got into the waiting launch. Santiago 
 had surrendered ; the campaign was over ; the foreign 
 officers in observation were returning to the quarters 
 assigned them on board ship ; even for Van Cleve him 
 self, the adventure was ended. 
 
 He was very far from foreseeing all this, though, as 
 they steamed west along the coast in a heavy sea and 
 rising storm, with Schreiber erelong wretchedly ill 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 255 
 
 in the cabin, as usual, and Captain Bowers taciturnly 
 smoking a particularly rank and vicious pipe which he 
 seemed to enjoy most when the tug s motion was at its 
 worst. By this time, Van had got used to the idea of 
 chasing Bob Gilbert about and never finding him ; he 
 expected another hunt at Siboney, and to be told again 
 of some fresh place to which the luckless fellow might 
 have gone. The next morning, after a night of thresh 
 ing about in the seas, Van was not much surprised to 
 hear that it would be impossible to make a landing 
 until the wind and swell died dow^n somewhat. He 
 could both see and hear the surf now, booming and 
 breaking on the shore of the unprotected little cove, 
 a formidable spectacle. They contemplated it all day 
 long, the tug taking up a station a quarter of a mile 
 out, in line with a number of transports and other 
 vessels, like themselves afraid to risk launching a 
 boat in such weather. Siboney appeared from this 
 distance to be a row of shanties, a half-constructed 
 pier, and the broken ruins of an old one swept by 
 waves, with a slender strip of beach in front and, grim 
 mest sight of all, a big lighter, lying on her side, about 
 fifty yards from shore, a castaway, with the seas pound 
 ing over her desolately. 
 
 "Them other things you kin make out closer in 
 shore is some more boats and truck that got stove in 
 trying to land through the surf," Captain Bowers 
 said, pointing out various dark objects wiiich had 
 puzzled Van Cleve s inexperienced eyes. " Ain t it a 
 sin V a shame? All that good stuff wasted!" His 
 tone was mournful ; it was the first and only time he 
 had displayed so much feeling of any kind, but Van 
 understood and thoroughly sympathized. The young 
 man s own thrifty soul was outraged. 
 
 After twelve hours or so more of waiting, during 
 which, although there was a great deal of coming and 
 going on shore, they heard no sounds of firing, or 
 
256 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 other indications of hostilities being resumed, he and 
 Schreiber at last got to land in a rowboat manned by 
 a pair of tatterdemalions which came out to meet 
 them finally, in answer to repeated signals, when 
 Captain Bowers had taken the tug in as near as was 
 prudent. Both boatmen were armed with pistols and 
 machetes, though nowise soldierly (or indeed at all 
 prepossessing) in appearance. " Must be the command 
 ing general of the Cuban armies and his chief of staff," 
 the newspaper-man suggested satirically; "and, by 
 George, look at the rest of the patriots getting ready 
 to land us! Look out for your watch, Kendrick!" 
 In fact, there seemed to be a lively traffic of this sort 
 among the native longshoremen, running down into 
 the water to seize a boat by the bows, and rush it 
 bodily through the surf, up high and dry on the sand. 
 There was a mob of them, clamoring, villainous- 
 faced, incredibly dirty ; the beach was busy as a hive. 
 It was littered with wreckage of lighters and launches, 
 partly submerged, or standing up stark and stiff when 
 the tide was out. There were mounds of barrels and 
 boxes covered with tarpaulin, under guard ; mule- 
 teams and wagons, their drivers cursing royally; 
 soldiers without end ; and a handful of bedraggled- 
 looking civilians, government employees, members of 
 the Red Cross commission, more correspondents. 
 The line of huts they had seen from the harbor 
 the day before turned out to be ten or a dozen 
 zinc-roofed, boxlike structures built originally by the 
 Spanish-American Iron Company, which had mines 
 somewhere in the neighborhood, as Schreiber vaguely 
 recollected hearing, for its operatives, but now in use 
 as hospitals ; and one of them, the largest, bore a sign : 
 "United States Post-Office, Military Station No. 1." 
 Van Cleve and his companion walked up towards it. 
 Fresh from the strong, clean sea, they had not gone a 
 hundred steps inland when a puff of tepid, foul air, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 257 
 
 heavy with unspeakable odors of animal and vegetable 
 decay commingled, fairly strangled them. Schreiber, 
 who had been limping vigorously ahead, turned alarm 
 ingly pale and faint for a second ; but he kept on gal 
 lantly. "That had a kind of yellow-fever taste, didn t 
 it ? " he gasped with unquenchable levity. " Cheer up, 
 the worst is yet to come ! Did you see that dead mule 
 behind one of the houses just now>? He was very dead. 
 In fact, he must have been quite entirely dead about 
 the week before last, I should judge. Viva Cuba 
 Libre!" 
 
 Military Post-Office No. 1 had a high stoop in front 
 of it, that gave it a queer likeness to the country cross 
 roads store and post-office combined in a village of 
 the same size at home ; and two or three loungers on 
 the porch, as our friends came up, heightened the 
 resemblance. "How it reminds me of that dear 
 Rising Sun, Indiana!" murmured Schreiber, tenderly. 
 There were a couple of privates waiting, probably, 
 for their regimental mail to be sorted out, and another 
 man, not a soldier, as he was dressed in canvas trousers, 
 boots, and a sweater, was taking a nap in informal 
 style stretched out on the floor, with an arm across 
 his face. The two orderlies glanced at the newcomers 
 without curiosity, and went on with a desultory con 
 versation wherein war and conquest or other trade 
 topics were not in the least concerned. " --the first 
 time was at a picnic given by the Eagles Indepen 
 dent Order of Eagles, y know, they re pretty strong 
 with us and I couldn t say exactly how often since," 
 said one of them, finishing some statement ; and the 
 other nodded indifferently. 
 
 "That fellow there lays like he was dead notice?" 
 he said presently. "Guess he s about played out. 
 He s just as still !" 
 
 "Dead ! Well, I reckon he s deader drunk than any 
 other kind of dead," said the other man, with a laugh. 
 
258 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "They don t lay that way when they re shot, though 
 mostly they lay all kind of crumpled up, in my 
 experience," he added, with the air of a veteran. He 
 was a smooth-chinned lad of twenty-three or there 
 abouts. Van Cleve and Schreiber went inside. In the 
 stifling heat, two clerks, one in pajamas and the other 
 wearing an undershirt, blue denim overalls, and a pair 
 of carpet-slippers on his bare feet, were sorting mail. 
 
 "Look in the rack. All you fellows mail is together 
 in one place right over there. You can just look 
 for yourself," one of them answered the correspondent 
 wearily, scarcely glancing up from the piles of letters 
 he was shuffling to and fro. Van, however, was not 
 expecting anything ; nobody knew where he was. He 
 wanted to post a letter he had written to Lorrie the 
 night before ; and that done, hastily retreated to the 
 open air, wiping the perspiration from his face. 
 
 "Hot, ain t it?" said one of the soldiers, amiably. 
 
 "I don t see how those men stand it in there. An 
 other minute of that oven would have finished me," 
 declared Van. 
 
 Schreiber came to the door behind him and said, 
 not without excitement; "Look here, Kendrick, 
 there re two letters there for your friend. I saw 
 them. R. D. Gilbert that s he, isn t it ? His folks 
 must have got on to where to find him. He s probably 
 written." 
 
 "R. D. Gilbert?" said Van Cleve, with a start. 
 "Then he s here, to a certainty. I wonder if any of 
 them in the post-office know him." He was turning 
 to go inside again, when at the second repetition of 
 the name, the man on the floor stirred, rolled over, 
 sat up at last after two or three efforts, staring around 
 with a puffy, reddened face. "Whazzat? What you 
 want?" said Bob. 
 
 If this meeting had occurred on the melodramatic 
 stage, for which as an incident it was well suited, Van 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 259 
 
 Cleve would undoubtedly have had to exclaim: "My 
 God, Bob! You here!" clutching his temples in a 
 frenzy of horrified astonishment. The plain fact is, 
 he did and said for an instant, nothing at all. It 
 took him that time to realize that this was Bob Bob 
 at last in a worse state from drink and hardships than 
 Van had ever seen him, gaunt, disordered, blear-eyed, 
 almost repulsive. In another moment, he perceived 
 that Bob, although looking straight at him, had not 
 yet recognized him, which, to be sure, was not to be 
 wondered at, Van quickly remembered, considering 
 his own appearance and that he was the last person 
 Robert would be expecting to see. Schreiber, who also 
 had been staring hard, now burst out with: "Well, 
 I ll be why, that s Gilbert ! Isn t it Gilbert ? Why, 
 that s him now! Well, I ll be !" he looked all 
 around helplessly. Bob surveyed him with blank 
 eyes. 
 
 "Friend of yours?" said one of the soldiers, address 
 ing Schreiber. 
 
 "No yes that is, here s his friend. This is 
 his friend. Been chasing him fifteen hundred miles ! 
 Wouldn t that jar you, though? Fifteen hundred 
 miles! And here he is !" 
 
 "Why, hello, Bob !" said Van Cleve, mechanically. 
 Then he collected himself, and made another effort. 
 "Hello, Bob, don t you know me? It s Van Cleve 
 Kendrick, you know --Van Cleve, you know!" Un 
 consciously he raised his harsh voice, as he repeated 
 the name. Bob eyed him so dully and unresponsively, 
 it made him anxious. 
 
 "No use hollerin at him, mister. Better let him 
 sleep it off," observed one of the privates; "he s 
 pickled for fair !" 
 
 "No, he ain t, he ll know you in a minute," said the 
 other with a judicial glance; "he knew when you 
 called his name just now. Wake up, bo!" he con- 
 
260 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 tinued to Bob, genially; " here s somebody come to see 
 you!" 
 
 This experienced gentleman was right; Robert had 
 unquestionably had some liquor, but that he was 
 legitimately fagged out from exertion, want of sleep, 
 and, very likely, want of food would have been evident, 
 on a closer inspection, to anybody. He got upon 
 his feet, while they were speaking, without any help, 
 looked hard at the dirty, bearded man in front of him, 
 and ejaculated at last in his own natural voice, but 
 filled with bewilderment : "Van Cleve ! It s not you, 
 Van?" 
 
 "See? What d I tell you? He s got you!" said 
 the soldier, triumphantly. 
 
 "How d you get here?" said Bob. In the wonder 
 and perplexity of the moment, neither of them thought 
 of shaking hands. Van Cleve s wits, in truth, were 
 at a standstill; he had never speculated much as to 
 the precise environment and conditions wherein he 
 would find his friend, and had no plans about what he 
 was going to say other than to tell Bob plainly and 
 forcibly that having betrayed a young woman accord 
 ing to her own confession, he must come home and 
 marry her. He had not thought this duty too hard ; 
 it was something that had to be done, and, for Van 
 Cleve, that dismissed all objections. What he had 
 not allowed for, was such a chance as this ; the open 
 beach, the crowded, noisy camp where decent privacy 
 seemed a thing unobtainable, the sudden stumbling 
 upon the man he sought. He was inordinately taken 
 aback. It was only for a second, but the others looked 
 at him curiously. Bob all at once recognized Schreiber, 
 and spoke to him by name, and they two shook hands 
 enthusiastically. Robert pulled out a half-empty flask 
 from his hip-pocket, and offered it all around, "Have 
 a drink? It ll do you good. Got to take a little 
 stimulant in this climate, you know. I do myself all 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 261 
 
 the time/ 7 he said frankly ; " here s how, boys! What s 
 your regiment? Oh, two regiments? We ll have to 
 have two drinks on that ! What s yours ? Third ? 
 Bully for the Third ! Here, got to drink to your 
 regiment, you know. What s yours, hey ? " 
 
 The second young fellow said, with an uneasy grin, 
 glancing at the others, that he belonged to the Twentieth, 
 and he didn t want any, thanky, sir. Van Cleve 
 interfered. " You ve had enough of that, Bob," he 
 said, the exertion of authority restoring him to his 
 habitual poise on the instant ; " here, give me the bottle. 
 You want something to eat, that s what you want. 
 Where do you go here ?" 
 
 "Aw, Van Cleve !" Bob began pleadingly; but 
 he surrendered his flask without more protest. No 
 amount of drinking could overcome the poor sinner s 
 native gentleness and tractability. "Kind of good to 
 see you, Van," he said next affectionately; "but I 
 must say, you took me by surprise. Don t all of us 
 look like tramps, though!" He cast a glance of 
 whimsical appreciation over his own figure and his 
 friend s. "How d you get here ?" 
 
 "Why, I I ll tell you presently. I d like to get 
 something to eat, first. Where do you live? Where 
 do you go to eat and sleep, I mean?" 
 
 Bob burst into a laugh, broken by hiccoughs. 
 " Where do I live ? Where do any of us live ? How s 
 that, fellows ? Where do we all live ? Why, in Cuba, 
 first turn to your left and keep on going!" He 
 looked to Schreiber for sympathy. "What s your 
 address, Schreib.?" 
 
 "It s going to be Herman Schreiber, Esquire, The 
 Front, directly," said the war-correspondent, himself 
 amused. "He s about right, Kendrick, you don t live, 
 nor eat, nor sleep anywhere you just get along the 
 best you can. What s doing, anyhow, Gil?" 
 
 "At the front? Nothing. No fighting, I mean. 
 
262 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 I came back last night. I was all in. I ve been trying 
 to get a little rest." 
 
 " Lying here on the ground?" Van said, thinking 
 with a certain shock of Mrs. Gilbert and Lorrie. If 
 they knew - - ! If they could see him - - ! But, 
 thank Heaven, they couldn t ! 
 
 Bob nodded, momentarily speechless in a fit of 
 coughing. "Sure! No place else to go, you know," 
 he said when he got his breath. "Why not? It s 
 what they all do sick and wounded and all. What s 
 good enough for our army, is good enough for me, I 
 hope." 
 
 Van Cleve eyed him over with a good deal of secret 
 worry. Under the mask of dirt and sunburn, and 
 apart from the specific look of the hard drinker with 
 the lines and hollows and unwholesome textures that 
 Bob s face had begun to show long ago, Van Cleve 
 thought he detected some appearance graver still; 
 that cough and that stoop were not due wholly to 
 privation and too much whiskey, he said to himself. 
 For a flash he was astounded at the alarm that gripped 
 him. Bob was worthless; but he loved Bob. "You 
 haven t had anything to eat yet?" he said roughly, 
 as usual, when he was much moved. And the other, 
 shaking his head in a renewed paroxysm of coughing, 
 Van took him by the arm; "come along, we ll get 
 something we ll hunt it up somewhere," he said. 
 
 They got Bob s mail a letter from his father, and 
 one from Lorrie with the Tampa postmark, as Van 
 Cleve noted to his surprise and started off, the news 
 paper-man, who did not lack a gift of tact, bidding 
 them good-by pleasantly and taking the opposite 
 direction. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 IN WHICH WE WITNESS A SURRENDER 
 
 "How on earth did you ever happen to hook up 
 with him Schreiber, you know ? How did you hap 
 pen to come down here, anyhow?" Bob wanted to 
 know, in recurrent wonder. " Think of my not know 
 ing who you were at first ! But, Van, I was simply 
 stunned, I couldn t believe it was you." He looked 
 into his friend s face, in sudden affectionate anxiety. 
 "You don t mind, do you ? My not knowing you right 
 off, I mean? I thought you looked as if you didn t 
 like it, for a minute. But honestly, Van Cleve, I 
 couldn t help it." 
 
 "Oh, that s all right. I don t think anything of 
 that. It was perfectly natural," said Van Cleve, 
 shortly ; he was unconscious of the impatient note in 
 his voice, of the scowl between his deep-set eyes. The 
 thing he had to do was on his mind, and it had all at 
 once become hateful to him, utterly abhorrent. Robert 
 looked so sick and shaken, Van Cleve wanted to take 
 care of him, not to accuse and coerce him ; moreover, 
 face to face, Bob seemed, as he always had to his friend, 
 intrinsically harmless ; he wronged himself terribly and 
 irretrievably, but it was hard to believe that he could 
 wrong anybody else. "Damn that girl !" Van thought 
 angrily; "if she s any too good herself, I miss my 
 guess ! It would be easy enough to lead Bob into 
 anything, and blame any trouble that came along after 
 wards on him. He s a mark for any woman." 
 
 Bob was speaking again. "Old grouch!" he said, 
 
 263 
 
264 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 thumping his friend s shoulder caressingly. "What 
 made you come here, anyhow, Van Cleve ? Did you 
 just take a notion you d come, or how was it ?" 
 
 "Well, I I came after you really, Bob. The fam 
 ily want you to come home." 
 
 "They know the Record-World fired me; I suppose 
 that s the reason?" said Bob, with a kind of amiable 
 annoyance. 
 
 "Why, yes one reason." 
 
 Bob began to explain cheerfully. "I suppose they 
 had to the management, I mean. I haven t any 
 kick to make about it. They re all pretty square 
 men, and they did the right thing, from their stand 
 point, to let me out. I d I d been drinking. It s 
 hard to keep out of it ; everybody drinks more or less, 
 but most of the men get away with it somehow. They 
 stand it better than I do ; they can hold more without 
 its affecting them. Oh, well, I never did much like 
 the work, anyhow running around, asking an in 
 fernal lot of questions, and prying into other people s 
 business ; it isn t much of a gentleman s job, seems to 
 me. I was about ready to quit when they notified 
 me. I m even on the transaction. I ve got the 
 experience, and that s all there was in it for me ; 
 it ll be invaluable in anything else I go into," he con 
 cluded comfortably, and dismissed the subject. "But 
 I don t see why you thought you had to come down 
 here after me, Van. You didn t need to take all that 
 trouble. Was mother worrying ?" 
 
 "Well, you see they didn t know where you were or 
 what had become of you." 
 
 "Why, I wrote them. I told them all about it. 
 I told them I was going on with the army. And then 
 I wrote again from here, as soon as I found out about 
 the postal arrangements, and told them to address me 
 here." 
 
 "They hadn t got that letter when we left home, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 265 
 
 of course. But they must have since, for I see Lome s 
 written you from Tampa/ 7 said Van Cleve. 
 
 Bob stared at him in stark amazement. "Lorrie? 
 At Tampa ? What s Lorrie doing at Tampa ? They re 
 not all of them there?" 
 
 "No, just Lorrie. She thought you were there, 
 and she wanted to get to you. I brought her. She 
 would come," Van said, rather defensively, as he saw the 
 indignant surprise on the brother s face. Robert 
 was genuinely shocked. The mere mention of Lorrie 
 awoke all the manliness there was in him ; Lorrie was 
 his creed and his conscience. 
 
 "Would come? What were they thinking of- 
 what were you thinking of, to let her come ? That s 
 no place for our Lorrie. Would come ! You talk as 
 if Lorrie were one of these hysterical, tomfool women 
 that have to be given in to, or they ll go crazy. Lome s 
 got sense. What did she want to come after me for?" 
 He stopped ; and a new expression came over his face, 
 a look of self-forgetful sympathy and tenderness that 
 made it beautiful with all the grime and weariness and 
 marks of dissipation. "Oh, I see! It was Phil. 
 Poor Lorrie ! You can t blame her for that. She 
 wanted to be near Phil. Poor Lorrie!" All his 
 features quivered. "Cort s dead. You knew that, 
 Van ? Killed right at the first before he d had a chance 
 to do anything poor Cort ! He was the best fellow. 
 I know you never liked him, but you didn t know him. 
 Cort was a splendid fellow." 
 
 "I m sorry for Lorrie just the same," said Van 
 Cleve. 
 
 "Is she does she know ? How is she ? " 
 
 Van Cleve shook his head gravely. "Don t ask, 
 Bob. It s the saddest thing I ever saw. Yes, she 
 heard it one of the first." He described the Tampa 
 experiences briefly. "The uncertainty was cruelly 
 hard on her. But of course, that s all over now." 
 
266 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Bob said, "Yes, it s all over," and passed the back 
 of his hand across his eyes. After a moment of striving 
 to get his voice under control, he managed to add : 
 "You know I saw it, Van Cleve. I saw him after he 
 was shot." 
 
 "You did!" 
 
 The other nodded, twisting his lips as if in bodily 
 pain at the mere recollection. "Yes. Oh, my God, 
 cruel things happen in war ! Yes, I saw it. I wasn t 
 up in front where he was when the fighting began. I 
 was coming along behind, with another fellow 
 another newspaper-man, I mean. I don t know who 
 he was. I suppose we must have been a couple of 
 hundred yards behind the nearest soldiers. They 
 marched in two lots two divisions, you know, 
 some of them straight up this ravine (you come to the 
 Santiago road that way directly) and Wood s men, 
 the Rough Riders (only they didn t have any horses) 
 went up that steep place, past the blockhouse that 
 one over there to your left you re looking the wrong 
 direction. I followed them. It was terribly hot. 
 Sometimes when we got to one of those little narrow 
 places, all walled in with trees and vines grown up 
 solid on both sides, it was like being at the bottom of 
 some kind of red-hot well. It made your head swim. 
 Some of the men fainted. When there began to be 
 firing in front, the men got an order to move faster. 
 You never would have called it a charge ; it wasn t any 
 thing like the things you read about in books. They 
 - they just walked along a little faster. When we 
 caught up with them I saw one man near me get his 
 sleeve hooked on a thorn, and he stopped to pull it 
 away, and scratched his finger and said Damn! and 
 stuck it in his mouth ! All the time the firing was 
 going on in front." 
 
 "They said Cortwright and those other men were 
 killed at the first fire," Van Cleve interrupted him. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 267 
 
 "Yes, I know. I worked off to the side somehow. 
 You couldn t see a thing, you know. The bushes 
 were full of men spread out trying to get through. I 
 don t believe any of them knew where they were any 
 more than I did, after a little while. They just kept 
 going towards where you could hear the guns. The 
 whole thing only lasted an hour, about. Cort didn t 
 die right off ; some of them were shot dead where they 
 stood, but he wasn t. They lifted him out of the way 
 over into some of the bushes. It was just the way you 
 sometimes see a dead cat in an alley at home, stuck 
 over in the gutter till the street-cleaners come and 
 get it. They couldn t help it ; they couldn t stop to 
 see about dying men; they just had to get him out 
 of the road and keep on. Cruel things happen in 
 
 war." 
 
 Bob paused, his face working. He began again : 
 "I didn t know about Cortwright until I walked 
 on to him almost. You don t know anything that s 
 happening anywhere in a battle except right where 
 you are. I almost walked on to him." Bob stopped 
 again; he swallowed, and wiped the sweat from his 
 face. "He was lying there breathing with a with 
 a thick sound, and his eyes half-closed showing the 
 whites, and his face all gray. He used to be so good- 
 looking and and rather vain of his looks, too, you 
 recollect, Van ; any man would have been. And he 
 looked so you didn t w^ant to touch him. That s 
 horrible, but it s so. I got over that, though, and went 
 and raised him up. I don t know whether he knew me 
 or not, but he looked at me. I said, It s me; it s 
 Bob Gilbert, Corty, don t you know me? but he just 
 said in a whisper, I m thirsty. And then I gave him 
 a drink out of a canteen I had, and he s-said, Th- 
 thank you!" Bob broke down and sobbed openly. 
 "He was dying, Van ; he was dying, and he said Thank 
 you ! 
 
268 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Poor fellow !" said Van, touched. " Was that all ?" 
 
 "Yes. He died. He never said another word. I 
 wish he had. If he d said Lome s name, I d like to 
 have told her. But he never spoke again." 
 
 There was a silence while Bob wiped his eyes on the 
 sleeve of his soiled shirt, and Van Cleve stared ab 
 stractedly at the glaring beach and sea. "Well, a 
 man can die but once," said the latter at last; "I 
 suppose getting shot s as good a way as there is, when 
 all s said and done. It s quick, anyhow. I don t 
 believe he could have suffered much." 
 
 "You you couldn t let me have a drink of the 
 whiskey now, could you, Van? I m pretty well used 
 up," said Bob, pitifully. 
 
 "Whiskey wouldn t do you any good," said Van 
 Cleve, unmoved. They had found a temporary rest 
 ing-place in the lee of what looked like a heap of lumber 
 and scrap-iron, but was in reality a collection of wagons, 
 " knocked down" in sections and roughly bundled to 
 gether for transportation. And now a military-looking 
 person came and ordered them away from it with few 
 words and strong. Nevertheless, Van Cleve had the 
 courage to inquire of him where food might be got. 
 Robert had no money left, it appeared ; he had nothing 
 at all except the clothes on his back, and as he patheti 
 cally stated, some few of poor Cort s things, his watch 
 and a little bundle of letters which Bob had taken off 
 the body to give to Lorrie. "They buried him there 
 close to where he was killed, like all the rest," he sighed. 
 Van got out his wallet and gave him five dollars. 
 
 "Now look here, you d better not stir around in this 
 sun any more than you can help," he said with his 
 practical kindness; "you stay near this place, while I 
 go and see about the stuff to eat. In case anybody 
 comes along with crackers or bananas, you might buy 
 something without waiting for me, only you ought to 
 be pretty careful, I think," and went off. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 269 
 
 Alas, when he returned in half an hour or so with 
 his supplies, Robert was nowhere in sight ; and Van 
 Cleve with gloomy forebodings which should have 
 visited him earlier, after another half-hour of worried 
 search, found the other as he had expected, in com 
 pany with a villainous-eyed Cuban, quite drunk and 
 happy in a nook of sand and scrub-palms, passing a 
 newly acquired bottle back and forth. Bob had 
 forgot all about "poor Cort," all about Lorrie, all 
 about his own late reverses and adventures in this 
 stimulating companionship ; he hailed Van Cleve 
 jovially. The Cuban, however, who was not in the 
 least drunk, looked upon the arrival of this body 
 guard with a very darkling countenance; and as 
 Van attempted to get Bob away, intervened with what 
 sounded like evil words in Spanish, and what certainly 
 was an evil expression. 
 
 "Get out of the way, you !" says Van Cleve, pushing 
 Bob (who, as always, was perfectly amiable and obe 
 dient) along in front of him. "Come on, Bob. Yes, 
 I know it s all right, old fellow, but you want to 
 come with me, you know, now. Get out, you ! Huh, 
 you would, would you? Well, I guess not! Not 
 this time, anyway !" 
 
 The Cuban picked himself up, and fled with a yowl 
 of malediction. 
 
 " S right, knock him (hie) down, Van!" said Bob, 
 gravely wagging his head in approval; " Cubans - 
 he flapped his hand "Cubans no good. Only ought 
 be careful, Van. Ought t have gun." 
 
 Van Cleve clapped his hip-pocket. "Good Lord, I 
 forgot all about it !" he ejaculated. 
 
 The next problem was to see Bob safely bestowed 
 somewhere, out of reach, if possible, of any more sym 
 pathetic natives or brother- Americans ; and in this 
 extremity Van bethought him of the Milton D. Bowers. 
 There she lay, two or three hundred yards out, peace- 
 
270 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ful and secure; and Captain Bowers made only one 
 comment when the boat came alongside and they 
 helped Robert aboard. " Found yer friend, I see. 
 He s got a pretty good load/ he remarked, turned his 
 quid reflectively, spat into the water, and inquired : 
 "He s the one you were figurin on takin back to the 
 States, I presume likely?" 
 
 "Yes," said Van Cleve. 
 
 "On the Milton D.f" the captain asked, stroking 
 his chin-beard. 
 
 "That s what I intend to do," said Van. 
 
 It is a pity that no reliable witness was at hand to 
 report the battle of giants that ensued. Captain 
 Bowers was a Connecticut Yankee ; Van Cleve was his 
 grandfather s grandson ; it must have been a hot en 
 gagement. Van has never, naturally, been at all com 
 municative about the episode, but one may conjecture 
 it to have ended in a draw. "Oh, yes, he stuck me. 
 But he didn t stick me as much as he expected," Mr. 
 Kendrick has been heard to acknowledge. The Gil 
 berts, I think, know nothing about the transaction to 
 this day. 
 
 After all these events, and when he had left Bob 
 stertorously sleeping in the cabin, Van Cleve, who had 
 vaguely looked for the sun to be setting, found to his 
 astonishment that it was barely noon ! There had 
 been no chance to say a word about the real cause of 
 his visit ; it would have been worse than useless to 
 attempt the subject in Bob s present condition. And, 
 having by this time reached a more philosophical mood 
 about it, Van decided that the miserable affair might 
 wait till the next day, without harm. By to-morrow 
 Bob would be at any rate sober, and fit to listen. 
 "His nerves can t suffer by it," thought Van, grimly; 
 "they re all gone to pieces anyhow. He hasn t any 
 constitution left. He ll probably have to go to Colorado 
 or Arizona or somewhere to keep alive. I don t know 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 271 
 
 how the family will manage. Some people certainly 
 do have a hard time." For his own part, he felt a 
 sense of release, now that his errand was all but done. 
 He wrote another note to Lorrie, briefly reciting that 
 he had found her brother and was bringing him home ; 
 that Bob was in " fairly good shape, though looking 
 rather tough, like everybody else down here." He 
 hoped she was all right, and she must not worry, 
 that everything was going along as smoothly as they 
 could possibly expect ; and as near as he could calculate 
 just now, they would arrive at Tampa by Saturday or 
 Monday at farthest; it couldn t take more than a 
 week. 
 
 He went ashore again to post this; and wandering 
 about fell in with and followed for some distance a 
 string of pack mules taking supplies to the front ; 
 much of the road, it seemed, was almost impassable for 
 wagons, although our engineers had widened and built 
 it up in many places. It was nearly all as Bob had 
 described it, sunken between solid walls of greenery, 
 suffocatingly hot, and, until they began to climb the 
 higher ground, steaming with noisome odors. He 
 walked along by one of the drivers, who, seeing that 
 he was feeling the heat, offered him a drink out of his 
 canteen, which Van accepted gratefully; he had not 
 thought to provide himself with water. They got into 
 talk. The teamster had been picked up by the army 
 at Mobile, being a graduate of one of the old, 
 well-established academies of mule-driving to be found 
 along the levees at Memphis and New Orleans, or in 
 deed almost anywhere throughout the southern States ; 
 he said that he liked it " first rate," and reckoned he d 
 stick with the job as long as Colonel Humphries had 
 any use for him. He was, in fact, quite open and 
 sincere in a conviction that his department was the 
 most valuable and indispensable in the entire army, of 
 which he considered himself and his mules as much a 
 
272 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 part as any regiment, brigade, or division ; and confided 
 to Van Cleve that old Pete, his mainstay, that there 
 big gray mule with that there scar on the flank, had 
 been a little off his feed here lately ; he was afraid the 
 climate was "getting to him" ; the trip in the transport 
 hadn t done none of the mules no good. "If Pete er 
 me was to be laid up with th sun er fever er any thin , 
 I dunno what they d do be doggoned if I know 
 what they d do !" he said seriously. It appeared there 
 were none too many of either mules or packers. Van 
 Cleve, if he was a little amused, rather liked him for 
 this honest and simple point of view. "That s the 
 way men ought to feel that are trying to do a big 
 thing together; every one as if his particular part of 
 the job was the biggest of all," he thought. 
 
 His new acquaintance, in a week of traversing the 
 Daiquiri and Siboney roads, backwards and forwards, 
 had learned the country-side by heart, and knew the 
 location of every body of troops as well as the 
 commanding general himself. "Here s whar they had 
 the first scrimmage. You-all heerd about that, I 
 reckon," he said as they reached the summit of one of 
 the ridges; and, halting to breathe the mules, he 
 pointed out to Van Cleve the entrance of the mesa 
 trail where Wood s men had joined the others, and a 
 shallow depression on one hand carpeted with cartridge 
 shells in ominous profusion. "They must a had it 
 hot n heavy right thar," he opined. But, for that 
 matter, the jungle floor and pathways were now every 
 where littered with grim reminders of the fight, rot 
 ting rags of bandages, bits of clothing, and wrecked 
 stretchers. Van picked up one of the shells and put it 
 in his pocket. 
 
 "They buried some man yonder, I see," he said, 
 nodding toward a long mound near by. 
 
 "Buried a dozen er more of em all in th one hole," 
 said the teamster. "They didn t have time to mark 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 273 
 
 their names down, mebbe they didn t even know 
 
 Van Cleve went and looked down at the mound 
 whereon some of the dead men s fellows had raked 
 together a few stones in the shape of a cross. The 
 sight of the poor tribute moved the young man strongly ; 
 he took off his hat as he stood. Already the rank 
 jungle was creeping upon the grave, effacing it. Van 
 Cleve wondered if Cortwright lay there. Cruel things 
 happen in war. 
 
 Some way farther on they came to another crest, 
 and suddenly for the first time the road and surround 
 ing country opened in front of them ; across the im 
 mediate valley was what looked like a mammoth green 
 field, hills, a little shining patch of water, roads thread 
 ing this way and that. Tents could be seen, and 
 clusters of black dots, some of which moved apparently 
 an inch or so while Van watched them ; but mostly it 
 was very still. It was not merely that there were no 
 martial sights and sounds such as Van Cleve found he 
 had been half expecting, there was nothing ; the peace 
 of harvest time at home was not more quiet and urbane. 
 He could have believed the landscape motionless in an 
 enchantment. 
 
 "That s the city over thar, cap. Santiago, y know," 
 said the driver, pointing with his whip to some faintly 
 visible buildings, pink and dust colored, on the farther 
 rim of the valley, as it seemed; "hey? Why, about 
 seven or eight mile, I judge. This side, kinder frontin 
 to you, is San Juan Hill, whar they fit the other day." 
 
 "Do you mean that little bare spot over there? 
 Is that a hill ? I thought San Juan was a high place," 
 said Van Cleve, in surprise. 
 
 "It were high enough," said the teamster, with a 
 tinge of offence; but he relented directly, seeing that 
 Van had had no idea of belittling the army s achieve 
 ment; and showed him where to look for the earth- 
 
274 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 works and blockhouses, and in what direction lay 
 Caney, where there had been the bitter struggle last 
 Friday. He could name some of the groups of tents 
 and black dots. "Gin ral Wheeler s division is right 
 square acrost from us less n they ve moved since 
 yestiddy morning. A division is jest one lot o men, 
 you know," he explained carefully; " tain t all the 
 army. Thar s a whole passel more with Gin ral Kent 
 round here kinder quarterin to yer left, and some way 
 over on the other side. You can t see one or t other 
 of em from here. But headquarters is down this side 
 tol ble near whar we air now ; if you step this way a 
 little, you kin see th flag." 
 
 "It s about ninety per cent safer than where General 
 Wheeler is, I should say," commented Van Cleve, 
 having, after repeated directions, at last located the 
 spot, a great deal closer than he had supposed. "Is 
 the commanding general always that handy to the 
 rear?" 
 
 "Well, he s got ter kinder stay put, ye know. He s 
 got to be alluz in th 7 one place so s they ll know whar 
 to find him. And up in front, ye just nachelly can t 
 stay in one place," the muleteer suggested, making 
 ready to move on. "You Pete, you dig right out, 
 now, you ol - - !" he addressed his convoy with much 
 affectionate profanity. As it had taken them upwards 
 of three hours to reach this point, Van thought that he 
 himself had better return before night caught him on 
 the road ; and two wagonloads of sick and wounded on 
 their way to the hospital at Siboney coming along just 
 then, he joined them. He was keenly curious, and 
 indeed promised himself to view the battle-field nearer, 
 but did not have another chance. It was Van s fate 
 to see the war throughout from its reverse side, to miss 
 all its hideous splendors, to encounter none of its 
 heroes. In a romance of any pretensions, Mr. Kendrick 
 would by this time have been hand-in-glove with all 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 275 
 
 the celebrities on the field, and would, for his own 
 part, have contributed dazzlingly to our successes. 
 But as a matter of fact, during the whole of his desul 
 tory adventures, and among the numerous companions 
 whom he picked up at random for a day or an hour, 
 Van Cleve never spoke to anybody above the rank of a 
 private, and saw and did nothing sensational. 
 
 When he came aboard, the cook reported that his 
 friend had been a mite restive, although he was asleep 
 again now. "Wouldn t wonder if he was jest about 
 on the edge of seein em pink rats and such/ he 
 remarked, not without some pleasant excitement. And 
 he kindly volunteered to sit up in case Van wanted 
 help through the night. "I ve had experience," he 
 said, which indeed was highly likely. But fortunately 
 these extreme measures were not necessary. Van 
 Cleve went sound asleep, rolled up in his blanket on 
 the deck. And when he waked up in the morning, 
 with a start and the sensation of something unfinished 
 and impending, which had got to be habitual with him 
 these last three weeks, Bob himself was the first per 
 son he saw. 
 
 The poor fellow was completely sobered by now, and 
 had got up and bathed and straightened his hair and 
 clothing as best he might ; and sat by Van Cleve, evi 
 dently watching and waiting for him to wake, with a 
 grave and patient air. He smiled eagerly as their 
 eyes met ; Van Cleve put out his hand, and the other 
 slid his own cold and shaking one into it with a con 
 fiding gesture like a child. "Top o the morning, sir !" 
 he said, and coughed. He had to take away his hand 
 and clasp it against his chest in a fit of coughing. 
 
 Van Cleve did not speak for a moment. He was 
 thinking, inconsequently enough, that in all their in 
 timacy he could not remember ever to have heard Bob 
 tell a foul story ; even at his worst and lowest, even 
 drunk and lying in the gutter, there had always been a 
 
276 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 kind of decency about Bob. It must be mental, see 
 ing that it could be neither moral nor physical ; but 
 could a man s mind be clean, when soul and body were 
 so debased? While he was considering this paradox, 
 Bob began to speak again. 
 
 11 Just as soon as you re up and have had your break 
 fast, Van, there s something I d like to talk to you 
 about," he said, with an earnestness that sat strangely 
 on him who was by nature so irresponsible; "I ve 
 read those letters from Lorrie and Father I can t 
 make em out they re so solemn and mysterious, 
 begging me to do my duty, and come home with you, 
 and all that, just as if they expected I d make a row 
 about it. What would I be doing that for? I d just 
 as soon go home as not. I ve seen all I want to. 
 Lome s letter is all wild and hysterical anyhow poor 
 girl ! She s about heart broken." The ready tears 
 came into Bob s eyes. "Why, of course I m coming 
 home with you. I d go back on Lome s account any 
 how. She wants to know all about Cort." Bob s 
 face grew grave again. He fingered the letters which 
 were spread open on his knees. "There s something 
 else I ve got to tell you to ask you about, I mean. 
 It s important. But you go ahead and get freshened 
 up first. There s coffee ; shan t I get you some coffee ? " 
 
 Van Cleve thought reluctantly : "It s come! He s 
 going to own up the whole thing to me !" Aloud he 
 said, "No, never mind the coffee, Bob, let s have it 
 out now. Might as well tell me and get it done and 
 over with." 
 
 The other hung his head, fumbling with the letters. 
 "It it s not so easy, Van," he said huskily; "if it 
 were just about myself, I wouldn t mind, but it s some 
 body else another person, you know - 
 
 Van Cleve thought it the part of wisdom, perhaps 
 the best kindness, not to help him out with any hint 
 of understanding ; an honest confession is good for the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 277 
 
 soul. He waited ; and, at last, seeing that Bob seemed 
 unable to get a step farther, said casually; "Is that 
 Lome s letter you ve got there ? I ve written already 
 to tell her we are starting home." 
 
 "No, no, these are Cort s. The ones I was going 
 to take to Lorrie, you know. This was my first chance 
 to look them over," Bob said ; and noting surprise on 
 his friend s face, he added quickly and defensively : 
 "why, I had to read them, you know, Van; I had to 
 find out what weren t worth taking to her, so I could 
 destroy them. We haven t got any room to be carry 
 ing letters around, and I thought there was no use 
 taking her a lot of laundry bills and things like that." 
 
 "All right I understand," said Van, almost amused. 
 
 "I wouldn t read other people s letters unless I had 
 to," said Bob, hotly. 
 
 "To be sure, it s a point of honor," Van Cleve agreed 
 in his driest tone ; and as the other looked at him, 
 puzzled, he said harshly : "go on, Bob, what is it you 
 want to tell me ? Go on, man ! No use shilly-shallying. 
 Everything always gets known first or last anyhow." 
 
 l Why, Van Cleve, you you act as if you talk 
 as if you knew or as if you suspected something 
 already !" Bob stammered, aghast. 
 
 "I know about you and Paula Jameson, if that s 
 what you re trying to tell me," said Van Cleve, out of 
 patience. 
 
 At the sound of that name, an unhealthy flush in 
 vaded the unhealthy pallor of Bob s face ; but he was 
 silent, staring at his friend unseeingly. Van judged 
 him to be stupefied with astonishment at the sudden 
 uncovering of the disgrace. Shame, regret, alarm, a 
 dozen feelings Van thought he could read in the other s 
 changing and confused expression. 
 
 "That s what your father and Lorrie meant by the 
 way they wrote, Bob," he said, poignantly ashamed 
 himself, and hurrying through his explanations ; "that s 
 
278 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 the real reason I m here after you. Lorrie would have 
 come by herself, only I stopped her I made her stay 
 at Tampa. Everything s come out. It was bound to 
 come out from the start. I I don t exactly blame 
 you, Bob I mean I don t think you re utterly lost 
 and abandoned because you and she the girl, you 
 know sort of let go of yourselves it was foolish, 
 but it it - Van Cleve floundered a moment, con 
 fused at the inadequacy of his own words "it s all 
 got to be straightened out, anyhow. They want you 
 to go home and marry her and make it up to her the 
 best you can - "he halted, struck by a sudden doubt 
 that Bob had understood all that he said, or even 
 heard it all. The abruptness of the attack (to call it 
 that) seemed to have a little dazed him. 
 
 " You know all about me and Paula Jameson ? " Bob 
 repeated, as if nothing after that had conveyed any 
 meaning to him. 
 
 "Yes, you and Paula Jameson." Van Cleve went 
 all over what he had already said, with more delibera 
 tion and insistence; as he talked he noticed with 
 anxiety that Bob s features faded gradually to a leaden 
 hue, lips and all. "I ought to be careful. He looks 
 like a corpse !" thought Van, frightened, and broke 
 off. "Are you are you all right, Bob ? You you 
 don t you aren t going to be sick?" he stammered. 
 
 Bob put up his hand to his forehead. "I m all 
 right," he said vaguely. 
 
 "You had to know, and I had to tell you. Nobody 
 can ever dodge anything like that. It ll come out 
 some day in spite of you. You might have known 
 that, Bob," Van Cleve reiterated. 
 
 "I I suppose so." However much Bob had been 
 startled, he did not faint nor go into some kind of fit, 
 as his friend had momentarily feared ; neither, to Van s 
 infinite relief, did he begin a clamorous denial of guilt. 
 Rather he seemed to be painfully adjusting his mind to 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 279 
 
 a comprehensive view of the situation. And at last he 
 said: " Who told you ?" 
 
 Van Cleve told him. He described all the circum 
 stances, as he had seen them, leading up to the un 
 happy disclosure; and how he himself came to bear 
 some part in it. Bob listened to him with an extraor 
 dinary immobility; he did not give the impression of 
 being callous or indifferent ; on the contrary, he ap 
 peared to Van Cleve to be bending his whole energies 
 merely to understanding the story. He interrupted 
 only once when he asked : "Did you see Paula? Did 
 she tell you?" 
 
 Me ! No ! " ej aculated Van Cleve, horrified ; she 
 wouldn t be talking to me about it. I hope to the 
 Lord the poor girl doesn t know I ve got a thing to do 
 with it ! No, as I understood it, she didn t want to 
 blame anybody, but her mother got it out of her some 
 how." 
 
 He went on talking ; and at the end, although Van 
 had pictured as forcibly as he could the attitude of the 
 family, which was surely also the attitude of every 
 right-minded person, Robert said, with the same ques 
 tioning air as before : - 
 
 "They want me to marry her?" 
 
 " Why, good God, Bob, what else ? That s the only 
 way you can square things. You know what the 
 world is. You know how it would treat that girl, 
 even if any decent person would ever speak to you 
 afterwards. You can t let her pay the score all by 
 herself. That s not fair. And, Bob, I know you re 
 fair ; I know you ll always take what s coming to you. 
 I told you before, I don t blame the whole of it on you. 
 There s a lot of rot talked about men deceiving girls, 
 and taking advantage of their innocence, and all that. 
 It s a partnership business, in my opinion six of 
 one, half a dozen of the other. But that doesn t let 
 you off. You you see there s going to be a child, 
 
280 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Bob I suppose you didn t take that in while I was 
 talking just now, but that s what s the main trouble. 
 Of course you couldn t know that." 
 
 " Yes, I knew it. I guessed at it, that is," said Bob, 
 looking down, sorting his letters out and bundling them 
 together again, first in one packet, then in another, 
 with mechanical movements. 
 
 "What? Before you went away?" 
 
 "No, not before I went away." 
 
 "She must have written to him," Van Cleve thought, 
 with a mixture of pity and disgust; and for the first 
 time he looked at the other in pure contempt. Faugh, 
 the sorry creature that Bob was! "Well, then, you 
 see you ve got to come home, Bob," he said. 
 
 "I I wish I could see Lorrie I wish Lorrie was 
 here !" said Bob, weakly. 
 
 Van Cleve got up with an oath. "By ! Bob 
 Gilbert, you make me sick !" he said savagely. "Lor 
 rie! You brought this shameful trouble on yourself, 
 and now you want to go whining to Lorrie and load 
 her up with it. Lorrie! Hasn t she got enough to 
 stand already ? The man she loved is dead, shot down 
 and buried like a dog in this God-forsaken hole, and 
 the best you can do for her is to wish she were here 
 to help you out ! Hasn t she done enough for you, 
 you that she s dragged out of the gutters, and defended, 
 and cared for and prayed over all her life ? If she were 
 here, you know very well she d want you to do the right 
 thing, the decent thing. Oh, Bob, be a man for once ! 
 Don t have us all bolstering you up, and helping you 
 along. Stand on your own feet ; think of somebody 
 besides yourself. You know what s right ; then do it 
 because it s right, not because Lorrie or some of the 
 rest of us tell you to !" 
 
 "I know -- I know ! I m going to ! I know I don t 
 amount to much, but I ll try to do the right thing this 
 time I m trying to, Van Cleve," said Bob, pitifully. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 281 
 
 "I was just thinking about Lorrie. I want to help 
 her, I don t want to put any more on her honestly I 
 do, Van I want to be good to Lorrie. She s the best- 
 sister that ever was, and it s just as you say, she s 
 stood a lot for me. I ought to spare Lorrie. You 
 don t need to talk any more, Van, I m going to do it." 
 
 He spoke pleadingly, but Van Cleve s flare of anger 
 was over, and he was already ashamed of it ; when he 
 looked at the other s stricken face, his heart smote 
 him. "Well, then, you come along home with me, 
 and make it all straight, if you re so anxious to be 
 good to Lorrie," he said gruffly. "Here, Bob, you 
 look kind of fagged, you d better stretch out over here 
 in the shade of the deck house, on my blanket. I ll 
 make a pillow out of the coat." 
 
 Bob submitted ; he gave Van Cleve a glance of 
 affectionate understanding, not without a spark of his 
 old sweet-tempered mischief. "Oh, you old grouch, 
 you!" he said, thumping the other a weak blow on 
 the back, and collapsed in one of his spasms of cough 
 ing. The letters which he was still holding flew out 
 of his hand, scattering about the decks, and Van Cleve 
 gathered them up and brought them to him. He was 
 surprised at the haste and eagerness with which Robert, 
 even in the middle of his coughing, snatched at them and 
 crammed them away in his pockets. "Did you see 
 any of those?" he asked with unwonted sharpness, 
 when he had recovered breath. 
 
 "What? To read, you mean? Why, no. I didn t 
 look. I don t want to know what s in other people s 
 letters any more than you do, you know," Van Cleve 
 said with an effort at lightness. 
 
 This was all or nearly all that passed between the 
 two on the subject of Bob s marriage; that painful 
 chapter was closed, and by tacit agreement neither one 
 of them referred to it again, except once, when they 
 
282 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 were nearing Tampa on their return, and this last chap 
 ter, too, of trials and adventures was all but ended. Van 
 Cleve s conscience, which had never been at ease on 
 one point, prompted him to say, with some diffidence : 
 "See here, Bob, there s one thing I ought to say. I 
 don t want to be unjust to you. But I don t want to be 
 unjust to to this girl either. That poor woman, her 
 mother that poor Mrs. Jameson is is all right, I 
 I know that. But I well, I don t know anything about 
 the daughter. I ve seen her running around the 
 streets late at night with another man, in a carriage, 
 you know his arm around her and all that. I 
 say I don t want to be unjust to her, and the fix she s 
 in now, you can t blame her for wanting to get out of 
 by any kind of hook or crook. But if you ve got any 
 reason to think you re being made a convenience 
 of ?" 
 
 "I said I was going to marry her. So you d better 
 not talk any more, Van Cleve," said Bob. And Van 
 Cleve, glancing into his face, was silenced. 
 
PART III 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 IN WHICH WE RETURN TO OUR MUTTON 
 
 THE next time I saw Van Cleve Kendrick was in the 
 fall of that year, some months after his Cuban vaca 
 tion trip, of which we had all heard during the summer 
 with a mild wonder and curiosity. It seemed a bizarre 
 sort of recreation for him to take. Van was notori 
 ously absorbed in work ; his bank, his Building Asso 
 ciation, his string of plain, respectable clients with their 
 small affairs and savings had hitherto furnished him with 
 all the entertainment he appeared to want, and he had 
 not been known to display the slightest interest in the 
 Cubans, nor, for that matter, in our own picturesque 
 and brave endeavors on their behalf. If anything, he 
 had rather disapproved of the latter. That he should 
 have deliberately chosen to spend his first leisure time 
 in years amongst the discomforts and (for all we knew) 
 the genuine horrors of the war, was a queer develop 
 ment. But the lure of adventure is strange and lays 
 hold of the most unpromising subjects in the most unex 
 pected ways. After all, Van Cleve was a young man, 
 though nobody ever thought of him as young ; he was 
 in reality no older than that poor young Cortwright 
 that Lorrie Gilbert had been engaged to or than her 
 brother Bob, and it had not seemed anything out-of- 
 the-way for them to go. Poor fellows, neither one had 
 got much of a vacation out of it ! 
 
 283 
 
284 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 As for Van Cleve, it had undeniably done him good. 
 At the end of four or five weeks, he was back on our 
 streets again, burned dark as an Indian whom, in 
 deed, with his high cheek bones and flat chin, he not a 
 little resembled lean, wiry, and hard-muscled, evi 
 dently in the best of health. The National Loan and 
 Savings welcomed him with an enthusiasm that aston 
 ished the young fellow, and no doubt secretly pleased 
 him a good deal, although he was far too proud to show 
 it. They all said they had missed him ; Schlactmann - 
 who had fairly made up his mind to resign at last, and 
 would leave for Flagstaff, Arizona, the first of the year 
 - shook his hand and said with some significance that 
 he would take his rest easier now he felt confident the 
 work would be done right in the office ; old Mr. Burg- 
 staller came and complimented Van s appearance, and 
 asked naive questions about Cuba. The old German 
 women beamed on him from outside the brass cage- 
 work, and one of them actually brought in a bag of rich 
 little cookies " Blitz-kuchen, Hilda, she make em for 
 Mr. Kendrick," she said, nodding and smiling; and 
 Van Cleve, who in the last ten years had seen Hilda 
 grow from a flaxen-pigtailed youngster, coming around 
 every Saturday night with the family savings folded 
 in a scrap of newspaper the Volksblatt and pinned 
 inside her blue woollen dress, to a buxom, dashing 
 young woman, chewing gum and wearing the latest 
 fashion in Eton jackets, pumps, and sailor hats, Van 
 Cleve grinned answeringly and took the offering with a 
 sudden warming of his own heart. Perhaps he was not 
 quite so hard as he looked, or as he fancied himself. 
 
 Yet, on the other hand, he was not at all impressed 
 by the attentions of Mr. Gebhardt, although that kind 
 and sentimental patron made almost as much of him on 
 the occasion of this return as if Van Cleve had been his 
 own son. The younger man inwardly and against his 
 own will distrusted that very kindness and that very 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 285 
 
 sentiment ; he really liked his superior, but he would have 
 liked him better without so much petting from him. 
 The president of the bank invited his assistant book 
 keeper out to dinner at his great, cool, rich, beautifully 
 ordered house on Adams Road, overlooking the golf 
 links, with the gables and chimneys of other similarly 
 rich and great homes showing charmingly in the spa 
 cious landscape of lawns and trees roundabout ; Mr. 
 Gebhardt s family of ladies were gone east for the sum 
 mer to their cottage at Watch Hill (to Van s relief), 
 but the gentlemen dined handsomely and formally and 
 had their coffee on the terrace as usual ; and the banker 
 talked with a flattering confidence to his young friend 
 about affairs at the National, and about Van s own 
 affairs, and was so genial, companionable, and unreserved, 
 so unaffectedly pleased with and friendly to Van Cleve, 
 that the latter s conscience rebuked him. 
 
 "It s all right, he means it at least, he means it 
 now every word of it. I needn t think that I m so 
 important, anyhow, that he feels he s got to get on the 
 good side of me!" thought Van, shrewdly ; "it s just 
 Mr. Gebhardt s way. He makes the same fuss over 
 Schlactmann, over nearly everybody. I ve seen him do 
 it so often, I suppose it s cheapened it. But he can t 
 help being expansive and emotional ; he acts as if you 
 were the best friend he s got in the world, because that s 
 the way he really feels for the moment. Probably he s 
 as sincere as most of us. People fool themselves some 
 times. Only I wish he hadn t started in to be so thick 
 and confidential with me ; people always dislike you 
 when they realize they ve been too confidential with 
 you - from which it will be seen that Mr. Kendrick 
 had no idea of presuming on his employer s indiscretions. 
 No, Van Cleve appeared in the offices of the bank ex 
 actly as before, a steady and efficient young man with a 
 tolerably sane and just estimate of his own value. That 
 may have been one of the reasons that Mr. Gebhardt 
 
286 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 never appeared to regret as the other had feared 
 his frankness with his subordinate ; he was constantly 
 and profusely kind after the same manner. He was 
 forever inviting Van to dinner nowadays ; he had him 
 playing billiards at his own expensive club ; he even 
 urged the young man to give up his boarding-house and 
 come out to Adams Road for the rest of the heated 
 term there was the whole big, comfortable place 
 the garden full of fruit and vegetables going to waste 
 such quantities of milk and cream and fresh eggs that 
 Mr. Gebhardt had caught one of the men selling these 
 goods in a poorer suburban settlement near by there 
 were the servants and horses with practically nothing 
 to do, and so on, and so on. Van declined, however 
 -"It s a good way out on the Hill, you know, and 
 supposing I got stalled on the cars some morning coming 
 down town - "he suggested clumsily ; and Gebhardt, 
 with some good-natured remonstrances, abandoned his 
 persuasions. The banker had not reached his present 
 age and position in the world without some study of his 
 fellow-man ; and whether he was surprised, or offended, 
 or merely amused at Van Cleve s stiff-necked refusal to 
 be made a favorite of, he did not allow it to show. 
 
 As I was saying, it was some time late in the fall 
 when I myself first met Mr. Kendrick ; and then one 
 Sunday afternoon, I encountered him, of all places in the 
 world, at the Art Museum in Paradise Park, a place to 
 which, as is usual with all public monuments, wherever 
 they may be, no native ever goes unless with some visit 
 ing stranger. It would have been impossible to imag 
 ine Van Cleve diverting himself there, at any rate; 
 and, in point of fact, he was not. He looked mortally 
 bored, standing about with folded arms, and a cata 
 logue of the Society of Western Artists whose pic 
 tures were on exhibition at the time crumpled in 
 one hand. There was a crowd ; but Van, being a tall 
 man and occupied in gazing around anywhere but at 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 287 
 
 the pictures, caught sight of me very soon, and nodded 
 with his habitual short civility which so often antago 
 nized people. Nevertheless, I went up and spoke to 
 him, taking care not to refer to Cuba, by the way ; he 
 must have wearied of that topic by now. I asked him 
 if Miss Lucas had a painting there, not being able to 
 account for his presence otherwise. 
 
 He said she had; he had just found it; she had 
 wanted him to go and see it. It was the landscape or 
 sea-view over there, No. 270 let s see, what did she 
 call it ? He unrumpled his catalogue, and, consulting 
 it, announced that the title was "The Beach: Pass 
 Christian, Mississippi." " They re down there, you 
 know," he told me casually. 
 
 Number 270 was hung on the line, if you please; 
 and we went and looked at it with great respect. "I 
 suppose it must be pretty good, or she couldn t have 
 got it in. I don t know much about pictures myself," 
 said Van Cleve, impartially. 
 
 "Did you say Mrs. Van Cleve and the family are 
 living there ? I thought - 
 
 "Yes. They were in New York for a while, but they 
 wanted to try the South this winter. Do you happen 
 to have seen Miss Gilbert ? She was coming to-day - 
 again his eyes roved. 
 
 It took some self-command not to smile at that. Of 
 course Van Cleve had come to see his cousin s painting 
 hanging (on the line !) in this honorable company oh, 
 of course ! And, without a doubt, it was pure coinci 
 dence that Miss Gilbert should chance to be visiting 
 the Museum that very day oh, without a doubt ! 
 The fact is, everybody knew about Van Cleve Kendrick 
 and Lorrie Gilbert. Everybody had been saying for 
 months past ever since that tragic event in the 
 beginning of the Cuban campaign, indeed that it 
 seemed rather dreadful to look at it that way, but Lorrie 
 had in all probability made a very lucky escape from 
 
288 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 that marriage. There had always been more or less 
 talk about Cortwright, not all of it true, of course, but 
 still . He was just the sort of handsome, dashing, 
 dissipated young fellow that seems to have a disastrous 
 attraction for nice girls the nicer they are, the more 
 likely to throw themselves away on Cortwrights. 
 There might have been something in him one couldn t 
 tell he had died in a fine way. But had he lived, it 
 was a question how the match would have turned out. 
 At all events, as long as the poor fellow was gone, why, 
 it might be a heartless thing to say, but we hoped Lorrie 
 would get over it and give Van Kendrick a chance. 
 
 She came into the picture-gallery it was the room 
 where the big canvas of " John Huss and his Followers " 
 hangs at that moment, with her father and another 
 gentleman about his age ; a striking, conspicuous per 
 son, very high and wide, and by his gait or looks some 
 how reminding one a little of Daniel Webster and a little 
 of Buffalo Bill ; and he had a slouch hat, and buckskin 
 gauntlet-gloves, and a large, red, purple, handsome, 
 coarse old face. He was so incongruous a figure to be 
 associated with the stooping old professor with his neat, 
 gray side-whiskers and his antique silk hat, peering near 
 sightedly at the pictures and, to tell the truth, leaning 
 pretty heavily on the cane which the doorkeeper, out 
 of a good-hearted consideration for his years, had al 
 lowed him to retain I say the swaggering elderly 
 d Artagnan was so much of a fish out of water that at 
 the first glance I supposed he had simply happened to 
 enter at the same time, with the rest of the crowd. 
 But now he was speaking to Lorrie ; and when we 
 reached them, Professor Gilbert had got him camped 
 before "John Huss," and was delivering a little lecture 
 on the life and teachings of that eminent theologian 
 " Archbishop Sbinko in 1410 denounced Huss to the 
 Pope Alexander V, if I remember correctly as a 
 Wickliffite "we heard. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 289 
 
 "Ah hum a which, did you say, Professor?" 
 asked the other. 
 
 "A Wickliffite a follower of John de Wickliffe, 
 sir. There can be no doubt, I think, that Huss was 
 greatly influenced by his writings. The similarity of 
 his conclusions to the argument set forth by Wickliffe 
 in the Trialogues proves it to my mind," said the Pro 
 fessor, earnestly ; I daresay he thought in all simplicity 
 that the subject was deeply interesting to his guest and 
 that an intimate acquaintance with Wickliffe was part 
 of every ordinarily liberal education. " However, it 
 was not until some four or five years later that Sigis- 
 mund of Bohemia- he went on talking, while the 
 other listened vaguely with one eye upon a mammoth 
 painting at the end of the room exhibiting a baker s 
 dozen of nude nymphs circling about a nude young 
 faun with a flute, in the midst of an Arcadian landscape 
 -some Western artist s idea of "Spring," according 
 to the catalogue. I had time to whisper to Van Cleve 
 and ask him who was the man with the Gilberts, did 
 he know ? 
 
 "Oh, yes; he s a Judge Cortwright from Maysville. 
 Phil Cortwright s father, you know. He s been up here 
 staying with them for two or three days. Lorrie said 
 they were going to bring him here to-day. They ve 
 been taking him around, of course." 
 
 That explained him. And it w T as a little disquieting 
 to reflect that Philip himself might have grown to be 
 just such another as this terrible old lewd-eyed satyr of a 
 parent. When we were introduced, I was aware of a 
 kind of halo of bourbon about him ; he carried his own 
 especial atmosphere, like the Olympians. To be sure, 
 the poor Gilberts were no strangers to that, after their 
 years of sad experience with that good-for-nothing 
 son ; but what did they think of the Judge ? What did 
 Lorrie think of her Philip s father ? The girl spoke to 
 us with her usual brightness ; Lorrie always had a 
 
290 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 spirited way, and she was looking as pretty as ever, if a 
 little thin. The Judge eyed her almost too apprecia 
 tively, I thought ; but indeed he eyed all the women 
 too appreciatively. The whole thing was rather funny 
 and rather pitiable ; that nice, scholarly old gentleman 
 expounding about John Huss, and the other leering 
 around at all the young girls, and at the canvases and 
 classic marbles in which he saw only the nakedness and 
 nothing of the beauty. " That s a very fine painting, 
 the large one, with the er shepherdesses and so on 
 in the pasture, eh?" he interrupted Professor Gilbert, 
 as the latter was innocently perorating ; and he directed 
 Van Cleve s attention to the " Spring/ with a sidelong 
 grin and a swift flicker of one eyelid, which I suppose he 
 thought none of the rest of us saw. Van gave the 
 picture a matter-of-fact survey and grunted. 
 
 "I don t know much about pictures," he repeated; 
 " Evelyn s got one here, Lorrie. I told you, didn t I ?" 
 And once more we all walked over and solemnly viewed 
 Miss Lucas s exhibit, Judge Cortwright struggling with 
 a yawn, and the professor looking dimly ill at ease. 
 
 "Is Judge Cortwright here for any length of time?" 
 I asked him. 
 
 "Well, for as long as we can keep him, of course," 
 said Professor Gilbert, whose Virginia standards of 
 hospitality would never have allowed him to utter the 
 most remote hint of any guest s departure. "He came 
 up from Maysville only last Wednesday. To be frank, 
 madame, I feared he would find it rather dull at our 
 house, he is used to what Mr. Roosevelt has called in 
 his book the strenuous life much more strenuous 
 than ours at any rate. My own activities are confined 
 to daily hammering a little of the humanities into a 
 number of young people, half of whom forget what I 
 have told them the next day and the other half get it 
 all wrong!" said Mr. Gilbert, not without a touch of 
 mild humor. "As I say, I was afraid Judge Cortwright 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 291 
 
 wouldn t find it very interesting, but Van Cleve, who is 
 quite a man of the world, has been kindly helping us out. 
 He has taken the Judge to his club and to places in the 
 evening, you understand." 
 
 I did understand. And it struck me that both the 
 Professor and his daughter were very thankful to resign 
 their visitor to Van Cleve s care and leadership ; Lorrie 
 dropped behind with me, too, as we strolled through 
 the rooms. I asked, with as casual an air as I could 
 command, how Bob was. 
 
 " Why, he s doing very well now, thanks very much 
 improved. It must be wonderful, that climate. The 
 doctors said he couldn t get well here, you know. But 
 Bob says they tell him now that he ll probably be able 
 to come home in the spring." 
 
 "Is it Colorado Springs where he s staying?" 
 
 "No, Boulder." 
 
 I made some banal remark about it s being very 
 hard on a man to have to give up work on account of 
 his health, etc. A piece of hypocrisy, but what would 
 you have? I must say something, for silence itself 
 would have been an awkward comment. The Gilberts 
 knew that we knew why Bob s health had failed ; that 
 he had been drinking it away for years, and that as for 
 work, he had scarcely done a hand s turn in his whole life. 
 They knew ; yet still we kept up our poor, well-meant 
 pretences, as is our habit in this world ; and upon my 
 word, we do many righteous things that are less ad 
 mirable ! 
 
 "Yes, it must be hard," Lorrie said, playing her part 
 of the game pluckily ; "but even if Bob can t ever come 
 back to this climate, he can always get something to do 
 out there, you know. He says he s going to look around 
 as soon as he s well enough." She paused, and then 
 said, rather diffidently, and not looking at me, "You 
 knew about his being married ?" 
 
 "About the wedding? Oh, yes. It made quite c.i 
 
292 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 excitement, you know. We were all very much in 
 terested." 
 
 "Were you surprised?" 
 
 " Well, not so very much. It had been going on for a 
 good while, hadn t it ? I never heard of your brother 
 being attentive to anybody else." I should not have 
 liked to tell her all the comments that had come to 
 my own ears. The least unkind one had been from 
 somebody who said that the affair was like what you 
 sometimes read in obituary notices, " . . . Lingering, 
 but very sudden at the last!" Some one else remarked 
 that it was astonishing that any one could have " nailed 
 Bob Gilbert down for keeps to anything." And there 
 had been considerable wonder expressed that Miss Jame 
 son should have taken so much trouble and displayed 
 so much perseverance to capture him, when half the 
 effort would probably have landed her ten times as good 
 a match. Of course the Gilberts were one of the 
 F. F. V. s, but Paula was as common as she could be, 
 and what good would a First Family of Virginia do her ? 
 
 I said to Lorrie, meaning to show an amiable inter 
 est : "It s getting to be very swagger to be married at 
 your summer home, or at Bar Harbor or The Hot, isn t 
 it ? I noticed that the Jamesons were in the country. 
 Was it a pretty wedding ?" 
 
 "It was very quiet," said Lorrie, looking down and 
 stroking and patting her muff nervously; "they 
 they wanted it to be quiet. There weren t any cards 
 or invitations or anything. They just had the notice 
 put in the paper. They wanted it to be quiet." 
 
 "Well, that was very sensible, considering that Bob 
 wasn t really well," said I, hastily and awkwardly. 
 I felt as if the subject were not a safe one, even though 
 Lorrie herself had opened it. Her manner was strained 
 and unnatural ; and Professor Gilbert stood by, si 
 lently fumbling and pulling at his old worn gloves, in 
 visible discomfort. The family must have disliked 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 293 
 
 Robert s choice of a wife even more than Society-at- 
 large had suspected; it was plainly as much as they 
 could do to put a good face on the matter. And it 
 must be allowed that Society-at-large sympathized with 
 them. "Did they I suppose they went at once to 
 Colorado?" I blundered along. "It s very nice for 
 you to know that he has a wife with him. And it 
 keeps him from being lonesome, too." 
 
 "Yes. No. That is Robert s wife is not with 
 him - " the father began hesitatingly. 
 
 "Not with him just now, of course, Papa means," 
 Lorrie broke in ; and she went on to talk in a hurried, 
 sprightly way, still quite unlike her own, until Van 
 Cleve and the judge, having made the round of the 
 rooms, came up to us. I never found out where Bob s 
 wife was ; upon comparing notes with other mutual 
 acquaintances, it developed that nobody knew where 
 she was, except that she was not with Bob, and not here 
 in town, neither she nor her mother. That must have 
 been a relief to the Gilberts, at any rate. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 IN WHICH MR. KENDRICK PUTS His FOOT DOWN 
 
 CERTAIN kind-hearted persons professed to think it 
 highly reprehensible for the Van Cleves to have packed 
 off to New York or wherever else they chose, leaving 
 behind the worthiest member of the family, homeless, 
 and exposed to the temptations which, as everybody 
 knows, beset the paths of lonesome young men in board 
 ing-houses. However, Van never showed any signs of 
 deterioration under this neglect ; he was an exemplary 
 boarder, quiet and punctual. In his bachelor apart 
 ment there was the oak " bedroom-set" that had always 
 been his when he lived at home, beginning to look shabby 
 now, though still substantial ; there was J. Van Cleve s 
 strong-box stored away on the top shelf of the cupboard ; 
 there was a sectional bookcase that Van had bought him 
 self with some of the first spare money he had ever 
 made ; it took thirty dollars, and sometimes when his 
 eyes fell on it, Van Cleve recalled with amusement the 
 struggle he had had between it and a bicycle, which was 
 the secret desire of his cramped boyish heart. He had 
 made up his mind to the bookcase, he remembered, be 
 cause it would never need repairs, devastating expendi 
 tures for tools, tire-tape, and so forth ; he was afraid 
 that he could not afford the upkeep of a bicycle ! On 
 the mantelpiece there stood a yellowing old photo 
 graph of his grandmother taken years ago when her hair 
 was still black, very alert and handsome in an elegant 
 sacque and open ruffled sleeves and chignon, and holding 
 on her lap a fat lump of a baby in a blur of white 
 
 294 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 295 
 
 embroideries, with no visible expression on its dough- 
 featured face, though Mrs. Van Cleve always declared 
 that it was the brightest and most beautiful child ever 
 seen, to wit : Van Cleve himself at the age of nine months. 
 Young Kendrick, who was fond of his grandmother, 
 had a sort of laughing affection for this thing ; he was 
 at heart rather proud of his good-looking, spirited, well- 
 bred women, even when he felt that they needed a 
 harder hand held over them. Latterly, he had begun 
 to perceive the moral of a story his grandmother had 
 once told him about Joshua s refusal to buy her a 
 carpet a body-brussels carpet for the best bedroom 
 on which she had set her heart. "Your grandfather 
 said up and down he would not let me get it ; he said 
 he wasn t going to spend money for a new carpet when 
 the old one was plenty good enough. And you know 
 it really was, only I was tired of it, and this other was 
 so pretty. But what do you think I did, Van ? I just 
 made up my mind I d have that carpet in spite of 
 him ; and I went to work and saved up the money bit 
 by bit out of my allowance that he gave me to dress 
 myself with. It cost fifty-eight dollars, too ; but it was 
 splendid quality and lasted for years. I always liked 
 that carpet better than any other in the house," Mrs. 
 Joshua concluded pensively, all unconscious, for her 
 part, of the moral. 
 
 Of course we were all used to the Van Cleves, but 
 when people who knew them as well as this writer heard 
 about that Pass Christian move, it was quite impos 
 sible to keep from laughing. Where to next ? The 
 family had tried the South before without conspicuous 
 success, but the New Orleans and Palatka orange-grove 
 episodes appeared now to be entirely forgotten ! All at 
 once New York City and its vicinity became utterly 
 unbearable. The cost of living was exorbitant. They 
 could not afford a servant in New York, and in the coun 
 try no servant would stay. The water and air in the city 
 
296 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 were contaminated by every germ known to medical 
 science ; the outlying towns half a dozen of which 
 they had tried were abhorrent with a population of 
 commuters and suburbanites comparable for noisome- 
 ness to the germs. It was imperatively necessary for 
 them to go to some small, quiet place in a mild climate 
 where life would be simple, and where at the same time 
 they could have congenial society, good society, not un 
 speakable vulgarians of commuters, forever rushing 
 for the trains with their parcels and their babies, with 
 their dreadful neighborhood clubs and gossip ; and not 
 the questionable occupants of New York apartment 
 houses, either, where you never knew who might be 
 living across the hall, and you wouldn t like to be seen 
 going up and down in the elevator with some of them. 
 Ashville, Pensacola, San Antonio, were discussed and 
 dismissed in turn, in favor of Pass Christian on the Gulf. 
 Living, of course, was cheap there ; you didn t have to 
 heat the houses, and your garden was constantly full of 
 fruits and vegetables ; they had, as usual, obtained volu 
 minous statistics from hosts of perfectly reliable per 
 sons. As to society, the large hotels were likewise full 
 all winter of charming people who went down there for 
 rest and recreation, and to whom Evelyn could give 
 painting-lessons. Mrs. Lucas and her daughter covered 
 reams of paper writing out these incontrovertible argu 
 ments ; Van Cleve did not take the trouble to read the 
 fourth of it. He was very busy and had no time to 
 thresh the subject out with them, even if they would 
 have listened to him. What it all boiled down to - 
 as he told himself with a passing irritation was that 
 they had got one of their periodic attacks of restless 
 ness again. 
 
 " Dear Aunt Myra," he wrote, "your letter of the 15th 
 rec d. I can t make the trip to Montclair, New Jersey, 
 merely to talk over your plan as you suggest, because 
 having been away for a month last summer, I don t feel 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 297 
 
 like asking for another leave so soon ; and the changes 
 at the bank have piled the work up considerably. Be 
 sides, it would hardly be worth the time and expense, 
 as I already understand what you want to do, and talk 
 ing wouldn t make it any clearer. I suppose you might 
 as well go to Pass Christian, as you don t seem able to 
 find anything satisfactory where you are. Enclosed 
 find New York draft for the $250. 
 
 "Tell Evie that I am glad to hear people admire her 
 pictures so much, and hope she will sell some of them to 
 good advantage. Love to all, as ever, 
 
 "V. C. KENDRICK." 
 
 So the change was made ; and you may be sure the 
 Van Cleve ladies kept within their appointed sum of 
 money; they all had a clever, bargaining streak, and 
 in their own way were good managers, never wasting, 
 and never owing any tradesman a penny. What with 
 taste and ingenuity and their peculiar distinction of 
 appearance, which they contrived to impart to all their 
 surroundings, they made a better showing than many 
 who had ten times the income. Mr. Gebhardt, who took 
 his family down to the Mardi-Gras and to some of the 
 Gulf resorts that winter, and some others of our people 
 who were there and saw the Van Cleves, came back with 
 enthusiastic accounts of their charming little bungalow, 
 furnished so artistically with things they had picked up 
 and with Evelyn s pictures. They themselves wrote 
 glowingly to Van Cleve about the balmy weather in 
 January, the unfailing sea-breeze, the drives, the boat 
 ing and bathing, the delightful society. Of course, there 
 was a great deal of money and display at the big hotels, 
 and the little ones were generally crowded with 
 excursionists, land-boomers conventions, hunting and 
 fishing men, and United Order of Owls on an outing. 
 But the cottagers were lovely, and even the hotels served 
 a purpose. Evelyn held an exhibition at the Sea- View 
 
298 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 House, which was jammed, and everybody went per 
 fectly wild over the pictures. It cost a good deal, as 
 they charged a mountainous rent for the room (the hotel 
 keepers were all robbers), and then there was the cost of 
 printing the catalogues, which had a cover that the artist 
 designed and lettered herself, the quaintest, brightest 
 thing, everybody simply grabbed one for a souvenir. 
 She was positively overwhelmed with compliments, and 
 it was rather funny, so many people, after seeing the 
 catalogues, wanted her to design place-cards and favors 
 for them. She had to tell them of course she did it 
 tactfully so as not to offend anybody that she never 
 did anything like that, but there were plenty of shops 
 where those little things could be got, or even done to 
 order by hack-workers. The idea ! Evelyn with her 
 talents and artistic education and the name she had 
 made for herself ! They wouldn t have dreamed of 
 asking Parrish or Gibson to do it. But the general 
 public isn t very appreciative of real art ; they only 
 notice whatever is tremendously advertised. 
 
 Miss Lucas sold one picture, " Moonlight on the 
 Bayou." Julius Gebhardt, Esq., bought it, and I re 
 member to have seen it hanging in the Gebhardt draw 
 ing-room a pretty scene of live-oaks, Spanish moss, 
 night-shadows, a mystic trail of light in the flat pools, 
 and so forth. "He was so dear about it, so much in 
 terested, and I believe would have given me any price 
 I asked/ Evelyn wrote to Van Cleve afterwards. " We 
 all love Mr. Gebhardt. I can t say as much for the rest 
 of them. Natalie is a cat, and the others just big, 
 plain, slow creatures, dressed like servant-girls out for 
 Sunday. But Mr. Gebhardt is a splendid character, 
 so strong and trustworthy, and with it all has so much 
 fun in him. You ought to have seen the merry little 
 twinkle in his eye when he said to me : Why, you can 
 hear the frogs croak in that swamp ! And he said 
 beautiful things about you, Van. Grandma was so 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 299 
 
 touched she cried. He said that you had the most 
 wonderful brain for finance he had ever come across. 
 He as good as told us he meant to advance you to the 
 very highest position in the bank. If he ever needs 
 money for any purpose, I hope he will not hesitate to 
 come to me. I would do anything I could to help him. 7 
 Those were his exact words, so you see I haven t ex 
 aggerated. . . . The water here is as hard as nails, 
 it makes your skin feel like a nutmeg-grater, really a 
 dreadful drawback to this ideal spot. . . ." 
 
 Van Cleve read the whole of this letter, as it happened, 
 in an off hour ; and laid it down with a curious look on 
 his face, as he thoughtfully rubbed one hand up the 
 back of his head. "I give em six months," he mentally 
 remarked, and he read again all that rhapsody about. 
 Mr. Gebhardt with a renewal of his queer expression. 
 The fact was, his promotion had already come ; already 
 he was occupying Schlactmann s ancient post, and 
 within a year, after the election when, Mr. Gebhardt 
 had privately informed him, they meant if possible 
 to persuade old Mr. O Rourke to retire from the board 
 of directors, Van Cleve was to have that seat too. 
 
 " Between you and me, O Rourke is entirely too old," 
 Van s chief said confidentially; "he s not competent 
 to manage any kind of business any more. But the 
 poor old fellow clings to his position here so, that you 
 can t help feeling it s brutal to turn him out. He won t 
 resign, and so far he s been perfectly impervious to 
 hints," said the kind-hearted gentleman, with a rueful 
 smile ; "so I suppose it s up to us to drop him, as gently 
 as we can. We have a rule here, as you know, that each 
 one of the directors shall own at least twenty-five shares. 
 But if that over-sizes you a little, why, I expect it can 
 be arranged. Any of us would be willing to carry you, 
 I myself, for that matter - Nobody, in short, could 
 have been kinder, or declared in warmer terms his belief 
 in his young friend s uprightness and business ability 
 
300 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 than the President of the National Loan ; and one might 
 have looked for Van to show some gratification at this 
 recognition, even to have been decorously elated over 
 his prospects. On the contrary, Mr. Kendrick went 
 about his work with the same dour energy as before, 
 no more gay nor agreeable than he had ever been. 
 The duties of his new position must have weighed 
 heavily on him, or else his private cares, for he was very 
 thoughtful and absorbed those days. 
 
 No small amount of water has gone under the bridges 
 since then, and Van Cleve has changed a good deal ; by 
 my count, he must be nearly forty years of age at the pres 
 ent date of nineteen hundred and twelve ; but he has 
 looked forty ever since he was twenty-five, so that now, 
 for an oddity, he seems younger rather than older ! 
 And it was with a start that I heard him the other day 
 allude to the time when he was "a young fellow at the 
 National Loan and Savings Bank"; that organization 
 has been dead and buried so long, as we measure now 
 adays. Yet, as I say, Van has changed a good deal ; 
 he is much more genial and companionable than he used 
 to be ; he takes life easier, possibly because it is easier 
 than when he was a hard, silent, care-laden boy, driving 
 himself to the limit. Once in a while, he will even cast 
 back to that time, not with any soft feeling of pity or 
 sympathy for that earlier self, but in a mood of tolerance, 
 wonder, and perhaps a little complacence. "I had 
 one of those chances that come to a man once in a life 
 time, and I knew it too, but I didn t have the courage 
 to take advantage of it," he said to me on this same 
 occasion, with a trace of the humorous pride he might 
 have taken in the exploits of a son. And he told me 
 about it. Van Cleve has never learned the art of 
 polite small-talk ; he will not change in that respect if 
 he lives to be a hundred, arid this anecdote represents 
 his notion of conversation with a lady. "It was back 
 in ninety-six," he said. "You remember the Demo- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 301 
 
 cratic National Convention that year ? Remember the 
 1 crown of thorns and cross of gold ?" And, glancing 
 at me and seeing that I had assumed the terrier-like 
 attitude of intelligent listening which is cultivated by 
 women for such emergencies, he went on: "Yes, but 
 what you probably don t remember or may not have 
 known at the time is that the stock market was very 
 uneasy just then. Standard Oil went back from three 
 hundred and something to less than two hundred. I 
 think it was down to a hundred and seventy at one time. 
 I was a young fellow at the bank then ; I had been there 
 four or five years, and I had four hundred dollars saved 
 up ; and ordinarily I d have thought of buying on the 
 stock market about as soon as I d have thought of buy 
 ing the Mammoth Cave for a speculation. But after I 
 read that Chicago speech, I said to myself : This 
 fellow is either another Abraham Lincoln, or or 
 he isn t. Now he s going to make a speech in New 
 York, and we ll find out. Well, he went to New York 
 and he made the speech, do you remember ? At Madi 
 son Square Garden, I believe ; and I went out and got 
 a copy of the paper the minute it was out, and read it." 
 
 "Well?" said I, a little at sea, as he paused. I do 
 not know much about politics or the stock market, one 
 or the other, and for the life of me cannot understand 
 the connection there seems to be between them. 
 
 "Well, he wasn t Abraham Lincoln," said Van Cleve, 
 with a slight smile; "I rushed off and telegraphed to 
 a fellow I knew that had gone from here to Dominick 
 & Dominick in New York, to buy me Standard Oil at 
 anything under two hundred. But as quick as I was, 
 I wasn t quick enough. It had jumped already. He 
 telegraphed back: S. 0. 210. Advise immediately. 
 And there - Van Cleve said with a kind of smiling 
 regret, "there is where I got cold feet. I ought to have 
 telegraphed in the first place to buy at the market, 
 but I didn t have the nerve. I gave up. I was just 
 
302 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 a young fellow, you know, and four hundred dollars 
 was all I had in the world, and there were people de 
 pending on me. I had a good hunch, but I didn t have 
 the nerve." He shook his head; and I preserved my 
 look of intelligence, though inwardly unable to see 
 the slightest relation between Standard Oil and Mr. 
 Bryan s New York speech ! 
 
 The story, however, vindicated, in some degree, those 
 alarmists who are eternally bewailing the decadence 
 of the race ; some of us are certainly greatly fallen off 
 from the strength and daring of our ancestors. It 
 would not have been old Joshua Van Cleve, for an 
 example, whose courage would have failed him ; he 
 would never have got "cold feet." By just such 
 masterstrokes, undoubtedly, did Joshua accumulate 
 his fortune. It is true that he was not, at Van Cleve s 
 age, hampered by Van Cleve s responsibilities; but 
 very likely he would not have taken them so seriously. 
 
 Joshua and the brussels-carpet story must have re 
 curred to Van Cleve frequently and forcibly that win 
 ter, as he sat beneath the stare of the baby in the 
 photograph, with the letters from Pass Christian on the 
 table. His family would have been surprised and 
 shocked could they have known what was passing 
 though that wonderful brain for finance. The letters 
 multiplied amazingly as the spring advanced. Van 
 heard in succession that the ceaseless wind, at first 
 so grateful, had begun to get on their nerves ; then that 
 the place had suddenly filled up with flashy people 
 from Pittsburgh, Memphis, and elsewhere, who did 
 nothing but drink highballs and wear diamonds, and 
 amongst whom it would be useless (in fact, impossible !) 
 for Evelyn to look for either pupils or purchasers; 
 then that they had had a terrifying cloud-burst ; then 
 that the price of everything had gone up until it was as 
 bad as in New York ; and for a climax, as summer 
 came on, that the town was all but deserted, the heat 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 303 
 
 and dampness absolutely tropical, the moonlight so 
 intolerably brilliant that nobody could sleep at night, 
 and that there was grave danger to northern people, 
 who were invariably the first victims, from yellow fever, 
 which was liable to break out there at any time ! 
 
 Over this last item, Mr. Kendrick knotted his brows 
 in some slight worry ; he had paid very little heed to the 
 other complaints, even smiling broadly at more than 
 one of the tragic statements. But Van had had ex 
 perience along the southern coasts; he thought of 
 Siboney, the hospital tents and huts, the sick faces, the 
 hot breath of the jungle. " Perhaps for the heated 
 term, you had better come up here. I can get you 
 rooms at The Altamont, I find, and though this town 
 isn t considered much of a summer resort, you will be 
 in a great deal cooler and pleasanter place than southern 
 Mississippi," he wrote them. His intentions were of 
 the best, but alack, as once before in his career, Van 
 was not quick enough ! Already the family had con 
 ceived a plan infinitely more picturesque and attractive ; 
 and with them, as he knew to his cost, to make a plan 
 meant to carry it out. It was with a face of ill omen that 
 he read the enthusiastic letter which crossed his on the 
 way. 
 
 Halifax, Nova Scotia, was the ultimate Paradise ! 
 This was established by another shower of statistics, 
 and sound, unassailable reasoning. They would go 
 to New Orleans, and from there by boat, themselves 
 and their chattels, to New York, where they would 
 trans-ship for Halifax, a way of travel so cheap that it 
 would only take four hundred dollars, and Evelyn 
 would put in her seventy-five from " Moonlight on the 
 Bayou," so that it would not come so hard on Van 
 Cleve, dear, generous boy that he always was ! They 
 would not think of asking him for this now, but it was 
 a matter of life and death. They were all losing 
 strength day by day, and the doctor told them that if 
 
304 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 they waited, their vitality might become so diminished 
 they would not have the energy to move. Immediately 
 after this there came another letter, commenting on 
 his own suggestion with gentle amusement ; it was sweet 
 of him to plan for them, but he was not in a position 
 to know the circumstances and what they needed. 
 Only see how much better Halifax would be ! And 
 they proceeded to point out its superiority on a score 
 of different counts. Perhaps at this juncture Van 
 Cleve again remembered the carpet anecdote; he 
 answered very briefly. 
 
 There ensued upon this a brisk correspondence of 
 which, fortunately, only a few scraps of letters have 
 survived. I say fortunately, because it could not have 
 been agreeable reading, to judge by the samples, nor 
 particularly creditable to any of the writers. Van Cleve 
 told them that he could not, offhand, pick up such a 
 sum as they asked, and in plain words that he would 
 not if he could. That he was willing to believe that 
 Pass Christian was not a pleasant or healthy place 
 during the summer, and so offered them a reasonable 
 change; but that, as to moving them to Nova Scotia 
 or anywhere else again, he had no more money to spend 
 on such whims. And he wound up by intimating in 
 terms that were not wholly unkind that this was his 
 last word ; they could take it or leave it. 
 
 No outsider could describe, no outsider could even 
 comprehend the effect of this bombshell upon the ladies, 
 upon Major Stanton, who was the soul of patience and 
 amiability himself, and had never contradicted anybody 
 in his life. For persons who were, as they honestly 
 believed themselves to be, in an all but dying condition 
 from the dreadful circumstances of existence at Pass 
 Christian, it was astounding with how much vigor the 
 ladies remonstrated, how much ink and time and mental 
 effort they expended. "You poor darling, I know you 
 are afraid you would never get your money back!" 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 305 
 
 Mrs. Lucas wrote; "but of course we mean to repay 
 you, Van Cleve. We know how hard you work for 
 your money, and you are right to think that you have 
 done enough for us. We only ask you to advance this. 
 Evelyn will repay you, we will all pay you, if we have 
 to work our fingers to the bone." 
 
 I daresay Mrs. Lucas, who was a thoroughly good 
 woman, would have been dumbfounded to see the pain 
 and anger on her nephew s face when he read her letter; 
 it was perfectly true that they owed him their living, 
 every comfort and every pleasure for ten years, since 
 the first day Van had gone to work ; then why should 
 he have felt bitterly hurt and even insulted at their 
 offering to pay him, if only a little ? She would not 
 have been able to understand it. She was a good 
 woman, and she would have told you that she loved 
 Van Cleve devotedly and would do anything on earth 
 for him anything ! 
 
 The young man ignored this handsome proposal; 
 he repeated his own. They could come to Cincinnati 
 or not for the summer as they chose. They chose 
 not ; and it would appear that Van Cleve had not un- 
 profitably followed his grandfather s example, for the 
 family, Evelyn, Mrs. Lucas, some one of them, must 
 have been stung into some kind of action. However 
 they raised, or saved, the money, they did move to 
 Halifax, bag and baggage, the beginning of August. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 OWING TO ILLNESS IN THE FAMILY, Miss GILBERT 
 
 REGRETS, ETC. 
 
 IT was a matter of occasional comment that Lorrie 
 showed so little sign of the real trial and suffering she 
 had had to undergo. A heartbreaking thing had hap 
 pened to the poor girl, but she never allowed herself 
 to look heartbroken. Lorrie apparently did not dream 
 of putting on black for her dead lover, or of going about 
 enveloped in a romantic melancholy. On the con 
 trary, she dressed herself as neatly and prettily as ever, 
 and went to church, and made calls with her mother, 
 and when winter came on and the season of receptions 
 and parties opened, was to be found at her station 
 behind the tea-tray or in the receiving line almost as 
 often as formerly. Her character forbade any sort 
 of posturing, morbid dwelling on her woes, or exploiting 
 them before her family and friends. In this as in most 
 of the other acts of her life she was the same bright, 
 sweet, and sensible woman, the same good, conscientious 
 daughter and sister that she had always been ; and in 
 the opinion of one person, a whole hogshead of tears 
 and hours of daily lamentation would not have done 
 her so much honor as the brave efforts she made to 
 forget her trouble, or at least to put it out of sight, for 
 the sake of other people. 
 
 If she spent an hour every night going over Philip s 
 letters, or sitting silently before his photograph, and 
 cried herself to sleep afterwards, no one knew anything 
 about it. She always wore his ring ; it had never been 
 off her finger since he himself put it there and " kissed 
 
 306 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 307 
 
 it on" as he said and Lorrie could see him now bend 
 ing over her hand, caressing it, as he half-knelt beside 
 her at their old sofa ; she could see his stooped head with 
 the thick, smooth, fair hair that she had always wanted 
 to stroke ah me ! It was all over ; it had come and 
 gone like a dream that ended in a nightmare. She 
 thought of the journey south Tampa the crowds 
 hurrahing the lonely days the two nurses with 
 their officious sympathy her mother s distracted 
 letters about Bob she thought of it all, and some 
 times, when she looked in her glass, wondered at the 
 fresh and unmarked youthfulness of the face that looked 
 her back. She had not a gray hair nor a wrinkle, yet 
 she was twenty-nine years old and had put happiness 
 of one kind out of her life forever. She did not 
 often speak of Cortwright, or that dreadful time ; and 
 even her mother never saw Lorrie cry except the day 
 when Van Cleve Kendrick brought her and Robert 
 home, when the girl had clung to her father and sobbed 
 hard for a brief moment ; and one other time when Mrs. 
 Gilbert, with tears in her own eyes, went to her with 
 the little store of towels, napkins, dainty linens marked 
 with a monogram L. G. C. upon which they had both 
 been working a century ago before anything happened. 
 The skeins of white embroidery-cotton were still folded 
 in with them; there was a needle yet sticking in the 
 stitch. "I m going to lock them up in a trunk, Lorrie," 
 Mrs. Gilbert said; "I know you can t bear to look at 
 them." 
 
 "No, no, we oughtn t to do that we oughtn t to 
 waste them. You ought to use them, don t you think ? 
 I don t mind truly I don t," said Lorrie, with a 
 pitiful resolution and cheerfulness. But her mother 
 looked in her face, and both women broke down. Mrs. 
 Gilbert took the things away and locked them up, as she 
 said, in a trunk in the attic ; and there they lie, yellow 
 ing, to this day. 
 
308 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Some time during the summer there arrived a letter 
 from Philip s father, somewhat to the surprise of the 
 Gilbert family, to whom he had never made any mention 
 of the old gentleman, and who had supposed that both 
 his parents were dead. There was nothing mysterious 
 about the elder Cortwright, however, as it quickly 
 appeared ; his son s neglect or forgetfulness, indeed, 
 needed no explanation to the Gilberts, who knew by 
 dreary experience that young men do not always keep 
 in touch with their homes and their people. Mr. 
 Cortwright senior wrote Lorrie a grave and dignified 
 letter, referring to their common loss in adequate terms ; 
 if the Judge s periods were a little too flourishingly 
 rounded, it came not ill, nevertheless, from a man of 
 his birth and age and upbringing; and when he con 
 cluded by inviting himself to make them a visit in the 
 fall, in order, as he said, to become acquainted with 
 his dear boy s choice of a wife a matter in which 
 the Judge did not doubt Philip had been happy and 
 lucky beyond his deserts the Gilberts were ready 
 enough to receive him. When the day came, the Pro 
 fessor hurried through his papers after class to get 
 down to the Southern Railway Depot to meet their 
 guest, without much idea of what he would look like, 
 but eager in hospitality, and willing to take any trouble 
 on Lome s account. Samuel was not a practical man ; 
 and though he was confident of miraculously stumbling 
 upon Judge Cortwright and knowing him at once, he 
 might have been there still, helplessly peering with his 
 near-sighted eyes, and confounded by the size of the 
 crowds, and the insane desire which everybody dis 
 played to get somewhere at top speed, had not the judge 
 cannily picked him out himself. Judge Cortwright 
 was thoroughly practical ; and having been in his day 
 an owner of race-horses, and a poker-player of mighty 
 renown, had probably made some study of his fellow- 
 man. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 309 
 
 Professor Gilbert had just been vaguely speculating 
 about the large, tall, Southern-looking man, who might 
 have been their guest, but for the fact that he was ac 
 companied by a plump, highly colored, giggling young 
 woman in a bright dress and feathers, chains of beads, 
 and dangling, glittering gewgaws I say the Pro 
 fessor had just remarked this pair, and decided against 
 them, when the big man, after a sharp look at him, 
 walked up and spoke. 
 
 "Am I mistaken, or is this Professor Gilbert?" he 
 said in a deep, rich, husky voice ; and as the Professor 
 dazedly put out his hand, Judge Cortwright took and 
 shook it warmly. "If there had been time, I should 
 have written you word not to put yourself out to come 
 and meet me, sir, but when your letter announcing 
 your intention of so doing came, I was upon the point 
 of starting, sir. 
 
 "Not at all not at all I am very glad to. The 
 young lady is your daughter, I suppose? We shall 
 be very happy to have her with us. My wife and 
 daughter will be delighted - stammered Samuel, 
 completely taken aback; and wondering inwardly 
 if they were prepared at home for the extra visitor, as 
 he advanced to greet her. She stared at him, and at the 
 Judge, and burst into a loud laugh, rather disconcerting 
 to the well-meaning gentleman. He stopped short 
 awkwardly. 
 
 "Ahem no, sir oh, no, this is a young lady from 
 my part of the world, who happened to be coming up 
 on the same train with me," said Judge Cortwright, 
 suavely. He did not think it necessary to explain that 
 he had never met the young lady before. "Miss Nettie 
 Frye, sir, who is intending to make a stay in your city." 
 
 Professor Gilbert, feeling dimly disquieted, he did 
 not know why, bowed rather stiffly. Miss Nettle Frye 
 laughed again. "Say, that s one on you, him taking 
 me for your daughter, ain t it?" she said to the Judge 
 
310 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 with charming frankness. Samuel never knew how 
 or when or where they parted from this attractive young 
 person. He offered mildly to take charge of the 
 judge s valise ; there was a good deal of noise and 
 pushing among the crowd ; he had an impression that 
 he saw the judge escorting her to a cab with amiable, 
 although not precisely fatherly, attentions ; and he said 
 to himself that he never had seen any young woman 
 roll her eyes in such an extraordinary way. Certainly 
 none of those in his classes did ! 
 
 The Professor, however, was adding to his experiences 
 at a rapid rate. Judge Cortwright, it turned out, knew 
 the city quite well, parts of it, I daresay, much better 
 than his anxious and somewhat bewildered host, though 
 he had not visited it for ten years. Under his guidance, 
 they stopped on the way home and had a drink at 
 "The Mecca" while waiting for their car. Samuel 
 had never been inside "The Mecca" in his life; he 
 could not have distinguished a "first-class saloon" 
 as his companion assured him it was from a third 
 class, or one at the very bottom of the scale, for that 
 matter ; and without doubt he made a queer and 
 laughable figure in the midst of the mahogany and 
 plate-glass and marble and dazzling brass fittings. 
 "I I am not very fond of anything strong," he said 
 shyly ; since Robert grew up and fell into his deplorable 
 habits, the father had never taken a drink of any 
 kind of liquor. "I mean I find it doesn t agree with 
 me," he added hastily, fearful of assuming a priggish 
 attitude of disapproval. "Would it be possible to get 
 a glass of water here ?" 
 
 "Sure! Fizz?" said the barkeeper, cordially. The 
 barkeeper, to Professor Gilbert s bottomless astonish 
 ment, was a clean, tidy, muscular, civil, decent young 
 man, with an eye and complexion that would indicate 
 absolute temperance ! "Milk if you want it. Butter 
 milk? Sure!" He divided a quick and measuring 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 311 
 
 glance between them, probably allowing himself some 
 private speculation about so oddly assorted a pair of 
 customers. "Whiskey for yours, Colonel ? What brand 
 you using now ? " he genially inquired, and, reaching a 
 tentative hand to the row of bottles, by some magic 
 singled out exactly the one of Judge Cortwright s choice ! 
 Thus with a libation did the Judge s visit begin. 
 Whatever he thought of his host, it was nothing to the 
 confusion of mind with which his host regarded him. 
 Samuel felt with dismay that he did not know what to 
 do with Judge Cortwright. For all his mutton-chop 
 side- whiskers, and his pedagogue s view of life, the 
 Virginia gentleman, after forty years absence from his 
 native State, was still enough of a Virginian to under 
 stand the Kentuckian, in a fashion. He may not have 
 considered it altogether seemly for a man of his own 
 age, or a shade older, to have the eye for women, the 
 not too nice taste in speech and anecdote, the fondness 
 for high-proof bourbon and the other lively, youthful 
 traits their visitor presently displayed, but the Pro 
 fessor remembered to have seen and known more than 
 one man of just such a type in his own far-away young 
 days, and they were worthy enough citizens ; he was 
 not disposed to criticise. But he knew very well that 
 his house and company were not of the kind the judge 
 was used to, or would ordinarily seek ; it worried him. 
 Possibly his wife was not so lenient, nor for once so 
 hospitable in spirit ; I don t think the little lady much 
 fancied Philip Cortwright s father. "Well, anyhow, 
 Lorrie was only going to marry his son. She didn t 
 have to marry the whole family," she remarked apropos 
 of nothing, as they were getting into bed that night. 
 As for Lorrie, nobody knew what she thought, not even 
 her own father and mother. Other people noticed a 
 rather terrifying likeness between the father and son ; 
 one t could not help wondering if Philip would have aged 
 in the same way. 
 
312 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Mr. Van Cleve Kendrick, coming up to the house 
 and meeting the Judge, found means to take him off 
 their hands for part of the time, much to the relief of 
 everybody concerned, including Judge Cortwright 
 himself, who must have found the Gilbert society a 
 little dull after a day or so of it. Van always looked 
 queer when questioned about this experience. " Judge 
 Cortwright? Oh, yes. Great old sport!" he would 
 say with an enigmatic grin; "yes, I took him across 
 the river to Latonia to the races several times, while 
 he was here. Hey ? Oh, yes, I had him down at the 
 club playing pool. Great old sport !" And sometimes 
 other men commented wonderingly on the fact that 
 Kendrick, who was as respectable a man as you could 
 find anywhere, was everlastingly loading himself up 
 with some down-and-outer, some thoroughgoing bum 
 to take care of and police around ! 
 
 They were not without justification, for later on, 
 when Robert Gilbert suddenly came back from the 
 West and was seen about our streets once more, it was 
 more often than not with Van Cleve. Bob was very 
 much better cured, according to his own report - 
 and appeared to have straightened up at last ; that is, 
 he was always straight in Van Cleve s company; and 
 either Van, or Lorrie, or his mother, was with him most 
 of the time. I saw him with the family in church one 
 Thanksgiving morning ; by this time, he had been away 
 for a year in that climate which is supposed to be almost 
 a specific for cases of tuberculosis, if taken soon enough, 
 as the family insisted his had been ; but, to tell the 
 truth, in spite of all the sanguine talk, Bob s "cure" 
 was unconvincing. He did not look like a well man; 
 still, he was not coughing nearly so much, and he was 
 by nature of a thin and slender build, so that in 
 dicated nothing. It was touching to see Mrs. Gilbert 
 mothering him ; the church was draughty, and she put 
 a knitted scarf about the back of his neck, which the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 313 
 
 young man twitched off fretfully. Then, seeing the 
 anxiety on her face, he picked the thing up and fum- 
 blingly adjusted it again, repentant. Poor Bob, poor 
 sinner, there was always something sweet about him. 
 
 He was at home all that winter, housed for weeks at 
 a time with what they called heavy colds ; Lorrie gave 
 up going out almost entirely so as to stay with him, 
 read to him, keep him entertained. Robert would 
 not have exacted any such sacrifice ; he used to urge her 
 to accept her invitations. "You ought to go, Lorrie; 
 you oughtn t to stay here shut up in the house. It s 
 bad enough for me to be jailed this way, let alone all 
 the rest of you," he said half irritably. "Hang it, I 
 wish you d go out and hear something new or see some 
 thing new so you could come back and tell us about it ! " 
 
 "All right, Bob, I ll go then. Maybe Van Cleve 
 will come over this evening, anyhow," said Lorrie, to 
 please him. 
 
 "He doesn t have to. I don t have to have some 
 body hanging around me the whole time," Bob said, 
 grumbling. Then he added apologetically : "It worries 
 me to see all of you so worried. There s nothing really 
 to worry about. I ll be all right in a little, as soon as 
 this cold wears off. A cold always has knocked me out ; 
 don t you remember how they used to when I was a 
 little fellow? Don t you remember, Lorrie?" he 
 insisted. 
 
 "Yes, you ve always had a horrid time with colds," 
 said Lorrie, with a twinge at her heart. 
 
 "Well then, you know it s not serious. Why don t 
 you and Mother go on to your teas and luncheons and 
 things? I m not going to open all the doors and 
 windows and let the furnace go out, and go and roll 
 in the snow with nothing on but my pajamas, just 
 because you aren t here to watch me !" 
 
 "I I don t really care much about it now, Bob, 
 not the way I used to," Lorrie said at last. Her brother 
 
314 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 stopped his half -laughing, half-vexed remonstrances, 
 eying her with a new expression in which there was 
 compassion and regret and something else, some other 
 feeling compounded, one would have said, of doubt and 
 distress. 
 
 "You mustn t let yourself think about that. You 
 oughtn t to let yourself dwell on it. On poor Phil, 
 I mean," he said gravely. 
 
 "I don t any more than I can help. I try not to. 
 But you know I can t forget, Bob." 
 
 Bob, who had been lying on the sofa among pillows 
 and magazines with an afghan spread over his thin 
 knees, threw everything aside and got up and began 
 to walk about the room restlessly. "You must stop 
 that kind of brooding, I tell you, Lorrie," he said, 
 pausing by her low chair. He spoke nervously, almost 
 angrily. "Can t forget! Why, remembering won t 
 bring him back. And if it did - "he broke off abruptly. 
 "If it did, things mightn t be the same," he finished, 
 in an uncertain voice. He took another turn up and 
 down the room and came back to her chair. "I 
 thought I thought maybe you were beginning I 
 hoped maybe you d --Van Cleve, you know, Lorrie - 
 Van s a splendid fellow I don t believe he s ever 
 looked at any other girl in his life - 
 
 "Oh, don t, Bob oh, please don t! I can t think 
 about that any more, ever. It s not just Van Cleve - 
 it s just that I can t think of marrying anybody. It s 
 all over and done with. Don t you see? It s all out 
 of my life," Lorrie said painfully. "Don t talk to 
 me about it again. I try not to be silly. I try not 
 to be selfish. I try to keep it to myself. You want 
 to help me, don t you? You want to make it easier 
 for me?" 
 
 "Lord knows that s what I ve wanted to do, Lorrie. 
 Lord knows that s what I ought to do after the time 
 you ve had with me !" Bob groaned out. He dropped 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 315 
 
 on the sofa with his head in his two hands. "I don t 
 want to make a mess of any more lives. I only thought 
 you and Van Cleve well, all right then, Lorrie, I 
 wxm t say any more. I won t speak about it again." 
 
 So when Van Cleve, who averaged about two even 
 ings a week thus gossip calculated came over at 
 eight o clock that night, Lorrie, true to her promise, had 
 gone to somebody s dinner and theatre-party afterwards; 
 and Van sat down to a game of checkers with his friend 
 without appearing especially cast down by her absence. 
 It has been said many times that he was a philosopher. 
 If the truth were known, if Robert had known it, before 
 he blunderingly and good-heartedly put in his oar, Van 
 Cleve had already spoken for himself to Lorrie and had 
 got his answer. 
 
 "I think a great deal of you, Van, but not that way," 
 the girl said, sincerely pained at having to pain him ; 
 " you re the best friend we have. I ll never forget all 
 you ve done for us for Bob " 
 
 Van Cleve interrupted her. " Don t talk about that. 
 Don t think that way. Even if it were so, I wouldn t 
 want to hold that over you, or have you hold it over 
 yourself," he said harshly. "Put all that out of the 
 question. This is just you and me. You don t you 
 can t "he fumbled and reddened like a boy over the 
 words, but went on "you don t love me you don t 
 feel as if you could marry me, even if there hadn t ever 
 been anybody else, is that it ? Or or is it because of 
 him, Lorrie?" 
 
 Lorrie nodded, her lips quivering. "Oh, Van, you 
 dear boy," she said brokenly, and put out her hand to 
 him. "You are always our Van Cleve, the man I like 
 and respect more than anybody else in the world. 
 But I can t marry you. I can t marry anybody. I 
 feel somehow as if I were a mean creature because I 
 can t do the only thing you ve ever wanted me to do 
 I can t give you the only thing you ve ever asked of me. 
 
316 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 But would you think any the more of me if I forgot so 
 easily, Van Cleve?" 
 
 He did not answer her directly. "Well, I waited/ 
 he said at last with a quick sigh; "I thought you 
 might have gotten over it. But you haven t got any 
 thing to reproach yourself with. You never encouraged 
 me ; you are just you, and I couldn t help loving you 
 and you couldn t have stopped me." 
 
 "Van Cleve, I wish I could care for you that way," 
 said Lorrie, earnestly ; "I wish I could ! You ought to 
 have everything you want, you ve always been so good 
 to everybody." 
 
 "Nobody cares for people because they re good," 
 said Van, with his dry smile. He looked at her wist 
 fully. "You don t mind my keeping on coming here? 
 It won t annoy you ? After all, you must have known 
 how I felt long before this." 
 
 "Why I I- "Lorrie turned scarlet under his 
 shrewd, kind eyes ; and Van Cleve smiled again. 
 
 "Well, then, it won t be any different from what it 
 was before," he said, practical as usual. "Don t 
 worry, Lorrie. I m not going to persecute you about 
 this. If you should ever feel differently why, I m 
 here, that s all." 
 
 And on this footing the old intimacy continued, 
 Romeo playing his part with a cheerfulness and self- 
 control in the very presence, as it were, of his blighted 
 hopes, that go to show of what exceedingly un-Romeo- 
 like, plain, serviceable stuff his character was con 
 structed. People would talk, of course; but gossip 
 was rather disarmed and put out of countenance by 
 the lack of romance about the proceedings. The hero, 
 for one thing, was quite as attentive and devoted to 
 Mrs. Gilbert as to Lorrie, and always in a perfectly 
 workaday, efficient style ; yes, I have known Mr. 
 Kendrick, in one of those domestic crises that will 
 sometimes occur, to rise up, put on his hat, and go 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 317 
 
 forth and rout out a colored cook or laundress or woman- 
 by-the-day from the fastnesses of Symmes Street, where 
 these do mostly abide, and return with her to Mrs. 
 Gilbert when advertising and intelligence bureaus and 
 every other means had failed ! What a performance 
 for a Romeo ! But can you show me another lover who 
 has done as much ? Van was more like an elder son 
 in the house than ever, lending a hand to taking care 
 of Bob and amusing him, consulted about their small 
 finances, giving Lorrie presents on her birthday and 
 at Christmas, which even her suspicious girl friends 
 would allow seemed to have no sentimental significance 
 whatever, patient, thoughtful, sane, reliable, prosaic 
 in his relations with them as he had always been with 
 all the world. 
 
 And where, all this while, was Mrs. Robert Gilbert 
 and what was she doing whose place was surely with 
 her husband in his ill-health his temporary ill-health, 
 as the family were so bent on making the outside world 
 believe, on making themselves believe, perhaps ? Where 
 indeed? Nobody liked to ask after the first innocent 
 ventures, which were received by the Gilberts with a 
 stilted and evasive courtesy so unlike them that the 
 slowest-witted acquaintance they had must have seen 
 at once that something was wrong. Bob s wife never 
 came near him ; it was to be doubted if he ever even 
 heard from her ; the last authoritative news was that 
 she was living with her mother in New York. Some 
 body had met her there on the street, and said that she 
 was just as pretty as ever, though a good deal "made 
 up," and that her manners were unchanged, and that 
 she never said a word about Bob ; if the Gilberts knew 
 her address, it was as much as they knew about Paula, 
 and probably it was all they wanted to know, as some 
 body remarked significantly. The marriage had evi 
 dently turned out one of those hasty ones to be repented 
 at leisure which many of us had suspected on first 
 
318 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 hearing of it. They couldn t get along. How could 
 they have been expected to get along? That little 
 Jameson girl had no sense, and, to speak plainly, Bob 
 Gilbert was not heavily endowed that way either, in 
 addition to being morally pretty unstable. He would 
 never take care of himself, let alone support a wife and 
 family. To be sure, Paula very likely had some money, 
 but how long would that last them ? And when it was 
 gone, the Gilberts could not, and that big, overdressed, 
 flashy Mrs. Jameson certainly would not, help them. 
 Every one felt genuinely sorry for Bob s family, to 
 whom the whole affair must be such a trial ; it was not 
 disgraceful, it was merely shabby, but people of good 
 name and good breeding really suffer in such circum 
 stances. 
 
 At about the time that everybody came to these 
 conclusions it was reported that Bob was to be sent to 
 some place in Vermont, some little town in the moun 
 tains where a well-known physician had established a 
 sanatorium for such cases as his. His mother and Van 
 Kendrick took him on east ; and only a day or so after 
 they had gone there came out in the court proceedings 
 published in the morning papers, a notice which caused 
 whatever readers stumbled on it a certain surprise and 
 satisfaction, as at an oracle fulfilled. In the Court of 
 Insolvency, No. 2459 (June 17, 1901), Paula J. Gilbert 
 brought suit for divorce against Robert D. Gilbert. 
 They were married in July, 1898 ; she charged him with 
 desertion and non-support, and petitioned the court to 
 annul the marriage and restore her maiden name. 
 Marks, Schindler & Marks, attorneys. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 IN WHICH THE UNITED STATES COMMISSIONER ISSUES 
 A WARRANT 
 
 THE Gilbert vs. Gilbert action did not afford much 
 material for wagging of tongues ; it went through 
 court as speedily and quietly as possible, the husband 
 making no defence, so that within a week Paula was 
 free, and Miss Jameson again if she chose. Nobody 
 saw her, though her presence in town must have been 
 necessary, and nobody knew what became of her after 
 wards. The newspapers, indeed, scenting a "story" 
 which, however commonplace, would be a godsend in 
 the hot weather and the dull times, would have made 
 capital out of it ; and from what we knew of Mrs. or 
 Miss Paula she would have been ready enough to oblige 
 them. But either she was greatly changed, or Messrs. 
 Marks, Schindler & Marks, in their wisdom, interposed, 
 for no " interviews " with her were published. It is 
 true that a cut came out in the Record-World, represent 
 ing her in a low-necked dress and large hat (photograph 
 by Sarony Studios) labelled: "Mrs. Robert Gilbert, 
 nee Jameson. Mrs. Gilbert is the wife of Robert D. 
 Gilbert, member of the prominent local family, and at 
 one time connected with this paper. Mrs. Gilbert is 
 now suing for divorce." But that was all ; and the re 
 porters who called at the Gilbert house were defeated 
 by the very courtesy of their reception. The elder Mrs. 
 Gilbert and her son were at their Vermont sanatorium ; 
 Miss Gilbert was not to be seen ; and I believe the thin 
 old Professor with his white hair and his simple manners 
 
 319 
 
320 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 of a generation and a society so infinitely removed 
 from their own as to be quite incomprehensible to them, 
 completely puzzled and baffled these brisk, inventive 
 youths. They could make nothing out of him ; he was 
 utterly valueless from the journalistic standpoint, as 
 uninteresting to their average reader as the Hebrew 
 Testament in the original ; without seeming disagree 
 ably unwilling, he gave the impression of being per 
 fectly unable to furnish them with the details they 
 sought ; and they departed empty as they had come ! 
 They also sought out an intimate friend of the family, 
 V. C. Kendrick, who was as affable as you please ; and 
 after he had answered all their questions, a discerning 
 person might have observed that they were precisely as 
 wise as they were before, and no wiser ! Van had in 
 deed given the Gilbert household some astute counsel 
 when publicity seemed imminent. "Now don t refuse 
 to see the fellows from the papers, or have them shown 
 out, or shut the door in their faces, or anything like 
 that," he warned Lorrie and her father ; "it s better to 
 see them, and then they ll have something to say, no 
 matter what. You don t need to tell them anything. 
 They re going to talk anyhow, you know ; they ve got 
 to fill their paper up with something. The reporters 
 make their living by it, and they don t mean any harm. 
 I say you don t need to tell them anything. Give em 
 the chance to put in a lot of stuff about a petite brunette 
 with sparkling brown eyes and a winsome grace of 
 
 manner ; 
 
 A petite ? What, do you mean Lorrie ? " said 
 the Professor, recognizing this description with equal 
 amazement and indignation; "but surely it s not 
 necessary for Lorrie to submit to their impertinences ? 
 She doesn t have to meet them." 
 
 "All right, you see them then. You ll be a dignified 
 gentleman of the old school, with a courtly elegance of 
 phrase/" said Van Cleve, not repressing his grin. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 321 
 
 "What difference does it make? They ll have some 
 thing to say, and that s all they re after. Nobody pays 
 any attention to them, or believes one-tenth of what 
 the papers say. You don t yourself. Don t antagonize 
 them, that s all." 
 
 Professor Gilbert looked at the younger man, un- 
 feignedly troubled. His every instinct, trained and 
 native, rebelled against what seemed to him a cheap, 
 time-serving, and spiritless piece of policy ; yet there 
 was something convincing about Van Cleve s argument. 
 "I m afraid I m very much behind the times," he said 
 with a kind of good-humored chagrin. "Can you 
 make any other suggestion, Van? For instance, 
 supposing one of these young gentlemen calls on me, 
 ought I to offer him entertainment ? Cigars, eh?" 
 
 "You might if you chose. But just give him one. 
 If you give him any more, he ll think they re aren t 
 worth anything," said Van Cleve, entirely serious. It 
 was at least a minute before he could make out why the 
 old man suddenly broke into a chuckle. Hitherto, 
 they had all been very grave, as well they might be, 
 whenever Bob s difficulties had to be discussed. None 
 of the Gilberts, though, lacked humor, and when the 
 Professor actually appeared in the Tribune inter 
 view as "a fine, courtly gentleman of the old school," 
 etc., almost exactly as Van had forecast, Lorrie and her 
 father were as much amused as their friends. 
 
 It was that same year, but in the autumn, or at any 
 rate, some time after Paula got her decree, for every 
 body had long since stopped talking about that incident 
 - had completely forgot it, no doubt that the 
 Xylotite Hinge Company failed. This was probably 
 the first news that many of us had that such a company 
 existed ; and although it has since been resuscitated, and 
 they say is in a fair way of paying out after years of 
 struggle, a large section of the community is still, like 
 myself, in perfect ignorance of what Xylotite is, and 
 
322 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 what kind of hinges are made of it, and who uses them, 
 and why the manufacturers should have failed. Never 
 theless, I have been assured that it was an enterprise 
 well known in commercial circles, employing hundreds 
 of thousands of capital, and of a spectacular size and 
 growth. It went down with a crash that (to be meta 
 phorical) shook the foundations of more than one other 
 established business ; all at once you began to hear of 
 So-and-So being seriously involved, of Such-a-One mak 
 ing desperate efforts to keep above water "he was in 
 terested in Xylotite, you know." Presently some person 
 or persons in authority instituted a " PROBE OF XYLOTITE 
 AFFAIRS, " as the newspapers proclaimed. " Experts 
 will be put on the books of the Xylotite Concern" was 
 their next announcement ; and that these latter found 
 things in a dangerous muddle might be guessed from the 
 length of time, some six or eight weeks, which their 
 labors took, and from the ominous items of information 
 that at intervals found their way to the press. "The 
 Xylotite Company did a business over a large territory, 
 and we have found that a convenient form was to incor 
 porate several companies, which was also used as a 
 means of securing additional credit. Among these 
 were : The Lawrenceburg Machine Tool Company, 
 Columbus Weights & Pulleys, Indurated Rubber of 
 Akron," and so on and on. That was only one (a fair 
 sample) of the damaging details brought to light. 
 
 Notwithstanding the sensational disclosures, how 
 ever, few people that one knew, excepting possibly Van 
 Kendrick and men like him who were buried heart and 
 soul in business, cared much about the vicissitudes of 
 Xylotite ; nobody had any friends or relatives ruined 
 by it ; and if we must talk about financial troubles, 
 there were rumors a great deal more interesting and also 
 dismaying in circulation which never seemed to get as 
 far as the papers ; they went the rounds of the private 
 houses, the men repeated them after dinner when the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 323 
 
 coffee and liqueurs came in and the smoking began ; 
 there were allusions, headshakings, careful admissions, 
 wise or satirical comments. It was all about the Na 
 tional Loan and Savings Bank, Mr. Gebhardt s bank, 
 that bank that Van Cleve Kendrick had been with so 
 long ; it began at the Christmas holidays, and went on all 
 winter in its curious subterranean way ; without quite 
 understanding it, everybody sincerely hoped that "it 
 wasn t so." Most of us were fond of the Gebhardts, 
 and disliked to think of them in money difficulties. The 
 women of the family, being the people whom it touched 
 the nearest, probably never heard a word of the reports ; 
 who would have told them? They could not even 
 have suspected that the head of their house was em 
 barrassed in the slightest manner. Mr. Gebhardt was 
 devoted to his family, the most liberal and indulgent of 
 husbands and fathers, a giver to every charity you 
 could name, a man who was constantly and unostenta 
 tiously doing kindnesses even to persons who had no 
 claim on him, except some far-fetched sentimental one. 
 He kept this up to the very end ; and as he never 
 brought the office home with him (so he had often been 
 heard to say) nor shared any of his worries with his 
 circle of women, they could not be expected to know any 
 thing about his affairs. All the while that the obscure 
 hints about the shakiness of the National Loan were 
 spreading abroad, the Gebhardt girls danced, and 
 dressed, and entertained as expensively as ever ; and the 
 youngest of the four, Annette, who would be out next 
 year, was getting ready to go to Europe for six months 
 with a party of two or three girls from her Connecticut 
 finishing-school, when - when the trouble came. Her 
 father went on to Washington the beginning of January 
 for a few days, and Annette was very much put out at 
 his refusal to take her the first time he had ever re 
 fused her anything she wanted in her life. She might 
 have gone to the New Year s reception at the White 
 
324 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 House, she might even have been " behind the line," 
 as one of the Cabinet girls was a school chum and had 
 visited at the Gebhardt summer home at Watch Hill. 
 It was a severe disappointment to her, and to her mother, 
 too. Annette Gebhardt was a pretty girl, the prettiest 
 one of them all ; she has been a stenographer in the city 
 office of the Pennsylvania Railroad for the last six years, 
 I believe. 
 
 Xylotite had been forgotten in its turn, by the time 
 the National Loan and Savings explosion occurred. It 
 was Easter Monday when we took up our morning Trib 
 une and read in the middle of the front page that fol 
 lowing discoveries made by Clearing-House Examiner 
 Walter H. Fisher in the affairs of the National Loan and 
 Savings Bank, that institution had been ordered closed. 
 Mr. Fisher refused to talk for the papers ; but it was 
 learned from other sources that the bank was not ab 
 solutely insolvent ; the expectation was that the de 
 positors might recover in the neighborhood of forty 
 cents on the dollar at the final clean-up unless further 
 investigation revealed a worse condition ; the share 
 holders would be completely wiped out. Excessive and 
 bad loans, unprofitable deposit accounts, and bad 
 management were to blame for the catastrophe, which, 
 while not unexpected, owing to rumors which had been 
 afloat for some time, had startled the financial world by 
 its magnitude and hopelessness. It was intimated that 
 the recent collapse of the Xylotite Hinge Company had 
 hastened this other downfall. Officials of the bank 
 (whose names were given) were uniformly reticent 
 when approached, explaining that a full statement 
 would be given out in a few days ; reporters had called 
 at the magnificent home of the National s president, 
 Julius Gebhardt, on Adams Road, the North Hill, but 
 were denied admittance. 
 
 There followed a condensed biography of the bank 
 from the year of its foundation 1875, and of Mr. Geb- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 325 
 
 hardt himself, the facts of whose career were plain and 
 simple enough and might have been gathered from a 
 dozen people, as he had lived here all his life. His and 
 the National Loan s troubles began with the ambitious 
 alterations and enlargements of the old building a few 
 years ago, the newspaper accounts declared. The 
 marble doorway and the bronze grille-work of the stairs 
 had been specially designed and executed by a New 
 York firm at a cost, it was said, of $75,000. The man 
 agement of the bank had undoubtedly been led into 
 this and other extravagant policies during the flush 
 times immediately preceding the disastrous year 1896, 
 which inaugurated a period of depression as severe as 
 this country has ever felt, etc. And the report con 
 cluded with a list of the shareholders, the unfortunates 
 who were going to be wiped out. 
 
 That was all for that one day, but it was enough. 
 Rarely does a disturbance on "The Street/ 7 even of so 
 grave a character, create such a flurry socially. All the 
 women were talking about the National Loan failure 
 that afternoon at their card-parties and luncheons ; 
 they quoted what their husbands had said at the break 
 fast-table without much understanding, but with looks 
 of awe ; they asked one another anxiously what it was 
 best to do. Would you telephone to Mrs. Gebhardt ? 
 Or call at the house and and leave a message of 
 sympathy, you know ? It must be terrible for her and 
 the girls. Would you write a note ? Somebody was 
 going to send flowers, but it was objected, not unreason 
 ably, that that would look too much like a funeral. It 
 wouldn t be tactful to be too sympathetic. If you 
 showed too great an interest, it was liable to be taken 
 for curiosity ; but if you didn t show some, you would 
 seem perfectly horrid and callous. The difficulty lay 
 in steering the middle course. "It doesn t happen 
 often enough for one to know what would be strictly 
 proper," one worried lady was overheard to sigh; "if 
 
326 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 I had always been very intimate with Mrs. Gebhardt, 
 of course I d go right to her. But I feel I can t intrude 
 that way, though we ve known each other for years, 
 and I ve been entertained at her house hundreds of 
 times, and she s on the Incurables Board, and the 
 Widows Home, and the Flower Mission with me. It s 
 dreadful. If it had just been a death in the family ! 
 We re all used to that!" 
 
 Within two or three days, the promised statement 
 came out, a whole column of it, headed by : " PROBE OF 
 NATIONAL LOAN AND SAVINGS CONTINUED. SENSA 
 TIONAL DISCLOSURES. KENDRICK GETS PANNED," a 
 manner of calling attention to it which fully succeeded, 
 thereby indicating (I suppose) that in the journalistic 
 view, the end justifies the means. For, when the friends 
 of the bank and of the official named, after reading the 
 above with surprise and concern, went on to the report 
 itself, they found, as occasionally happens in our news 
 paper practice, that the headlines had only the most 
 remote and exiguous connection with the actual facts ! 
 For one thing, the new disclosures could scarcely be called 
 sensational, inasmuch as everybody had been expecting 
 them, and they were in a sense an amplification of what 
 was already known. Mr. Fisher with his clerical staff, 
 aided by the head-bookeeper of the National, V. C. 
 Kendrick, and the assistant bookkeeper, R. Meyer, had 
 worked till a late hour every night last week, leaving 
 themselves the shortest possible intervals of rest ; the 
 Examiner s job was monumental, according to the report; 
 he had reviewed practically every one of the bank s 
 accounts, classifying them for the convenience of the 
 Clearing-house Association in three divisions, "good." 
 "doubtful," and "worthless"; they had the papers 
 in bushel-baskets ; and when they got through (said 
 the Tribune), "The condition of the room bore testi 
 mony to the financial whirlwind which had swept it." 
 . . . " Certain collaterals behind loans to the Xylotite 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 327 
 
 Company were absent, it is charged, from the notes 
 where they should be pinned in good banking practice." 
 . . . "It is said that the average cost of the special, 
 bank, and savings deposit accounts stood the National 
 Loan between 2.75 and 3 per cent. Other banks insist 
 that there is no money in these deposits at this rate, 
 and that the only benefit they are to a bank is to make a 
 flash with big deposit accounts." After receiving 
 the report, the Association, consisting of representatives 
 from all the clearing-house banks in the city, Messrs. 
 Geo. Douglas, Edward B. Hooper, Morris Kuhn, etc. 
 (the Tribune gave all the names), in a session that 
 lasted four hours, the president and three directors of 
 the National being present, finally reached the decision 
 that an adjustment of the National Loan s affairs to 
 enable it to continue business was impracticable. "It 
 was a dramatic scene" -to quote the paper again - 
 "when Julius Gebhardt, president of the defunct or 
 ganization for the last fifteen years, and connected with it 
 throughout his business career, took his dismissal from 
 the ranks of bankers. Mr. Gebhardt, who seemed to 
 be much affected, rose and said that he wished to thank 
 the Association ; that if they had seen their way to back 
 ing his bank up in its troubles, his gratitude would have 
 been boundless : but that he realized they were using 
 their best judgment, and he was willing to abide by it. 
 After his little speech, the meeting dissolved. It is 
 understood that the next move will probably be made 
 by the shareholders, to call a meeting and decide what 
 action, if any, shall be taken. Rumors of a Federal 
 suit involving Gebhardt and others were rife on the 
 street to-day, but could not be confirmed." 
 
 As to that "KENDRICK GETS PANNED," which had 
 given persons who knew him such a shock, interviews 
 with Mr. Fisher and one or two other authorities re 
 vealed that no such formidable process as "panning " 
 would describe had taken place nor anything resembling 
 
328 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 it. It was now made known that the Examiner, on his 
 regular inspection, six months before, had sent a report 
 to the Association that conditions at the National Loan 
 were decidedly unsatisfactory. Later Mr. Gebhardt had 
 made a trip to Washington to see the Comptroller of the 
 Currency, and had received the ultimatum to " clean up 
 or be cleaned up. " Notwithstanding the warning, noth 
 ing looking towards any kind of straightening out was 
 done at the National in spite of the personal efforts of 
 Mr. Kendrick who, as it now appeared, since he be 
 came aware of the exact state of affairs, had made 
 repeated and vigorous protests to the head of the organ 
 ization. Finally, on the 27th of March, in the course 
 of a stormy conversation with the president, Kendrick 
 had declared his intention of writing to the Examiner, 
 and acquainting him exactly how matters stood. A 
 young woman stenographer who had been within hear 
 ing of the controversy, which went on behind closed 
 doors in the president s own room, reported that Ken 
 drick had raised his voice and got very angry and pro 
 fane ; she had heard him say that he was no d d 
 dummy like the rest of them to sit still and do what he 
 
 was told ; that, by , he had smelled something rotten 
 
 the first day he sat with the directors and found that 
 the loans weren t read. He had also said that American 
 Bung Company was only another infernal swindling 
 alias for Xylotite ; he wouldn t stand for it you 
 couldn t play horse with him and a great deal more 
 in the same style. Miss Nevins had not overheard any 
 of Mr. Gebhardt s replies to all this ; he had evidently 
 been much more moderate; everybody in the bank, 
 she said, liked Mr. Gebhardt, who was "just lovely" 
 to all of them, and had been in particular so good to 
 Mr. Kendrick, she didn t see how he could talk to Mr. 
 Gebhardt that way. 
 
 Sitting in the street-car that morning there were 
 next to me two men who were discussing the National 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 329 
 
 Loan all the way down town; it was curious and in 
 structive to hear them say (for I listened unblushingly) 
 that they never had trusted Gebhardt, that they always 
 had suspected he was crooked " or plain fool ; it s 
 pretty near as bad when it comes to letting him handle 
 other people s money," one of them said. After Mr. 
 Gebhardt s fall, everybody simultaneously found out 
 that they had never trusted him, or that they had always 
 had a poor opinion of his business sense! " There s 
 one honest man in the mix-up, anyhow, this Kendrick, 
 the fellow that put the Examiner wise to what was go 
 ing on. Wrote to him, it says," said this gentleman, as 
 he folded up the paper. 
 
 The other, who was chewing a toothpick, looked 
 sceptical. " Fisher would have been round and found 
 out for himself in two or three weeks, anyhow," he 
 said ; "looks to me like Kendrick was trying to get from 
 under. Looks to me like it was a case of thieves falling 
 out, more than anything else. You see Kendrick had 
 that rumpus with Gebhardt, after they d been as thick 
 as could be for years. A man can t stay ten years in a 
 bank and be as close as he was to the top without know 
 ing more about it than Kendrick claims to have. And 
 a man don t get that mad about somebody else s money 
 being risked. If it was his own-- !" 
 
 "Your idea is it was just spite work, then ?" 
 
 "Sure. They had a quarrel, and Kendrick did it 
 partly to get even. Why, look here, in that interview 
 they got out of him, he admits that he d borrowed 
 money of Gebhardt. My guess is that Gebhardt 
 wouldn t lend him any more, or refused to let him in on 
 some deal, so he gets sore and makes up his mind to put 
 Gebhardt out of business." 
 
 "I didn t see that about the borrowing. Is that in 
 the paper? " 
 
 "Yes inside page. It seems they went through 
 Gebhardt s private desk and papers along with the 
 
330 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 rest Fisher turned everything inside out, you know 
 - 1 expect the whole of that Xylotite loan business 
 hasn t come out yet. Anyhow, first thing you know 
 they found some kind of begging letter from Kendrick s 
 sister or mother or somebody representing that the 
 family they live away from here somewhere were 
 in some kind of fix and needed some money to help em 
 out. And then there were some more letters acknowl 
 edging a loan, and thanking him for it and so forth - 
 five hundred dollars, I think it was. Of course that s 
 a small sum, but that just shows you how close Kendrick 
 was to Gebhardt ; and besides you don t know how 
 many times they may have done that, how much 
 they may have got out of him in dribs, till Gebhardt 
 got tired of it. Of course Kendrick himself don t ask 
 for the money oh no ! All he does is to get behind 
 the women and let them ask for it. He s been making 
 a good salary right along ; his family didn t need to ask 
 Gebhardt or anybody else for money, unless he told 
 em to. You d probably find that every cent they ve 
 borrowed has gone to some bucket-shop ; that s the 
 way men get away with it, in just those little dabs. 
 Anybody that wants money for any legitimate enter 
 prise goes out and borrows it openly, you know that. 
 No, sir!" he spoke with righteous warmth, chewing 
 vigorously on the toothpick; "when I read that, it 
 settled my opinion of Kendrick." 
 
 "It don t look very good," the other man admitted; 
 "what did Kendrick say when the reporters got on to 
 this letter business, and asked him ?" 
 
 "Didn t say anything, just acknowledged it. He 
 couldn t very well help himself, you know. Made 
 some bluff about that being a private matter between 
 himself and Gebhardt some big talk like that. It s 
 all in the paper you read it yourself, and see what you 
 think." 
 
 "Well, I wouldn t want to condemn anybody whole- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 331 
 
 sale. After all, Kendrick had the choice of letting things 
 go on as they were at the bank and piling up bigger 
 losses for everybody concerned, or of blowing it up at 
 once and himself along with it - 
 
 " That s what he did, and took a chance on getting 
 out." 
 
 "That makes him either a mighty honest man or a 
 mighty desperate one/ said the other with a laugh ; 
 "oh, well, give him the benefit of the doubt, anyway." 
 
 These two probably represented fairly the varying 
 opinion of the public, amongst whom there would be 
 some on Van s side, or, at least, on the side of moderation 
 and impartiality ; and it is to be feared many more as 
 critically biassed as the man with the toothpick. Van 
 Cleve knew it ; he knew his world. He felt no disposi 
 tion to w^aste time attempting explanations, or de 
 manding justice from the community at large. "In 
 the long run it doesn t make any difference how much 
 you ve been wronged, or how well you talk, or what proofs 
 you ve got ; all that people know is that you re letting 
 out an awful yelp about something, and they wish 
 you d quit!" he said sourly; "anybody that doesn t 
 trust me, can look up my record. I m not going around 
 showing it to people, but I haven t got anything to be 
 afraid of or ashamed of. Everybody will forget all 
 about it directly, anyhow ; ten years from now, they ll 
 only remember that the National Loan and Savings 
 Bank went to pieces, and that V. C. Kendrick was 
 somehow connected with it." A prophecy which has 
 literally come true ! 
 
 The morning after the final report appeared he went 
 down to the bank for the last time, to clean out his desk ; 
 Meyer was to be there, too, and they were expecting Mr. 
 Gebhardt. It happened to be market-day, and there 
 was a keen smell of fresh meats and vegetables on the 
 air ; the stands and carts were ranked all along the 
 curb, with among them many of those humble clients 
 
332 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 of the National Loan whom Van Cleve had grown to 
 know so well. For all his hardness, he would have given 
 something not to have to meet their honest, worried 
 faces, their eyes that followed him with so unnatural 
 and painful an interest. He had not despoiled them ; 
 he had tried to save them ; his hands were clean ; and 
 he was surprised at the suddenness and strength of his 
 desire to have them know it. Let who will suspect him 
 of being a scoundrel or a weakling, but not these ! Not 
 these poor hard-working men and women ! The old 
 German wife he knew the best came up to him, with her 
 scared, trembling old face. "Mr. Kentrick, Mr. Ken- 
 trick, meine Hilda she say der bank iss go bust mit all 
 der mazuma!" She sobbed the grotesque words, 
 clutching at the sleeve of his coat with toil-cramped 
 fingers, a figure of Tragedy among the pots of hyacinths 
 and Easter-blooming lilies, the onions and carrots and 
 crocks of cottage-cheese. All the other old women, and 
 the lank younger ones with their shawled or sunbon- 
 neted heads, the stoop-shouldered men and the chil 
 dren, who were bobbing about everywhere underfoot, 
 crowded up, hanging on his words. Not all of them had 
 lost by the bank s failure ; on some of the faces there 
 was no feeling stronger than curiosity, or a sordid ex 
 citement. "Iss it true, Mr. Kentrick? It aindt true, 
 aindt it ?" clamored the old woman. 
 
 "Pretty near true, Mrs. Habekotte," said Van Cleve, 
 grimly. "You ll get a little something back." 
 
 She dropped her hands with a wail ; some of the other 
 women set up a sympathetic lamentation. "Poor 
 soul, ain t it awful ! How much did she have in ? " one 
 of them questioned Van Cleve. Just as he was extri 
 cating himself, Mrs. Habekotte broke through her circle 
 of condolence, and ran after him, "Mr. Kentrick, your 
 own money mit der bank got away also yet ? " 
 
 "That s right. I m about cleaned out." 
 
 She contemplated him mournfully, with a kind of 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 333 
 
 resigned and unenvious comparison of their lots. Veil, 
 you are young, already ! Aber, when one is old !" 
 she sighed, and plodded back to her stall, drooping, fol 
 lowed by her clan of neighbors. Van Cleve heard 
 some of them volubly reporting the fact that he too was 
 " busted/ something which appeared to establish his 
 honesty to their minds. 
 
 Meyer was waiting for him on the steps of the bank, 
 and they went in behind the familiar bronze gratings that 
 had proved to be so disastrously costly, and went to 
 work, but after a while found themselves " stalled/ as 
 Meyer said, by the non-arrival of their ex-president ; he 
 was to have been there at half-past ten, and was, in 
 general, the most punctual of men. The minutes wore 
 on, and still they lounged. Meyer had one cigar, a 
 long, thin stogie of unimaginable flavor, which he cut in 
 two ; and they smoked it, commenting on the strange 
 ness of smoking there in the bank, the strangeness of the 
 silence and emptiness at what had been wont to be the 
 busiest and most crowded hour of the day. At last, 
 as it was striking eleven, Van Cleve went up stairs to the 
 real-estate office on the third floor to telephone, the 
 bank s instrument having been disconnected. There 
 was some trouble. "I don t believe I can get you that 
 number, party, they don t answer," the telephone- 
 exchange girl had just announced, when an agitated 
 voice at the other end of the line broke in: "Well, 
 what is it ? Do stop ringing ! What is it ? Who are 
 you and what do you want ? " 
 
 "Tell Mr. Gebhardt it s Kendrick, please; we re 
 waiting for him at the bank." 
 
 Kendrick ? Wait a minute ! " 
 
 Van Cleve, standing with the telephone at his ear, was 
 aware of a wild flurry of talk, sobbing, ejaculations, going 
 on somewhere near the other end. Then some one be 
 gan again ; it was a minute before he could recognize 
 Mrs. Gebhardt s voice. "Mr. Kendrick, is it you? 
 
334 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Oh, won t you please go right away down to the 
 where did they say he had to go, Natalie ? to the 
 Courthouse no, no, it s the Government Building 
 he s there they wouldn t let me go with him oh, 
 I m so afraid never mind, Natalie, I ll tell Mr. Ken- 
 drick. He s with the Marshal in the Marshal s 
 office, I think they said. They wouldn t let me go 
 with him, and I m so afraid he hasn t been well, you 
 know, since this terrible trouble came. Will you go 
 down there, Mr. Kendrick?" 
 
 Van Cleve said that he would be glad to be of any 
 use. And indeed he was ; for he ran out and caught the 
 next car and got down to the Government Building just 
 as poor Julius Gebhardt, accompanied by the Marshal 
 and the Chief Deputy and his lawyer, and watched from 
 afar by a little swarm of newspaper-men, was going 
 into United States Commissioner Dixon s room for a 
 preliminary hearing ; he was under arrest, charged with 
 having abstracted and wilfully misappropriated certain 
 of the moneys, funds, and credits of the National Loan 
 and Savings Bank to the amount of twenty-eight thou 
 sand dollars ($28,000); "the said Julius Gebhardt 
 was then and there the duly elected and acting presi 
 dent of said banking association, and he did then and 
 there unlawfully and wilfully convert same to his own 
 use with intent to injure and defraud the said National 
 Banking Association and the shareholders thereof." 
 Van Cleve reached there just in time to go out and hunt 
 up the bondsmen for him. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 BUSINESS WOMEN 
 
 AFTER a year or so of Nova Scotia, the Van Cleve 
 family moved to Salem, Massachusetts, as we heard 
 through Miss Gilbert, who was always more likely to 
 know something of them and their whereabouts than 
 any one else. But since that time we have rather lost 
 sight of Van Cleve s people ; they have never come back 
 here, and their various flights and settlings have been 
 too distant and uncertain to be easily followed. The last 
 news was they were in Pasadena, and Evelyn was en 
 gaged to a Mr. Heffelbauer, a a son of the millionnaire 
 prune-man," as some one told me ; it may be true, 
 for in American Backgrounds, the magazine of house 
 decoration I came across quite by accident the other 
 day, a half-tone of a charming garden in the Italian 
 style, pools, marble benches, dark, pointed fir trees and 
 all the rest of it, labelled: " Formal garden at Idlewild, 
 the estate of W. D. Heffelbauer, San Jose, Calif. Prune 
 orchard in the distance. Photograph from a painting 
 by Miss E. Lucas." So, I say, there may be something 
 in that rumor. 
 
 And I will confess it has occurred to me once or twice 
 to wonder whether a millionnaire in the family might 
 not help Van Cleve out a little, and to hope that the 
 prospective Mrs. Heffelbauer s papa-in-law will be lib 
 eral with his prune-money. To be sure, Van doesn t need 
 help much nowadays ; they say he makes a great deal 
 more than a comfortable living out of the real-estate 
 business he went into after the National Loan fail- 
 
 335 
 
336 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ure. He borrowed money for the venture, and opened 
 an office over the Central Building and Loan Associa 
 tion, with which organization he had been connected a 
 long while. Its members stood by him staunchly, in 
 spite of the ugly gossip going about ; the small clients 
 whom he had gathered during his term at the bank stuck 
 to him, and he gradually gained others ; nevertheless, 
 he must have had a gloomy time of it for the first few 
 years. Heavens, how he worked ! What nights he 
 spent awake, what days of effort and anxiety ! Out 
 wardly, he gave no sign of it ; he had the temperament 
 for such a struggle, and in a sense it agreed with him. 
 I have heard him say with a laugh that in the worst of 
 his pinches, he never worried half so much over holding 
 any job, or making both ends meet, as he did the very 
 first time he went to work, a lad of eighteen, at the shoe 
 factory in St. Louis, and used to go up, trembling, for 
 his pay envelope every Saturday night, in deadly fear 
 of hearing that he was to be "laid off." "I got the place 
 during a rush season they were having, with the under 
 standing that if competent and satisfactory I was to be 
 taken on regularly," he explained; " competent and 
 satisfactory ! My job was sticking black silk labels 
 with the firm s name on em in gilt letters in the insides 
 of the shoes, and I wasn t so green but that I knew they 
 could get fifty boys to do that whenever they needed 
 them that s what was on my mind. And I thought 
 the family were headed straight for the poorhouse if it 
 wasn t for me and my eight dollars a week!" He 
 laughed again, but to a discerning listener, the story 
 was not all funny; and where would his family have 
 been by now but for Van Cleve, one could not help ques 
 tioning. 
 
 No, hard work, debts and expenses, narrow profits, 
 harrowing uncertainties, none of these were a trial to 
 Van Cleve ; he had lived too much of his life under 
 those same conditions, and would scarcely have known 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 337 
 
 what to do with himself in untrammelled leisure. But 
 what did gall him was the knowledge that to very many 
 people, good honest people, however small-minded and 
 unfair they might be, he would always be an unscrupu 
 lous and untrustworthy man. A scoundrel who kept 
 his scoundrelism just inside the limits of the law ; a 
 rat who left a sinking ship ; a fellow who had been ready 
 to profit by some shady transaction with the National 
 Loan funds, but was smart enough to get out in time, 
 and leave Gebhardt with the bag to hold, that was 
 their judgment, and as I have said, Van Cleve knew it. 
 It was true that a thorough inquiry into the bank s 
 affairs had brought out nothing discreditable to him ; 
 the very man who talked most knowingly about Ken- 
 drick s sharp practices could not describe one of them, 
 knew not a soul whom Kendrick had injured, nor had 
 been injured himself to the value of a penny. But the 
 intangibility of the suspicions made them harder to 
 disprove ; and even to-day, after all this time, and 
 though Van s whole life, before and since, has been in 
 direct contradiction, there still remain people who will 
 answer any statement about Van Cleve Kendrick by 
 remarking sagely: "Oh, yes, he s that fellow who 
 nearly got caught with Julius Gebhardt, in the National 
 Loan smash-up. Got hold of a lot of money by mak 
 ing his mother borrow it on some pretext or other, and 
 lost it all. Tell you if I d been District Attorney, I d 
 have got him. There s too much quibbling about 
 technicalities, and not enough common-sense justice 
 in our law practice nowadays." 
 
 It seemed strange to Van Cleve afterwards, when the 
 irretrievable had happened, that he had never suspected, 
 scarcely even troubled himself to ask, at the time of the 
 family s removal from Pass Christian to Halifax, whence 
 had come the money for the journey, which he himself 
 had refused to supply them. He understood that Eve 
 lyn had sold some pictures ; well and good ! He had 
 
338 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 received the news with a surprise not entirely compli 
 mentary to the artist ; but had made no further in 
 quiry. It was not until a year and a half later, in the 
 summer of 1901, that he found out the truth. Nineteen 
 hundred and one turned out a fateful year for Van; 
 Mr. O Rourke gave up his place among the bank direc 
 tors at last, having indeed been called to another some 
 six feet underground in Spring Grove Cemetery, so 
 that the poor old man never knew the disgrace that was 
 to come upon their management or mismanagement; 
 and Mr. Kendrick, who was even at that time cloudily 
 dissatisfied and uneasy over the conduct of affairs, took 
 his seat. The hot weather came on; Van Cleve took 
 Mrs. Gilbert and Bob on east to the Vermont sana 
 torium, and himself extended the trip to visit his family, 
 who were by this time getting ready for the Salem 
 move. 
 
 It had been almost three years, but Van found them 
 not much changed. His grandmother looked a good 
 deal older, and clung to him rather pathetically; his 
 aunt and cousin were as slender, brilliant, and em 
 phatic as ever; Major Stanton had a new story, a 
 tensely dramatic one, beginning: "When I was with 
 Sherman on his famous march to the sea, of which you 
 may have heard "and reciting how he had " taken a 
 detail" on a scouting expedition, and found a dozen 
 people starved to death in a negro-cabin where they had 
 taken refuge, the women in ball-dresses with jewels on 
 their necks, and on every face a set smile ghastly to 
 behold ! The Major didn t invent this grisly tale, 
 either, though his telling of it could hardly be surpassed. 
 You may find it in Napier s " History of the Peninsular 
 War " any day you choose to look. Van Cleve listened to 
 it with due appreciation ; he recalled his boyish agonies 
 of shame and fear of ridicule with amusement nowadays. 
 Uncle Stan was harmless ; everybody saw through him, 
 he reflected with a kind of laughing affection. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 339 
 
 As for the rest of the family, they were sincerely de 
 lighted to see him ; all the women hung on him with 
 caresses ; they had his favorite dishes on the table ; 
 upset the whole house to suit what they fancied to be 
 his convenience or his whim ; entertained " him by the 
 hour ; showed him off before their friends, and enemies, 
 too they had an entire new set of both about whom 
 they were as hotly enthusiastic in praise and blame as 
 had always been their habit. Though they had gone off 
 and left him without scruple, though they had had more 
 than one disagreement with him, and had often com 
 plained to one another of his harshness and obstinacy, 
 about the impossibility of reasoning with him, and his 
 brutal way of "saying things/ they were nevertheless 
 very fond and proud of Van Cleve. No outsider would 
 have dared to criticise him in their presence as severely 
 as they did themselves ; they were loyal to the core ; 
 and, even if Van had been as arrant a blackguard as ever 
 walked, would have loved and shielded him. They had 
 long ago forgiven the Pass Christian grievance, being 
 always generous-spirited and ready to let bygones be 
 bygones. And, besides, the impracticability of Halifax 
 as a place of further residence, and the extreme de 
 sirableness of Salem now occupied them fully. Van 
 Cleve heard them leniently, for once. 
 
 "It might not be a bad plan," he said; "this place 
 seems to be all right, but I d be better satisfied if you 
 were a little nearer me, so I could reach you quickly in 
 case some trouble came up. It takes too long on the 
 road coming here." 
 
 "Oh, Van, you have so much judgment!" said his 
 aunt, devoutly ; "I knew if we could get that splendid 
 clear head of yours to work, you would get right to the 
 bottom of of everything at once. Our only problem 
 is getting to Salem. You know how we hate to ask 
 you for another cent after all you re constantly doing." 
 Tears came into her eyes, as she gazed at him ; it was 
 
340 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 quite true ; they did hate to ask him for money or 
 thought they did. 
 
 " That s all right/ said Van, briefly; "it s possible 
 that I can t give you all you need, but you might begin 
 and save a little don t stint yourselves, just save 
 what you can, you know every month from now until 
 your lease here runs out. Then with that, and what I 
 can spare, you may be able to make out. Sold any 
 thing lately, Evelyn?" 
 
 "Oh, this isn t any place for pictures, Van," the 
 artist explained with energy. "That s one very strong 
 reason for our getting away. I really don t think we 
 ought to stay any longer than we can possibly help ; 
 we can get somebody to take over the lease, you know, 
 so we won t lose anything that way. It s business, you 
 know, with me, Van. I m simply buried here." 
 
 "What s the matter? Aren t the people here up in 
 art, and all that ? Can t you get them interested ? I 
 thought it could hardly be a worse place than Pass 
 Christian, and you did pretty well there." 
 
 Evelyn and her mother began together : "Oh, mercy, 
 don t talk about Pass Christian ! It was horrid. 
 There was nobody there but a great drove of common 
 rich people that didn t care for anything but money, 
 and didn t know any more about art than they did about 
 geometry. I daresay their houses were full of Rogers s 
 statuary and prize chromos. The only way to sell 
 them pictures would have been by the yard or the 
 pound. It wasn t even worth while to show them my 
 pictures ; they would have been pearls before swine," 
 Evelyn finished contemptuously. 
 
 "Well, who bought them, then? You did sell 
 some," Van Cleve asked ; he was used to their teacup- 
 tempests of disapproval and denunciation, their violent 
 likes and dislikes, and seldom gave himself the trouble 
 of looking for a cause ; but this promised to be interest 
 ing. "Some of the swine must have known a pearl 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 341 
 
 when they saw it," he said, restraining a certain incli 
 nation to laugh. Evelyn saw it, however, and flushed 
 angrily. 
 
 "Oh, I know what you re thinking, Van Cleve, but 
 other people appreciate my work, people who have seen 
 a great deal more, and know more about art than you 
 do ; Mr. Gebhardt, for instance !" 
 
 " That s so, he bought one when he was down there. 
 He showed it to me out at the house, I remember. I 
 thought it was pretty good," said Van Cleve, cordially ; 
 " who took the others ? You seem to have a good many 
 left still." He glanced about at the walls, which, in 
 fact, were as well covered as ever. 
 
 "Mr. Gebhardt," said Evelyn, with a shade less con 
 fidence than before; and this time Van Cleve was 
 openly astonished. 
 
 "What ? All ? The whole four or five hundred dol 
 lars worth, I mean? Thunderation ! " he ejaculated; 
 and paused with a puzzled face. "It s funny he never 
 said a word to me about them. He only showed me that 
 one." And now he looked at the three women, sudden 
 suspicion growing in his quick, light eyes. "How many 
 pictures did he take, Evie ? " 
 
 Everybody again began talking at once. 
 
 "Why, it was four he took that is, there 
 were four of them, Van. But you don t quite under 
 stand at least you don t seem quite to have under 
 stood - 
 
 "I didn t want them to do it, Van Cleve; I knew you 
 wouldn t like it, but they would, anyhow - "his grand 
 mother cried. 
 
 "You see it it wasn t a sale exactly - 
 
 "Well, Mr. Gebhardt can have them whenever he 
 sends. It s the same thing - 
 
 Van Cleve silenced them with a gesture. "One at 
 a time," he said with a voice and expression so like the 
 late lamented Joshua that his grandmother jumped 
 
342 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and gasped. "I want to know what you ve been doing. 
 Aunt Myra, will you please tell me ? I said, one at a 
 time, Evie. Now Aunt Myra, will you go ahead ? " 
 
 "Van Cleve, you know it was when we wanted to 
 come here, and we couldn t bear to worry you after 
 you said you you couldn t let us move again, and we 
 thought we d have to stay there in that horrible place 
 forever, and oh, Van, you can t have any idea how ter 
 rible it was ! We couldn t stand it. It was killing us 
 all. We had every one of us been down with coast 
 fever, and the colored servants were so lazy and dirty 
 and disgusting ; just think, the last one I had went off 
 and left the muffin-pans stuck away in the back of the 
 closet with some of the batter in them ! And the doc 
 tor said we were all the kind of constitutions that would 
 never get acclimated, never. Van Cleve, we were just 
 desperate - " Mrs. Lucas had to stop for breath ; Van 
 Cleve waited patiently ; he had no doubt of presently 
 getting to the truth, for they were truthful and upright 
 women. 
 
 "So I wrote to Mr. Gebhardt. You know he had 
 told us over and over again that very time when he was 
 there, and bought Moonlight on the Bayou, that he 
 would do anything in the world to help you, financially, 
 or any way, and wished he could have the chance. So I 
 wrote him just how it was : that you couldn t afford to 
 move us, and we didn t want to be any more of a drain 
 on you, when you were trying so hard to get ahead. 
 Only it was a case of life and death, and we must do 
 something, for a little more of Pass Christian would 
 finish us all. And I told him that Evelyn had four 
 pictures that she would let him have for five hundred 
 dollars ; she considers them her best work, and you 
 know, Van, they have been exhibited and wonderfully 
 spoken of by the finest critics in the country. I enclosed 
 the newspaper clippings so that he could see for himself," 
 said Mrs. Lucas, impressively ; "I wanted him to know 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 343 
 
 that he would be getting a bargain, that it wasn t just 
 talk on my part - 
 
 "I begged you not to do it I said Van Cleve 
 wouldn t like it/ reiterated the old lady. 
 
 "Well, no, I don t like that sort of thing," Van said, 
 temperately; "but I suppose there s no harm in it, 
 since all artists do it, I m told. I wouldn t like Mr. 
 Gebhardt to think that I was putting you up to it, 
 that s all. He might, you know. However, it can t be 
 helped now," he meditatively rubbed his chin. "Did 
 he take them at that price ?" 
 
 "No, he didn t take them at all oh, Van Cleve, he 
 was perfectly lovely, he is the dearest man !" cried Eve 
 lyn. "He wrote back a beautiful letter and said that 
 he would be proud to own any pictures from the same 
 brush as his beautiful Moonlight on the Bayou ; 
 but he didn t want to take advantage of me that way ; 
 and that he had often thought what a pleasure it must 
 be to do something towards helping struggling talent, 
 because genius always did have to struggle, no matter 
 how great it was, and I was no exception to that rule ; 
 and if I would accept it, he " 
 
 "He d give you the money, but you could keep the 
 pictures, is that it ?" said Van Cleve. 
 
 "Yes, but he put it in the sweetest, most delicate way. 
 We couldn t refuse flat, Van, it would have been horrid ; 
 so Mama wrote 
 
 "I wrote and told him how much we appreciated his 
 noble, generous offer, and how we hoped he wouldn t 
 think us ungrateful, if we considered it as a loan, not a 
 gift," said Mrs. Lucas, eagerly; "I told him we would 
 keep the pictures since he wanted us to, but as far as we 
 were concerned they would be security for his money, 
 and he could have them any time. And he wrote back 
 and said that was perfectly satisfactory. So you see it 
 was nothing but an ordinary business transaction after 
 all, Van Cleve, and you mustn t worry about it, you 
 
344 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 dear boy; we wouldn t be so hateful and selfish as to do 
 anything that would cause you one minute s worry." 
 
 Van Cleve sat silent, rubbing his chin, while all the 
 women gazed at him a little apprehensively; not in 
 deed that they were in the least anxiety about the wis 
 dom and righteousness of their own recent course, but 
 it was sometimes so difficult to bring Van Cleve to their 
 point of view; with all his splendid, manly qualities 
 he was often so stubborn and unreasonable ! However, 
 instead of scolding or arguing, he dismissed the matter 
 with an extraordinary speech, a speech which had no 
 apparent relation to anything he or any of them had 
 said hitherto. 
 
 "I guess the laugh s on me !" were his words, uttered 
 with that semi-humorous dryness which they resented 
 without knowing why ; and he addressed Mrs. Van Cleve 
 with a startlingly abrupt change of subject. "Oh, 
 Grandma, tell me again about that time when Grandpa 
 wouldn t buy you that carpet you wanted, will you ? " 
 
 Six months later, the Van Cleve ladies, like all the 
 other people of unimpeachable integrity, were denounc 
 ing the wretched president of the National Loan high 
 and low. They were painfully disappointed in him; 
 they had thought him so fine, so strong "but, as you 
 know, Van Cleve dearest, we saw a great deal of him 
 and the family that winter at Pass Christian ; and 
 though I shrank from speaking of it, I used sometimes 
 to notice a kind of sly look in Mr. Gebhardt s eyes that 
 rather worried me. And then there was all that studied 
 attention to us ; I felt an intuitive distrust of it, and kept 
 trying to put it out of my mind - Mrs. Lucas wrote 
 in a letter that Van Cleve threw aside with an impa 
 tient word. Neither his humor nor his philosophy 
 served him much these days ; if he had no respect for 
 his late employer, Van still felt a certain liking and a 
 certain pity for him. The friendly associations of ten 
 years are not easily forgotten ; and no matter how much 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 345 
 
 Gebhardt deserved it, nor how imperative Van s desire 
 to do his duty, he did not relish the part he must play. 
 I declare I myself have felt sorry for the poor, visionary, 
 free-handed, warm-hearted, mistaken gentleman ; I 
 do not like to think of his blonde beard and his Viking 
 presence haled before a court and jury, and all his dreams 
 and schemes and foolish wrongdoing ruthlessly exposed. 
 (Oh, Xylotite, how many crimes have been committed 
 in thy name ! as some wit brilliantly remarked while the 
 investigation was going forward.) Sentiment is of 
 course quite thrown away on such a scoundrel, and any 
 way it s years since it all happened, and Gebhardt must 
 be "out" by this time, some one was saying the other 
 day, and so has a chance to begin life over again at 
 seventy ! His wife stuck to him through it all. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 ANOTHER BUSINESS WOMAN 
 
 THE Vermont sanatorium did so much for Bob Gil 
 bert that in less than a year he came back looking, to be 
 sure, not fully restored or as if he ever would reach nor 
 mal health and strength again, but much better than 
 anybody had expected, fleshier, his color tolerably good 
 and cough almost gone ; and he himself, as usual, un- 
 quenchably sanguine. "Oh, yes, the symptoms were 
 tubercular," he would acknowledge with a fine air of 
 superiority and detachment ; " the doctors all told me so. 
 In old times you d have felt as if your death-warrant 
 had been signed, and would have made your will and 
 laid right down. I believe people died of pure fright 
 as much as of the disease. It s different now ; we know 
 so much more about treatment and and all that. I 
 took it in time, and it never got any real hold on me. Of 
 course they keep telling me to be careful ; but I expect 
 to keep even with it, and eventually to get it under. 
 I ve always been lucky about that coming out even, 
 you know, or a little better." And with his laugh, 
 which always ended in a little choke, Robert would 
 change the subject. He never spoke about his health 
 at all unless directly questioned. 
 
 He wanted to get something to do at once, and talked 
 very eagerly and insistently about " getting back into 
 harness" ; perhaps he was governed as much by a subtle 
 anxiety to have his theories about his renewed health 
 confirmed even to himself, as by any real motive of 
 ambition or industry, for he was not naturally ambitious 
 
 346 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 347 
 
 or industrious. But now he sought work feverishly, 
 canvassing his friends, haunting offices and salesrooms, 
 attacking all sorts of unlikely people, offering himself 
 for positions he could no more have filled than that of 
 Secretary of State. In fact, it would have been hard to 
 name one for which Bob was qualified, he had had so 
 little training, either business or professional ; and his 
 friends were sorely put to it for terms in which to recom 
 mend him. They could say that Bob was honest, for, 
 with all his failings, nobody ever knew him to tell a lie, 
 and he would have gone to the gallows sooner than take 
 a cent that was not rightfully his own. Is that all that 
 honesty means ? I do not know, but I suspect not. At 
 any rate, one could have sworn with a clear conscience 
 that Robert could be trusted ; but when it came to 
 fitness and efficiency and stability ! However, he 
 might keep straight now ; at least, he could not go far 
 on his old paths, without his sadly abused body giving 
 out altogether, and that fear might prevail with him, 
 weak and yielding as he was. For the sake of the 
 family every one did his best for Bob ; but bad luck 
 or what he considered bad luck dogged him unswerv 
 ingly. For a while he held some sort of small clerk s 
 position with the Antarctic Ice Company, a business 
 enterprise which had collapsed recently, and was being 
 run by a receiver (Stuart Nicholson, the same Mr. 
 Nicholson who was at that time so attentive to Lorrie 
 Gilbert) . Bob may have been doing well enough - 
 nobody knew but anyhow the receivership presently 
 ended, the company got on its legs again, and in the 
 changes of its reorganization, they let Robert go. Then 
 the Park Superintendent, an old friend of his father s, 
 got or made him a place under him at the City Buildings ; 
 but unfortunately the Park Superintendent, happening 
 to be a gentleman and an honest man who had been 
 elevated to this civic office "by a fluke" (people said), 
 speedily fell into disfavor with our gang-elected Mayor 
 
348 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 and other authorities, and was deposed along with 
 whatever associates he had gathered, in the political 
 shake-up the very next autumn. So there was Robert 
 on the market again. After that, Van Kendrick be 
 stirred himself and found several small jobs of collecting 
 for Bob to do an absurd effort, really, for if there was 
 a thing on earth for which Bob had not even a vestige of 
 taste or capacity it was running around after other people 
 to make them pay their debts. The idea of that shift 
 less, easy-going fellow harrying other delinquents as 
 shiftless and easy-going as himself was ludicrous ; they 
 could make him believe any cock-and-bull story, or 
 work on his sympathies until he would be ready to 
 empty his own pockets to save theirs ! At the end of 
 six months, having conclusively demonstrated how not 
 to do collecting, Bob was out of employment once more. 
 And about this time, it began to be rumored that he was 
 drinking again. 
 
 I cannot now recall all his other attempts and failures, 
 nor follow his alternate backslidings and rehabilitations. 
 One met him from time to time, now shabby and run 
 down, now clean and confident, now idle for months, 
 and again working with a hectic energy, full of excite 
 ment and enthusiasm, always thin and coughing, yet 
 somehow never seeming to be much worse. It went 
 on for five years ; people were constantly prophesying 
 his decline and death and wondering how the family 
 could bear to watch the process, or telling one another 
 with pitying indignation that it was hard to say which 
 must be the more painful and humiliating spectacle for 
 his father and mother and poor Lorrie ; Bob on one of 
 his sprees, or Bob sober and half-alive with one lung 
 gone, trying unsuccessfully to support himself in ways 
 the average bright boy of sixteen would disdain. He 
 was assistant to the veterinary surgeon that had the 
 animal hospital on Sycamore Street, at one time ; and 
 he tried working with a market-gardener on one of the 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 349 
 
 little Mill Creek Valley truck-farms ; but that only 
 lasted a very short while, for by that time he was not 
 strong enough even for that light labor, and the open- 
 air winter reversed all theories by doing him more harm 
 than good. The last place he had was at the Hotel 
 Preston, the big new hotel put up by the Preston Estate 
 in 1907. It is a handsome establishment in the most 
 approved hotel style with canopies of glass and wrought- 
 iron over the entrances, and half a dozen elegant little 
 shops along the front, where persons of sufficient afflu 
 ence may buy candies, "gents furnishings," and rich 
 blue brocade corsets. Within there is a rotunda with 
 frescoes and a musicians gallery ; and many resplendent 
 rooms upstairs occupied mostly by New York tailors 
 and milliners on tour with displays of their goods. 
 Robert was in the small booth near the lesser door for 
 ladies, in charge of the supply of cheap umbrellas which 
 the management benevolently hires out to people who 
 have been caught unprotected in a shower. I saw him 
 there myself when I darted into the Preston in the middle 
 of a storm one day. 
 
 There he was, in the hotel uniform and buttons, like 
 the bell-boys, handing out umbrellas, taking the names 
 on little pasteboard checks and putting away the money, 
 with quite a long line of hurried and impatient custom 
 ers before him whom he served briskly, civilly, and with 
 out confusion. We recognized each other at the same 
 instant ; and his manners were better than mine, for 
 whereas I stopped short, and hesitated, feeling sicken- 
 ingly sorry and ashamed, Bob kept a perfectly placid 
 face and matter-of-fact air, nodded with his nice smile, 
 and went on dispensing umbrellas until it came to my 
 turn, as if that were one of the most worthy and suitable 
 of occupations for an educated man, thirty-five years 
 old, and born and bred a gentleman. 
 
 "You didn t get wet, I hope. I never saw anything 
 like the sudden way that rain came up," he said when 
 
350 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 I reached his counter. He looked about as usual, with 
 a high color and large, brilliant, hollow eyes ; and he did 
 not smell at all of whiskey. I do not know why I 
 should have been so unhappily embarrassed, unless it 
 was because I could not keep Professor Gilbert with 
 his Sanskrit and his scholastic dignities out of my head ; 
 and Bob s mother with her pretty, waving gray hair ; 
 and Bob himself as a boy ; and other days, other memo 
 ries, that were not so very old, as years go, but might 
 have been a century past by comparison. I tried to 
 speak naturally. 
 
 "I didn t know you were here, Bob." 
 
 "Well, of course you wouldn t be likely to. You 
 don t come in very often, I expect ; nobody ever knows 
 much about the hotels in their own town. I ve been 
 here two months ever since it opened," he said sim 
 ply. " This is a nice one. You have to leave a dollar, 
 you know." 
 
 I could think of nothing more to say, so got the money 
 out in silence and watched him put my name down, 
 lingering in a wretched uncertainty. "Why, you re 
 left-handed, aren t you?" I said at last, idiotically, as 
 he tried the umbrella to see if it was in good order, and 
 passed it over. 
 
 "Eh? Why no, not naturally. I ve been learning 
 to use that arm, on account of having some trouble with 
 my right here recently," he explained indifferently; 
 "some kind of neuralgia or neuritis or something." 
 
 The right lung was the one that was gone or going 
 undoubtedly ; I might have guessed it, and refrained 
 from questions, if I had not been so flustered. After 
 this maladroit effort, I stammered out some sort of 
 good-by and was about to retreat thankfully ; but the 
 bad quarter of an hour was not yet ended. Before I 
 could move, a lady stepped out of the azure corset- 
 shop which opened on this corridor near at hand, turned 
 towards the door, saw the rain, and turned back quickly. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 351 
 
 She walked up to the umbrella booth. She was dressed 
 in a beautiful dark blue linen suit, that fitted with in 
 comparable snugness over a figure of smooth, unyield 
 ing, accurate curves surpassing those of the whale- 
 boned and pompadour-ribboned dummies we could see 
 through the plate-glass doors behind her; her fawn- 
 colored hair was arranged like theirs in regular, petrified 
 waves glossy with brilliantine, under a neat, stiff hat 
 with dark blue quills and ribbons smartly applied. She 
 came up to the stand, and the light struck full on her 
 face, and I would have known her in a thousand. 
 "Can I get an umb ?" she began; and broke short 
 off, staring. It was Paula Jameson Gilbert what 
 ever she called herself Bob s divorced wife ; all three 
 of us stood a moment dumb. 
 
 I do not know what I should have done what 
 would have been the proper and humane thing to do, 
 that is ; run away as if I were afraid of being caught 
 with them? Or stay as if I wanted to see what they 
 were going to do ? Actually I contrived to do neither ; 
 it all happened too quickly. Paula she seemed to 
 be merely surprised, not at all disconcerted recovered 
 almost at once, and knew me and spoke to me by 
 name; and she said, "Why, hello, Bob!" and put 
 out her hand to him, too ! 
 
 He took it automatically, and said, "How do you 
 do ?" looking at her helplessly. Paula kept on talking, 
 not to relieve the situation, for it was plain she herself 
 felt no awkwardness about it, but as it would seem out 
 of the fulness of her heart ! She asked both of us if 
 the folks were well. She inquired after several other 
 people. She said warmly: "Well, this little old burg 
 has waked up at last, hasn t it ? Look at the new sky 
 scrapers ! And let me tell you there aren t many 
 hotels in this part of the country that have got anything 
 on this one. If they d only get a bunch of porters with 
 caps and uniforms and numbers down at the Grand 
 
352 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Central to grab your grip when you get off the train, 
 why, the town d be right up to date!" And she 
 laughed, showing all her teeth, which were as pretty 
 and white and flawless as ever ; and a tiny crease in 
 one cheek that used to be a dimple years ago. She 
 was astonishing. I believe the woman was glad to 
 get back here, glad to see us, glad to talk to us. Let 
 me give no false impression ; Paula s hail-fellow-well- 
 met manner was not in the least brazen or self-asser 
 tive ; one sensed a kind of good feeling in her very 
 lack of feeling. She could not be a gentlewoman, 
 nor even look like one ; but for all her teetering high 
 heels, and her tortured waist, and her carefully made-up 
 complexion, and the breezy assurance of her address, 
 she was absolutely respectable. Her respectability 
 clothed her visibly, like her blue linen suit ; she had the 
 air of being armed and bucklered against the world 
 and the wiles of men, supplied with an arsenal of morals, 
 and ready to open fire at the slightest hostile demon 
 stration. 
 
 I edged away at last, and was escaping, but Paula 
 interrupted her eager chatter she was actually 
 asking Bob what that friend of his, Mr. Kendrick, 
 was doing, and whether he and Lorrie had made a 
 match of it yet ! to run after me. " Oh, do you have 
 to go ? Can t you stay a minute ? It s raining cats 
 and dogs still," she said, and seized my arm confiden 
 tially ; i can t you just come upstairs, and let me show you 
 our display? I know you ll like it, and I d love to 
 show you. The things are awfully pretty, and the 
 very latest wrinkles right straight from Paree, you 
 know, the swellest ever. Oh, say, do come ! Our 
 prices aren t sky-high, either, but anyway you don t 
 have to buy anything, you know ; I d just love to have 
 you see em. Say, can t you? Well, all right, then, 
 but I m going to be here for three days, so you ll come 
 in some other time, won t you? Didn t you get one 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 353 
 
 of our cards ? Well if that ain t the limit ! I 
 know you must have been down on our list ; we get 
 all the names out of Who s Who. Here, take this 
 one. And say, mention me to your friends, will you ? 
 I expect some of them remember me, anyhow. This is 
 the first time I ve ever made Cincinnati on a trip, and 
 I d like to work up a trade here for the firm." 
 
 The leaflet she pressed on me was handsomely en 
 graved at the top with a crest, the head of a Roman 
 emperor (to all appearances) enclosed in a wreath, and 
 underneath in minute lettering: "L. Bloch, 325 Fifth 
 Avenue, New York, N.Y." Farther down it announced 
 in flourishing script that M. Levi Bloch, of Paris, 
 Vienna, and New York, desired to call my attention 
 to the display of samples from his ateliers wliich would 
 be on view at the Hotel Preston, Parlors A and B, the 
 24th, 25th, 26th. Corsets, Brassieres, Garters, Silk 
 Stockings, Woven and Piece Silk Combinations, etc. 
 Exclusive agents for La Sylphide Empire girdle. Ex 
 pert fitters would be in attendance, and their represen 
 tative, Mme. Clarice, would give my order her personal 
 supervision. 
 
 "I wish you d come up; you might look around 
 while you re waiting for the rain to hold up, anyhow, 
 couldn t you?" said Paula, nudging me towards the 
 elevator. "Say, come on!" And shrewdly keeping 
 a firm grip on my arm, she turned and called a familiar 
 good-by to Bob, over her shoulder. "See you later !" 
 He did not answer; indeed, he had hardly spoken at 
 all throughout the incident. 
 
 Paula piloted me, unresisting, yet inwardly amazed 
 at the feebleness of my compliance, up-stairs and to 
 Parlors A and B, where, in fact, there was a sumptuous 
 parade of Corsets, Brassieres, Combinations, and all 
 the rest of it. She had a couple of mannequins there, 
 good-looking young women all Marcel waves and 
 glittering finger nails, who surveyed me with the 
 
354 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 extraordinary deferential patronage of their kind; 
 and I noticed that Paula herself exhibited that manner 
 to perfection as she guided me about. She put it 
 on like a glove for the benefit of her underlings, holding 
 up one garment after another, and murmuring prices 
 in confidence ; and blarneyed me into buying an ex 
 pensive harness of sky-blue moire", lace, and silver 
 buckles, which I have never had on from that day to 
 this, in a style no Parisian saleswoman could have 
 bettered. It was inconceivable that "that little Paula 
 Jameson" could have developed into so able and 
 distinguished a personage as Madame Clarice, but such 
 was the fact ! And in a moment when we were alone, 
 I had the hardihood to ask her a question or two about 
 the process. 
 
 She was not in the least offended ; I think she took 
 my curiosity and surprise rather as a compliment ! 
 "Why, I just kind of fell into it," she said. "I ve 
 been in it now for four years. I had to do something, 
 you know. After Momma died that was in nineteen- 
 two no, three I ve lost count, but it was along 
 there some time well, after she died, I found we just 
 didn t have anything left. We d lived it all up. Momma 
 didn t know much, and she didn t raise me to know 
 much, either. -- Very well, Ongriette, you can go to 
 your luncheon now, and right afterwards I want you 
 to take those garters up to show the lady in 217 that 
 was in this morning. Tell her we can match any color 
 of corset or silk lawngerie she selects ; it s so chick to 
 have everything underneath match." And as the girl 
 departed, Paula, who had momentarily resumed her 
 saleswoman s elegance of deportment, turned to me, 
 relaxing again. 
 
 "We d simply lived everything clean up. Momma 
 never did have much head-piece, you know," she ex 
 plained impartially. "She d got to be in poor health, 
 and it was a good thing she died when she did ; she d 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 355 
 
 have been an awful drag on me. I couldn t have taken 
 care of her and made a living for both of us, too. As 
 it was, she died and never knew a thing about it. But 
 my, you haven t any idea what a time I had afterwards ! 
 Why, I had to sell some jewellery to bury her with. 
 Hey ? Why, we were in N Yawk. I went and got a room 
 in one of those perfectly punk boarding-houses down 
 near Washington Square. You haven t any idea what 
 a time I had ! I didn t know what to do, and anyway 
 there wasn t a thing I could do not even sewing or 
 cooking. If I hadn t had luck, I bet I d have been 
 scrubbing floors this minute. First I thought of going on 
 the stage ; but pretty soon I saw that wasn t any good. 
 You can hang around the theatrical agencies and offices, 
 and hang around em, and hang around em, till your 
 feet drop off, and you ll never get a look-in, unless 
 you ve a friend with a pull. You know the kind of 
 friend I mean." She paused significantly, and I 
 nodded. 
 
 "Well, I wasn t that kind," Madame Clarice went 
 on, a certain hardness settling about her still lovely 
 mouth. "Of course I could have !" She shrugged. 
 "But what s the use? I just felt as if I was good and 
 done with men. When they come around me now, 
 I just tell em all nix on that talk. It don t go with me. 
 I ve seen too much. I don t want anything more to 
 do with any man, except in a business way, of course. 
 I must say that when a man s got his head set on busi 
 ness, he s, generally speaking, a perfect gentleman. 
 Well, as I was telling you, there I was in N Yawk, in 
 a hall-bedroom, you know, without a cent and scared 
 to death every time I heard the landlady coming up 
 stairs. Then one day I had an idea. I got it from 
 something I heard a girl say in one of the dramatic- 
 bureau places I d been going to. She was a chorus- 
 girl, I guess looked it anyhow ; and I heard her tell 
 ing the man that she d been in a coat-and-suit model 
 
356 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 job over on Sixth Avenue, ever since the June Roses 
 show broke up. 
 
 "That interested me, because I always have wanted 
 to know what they did in between times, haven t you ? 
 That s where I got my idea, too. I just thought, 
 Why shouldn t I be a coat-and-suit-model ? They 
 get good money, and nothing to do but stand around 
 and be looked at. And I ve got enough better figure 
 than that chorus-girl. So one day I put on my things 
 and started out. 
 
 "Well, it wasn t so easy as I thought, but I finally 
 did land a job with a ladies tailor named Blitz on 
 Thirty-second, near Broadway. His head-woman was 
 sick, and they took me just to fill in while she was 
 away. What he wanted was more of a saleslady to 
 show the things, and sort of jolly people along than a 
 model. It wasn t a real swell place like they have on 
 the Avenue like this one, you know - And here 
 Paula sent around a glance of proud satisfaction which 
 was, on the whole, rather agreeable to see. She got 
 up and rearranged a negligee of opalescent-tinted 
 crepe and silver embroidery, so that it would show to 
 better advantage, laid carelessly over one of the gilded 
 Empire chairs of Parlor A ; eyed the effect a second, 
 with her head on one side, touched the folds here and 
 there, and returned to her chair and narrative. 
 
 "Of course I was pretty green at first, but by the 
 time I d been there six weeks, I could see I was mak 
 ing good with Blitz. He was business clear through ; 
 kept tab on your sales, and got every ounce of work 
 you held out of you. However, the head lady came 
 back one day, and she hadn t been in the place a half 
 hour before I knew it would presently be here s your- 
 hat-what s-your-hurry for me. Mad ! And jealous ! 
 Whee! And the worst of it was she was too good her 
 self for Blitz to get rid of her. Smart as a steel trap, 
 you know, sell you the whole stock without your know- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 357 
 
 ing it; just hypnotized you into buying. I learned 
 a good deal watching her. My, I ve often thought 
 how mad it would have made her to know I was getting 
 a line on all her ways, and seeing where I could improve 
 on em ! When it came to looks, I had the biggest 
 kind of a lead over her, and I guess that s one of the 
 things that made her sorest. I was more refined style, 
 you know, and that s very hard to get always ; you 
 don t see a real refined one every day. 
 
 " However, by that time, I d made some acquaint 
 ances in the trade ; so when I left Blitz, I didn t have 
 any trouble at all scarcely. I went right over to the 
 Lawngerie Department at Altman s. But I hadn t 
 been there any time at all before a man I d met that 
 was in passementerie and fine trimmings came to me 
 and says : Look here, what you doing here ? This 
 ain t any place for you. Well, I says, what I m 
 doing is getting my little fifteen a week. Any place 
 where I can make that is the place for me, according 
 to the way I figure it. He just laughed. He says : 
 Fifteen! Why, you re too good for that. Now I ve 
 got a friend, he says, with the Maison Bloch, name 
 of Sweeny, he s their head-man there, and he s looking 
 for somebody like you. You can put it all over any 
 saleslady he s got. Just look at your form for one 
 thing ; form s everything in the corset trade. Tell 
 em you wear the La Delice or the Cleo or the X.Y.Z. 
 or any old style you choose, and they look at your 
 form and fall for it every time. Now I want to take 
 you around and introduce you to Sweeny. Of course 
 I knew that meant I was to throw Sweeny s trade his 
 way all I could, but I d just as lief. He had a first- 
 class line of goods, and one good turn deserves another, 
 don t it ? So we went over to see Sweeny, and sure 
 enough, didn t he engage me right off ! Only thing 
 he said to me was: Say, you got to can that name. 
 You don t want to be Mrs. Anybody you ve got 
 
358 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 to be Madame Something, or just a single name like 
 Louise or Charlotte or Adelaide ; that s the nifty 
 thing to do. So we decided on Madame Clarice. 
 I think it sounds swell, don t you ? Madame Clarice." 
 
 I expressed due admiration; and we sat silent a 
 moment, Paula thoughtfully moving and replacing 
 the charming little sachet-bags, jabots, and odds and 
 ends spread out on the table near her. 
 
 "It s been easy for you ever since, I suppose ?" said 
 I, at length. 
 
 "Yes, oh, yes. Well, of course, I ve got to keep on 
 the job every minute; believe me, I work. But I 
 haven t had any trouble; I ve gone right along. I 
 make two trips a year, South in winter Palm Beach, 
 and all the resorts, you know and North in summer. 
 It s funny I never happened to come here before, but 
 I believe the management have got a notion it isn t 
 a likely place. Anyway, they never put it in my route. 
 You don t know how queer it seemed to-day same 
 old town, but everything different !" 
 
 She was silent, playing with the trifles, and then 
 spoke abruptly: "Bob Gilbert looks awfully, don t 
 he? I don t believe he ll live long." 
 
 She said this with an air of detached and impersonal 
 observation startling to witness. Whatever their ex 
 periences together had been, it was evident that Paula 
 cherished no resentment, no feeling of any kind, about 
 her ex-husband. She regarded him with an amiable 
 indifference. While I was still sitting in a wordless 
 confusion, she added with much more earnestness : 
 "Lorrie hasn t ever got married, he said. I wonder 
 why. Do you suppose it s because of her having been 
 engaged to to ? " 
 
 "To that Mr. Cortwright, that was killed in the 
 Spanish War?" I supplied, seeing her hesitate; "why, 
 yes, that s what everybody thinks." 
 
 "I thought sure she d marry Mr. Kendrick," said 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 359 
 
 Paula, gazing into space with a meditative frown. 
 She caught sight of herself in a mirror, and gave a 
 sound of consternation. "My, I ve got into such a 
 bad habit of frowning that way ! Ain t it awful ? 
 I ll have my forehead full of wrinkles if I don t look out." 
 She rubbed her finger-tips across it anxiously. 
 
 Some customers coming in just then, this was the end 
 of the interview ; and I did not see Madame Clarice 
 again, although she invited me very urgently, and kissed 
 me at parting ! It was to be feared that "she had diag 
 nosed Bob s case accurately ; for going to the Preston 
 next day to turn over the umbrella, I encountered a 
 stylishly trim young woman at the booth in his place. 
 And in answer to my inquiry she told me that the regular 
 clerk had been taken sick yesterday afternoon and had 
 to be sent home. 
 
 "I guess he s pretty bad off. They had the house 
 doctor to fix him up, and he took him out to where he 
 lives in a cab. I heard em say he had a hemorrhage, 
 or was going to have one," she said. 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 IN WHICH WE CALL AT THE GILBERTS* 
 
 ROBERT was indeed very sick. The attack might 
 have been attributed to the shock of the sudden en 
 counter with his wife, but the family doctor, hearing 
 of it, shook his head. It was a coincidence, he said, 
 nothing more ; the machinery was worn out, and must 
 have been upon the verge of breaking down this long 
 while. Of course, it was impossible to say some 
 times these cases contradict all previous experience 
 
 - Bob might live for several months, even for a year 
 
 - or he might drop off to-morrow. The only thing 
 to do was to try to keep him contented and in ignorance ; 
 there would probably be times when he would feel 
 a little better and would get restless and want to get 
 around or go back to work, but that wouldn t last, 
 he was physically too weak. Just don t cross him; 
 let him do what he could, in reason. If he got to talk 
 ing about going away somewhere and trying some other 
 climate as he had done before, just put him off ; any 
 excuse would do. He was not likely to suffer acutely ; 
 oh, yes, he could eat anything, give him anything he 
 liked. As long as the weather was pleasant this way, 
 he might stay out on the porch most of the time ; they 
 could arrange a couch or a reclining chair for him out 
 there. The doctor would look in occasionally, but, 
 frankly, there was nothing he could do nothing 
 anybody could do. He looked at Lorrie and her 
 mother standing, each with her cold hands clasped 
 tight together, listening to him as if he had been, what 
 
 360 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 361 
 
 surely all good doctors are, a kind of deputy-Deity 
 - the doctor looked at the women gravely and kindly, 
 and got into his buggy and drove away. 
 
 This sad news being presently spread abroad, all 
 the friends of the family and the Gilberts had made 
 a great many warm and devoted and steadfast friend 
 ships were quick to show their sympathy, though 
 nearly every one privately was of the opinion that Bob s 
 death would be a merciful release. The poor fellow 
 never would have reformed, probably could not, and 
 there was nobody who could be better spared ; he 
 had never been anything but a care and a disgrace to 
 his people, to everybody that ever had anything to 
 do with him. But all that ought to be forgotten now. 
 Persons who had long ago stopped asking after him, or 
 recognizing him on the street, now called at the house, 
 brought kind-hearted offerings of books and fruit and 
 jellies and bottles of wine and air-pillows, recommended 
 other physicians and wonderful new treatments, hoped 
 the family wouldn t hesitate to call on them in case 
 they needed outside help things that nurses and 
 doctors couldn t do, you know. They came and in 
 sisted on taking Lorrie out in their motor-cars, whenever 
 she could leave the invalid. Sometimes they saw him, 
 for a few minutes; he had his days of feeling better 
 or worse. Girls he had gone to school with, married 
 women now with boys of their own, came to visit him, 
 putting aside the fact that they had not spoken to him 
 in years ; but they always had liked Bob Gilbert, 
 they said, he was so nice when when he was all right. 
 Even little old Miss Harriet Peck, the primmest mortal 
 on earth, who would have run from the mere sight of 
 Robert (even sober) a while ago, now ventured to the 
 house and sent in her maidenly card with a tidy little 
 nosegay of heliotrope and lemon-verbena. She had 
 been his Sunday-school teacher twenty-five years before. 
 " And I never did know my Collect," the sick man said, 
 
362 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 surveying the gift with a grin ; "she must have forgiven 
 me. Does she wear that funny little pancake bonnet 
 with the gilt arrow stuck through a bow in front still, 
 Lorrie? I d like to see Miss Harriet; can t I see 
 her?" 
 
 11 She s gone. I don t believe she was quite certain 
 about the propriety of calling on a gentleman, especially 
 after I told her you were lying down," said Lorrie, 
 quickly. The fact was, she had actively discouraged 
 Miss Peck, who had arrived with a Testament under 
 one arm, eager to administer the consolations of religion 
 to her old-time pupil in his extremity. 
 
 "As soon as I m well enough, I ll go around and see 
 the old girl. It was very kind of her to come," 
 Robert declared. " Everybody s kind, seems to me. 
 I ll have lots of calls to make. You come with me, will 
 you, Lorrie?" 
 
 "Why, of course, I d love to," said Lorrie, smiling 
 bravely. 
 
 It was in the first week of Bob s sickness that they had 
 one visitor whom it never would have occurred to them 
 to expect. Robert, as the doctor had prophesied, 
 rallied with uncanny swiftness, and already they had 
 conveyed him to a cot on the side-porch, and his 
 mother and sister were sitting there with him, in the 
 mild sunshine it was in September Lorrie reading 
 aloud from the morning paper, and Mrs. Gilbert 
 constructing the first of a series of fine outing- 
 flannel night-shirts which she was confident she 
 could make better and infinitely cheaper than the 
 men s haberdashers. It was strange how quickly 
 the household had adjusted itself to the idea of 
 illness. Bob lay there quietly, comfortably, not 
 looking so very sick. I am not sure that there was not 
 an obscure content somewhere in the depths of his 
 mother s heart to have him at home at last and secure ; 
 it was hard to believe that he could not go on forever 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 363 
 
 in this state, being cared for, petted, watched over ; 
 she was almost happy as she planned his night-shirts. 
 
 As they sat there, they heard the bell ring, and heard 
 the servant s footsteps going through the hall and some 
 low- voiced talk at the front door. " There s the post 
 man," Bob said. But some one came, apparently 
 with an anxious caution, into the sitting-room, which 
 opened with a long window on the porch ; and directly 
 their maid spoke from the door. "It s a lady to see 
 you, Miss Lorrie. She didn t give any card. She 
 just said she wanted to see you," said the girl. 
 
 Lorrie put down the newspaper, and rose with a 
 faint grimace. "They re always coming in like that, 
 on tiptoe and holding their breath as if as if . 
 Can t they see that the real kindness would be to be 
 have as if nothing were the matter?" she said to her 
 self impatiently. She went into the room, which was 
 darkened by the vines and roof outside, and, making 
 out only a silhouette of the visitor standing in an un 
 certain attitude by the door, spoke with a cheerful 
 ness that, had she known it, was almost as artificial 
 as the other s labored solicitude. "How do you do? 
 I can t see who it is ; everything looks all black and 
 green, coming in here out of the light but how do 
 you do, anyhow!" said Lorrie, gayly. "Is it Mrs. 
 -?" Her lips stiffened on the words; she had gone 
 up quite close to the other, but stopped stock-still 
 with her hand yet outstretched. 
 
 "I guess you weren t expecting to see me," said Paula. 
 She looked at Lome s hand, advanced her own awk 
 wardly, then withdrew it and began to fumble with 
 the clasps and chains of two or three silver trifles that 
 dangled from her wrist a purse, lorgnette, and what 
 not. She shifted her parasol to the curve of her other 
 arm, and pulled at the edge of her veil, glancing around 
 the room with a kind of cringing resolution. "I knew 
 you d be surprised to see me," she repeated ; "I didn t 
 
364 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 suppose you d want to, but I I came, anyhow, 
 Lorrie." 
 
 " Don t speak so loud," said Lorrie. 
 
 "I won t I didn t mean to " said Paula, faltering 
 and shrinking. 
 
 "My brother is just outside the window. I don t 
 want him to hear you suddenly. He s very sick," 
 said Lorrie, more gently. 
 
 "I know. I knew he was sick. I don t want to 
 see him. I didn t come to see him," Paula whispered 
 hastily and urgently; she even retreated a step in 
 visible fright. "I don t want to see him. I came to 
 see you, Lorrie." 
 
 On a common impulse, they moved a yard or so 
 farther away, into the hall. In the stronger light Paula 
 examined the other half furtively, half openly, with a 
 strangely mixed expression combining fear, curiosity, 
 bravado, and something that might almost have been 
 construed as regard. Her accurately fashionable dress, 
 her little groomed and petted body with all its good 
 points so carefully cherished and exhibited, noticeable 
 enough elsewhere, somehow lost all distinction and 
 significance in Lome s presence, and she herself seemed 
 dimly to realize it, but without envy. "Lorrie Gilbert, 
 you haven t changed a bit not a speck ! " she declared ; 
 "my, I wish I had your complexion ! It s the way you 
 live, I suppose. Tell you, New York ll get away with 
 anybody s looks, no matter how careful they are." 
 
 "Hush! Bob will hear you," Lorrie warned her 
 again, and drew the door shut. 
 
 "Oh, you don t think he could, do you? I hope not. 
 I I don t want to see him, Lorrie," said Paula, in 
 a panic. "I heard he was going to die I don t 
 want to see him. It s true, isn t it ?" 
 
 "Yes, it s true," Lorrie said. As she surveyed 
 Paula, she found herself on a sudden thinking of her 
 with all the old tolerance and pity. Poor Paula, 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 365 
 
 poor dull creature with her vanity, her petty shrewd 
 ness, her unconscious brutality, her wofully cheap 
 morals, poor Paula ! It was like her to be afraid of 
 Bob because he was dying, like her to come here to 
 this house that was associated with an experience so 
 shameful no other woman could have even thought 
 of it, much less seen it, without invincible shrinking. 
 Merciful Heaven, she had not entered it thus since that 
 day, nearly ten years before, when Lorrie had taken 
 her, sick and sorry, back to the hotel ; she had not even 
 seen Lorrie since the marriage. Here she stood, un 
 easy, ingratiating, not really callous, not really coarse, 
 only immutably self-absorbed. 
 
 "Can t we go somewhere and talk, where he can t 
 hear us?" Paula questioned; "I d love to have a 
 good long talk with you, Lorrie. I came because I 
 wanted to talk to you." 
 
 " We can go up-stairs to my room - 
 
 "Well, are you sure he won t hear us? I don t 
 want him to know I m here," said Paula, a little timor 
 ously. "He looked awfully badly the other day. 
 Did he tell you he had seen me ? Did he say anything 
 about me?" 
 
 "Yes, he said you were at the hotel. He said you 
 were travelling for a firm of ladies tailors," said Lorrie, 
 leading the way. 
 
 "Well, he didn t get it quite right, but that was 
 near enough, for a man, I guess. Hello, it s your 
 same old room !" 
 
 Lorrie silently brought forward a couple of chairs, 
 but the other did not at once sit down. Instead, she 
 flitted lightly about the room, inspecting and com 
 menting on the pictures and bits of ornaments, new and 
 old, the wall-paper, the curtains, the pincushion - 
 "I see you re doing that eyelet-work; that s your own 
 w^ork, isn t it ? I ve got a friend that does the most 
 simply gorgeous Irish crochet. She s got her bureau- 
 
366 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 scarfs all made of it, and a handkerchief -bedspread, 
 the squares all put together with Irish inserting, and 
 pink China-silk lining showing through perfectly 
 elegant. The same thing would have cost forty-five 
 dollars at McCutcheon s ; I priced one. Say, you ve 
 changed your desk, haven t you? Didn t it use to 
 be over there by the mantelpiece ? Oh !" She paused 
 by the desk, picking up a photograph in a silver frame 
 that Lorrie always kept standing in the middle of the 
 little shelf ; her voice changed slightly as she said : 
 " That s him, isn t it, Lorrie? Isn t it Mr. Cort- 
 wright ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 Paula carefully relaxed her smart, tightly-drawn, 
 dotted white veil, and pushed it up, and studied the 
 picture for a long while. "It s in that Rough Riders 
 uniform. He must have had it taken just before he 
 went to the war." She turned it over and read aloud, 
 "Dearest, from Phil." Her face twitched momen 
 tarily. Then she set the frame down again. "Law 
 me, what fools everybody is when they re real young !" 
 she said musingly. And there was a silence in the 
 little room for half a minute. 
 
 Paula went to the glass and readjusted her veil with 
 care. She sat down deliberately, facing Lorrie ; and 
 when she spoke, Lorrie noticed a certain assurance and 
 maturity in her manner that had been lacking at the 
 first. Nobody would conceive of a New York cor- 
 setiere s establishment as a school for the development 
 of character ; yet one cannot become Madame Clarice, 
 head saleswoman of a fashionable importing-house, 
 without having acquired some poise, initiative, and 
 understanding of one s neighbor. 
 
 "Lorrie," Paula said; "I suppose you think it s 
 funny my coming to see you this way, after every 
 thing that s happened. But I wanted to see you. 
 I always liked you, Lorrie. I liked you even when 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 367 
 
 I hated you if you know what I mean. Girls are 
 so funny." 
 
 Lorrie had no declaration or confession to make in 
 return ; she sat without answering, scarcely even 
 surprised. 
 
 "You don t hold it up against me, about Bob, do 
 you? You don t hold that against me?" said Paula, 
 with unexpected earnestness. 
 
 "You mean your being married to him? Why no, 
 Paula. How could I dislike you, or feel any resent 
 ment against you about that?" said Lorrie, startled 
 and distressed. "Bob did you a dreadful wrong. The 
 first thing we all thought of was that he must set it 
 right. It doesn t make any difference that he s my 
 brother. We I ve never thought of such a thing as 
 blaming you for it." 
 
 "Well, I d have hated it, if I d been in your place," 
 said Paula, honestly. "Why, I even hated the whole 
 thing at the time, but I couldn t help myself." She 
 leaned forward and spoke with emphasis. "You know, 
 Lorrie, there s one thing I ve always wanted you to 
 know, only I never had a chance to tell you, and some 
 how I couldn t write it. I never was good at writing ; 
 and I was afraid I couldn t say it so you d believe me. 
 But it s just this : if I d been left to myself, I d never 
 have hooked on to Bob Gilbert that way. I d never 
 have done it in this wide world. It was Momma that 
 did it. I told her afterwards, often and often, that 
 it didn t need to have been done at all. If I could have 
 known beforehand that the baby was going to die 
 you knew it was born dead ?" 
 
 Lorrie uttered a sound of assent. She could not have 
 spoken articulately. 
 
 "If I could only have known that beforehand, I 
 wouldn t ever have hooked on to Bob. There wouldn t 
 have been any particular use, you see. Momma and 
 I could just have gone away from here and come back 
 
368 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 again, and nobody would have been one bit wiser. I 
 kept thinking : What am I going to do with that baby ? 
 And as it turned out, I didn t need to bother at all !" 
 
 Lorrie gazed at her, dumb. She was conscious with 
 horror of a desire to laugh, yet there was a sob in her 
 throat. Oh, it was too grotesque, it was too pitiable ! 
 About Paula s intention, there was a crooked fairness 
 immeasurably pathetic ; yet by every word she said 
 Lorrie felt all womankind to be humiliated and debased. 
 
 "If I could only have known, I wouldn t have let 
 Momma rope him into getting married. But I didn t 
 know. I couldn t tell the baby was going to die," 
 Paula said over again; "you believe me, don t you, 
 Lorrie?" she asked, in earnest apology. 
 
 "Of course I believe you, Paula," said Lorrie, with 
 difficulty. The tears stood in her eyes. 
 
 Paula sat back with a long breath. "I always 
 wanted you to know. When the baby was born, and 
 they found it was dead, that was the first thing I thought 
 of. I thought : There now, all the fuss was for noth 
 ing ! Well, I did the best I could. I went to a lawyer, 
 and got him to tell me what was the best way to get a 
 divorce without having any talk, or having to tell any 
 thing. I had to pay him a lot, too. So I took his 
 advice and waited three years, and then got it, you 
 know ; and I told the other lawyers that I wanted it 
 fixed so that your brother could marry again if he 
 wanted to, same as myself. I don t know whether 
 they did it or not, but that s what I told em, anyway. 
 And I want to say, Lorrie, that your brother s always 
 been as nice a little gentleman as anybody d want to 
 know. He s all right, and I want you to know I think 
 
 so." 
 
 Lorrie had a sensation as of a person groping vainly 
 in some unlit labyrinth. She had reached a point 
 where she could not follow the processes of Paula s 
 mind ; at every turn some stone wall of complete in- 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 369 
 
 comprehensibility baffled her. Surely any other woman 
 in Paula s position would have either hated Bob or 
 loved him ; it was incredible that she could pronounce 
 him, with this obvious friendly conviction, "all right." 
 It was incredible, but it was so! 
 
 "Now you tell me something about 7/owrself," said 
 Paula, shifting her ground with surprising suddenness. 
 "I thought you d be married by this time. Why didn t 
 you, Lorrie?" She spoke with energy; it had the 
 effect of an accusation, rather than an inquiry. 
 
 "I didn t want to. I don t want to," Lorrie answered, 
 gathering herself together after a moment s effort. 
 
 The other eyed her sharply. "You ve had some 
 more offers, haven t you?" she demanded; "I guess 
 they don t come along so thick as they used to; but 
 you ve held your looks pretty well, Lorrie. I bet 
 you ve had some more offers. Don t that Mr. Ken- 
 drick want to marry you still? He used to." 
 
 "Why I he he - 
 
 "I knew he did," said Paula, triumphantly. "Why 
 don t you take him? He s always been crazy about 
 you ; and he must be pretty well fixed now. Of 
 course, it s all right to keep a man hanging around 
 for a while, so s he won t ever get to feeling sure 
 of you," she interpolated liberally; "but you don t 
 want to take too long about it. Men are kind of 
 queer, and he might get tired of waiting, and go off 
 to somebody else." 
 
 "You don t understand. I don t want to marry 
 any one. I shall never marry any one. And I will ask 
 you not to talk to me any more about it, Paula. You 
 know I don t like you to," said Lorrie, fairly incensed. 
 Paula, however, looked at her flushed and mortified 
 face quite unmoved. 
 
 "I guess you think I ve got my nerve," she com 
 mented dispassionately. "Suppose I told you that 
 was one of the things I came here to see you about? 
 
 2u 
 
370 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 To ask about you and Kendrick, I mean. Suppose I 
 told you that, what d you say?" 
 
 "I would tell you that it was a great piece of im 
 pertinence!" said Lorrie, at the end of her self-com 
 mand. She tried to steady herself. "It seems as if 
 you can t be made to understand that this isn t a mere 
 pretence with me. I mean it when I tell you I don t 
 like it. It s an insult to Mr. Kendrick and myself 
 both. He " she choked ; all at once she found her 
 self angered to the point of tears on Van Cleve s account. 
 He was above being gabbled about this way ; above all 
 this contemptible gossip about getting tired of waiting, 
 and going off to some one else ! 
 
 Paula, on the other hand, kept her temper admirably ; 
 she had always been of an equable disposition, and 
 doubtless the years she had spent catering to M. Levi 
 Bloch s customers had taught her the value of a surface 
 amiability, at any rate. " Maybe it is an impertinence. 
 Maybe who you marry or don t marry is none of my 
 business," she said tranquilly; and rose with well- 
 controlled movements. "But I ll tell you one thing, 
 Lorrie Gilbert, if you re holding off and meaning to die 
 an old maid because of him - she pointed with a 
 negligent gesture of her parasol to the photograph of 
 Lome s dead lover which was impassively witnessing 
 this scene, from its stand on the desk "if it s because 
 of him, you re making the mistake of your life. Would 
 he have done it for you ? Not much ! Not much he 
 wouldn t have ! Why, you were only one of a dozen 
 with him. If you d been married, you d have found 
 out about Phil Cortwright. He d have got tired of you 
 in a month " 
 
 "Paula, stop! How dare how can how- 
 Lorrie s voice failed in stark anger. She could not get 
 out another word ; her whole frame trembled. She 
 darted to the desk and snatched the photograph up, 
 holding it against her breast with a fierce movement. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 371 
 
 She hardly knew what she was doing, save defending 
 her most sacred memories against this sacrilegious voice 
 and presence. 
 
 "If you scream out that way, your brother or some 
 body will hear," said Paula, disturbed for the first 
 time. She lowered her voice, glancing towards the 
 door. "He wouldn t want me to tell you, anyhow. 
 He made me promise not to. But what does a promise 
 like that amount to? I was in such a fix I d have 
 sworn black was white !" She went closer to Lorrie 
 and whispered something with a sort of cold vehemence. 
 
 Although she heard, Lorrie for a second did not 
 understand; the words beat idly about her ears like 
 the fluttering of a bat s vrings at night. Paula spoke 
 again ; and then Lorrie gave a wild and inarticu 
 late sound of denial. "No, no!" -she gasped; and 
 stared speechlessly at the other, her color slowly 
 fading. 
 
 "It s the truth. My God, Lorrie, don t look that 
 way ! I can t help it now. It s the truth" Paula s 
 own face showed ashen-gray through all her paint; 
 the effort she was making taxed all her meagre reserves 
 of character ; but she spoke with a force of voice and 
 manner that vanquished doubt. 
 
 "What call would I have to come here and lie to 
 you ? It s the truth. I can prove it. I ve got letters 
 from him. I can prove it if you don t believe me. 
 Or you can go and ask your brother. Ask your brother, 
 and see what he says. 7 
 
 Lorrie made a negative motion with her head ; she 
 tried to speak with lips that moved as if of lead. The 
 picture slid out of her hands to the floor. Paula seized 
 her arm with an exclamation. 
 
 "Goodness, Lorrie, don t faint, whatever you do! 
 For mercy s sake, don t faint ! Somebody will come 
 up here to see what s the matter, and then we ll have a 
 time. Here, what do you take when you feel sick? 
 
372 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Haven t you got any whiskey? What s that on the 
 wash-stand? If it was ammonia, it might do. Gra 
 cious, I don t know what to do !" She held to Lome s 
 elbow, gazing about in utter perplexity and helpless 
 ness. "I never could do anything for any person that 
 was sick. Would you like some water? I can get 
 some if you ll tell me where it is," she suggested un 
 certainly, as Lorrie slowly lapsed into a chair. 
 
 "No. Never mind." Lorrie put up her hand to 
 her forehead, and felt the chilly moisture beading 
 there, with dull wonder. She drew herself upright, 
 with an inconceivable effort, clutching at the ledge of 
 the desk. Paula sat down opposite, surveying her 
 uneasily. 
 
 "It s the truth- " she was reiterating, when Lorrie 
 raised one hand unsteadily. 
 
 "I believe you," she said. 
 
 For an instant, Paula seemed almost frightened at 
 the ease of her victory; then she began volubly and 
 eagerly. "I expect you think it s funny about your 
 brother. Well, it is funny. Because he never touched 
 me. Bob Gilbert never touched me, he never had 
 anything to do with me. I m telling you God s truth, 
 Lorrie. It was the other all the time. I was a fool, 
 of course. I thought it was because of me he was 
 coming here all the time, making out he was calling 
 on you. I thought it was to get a chance to see me 
 outside the hotel, you know. And don t you remember 
 how he used always to take me home ? I believed 
 everything he told me. I guess you know how that 
 was yourself. You believed him, too. We used to 
 meet other places. I didn t know he was engaged to 
 you, or thinking of it, till till after everything had 
 happened, and I--I was in that awful fix. Oh, I 
 was a fool all right ! I bet I wasn t the first one he d 
 fooled either 
 
 "Don t!" said Lorrie, faintly. And Paula, looking 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 373 
 
 into her face, was obediently silent. After some time, 
 Lorriesaid: "Bob ?" 
 
 "I never put it on him. Lorrie, I wouldn t have 
 thought of him why why I just wouldn t have 
 thought of him !" cried out the other, violently earnest. 
 "I tell you Bob never came near me that way, and I 
 never said he did. It was Momma. When I owned 
 up to her what was the matter with me, she acted clean 
 crazy. She kept tormenting me to know who the man 
 was, and when I wouldn t tell her, she kept asking, 
 Is it him? Is it himf one man s name after an 
 other, till she d gone over all the men we knew. I 
 kept saying: No, it ain t. I m not going to tell you 
 who it was ! And then something in the way I said 
 it made her think it was your brother, and she got up 
 and went off like a flash to your house and I couldn t 
 stop her." 
 
 "She told us it was Bob. We believed it," said 
 Lorrie, her face contracting. "We oughtn t to have 
 been so quick to believe it about him. I can see that 
 now. But afterwards, why did he ?" She looked 
 at the other, mutely questioning. 
 
 "That s what 7 couldn t make out, when you wrote 
 you d got hold of him down there in Cuba, and he was 
 going to come home with you and marry me. I couldn t 
 make it out ; I couldn t think why he did it ! It looked 
 like he was crazy too !" said Paula, sincerely; "I had 
 been expecting the real truth would come out when 
 you got hold of your brother. At least you d know it 
 wasn t him. But I didn t care much. I was feeling 
 too awfully. There wasn t any use my telling. He - 
 the other one the real one, you know - for some 
 reason she shrank from pronouncing Cort Wright s 
 name again "he wouldn t come back here and marry 
 me. I d written to him. Oh, yes, he knew. I d told 
 him I d written him over and over again. But he 
 was through with me, that was all. He didn t care 
 
374 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 what became of me. He knew I wouldn t ever tell ; 
 he knew I d be afraid to. And then he got shot, so 
 that settled it, anyhow. Then your brother came home, 
 and your father brought him down to Clarksburg, that 
 little place in Indiana where Momma and I were. I 
 was glad it was just your father and mother that came ; 
 I didn t want to see you. They got a minister and a 
 license right off. Before we were married, though, 
 everybody went away and left your brother and I 
 alone together I suppose they thought we d want to 
 do some love making," said Paula, dully ironical; 
 " any way they left us alone in the room. I said to 
 him: What are you doing it for? Just like that. 
 I couldn t think of anything else. He knew what I 
 meant, of course. He said : I found out about you 
 and Cort. It was an accident I didn t mean to 
 but I found out. I ve got all those letters you wrote 
 him. Here they are. You better burn em up/ 
 Then I said again : But what are you doing it for ? 
 He said : I don t want my sister ever to know. It 
 would kill Lorrie. You must promise me you won t 
 ever tell Lorrie. He said more, but I forget what it 
 was now ; it was about the same, I guess. He was 
 afraid for you to know. So I promised him, and we 
 were married." 
 
 Lorrie heard her with a sharp pang of contrition. 
 She really had no cause for self-reproach ; her affection 
 for her brother, her kindness, her forbearance, had been 
 as constant as the sunlight. And about Bob s own 
 self-sacrifice there had been nothing commendable, 
 nothing heroic ; it was merely foolish, Lorrie recog 
 nized that. Nevertheless it was with an aching regret 
 that she cast back over all the years that they had 
 condemned and misjudged him. "Oh, poor, poor Bob ! 
 I wouldn t have died of it. People don t die of things 
 like that," she said. The idol she had served and 
 cherished lay in fragments at her feet; but, strangely 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 375 
 
 enough, Lorrie faced the spectacle with far less pain 
 than that with which she thought of Robert, and his 
 generous folly. How could they ever have believed it 
 of him in the first place? It was clean out of his 
 character, couldn t they have seen that? she asked 
 herself in futile sorrow and impatience. She wanted 
 to go and get down on her knees and beg Bob to for 
 give her. 
 
 "Well, anyway, he didn t want you to know," Paula 
 said, answering her last words. "After we were 
 married he stayed around about a month, just for the 
 looks of the thing, you know. But nobody ever sus 
 pected, even Momma, though she was right with us. 
 I guess you remember about his being taken with his 
 lungs, and having to go to Colorado you remember 
 when that was ? We ve scarcely ever seen each other 
 since. But he was always a perfect gentleman, Lorrie. 
 He never said another word to me about him, nor threw 
 it at me what I d done, nor anything, not even when he 
 was drunk." 
 
 There was another long silence. Paula began arrang 
 ing her gloves and veil preparatory to departure, and 
 at last rose, shaking out her skirts with careful, preen 
 ing fingers. 
 
 "Well, that s all. I guess I ll be moving," she an 
 nounced ; and as Lorrie did not speak, paused, looking 
 at her with renewed uneasiness and suspicion. "Of 
 course I haven t got any of the letters he wrote with 
 me. I don t take em around when I m on the road. 
 But I can send and have em sent to you. They re 
 all in my desk in the flat in N Yawk. I ll send for em 
 if you don t believe me, Lorrie." 
 
 "I don t want to see them," said Lorrie. 
 
 "You really don t need to, anyhow. You can just 
 ask your brother," Paula advised practically; "it 
 can t harm him now to know that you know all about 
 it. He s too far gone. When I saw him the other 
 
376 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 day, I don t know how it was, but it just came over 
 me that I ought to tell you. He s going to die, and 
 I couldn t help hating to think of Bob Gilbert dying 
 and his folks still thinking that about him. I don t 
 know why, but I just couldn t bear the idea," said 
 Paula, stopping a moment to consider this phenomenon. 
 "And besides, I heard you weren t married yet, and I 
 thought to myself, I bet I know why ! And you 
 know, Lorrie, it did seem to me too silly for you to 
 give up that way, because of him. It seemed like you 
 ought to know about him. Well, good-by. Oh, my, 
 excuse me ! I ve stepped right square on it ! Is the 
 frame broken ? Why, isn t that awful ! Do excuse 
 me ! I didn t see it." 
 
 "It s no matter," Lorrie said in an expressionless 
 voice. After Paula had gone, she went with slow 
 steps back to the room and picked up the broken 
 photograph and the glass which the other s high French 
 heel had ground to crumbs, and sat awhile, thinking of 
 her destroyed illusions with a kind of compassion. 
 Suddenly she felt that what she had just heard was no 
 revelation ; it was something she had always dimly 
 known and tried with a pitiful defiance to keep herself 
 from knowing. She viewed herself in a strange detach 
 ment. That girl who had been engaged to Philip 
 Cortwright, that poor thing who had had to learn of 
 his death in so cruel a way, who had kept faith with 
 him all these years, who had resolutely turned away 
 from other devotion that woman had loved her 
 hero ; but she had never trusted him. There was a 
 side of his life, a side of his character, she had steadily 
 refused to see ; yet she knew it was there all the time 
 oh, she knew it ! Lorrie remembered with ineffable 
 shrinking, having recited to herself the common, petty 
 bit of feminine cynicism that all men . How could 
 she ever have pretended to believe that ? Why, their 
 poor Bob, poor, dull, weak, self-indulgent, characterless 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 377 
 
 Bob, was too strong, too decent for that! Hot humilia 
 tion suffused her anew. She got up with a violent 
 movement, and went to her desk. 
 
 A while later, Mrs. Gilbert came up-stairs to answer 
 the telephone; she paused at the threshold, and, 
 glancing in, exclaimed aloud: "Lorrie! You re not 
 building a fire? It s not cool enough yet for that!" 
 
 "No, I m only burning some things," said Lorrie. 
 She was sitting before the hearth with her chin in her 
 hand, staring at the dying embers. Mrs. Gilbert came 
 farther in, eying the dismantled desk. 
 
 "Old letters?" she queried innocently. "It looks 
 as if you had rummaged all the drawers, and cleaned 
 out everything. I thought I smelled smoke. Photo 
 graphs are slow to burn, aren t they? Why, your 
 mantelpiece is almost bare ! You ve changed every 
 thing no, here s Van Cleve s picture in the same 
 place. You re not going to burn that up, I hope, 
 Lorrie." 
 
 Lorrie looked up. Van Cleve s photograph, one of 
 the few he had ever had taken, had always stood in 
 the middle of her mantelshelf, and stood there now, 
 its harsh features and direct gaze facing her a homely 
 picture of a homely man. Lome s eyes suddenly 
 filled up ; to her mother s surprise and alarm, she began 
 to sob heavily. "No, no, I sha n t change Van Cleve, 
 Mother nobody can change Van Cleve. He ll al 
 ways be the same always, always." 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 THE END OF THE TETHER 
 
 OF all the family, Robert himself was the least 
 moved when it was made known that Paula had been 
 there at the house, and the object of her visit revealed. 
 He was surprised and disconcerted, and swore once or 
 twice amiably, under his breath. "Well, that s the 
 last thing in the world I would have expected ! What 
 the mischief did she want to do that for ? Oh, yes 
 yes, it s true. She s gone to work and told the whole 
 thing, so there s no use my talking. But what possessed 
 her?" he ejaculated in futile inquiry. His strongest 
 emotion appeared to be a vexed embarrassment, which, 
 however, gave away instantly to concern on seeing his 
 mother s face. 
 
 "Why, Moms, why, what s the matter? Don t cry 
 that way!" he said in distress; "you couldn t help 
 believing it. What else could you think ? Wronged ? 
 Wronged who ? Wronged me f Bosh, you didn t do 
 anything of the kind ! It s all right. It didn t make 
 any difference about me. I m a little glad, now it s 
 all over, to have you know that I m not that sort of a 
 fellow. I wouldn t ever have treated any girl that 
 way," said Bob, earnestly, apparently thinking it 
 necessary to clear up this point. "I why, I just 
 wouldn t have wanted to, you know. I wouldn t ever 
 have wanted to, that s all ! I hoped it would never be 
 known how it really was, on Lome s account. Seemed 
 to me that was the least I could do for Lorrie. And I 
 always liked Cort. And he was dead, you know 
 and you all thought it was me, anyhow - 
 
 378 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 379 
 
 "Don t, Bob ! And don t say anything more about 
 that man!" Mrs. Gilbert cried indignantly through 
 her tears. "He was the one that took you away from 
 us in the beginning, and and led you into doing 
 things you wouldn t have done by yourself. You 
 know he did. He was a bad man, Bob, I always felt 
 he was, only Lorrie cared for him, and so . But he 
 was a bad man " 
 
 "I liked him, anyhow, Mother. You mustn t talk 
 to me about Cort," Bob interposed with so unwonted a 
 gravity that she broke off, rather frightened. All the 
 doctor s cautions crowded into her mind. 
 
 "I don t mean that is, I - " she stammered, with 
 a sob. 
 
 "I know," said Bob, and took her hand affectionately 
 into his own thin, hot grasp. "You don t understand 
 how men are sometimes, I believe. Cort and I were 
 pretty good friends, that s all. I think perhaps 
 women aren t ever friends the same way men are. A 
 fellow that knows all about you, and likes you in spite 
 of it that s a friend. Like old Van, you know. He s 
 the best friend I ve got and he knows me like a book ! " 
 
 "Why, of course, Bob of course Van Cleve likes 
 you ! But that s different. It s not the same thing 
 at all!" cried his mother, puzzled, and resentful of 
 this classification; "you talk about yourself as if you 
 were as if you were 
 
 "No good? Well, I m not!" Bob said easily; 
 "at least I haven t been up to now. But thank the 
 Lord it isn t too late ! This last attack has been a 
 good lesson to me, Moms. I mean to brace up. When 
 I get well and get out of this bed, you re all going to 
 see a big change in me. There s room for it. I m 
 going to brace up and work and and make something 
 of myself !" The face he turned towards her was full 
 of enthusiasm ; he looked, for a fugitive instant, like a 
 boy again. 
 
380 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Lorrie says Van Cleve ought to know about this, 
 too," Mrs. Gilbert said after a while; "she wanted 
 you to tell him." 
 
 "Van? Oh, I don t know. He doesn t mind, you 
 know. I don t see why he need be told," said Robert 
 with indifference ; "however, if Lorrie wants me to 
 And after all, Van took a deal of trouble going down 
 there to Cuba to get me, and I suppose he has a right 
 to know about it ; and it can t make any difference to 
 Paula now." 
 
 It happened that when Van Cleve came up that 
 evening, according to custom, he was quite excited 
 for him over some news of his own, and launched 
 into it with astonishing loquacity almost the minute he 
 was ushered into the room, amongst the family, with 
 out noticing the silence and the slight constraint that 
 hung over them all. "What do you think ? The most 
 remarkable event of the present century has just taken 
 place!" he proclaimed with actual joviality; his 
 crows feet all puckered together; the line at the 
 corner of his mouth curved ; all his harsh, tired face 
 relaxed as he looked around and felt their kind expec 
 tancy. They were the only people he knew who took 
 a real and selfless interest in him or so Van thought ; 
 he did not except his own family. He had never had 
 much talent for making friends, nor, as he considered, 
 enough time ; he had always been so busy. But the 
 Gilberts understood ; and his lean-nurtured heart 
 fairly sunned itself in their affection. The men who 
 called him a skinflint and he may have become 
 something of a skinflint by this time would have 
 been confounded could they have seen him in his 
 present environment. 
 
 "Did I ever say anything to any of you about that 
 old farm my grandfather owned up in Union County ? 
 Bob, I ve talked to you about it, haven t I? I ve a 
 kind of hazy recollection of having mentioned it 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 381 
 
 probably in June or December when the taxes came 
 round," he threw in with a chuckle. "It s always been 
 perfectly worthless. Grandpop Van Cleve didn t make 
 many mistakes, and I ve often thought the old gentle 
 man must have had to take some man s property on a 
 bad debt that would have accounted for the farm. 
 Didn t I ever speak of it before?" 
 
 But nobody could remember having heard a word 
 about the Union County farm, so Van Cleve went on : 
 "It s had a great many vicissitudes close calls, you 
 might say. Once we were on the verge of selling it, 
 and I was to have gone to Eureka College with the 
 money. I wanted to go with you, don t you remember, 
 Bob ? Good gracious, that must be nearly twenty 
 years ago ! Anyhow, the lawyers objected to some 
 thing about the title, and we never did sell it. And 
 here the other day, they struck gas on the farm next 
 to it, not thirty yards away from our line ! I ve got 
 two offers already for the land at prices that would 
 raise your hair. I have to go up there and see about 
 it ; looks to me as if the entire community had gone 
 insane on the subject of natural gas." 
 
 "Hooray !" cried Bob, weakly ; and, in lieu of a hat, 
 seized and tossed into the air a copy of the Record- 
 World which was lying handy; "Van Cleve, you re 
 going to be a millionnaire ! I see it coming ! Remem 
 ber the humble friends of your youth, and give us a 
 ride in your private car once in a while !" Everybody 
 was unaffectedly delighted. They liked to figure Van 
 Cleve on the high road to prosperity after all his hard 
 years. 
 
 "Well, I haven t got there yet, you know. You 
 don t want to bank too much on anything," he warned, 
 as the felicitations subsided ; and so characteristic was 
 this remark that Bob burst out laughing again, in pure 
 enjoyment. Van Cleve shook his head at him good- 
 naturedly. "That s all right, my son. You can 
 
382 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 laugh, but nobody ever got something for nothing, yet. 
 Everybody has to pay for his good luck one way or 
 another/ 7 he observed sagely. "But this rather re 
 verses the usual story, doesn t it ? You re constantly 
 hearing from the man who could have bought Calumet- 
 and-Hecla for a song back in eighty-one ; or the other 
 man that gave Carnegie a tip about steel ; or the 
 fellow that told John D. Rockefeller coal-oil was a good 
 thing. If all of the men that have missed their chances 
 that way were laid out end to end, they d make a 
 band that would go seven times around the earth and 
 lap over a third of the way ! I m one of em myself. 
 Where s Lorrie ? Has she gone out ? I wanted to tell 
 her." 
 
 Lorrie had a headache she was not well she 
 had been very much upset by something that had 
 happened that morning, he was told ; poor Van s face 
 fell noticeably at this news. And he was quite un 
 conscious of the unnatural awkwardness with which 
 the Professor and Mrs. Gilbert got themselves out of 
 the room ; suddenly he found himself alone with Bob, 
 who looked at him apprehensively from the sofa. 
 
 "You would never guess who was here to-day, 
 Van," he said hesitatingly. "It was well, it was 
 Paula." 
 
 Paula ? You don t mean ? Paula ! Is she here ? 
 Here at the house?" 
 
 "No, she s at the hotel still. But she came out this 
 morning." 
 
 "To see you?" Van Cleve asked rather blankly. 
 His first thought was that Bob s wife must have 
 wanted to patch up a reconciliation with him, before 
 he died ; and he wondered uncomfortably if he himself 
 would be obliged to meet her. 
 
 "No, no, I didn t see her. She didn t come to see 
 me. It was Lorrie she wanted to see. She wanted to 
 tell Lorrie something " Bob went on with the tale 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 383 
 
 haltingly and not very clearly, as could be judged by 
 the perplexity in his friend s eyes. Van did not in 
 terrupt ; he had the gift of not interrupting ; but at 
 one stage of the narrative, as Bob paused, he said not 
 without satisfaction : 
 
 "I always thought that girl was a bad lot. Now 
 she tells you the child wasn t yours at all, hey? If 
 you ll remember, Bob, I suggested that to you once, 
 but you wouldn t pay any attention to me. I daresay 
 she had no idea who its father was 
 
 "No, no, Van Cleve ! It wasn t that! Don t think 
 that!" Bob cried out with tragic earnestness, raising 
 himself painfully. "You ve got it all wrong. Don t 
 think a thing like that. You she I - he began 
 to cough pitifully. 
 
 "Here, lie down. You know the doctor said you 
 weren t to bear your weight on that side," said Van 
 Cleve, alarmed. "Lie down, Bob. Where s that stuff 
 you take ? I ll get you some of it. Never mind, you 
 can tell me the rest after a \vhile. You keep quiet now, 
 old man." 
 
 Bob dropped back on the pillows, exhausted, eying 
 the other with affection and a certain wonder and con 
 fusion of mind, as Van Cleve carefully measured out 
 and administered the medicine, using his big, strong, 
 steady hands with surprising delicacy. 
 
 "I can t always make you out, Van," he said. 
 "You re so hard sometimes I feel as if talking to you 
 was like dashing myself against a rock. And then again 
 you re you re so solidly good! I can t make you 
 out." 
 
 "Oh, I think I must be about like everybody else," 
 said Van Cleve, embarrassed. "You d better not try 
 to talk any more to-night. It ll keep till next time, 
 won t it?" 
 
 But no, it wouldn t keep, Bob strenuously assured 
 him, so Van Cleve, anxious not to let him excite him- 
 
384 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 self further, sat down again with folded arms, and at 
 last heard the whole. At the end he shifted his atti 
 tude slightly, staring broodingly on the floor. After 
 a while, he asked : "How did Lorrie ? Is that why 
 she ? I mean, is that what has made her sick ? " 
 
 " She isn t really sick. She s just well, all to pieces. 
 And no wonder ! It s terribly hard for her. Mother 
 says she s burned up all his letters and everything. 
 It s terribly hard." 
 
 "It s been hard for Lorrie for ten years," said Van 
 Cleve. "He died once, and as if that were not hard 
 enough, he s been killed all over again. Once was 
 enough, I think. She might have been spared the ten 
 years, and this thing at the end of them." 
 
 Bob explained feverishly. "If I could have had any 
 notion that Paula would come here, and let it all out this 
 way, I d have stopped her. I d have tried to stop her, 
 anyway. But I why, I didn t dream of such a thing ! 
 it never came into my head that she- 
 
 "I wasn t thinking about her. I m not talking about 
 anything she s done," Van Cleve said. 
 
 He spoke in such a tone that Robert, looking into his 
 overcast face, began to plead with a childish fearful- 
 ness. "Look here, you you don t think I did wrong, 
 do you, Van Cleve ? After all, it was it was worse 
 for me than for anybody else. I was going to tell you 
 the whole truth down there at Siboney, on the boat 
 that morning, you know. I had just found it out from 
 those letters I took off of poor Cort s dead body. I was 
 starting to tell you when it came out that you and all 
 the rest, Lorrie and everybody, thought thought / 
 was the one. I didn t know why Paula fastened it 
 on me. I never had anything to do with her that way 
 His emaciated face flushed and paled distress 
 ingly. "I ve never been that sort. No credit to me 
 I m just not that sort. But none of you realized that ; 
 you couldn t have been expected to. And all at once 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 385 
 
 I saw that I well, that I could take the blame per 
 fectly well - 
 
 "I don t see why you should. I don t see what good 
 you expected to do by that. And what good have you 
 done?" said Van Cleve, bitterly. "What good have 
 you done?" 
 
 Bob looked at him in helpless appeal. "I wanted 
 to make it easier for Lorrie, Van. How could / tell it 
 was all going to turn out this way ? I wanted to make 
 it easier for her. Why, don t you remember, you your 
 self started in and gave me the most awful roast about 
 how I d treated her, and what a care and a trial I d 
 been to her for years and you were all right, too, 
 Van ; you didn t put it a bit too strong, and every word 
 you said was the flat truth, I knew that - he in 
 terrupted himself in eager acknowledgment. "It just 
 came to me then that I could make it up to her a little. 
 That s why I did it. I wanted to save Lorrie all I 
 could. Seemed to me that was the least I could do !" 
 
 "To save her from what?" said Van Cleve. He 
 got up and walked twice or thrice up and down the room, 
 while the other s troubled gaze followed him. "Do 
 you know you ve let Lorrie waste ten years of her life - 
 ten of her best years ? For what ? For nothing ! 
 For the sake of that cheap seducer that flimsy, sen 
 sual - "he caught sight of Bob s face, and stopped - 
 "Very well, I won t say anything more about him, only 
 that you yourself must know in your heart, Bob, that 
 he wasn t worth a minute of it. She d have wasted all 
 the rest of her time, if this Jameson woman hadn t come 
 here, and let her know the truth about him at last. You 
 call that saving Lorrie? I don t, Bob." 
 
 "I know I know I ve sometimes felt it wasn t 
 all right, somehow when I saw the way she felt," 
 said Bob, tremulously. "But I want to ask you one 
 thing, Van Cleve ; I want to ask you what you d have 
 done in my place ? Would you have told her ? " 
 2c 
 
386 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Oh, me! It s no question of what I d have done 
 or not have done," said Van Cleve, fiercely impatient. 
 "It would have been an altogether different position for 
 me, anyhow." 
 
 "But would you? You might have found it out - 
 anybody might have found it out," persisted the other. 
 "If you had known, would you have told Lorrie about 
 Cort? Would you, Van?" 
 
 "Why I I well, no, then, I wouldn t have !" 
 Van shouted in a kind of angry confusion, striding about 
 the room, avoiding his friend s eye. "No, I wouldn t ; 
 of course I wouldn t ! Think I m going to run around 
 gabbling stories about a dead man ? And to Lorrie ! 
 I tell you my position s different entirely different - 
 
 "But you wouldn t have told her, either," interrupted 
 Robert, without triumph, however. He fumbled 
 weakly with the fringe of the counterpane for a moment, 
 then, with a quick movement, turned towards the other 
 a face of wistful affection, penitence, earnest desire to 
 make all clear. "You see how it was with me, then, 
 Van. I thought you d understand. And I liked Cort. 
 That was another reason. You know I didn t mean 
 any wrong ; I never thought of it harming anybody 
 but myself. It wasn t until after the whole business 
 was done and settled and couldn t be undone, that I 
 began to be afraid I d made a mistake after all. I mean 
 when I when I saw how it was going to affect 
 you, you know. I ve always felt badly about that, 
 Van Cleve. I ve always been hoping that Lorrie would 
 get over it," said poor Bob, who himself had never had 
 the least trouble in "getting over" anything, whose 
 memory was as water for other people s sins, errors, 
 and misfortunes as well as for his own. "I ve always 
 counted on her getting over it, and then she you 
 and she - 
 
 "I wasn t thinking about that," said Van Cleve, 
 still angrily. Even as he uttered the words, he became 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 387 
 
 suddenly aware that that was precisely what he had 
 been thinking about in some inner recess of his mind. 
 A dark color came into his face ; he went and sat down 
 by Bob s cot again. "I suppose that was really at the 
 bottom of what I said just now," he confessed, humil 
 iated. "Not that Lorrie would marry me, anyhow, 
 you know, Bob. But I might have had a better chance. 
 I didn t mean to be rough with you. I know you were 
 doing it for the best. I think now we ought all to be 
 ashamed of ourselves because we were so ready to be 
 deceived so ready to think evil of you. It must 
 have been hard for you to stand. There are people 
 that don t think any too well of me; I know how you 
 must have felt." 
 
 "No, you don t, because you aren t like me," Bob 
 retorted with a curious and touching lightness, in open 
 relief at his friend s change of tone. l It never did make 
 much difference to me, Van just once in a while, 
 you know. It would have been hard for a man like 
 you, I can understand that. But me why, it didn t 
 matter so much. Sometimes I ve thought I d like to 
 have all of you know how it really happened. But you 
 see I d given all of, Paula s letters back to her, so I 
 couldn t prove anything. And I wasn t going to call 
 on her for proof ; and none of you would have believed 
 me, if I d sworn to the truth up and down. So I had 
 to let things go as they were." 
 
 He offered this explanation with a simplicity that cut 
 the other to the quick ; yet Van Cleve knew that none 
 of them had ever been consciously unjust or unmerciful 
 to Bob. They had all tried their best to do what was 
 right, and the result was a miserable muddle wherein 
 everybody was somehow more or less in the wrong ! 
 "Why, I would have believed you, Bob," he said hus 
 kily; "we would all have believed you. Your bare 
 word would have been enough at any tune. What put 
 that notion into your head?" 
 
388 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 " Would you, Van Cleve ?" said Bob, pleased ; "well, 
 that s good to hear. People generally haven t got much 
 use for me, you know, and what I say doesn t go very 
 far with them." 
 
 During the succeeding weeks Bob s case progressed, 
 as had been foretold, with faint rallies, alternating with 
 imperceptibly accelerated declines. The family could 
 not hide it from themselves; yet Mrs. Gilbert still 
 worked away at coverlids and bed-shoes and little sick 
 room conveniences; they still talked of next spring, 
 next month, next week. It was habit. Robert had 
 been a care to them so long, in one way or another, 
 that they could not envisage a future without him, a 
 time when he would no longer be on their minds to be 
 loved, excused, petted, shielded. He himself was never 
 plaintive, never fretful ; and the end, when it came, was 
 mercifully quick and quiet. Van Cleve, at his office, 
 was called to the telephone one morning, towards the 
 end of the winter ; he had been at the house the night 
 before and left Bob feeling better than for days, quite 
 gay, and laughing over the comic papers some one had 
 sent him. It was an instant before Van recognized Lor- 
 rie s voice, begging him to come out, in a hurried and 
 frightened tone ; Bob had had a good night ; but some 
 how they did not think he looked so well this morning ; 
 he had been wishing Van Cleve would come ; he seemed 
 not to realize that it was daytime early in the day ; 
 they had sent for the doctor 
 
 Van Cleve got into his overcoat and hurried out; 
 the winter day was dingily thawing, with a wan sky 
 overhead, and the streets in a discolored slush. Van 
 met the doctor picking his way down the Gilberts un- 
 swept steps, between the treacherous, sliding lumps of 
 ice and snow ; they spoke together for a moment. 
 Lorrie was waiting, and drew him into the hall. She 
 was not crying, but her face trembled as she began to 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 389 
 
 speak in a guarded voice. "The doctor told you, 
 didn t he ? He has just seen Bob he says it may be 
 any time now. It s so strange we thought Bob was 
 better for a little while this morning. And then all at 
 once no, he s quite right in his head ; he ll know you." 
 
 He followed her into the sick-room. Bob was lying 
 there, propped on his pillows in the bright, fresh, pretty 
 place they managed always to keep about him, looking 
 somehow a little different from the way he had last 
 night, as Van swiftly noted, but certainly no worse. 
 Van Cleve went up to the bed, where the father and 
 mother drew aside for him, and sat down close beside 
 it, taking the other s hand ; he said with that false 
 heartiness that seems as if it never should deceive any 
 body, least of all the person for whom it is intended 
 Van said: " Well, Bob, how are you coming on, hey ? " 
 
 Bob raised his head a little and looked at him with 
 his old, sweet, boyish smile, confiding and gay. "Why, 
 I m about even, Van, old fellow ! " he said. His head 
 dropped back with so gentle and natural a movement, 
 it was a full minute before any of them saw that he was 
 dead. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 WHICH is IN THE NATURE OF A FOOTNOTE 
 
 IT would be appropriate and dramatic for this his 
 tory to end as it began with a tavern-scene and drinking- 
 chorus, quintette of male voices and one soprano, 
 but unfortunately no such artistic climax is possible. 
 For one thing, the old Saint Simon Hotel went out of 
 existence the other day Ichabod, its glory is departed ! 
 In fact, I understand that most of the Ichabods have 
 truly departed ; they have gone over to the Preston, 
 or to some of the other magnificent, new, modern 
 places of refreshment, and it is to the withdrawal of 
 this Old Testament patronage that the passing of the 
 Saint Simon may be traced, so they say. At any rate, 
 it was sold up, closed up, boarded up, a year or so ago ; 
 and will presently be torn down to make room for 
 another skyscraper, no doubt. 
 
 And, secondly, as to the principals in that little scene 
 with which we started out, we have lost some of the 
 voices well, well ! and those of us who are left, 
 being twenty years older, are not always in the best of 
 form for singing. I have not seen Major Van Cleve 
 since I don t know when ; he must be getting on in years 
 now, although still, I suppose, a boy to his mother, who 
 is eighty-seven, as her grandson tells me, but remark 
 ably hale, erect, and well preserved. 
 
 "Does Mrs. Lucas continue to have those attacks 
 of the heart that used to alarm all of you so much ? " 
 I asked him. 
 
 Van Cleve considered a little. "Why, no, I don t 
 
 390 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 391 
 
 believe my aunt can be much troubled with those now 
 adays at least they haven t written anything about 
 it for a good while. Of course they would let me know 
 if anything was the matter," he said at last. 
 
 They certainly would ! 
 
 " The climate there suits her, I think," said Van Cleve. 
 But what climate he meant, or where, I disliked to ask, 
 he so evidently took it for granted that I knew all about 
 their changes of residence as if any mortal could ! 
 
 "I ve sometimes thought it was more nerves than 
 heart with Aunt Myra, anyhow. She always seems to 
 be more liable to to get upset that way when she s 
 worried or disappointed or out of spirits, you know," 
 he added with a simplicity that defeated comment. 
 And just then a salesman came up to say that the ladies 
 were waiting for Mr. Kendrick up-stairs. 
 
 For where do you suppose this conversation took 
 place ? It was at Messrs. Matthew & Luke s some time 
 during the spring of 1910, the date being fixed in my 
 mind by the fact that I had gone into the shop to look 
 at summer furnishings for the porch. There I happened 
 upon Van Cleve, roaming restlessly about the teak- 
 wood stands, and the carved, or stained, or inlaid "odd 
 pieces," occasionally stopping to turn up a price-tag 
 absent-mindedly, or backing away embarrassed when 
 he came face to face with himself in a mirror. The 
 mere sight of him in such a place would have piqued 
 one s curiosity ; but, taken with the intelligence that 
 the ladies were waiting for him up-stairs (whereat his 
 countenance lighted up visibly, and he put his watch 
 back into its pocket without looking at it again), it 
 was a guess-proof mystery. Nor was I much illumi 
 nated to encounter him once more, half an hour later, 
 seriously inspecting a panelled oak chest in company 
 with Mrs. and Miss Gilbert. 
 
 Their backs were towards me, but of course I recog 
 nized them at once. They were still in mourning 
 
392 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 Mrs. Gilbert will never take off that black veil she wears 
 for Bob, but Lorrie had a white wing in her hat, and 
 her face, as she turned with some earnest speech and 
 gesture to Van Cleve, was very bright, and happily 
 interested. He listened, gravely nodding ; and the pic 
 ture they made was so startlingly domestic that when 
 at length they observed me wavering in the background, 
 I didn t know which way to look ! I had heard of 
 nothing happening recently in that quarter; but if 
 something had happened, and was not yet announced 
 
 However, I might have spared my benevolent 
 excitement. Mrs. Gilbert came over to me with some 
 thing of an apprehensive look though Lorrie and Van 
 themselves were quite cool and unruffled and began 
 to explain rather nervously and volubly. She and her 
 daughter were helping Mr. Kendrick select the furniture 
 for his new apartment. Yes, didn t I know about it ? 
 It was so nice. He was going to have one of those new 
 apartments in "The Mantua"; he was tired out with 
 boarding, and wanted to have a place to himself. Oh, 
 yes, he was going to keep house regularly, like anybody 
 else. The flat would be lovely ; Lorrie wanted him to 
 get that piece they were just looking at for the hall 
 or dining-room 
 
 "Everybody has an oak chest now, you know, Van," 
 Lorrie put in eagerly; "and all your things will be in 
 that solid, plain Old-English style." 
 
 "It does look good and solid," said Van Cleve; 
 "what s it for ?" At which inquiry, both ladies looked 
 pretty well gravelled for an instant, but the salesman 
 unhesitatingly stepped into the breach. 
 
 "Almost anything you choose they re useful in a 
 dozen ways no limit to what you can put in one of 
 them, actually !" he said with enthusiasm. "That old 
 style of furniture, as your wife was just remarking, was 
 made to use. That s the beauty of it, you know. Why, 
 I sold one something like this to a gentleman out here 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 393 
 
 in the suburbs that said it would be the very thing for his 
 boys to keep their baseball bats and uniforms and sweaters 
 and all their athletic outfit in ha, ha ! But now for 
 yourself, why -er storage furs, household linen 
 
 Van s wife ! But, as I was careful not to catch any 
 body s eye, I cannot say how this mistaken reference 
 was received. 
 
 Oh, blankets and things ? It would be pretty nice 
 for those, wouldn t it?" said Van Cleve; "all right, 
 Lorrie, I ll take it, if you say so." 
 
 "It will go beautifully with the rest of your things," 
 Lorrie said, her eyes dwelling on the chest delightedly. 
 Then businesslike anxiety settled upon her brow. 
 " Oughtn t we to go and look at the Oriental rugs while 
 we re here?" she asked Van Cleve, tensely. 
 
 i i Who s going to attend to the blankets and things for 
 him, by the way?" I inquired of Mrs. Gilbert, as we 
 followed them in the direction of the rug department. 
 "Men don t know anything about that part of house 
 keeping." 
 
 "Oh, Lorrie and I will see to all that. She ll tell 
 him," said Mrs. Gilbert, energetically; "he ll do any 
 thing Lorrie says I mean - she reddened a trifle, 
 and amended hastily: "I mean he has confidence in 
 her judgment, and he knows that she won t have any 
 foolish, extravagant ideas. In fact, he s the one that 
 wants to spend the money, and has to be held back all 
 the time. Whenever Lorrie looks twice at a thing, he 
 thinks she wants it for him, I mean, you know, of 
 course and she can hardly keep him from buying it ! 
 She wants him to that is, he wants her to that is 
 
 " and here poor Mrs. Gilbert came so perilously near 
 losing her balance, conversationally, that I charitably 
 interrupted to right her, by asking if Van had hired any 
 servants yet, or did he mean to ? 
 
 "Yes, he s got a Japanese. They say they re ideal, 
 but you never know - 
 
394 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 "Well, at any rate, the silver and brass will all be 
 kept polished/ 7 said Lorrie, catching the drift of our 
 talk. "Men always do that if they don t do anything 
 else." And, the rugs having probably brought a kindred 
 subject to her mind, she added to me over her shoulder : 
 "volunteers are needed for the curtain and cushion 
 service," and laughed her old kind, sweet laugh. 
 
 "Curtains and cushions!" said I, agog. And I 
 daresay I stared very hard at Van Cleve, who neither 
 saw nor heard me. He himself had his eyes fixed on 
 the back of Lome s head where her thick hair showed 
 under her hat, richly brown, except where the light 
 from a near-by window burnished it. 
 
 "I never heard of a man that cared to have curtains 
 and cushions around," said I, flat; "but I d like to 
 help with them, if - 
 
 "No, no, I was just in fun. I d rather make them all 
 myself really I would. I don t need any help," 
 Lorrie quickly assured me. She seated herself on a 
 pile of rugs, and promptly forgot everything else. 
 "There, that copper-color and deep blue one, that 
 would be beautiful in the living-room, Van." 
 
 "All right. Put that one aside," he ordered the clerk, 
 briskly. "Have em put aside whatever you like, 
 Lorrie. I don t know a thing about colors and and 
 all that. Pick out what you like." 
 
 A few days afterwards when I went over to the Gil 
 berts, I found Lorrie up to her knees in fine white swiss 
 and scrim draperies, measuring, cutting, and tearing 
 with the hand and eye of an expert. Cretonnes, charm 
 ingly patterned with cockatoos, baskets of roses, or 
 drooping garlands of fruits lay all about her little bed 
 room ; there were down pillows, there were squares of 
 Chinese embroidery, there were yards upon yards of 
 white cotton fringes. 
 
 "Well, why shouldn t he have his things pretty?" 
 she retorted almost sharply to my satirical comments. 
 
HIS FRIENDS AND HIS FAMILY 395 
 
 "Men really like pretty things as much as women do. 
 I m determined to make Van Cleve comfortable for 
 once in his life, anyhow. Nobody s ever cared whether 
 he was comfortable or not, or done a thing for him, or 
 or had things look nice for him, in his whole life !" said 
 Lorrie most unjustly ; but she tore off another breadth 
 with a fierce little snap that I realized finished the argu 
 ment. And, although she plainly had her hands- full 
 with the work, she could scarcely be persuaded to let 
 me share it, and parted with some of the stuff with a 
 reluctance almost jealous ! 
 
 Any one might think that I had "put my foot in it," 
 as the saying goes, often enough already ; but there was 
 one more experience reserved for me, one more moment 
 of supreme awkwardness about which, however, no 
 body save myself and one other lady, my friend Mrs. 
 Michael Flannery, who goes out charwomaning at 
 a dollar-thirty-five a day, has known up to the present 
 hour. It occurred when I had got my quota of curtains 
 for Mr. Kendrick s rooms finished, and carried them in 
 a tidy parcel over to "The Mantua" according to 
 Lome s directions, a certain Wednesday afternoon 
 which she had named as the day of installation. By 
 that time, the last of the cleaning, papering, and so on 
 (all of which she seemed to have under her personal 
 charge) would be done, she said, and Van s "things" 
 could be put in place. In fact, when I reached there, 
 this work appeared to be completed; going into the 
 Mantuan corridors, I found Van s front door open - 
 he had one of the roomiest and most sumptuous suites 
 in the building ! and the first thing I saw in his hall 
 was the oak chest, looking as roomy and sumptuous 
 as its surroundings ; it had got there ahead of me along 
 with the rugs, some of which were spread down, and there 
 was even a picture or two hung. But the place was 
 surprisingly quiet; the janitor went along the outside 
 hall with a step-ladder, and I heard a scrub-woman sluic- 
 
396 VAN CLEVE: 
 
 ing a pail of water down Mr. Kendrick s kitchen sink, 
 but that was all. Yet Lorrie had said that she and 
 Van would both be there. I went in, stepping with an 
 involuntary caution ; but I got no farther than the liv 
 ing-room door, which, mercifully for me, was not wide 
 open. 
 
 Perhaps they would not have been aware of me in 
 any case. They were standing together in the middle 
 of the room, and the girl had her two hands to her face, 
 and it seemed to me that Van Cleve s arms were where 
 they ought to be, and performing the best of offices. 
 Retreating, I came eye to eye with the scrub-woman ; 
 we exchanged not a word, nor even a grin, but went on 
 about our business with as little noise as possible. 
 What evinced our perfect understanding and community 
 of interest was the motion we both made, sponte propria, 
 to draw the door a little nearer shut when we heard 
 the janitor coming back; we were not going to have 
 him gawking in on that scene, anyhow ! 
 
 I have wondered since how it happened, what Van 
 said, what she herself said and thought. The effort 
 at home-making must have been too much for her reso 
 lution, her pride, her distrust of herself. She was 
 crying a little, I think. Did she regret the lost years ? 
 Was she sorry for Van Cleve, for herself, in their happi 
 ness that need not have come so late? How should 
 we know ? At any rate, she does not look as if she had 
 had occasion to shed many tears since ; we have seldom 
 beheld a more satisfied couple. And I feel sure that 
 for all his reputed hardness and closeness, Van s greatest 
 pleasure in life is in being able to give his wife every 
 thing she wants. 
 
T^HE following pages contain advertisements of Mac- 
 millan books by the same author, and new fiction 
 
BY MARY S. WATTS 
 The Legacy 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, $1.50 
 
 " It is a good story and at the same time good literature. Its plot 
 is handled with a sure hand, its occasional touches of emotion are 
 genuine, its spirit is wholesome and buoyant. It belongs to the 
 select company of the best American novels." Record-Herald. 
 
 " In Nathan Burke and in The Legacy, Mrs. Watts has reached 
 a high-water mark in American fiction, has told two stories of 
 genuine Americanism. Every page shows her truly remarkable 
 gift of observation observation shrewd but not unkind and her 
 power to probe the hearts of weak and erring mortals. Those who 
 would keep in touch with the best product of story-telling in America 
 must not miss The Legacy. " New York Globe. 
 
 " It is a story exceptionally well told, reaching and maintaining a 
 rare pitch of interest." New York World. 
 
 " It is a masterful novel throughout, and places the writer in the 
 very highest rank of modern authors." Salt Lake Tribune. 
 
 Nathan Burke 
 
 Decorated cloth, I2mo, $1.50 
 
 "To the few discriminating readers who still have the patience to 
 read a very long novel of leisurely excellence, I can commend 
 Nathan Burke as extraordinarily worth while. Mrs. Watts has 
 chosen a peculiar form of autobiography for her story, and it must 
 be admitted that the whole is a perfect fulfilment of her design. 
 And not only does her leisurely method make her numerous char 
 acters amazingly real, but there is also a quality of humor and of 
 keen, quizzical observation of the human heart, that keeps every 
 page alive. I have ventured to call this novel great, and, in its 
 quiet, realistic way, it justifies the epithet. One of the tests of great 
 fiction is the sense of complex life that it conveys. Nathan Burke 
 stands this test. . . . Mrs. Watts depicts a whole epoch. I do not 
 know of any other book that can bring the customs, thoughts, 
 fashions, and mental attitude of the rural United States of the 40*5 
 so minutely before the eye. 
 
 " Another test of the vitality of a novel is the aliveness of its char 
 acters. At least a dozen people in Nathan Burke seem as real as 
 any flesh-and-blood acquaintances. And, what is more, you know 
 their hearts. The author s power lies not in portraying memorable 
 imaginative scenes, but in her wonderful knowledge of human 
 nature. The interest of her story is psychological quite as much as 
 dramatic." The Record-Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
NEW BOOKS FOR BOYS AND GIRLS 
 
 When I Was a Little Girl 
 
 By ZONA GALE 
 Author of "The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre," etc." 
 
 Illustrated. Decorated Cloth, i2mo. Preparing 
 
 Miss Gale has already written a romance of old age in The Loves 
 of Pelleas and Etarre. Now she gives us a true romance of childhood. 
 When I Was a Little Girl is the same kind of real fairy story as Peter 
 Pan and The Blue Bird. Older readers will see in it a charming and 
 exquisite fancy, but the real truth of it all will only be appreciated 
 by the young of whatever age. 
 
 The Voyage of the Hoppergrass 
 
 By EDMUND LESTER PEARSON 
 Author of " The Believing Years " 
 
 Profusely illustrated by Thomas Fogarty 
 Decorated Cloth, i2mo. Preparing 
 
 Some of the boys whose acquaintance the reader made in Mr. 
 Pearson s former book go for a cruise on a small schooner with 
 an old sea captain. The adventures which they have, ranging from 
 the exciting through the amusing to the ridiculous, as they explore 
 the rivers, the bays, the ocean and the small towns of the New 
 England coast, make up the book. This is all material in the 
 handling of which Mr. Pearson is particularly adept, giving him 
 delightful opportunity for the display of those whimsicalities which 
 form half the charm of his writing. The possibility of meeting an 
 occasional pirate ship or of uncovering buried treasure or of finding 
 a smuggler s cave possibilities belief in which makes life worth 
 living to the average boy all come into the action naturally and 
 invest the whole trip with mystery. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 FIFTH AVENUE New York 
 
New Macmillan Fiction 
 
 The Valley of the Moon 
 
 BY JACK LONDON 
 With Frontispiece in Colors by GEORGE HARPER 
 
 Decorated cloth, ismo ; preparing 
 
 A love story in Mr. London s most powerful style, strikingly 
 contrasted against a background of present-day economic prob 
 lemsthat is what "The Valley of the Moon" is. The hero, 
 teamster, prize-fighter, adventurer, man of affairs, is one of Mr. 
 London s unforgetable big men. The romance which develops out 
 of his meeting with a charming girl and which does not end with 
 their marriage is absorbingly told. The action of the plot is 
 most rapid, one event following another in a fashion which does 
 not allow the reader to lose interest even temporarily. "The 
 Valley of the Moon " is, in other words, an old-fashioned Lon 
 don novel, with all of the entertainment that such a description 
 implies. 
 
 Robin Hood s Barn 
 
 BY ALICE BROWN 
 
 Author of " Vanishing Points," " The Secret of the Clan," " The Country 
 Road," etc. 
 
 With Illustrations in Colors and in Black and White by 
 H. M. CARPENTER 
 
 Decorated cloth^ izmo ; preparing 
 
 Miss Brown s previous books have given her a distinguished 
 reputation as an interpreter of New England life. The idealism, 
 the quaint humor, the skill in character drawing, and the dra 
 matic force which have always marked her work are evident in 
 this charming story of a dream that came true. The illustra 
 tions, the frontispiece being in colors, the others in black and 
 white, are by Mr. Horace Carpenter, whose sympathetic crafts 
 manship is widely known and appreciated. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
New Macmillan Fiction 
 
 Deering at Princeton 
 
 BY LATTA GRISWOLD 
 
 Author of " Deering of Deal " 
 With Illustrations by E. C. CASWELL 
 
 Decorated cloth, i2mo ; preparing 
 
 This is a college story that reads as a college story should. 
 Here Mr. Griswold tells of Deering s Princeton years from his 
 freshman days to his graduation. A hazing adventure of far- 
 reaching importance, a football game or two in which Deering 
 has a hand, a reform in the eating club system, the fraternity 
 regime of Princeton, initiated by Deering and carried through at 
 the sacrifice of much that he values, a touch of sentiment center 
 ing around a pretty girl who later marries Deering s roommate, 
 besides many lively college happenings which only one familiar 
 with the life could have chronicled, go to the making of an in 
 tensely interesting tale. 
 
 Tide Marks 
 
 BY MARGARET WESTRUP 
 
 Decorated cloth, I2mo ; preparing 
 
 A novel of unusual interest and power told in a style both con 
 vincing and distinctive. Margaret Westrup promises to be one 
 of the literary finds of the season. 
 
 The Will to Live 
 
 BY M. P. WILLCOCKS 
 
 Author of " The Wingless Victory," etc. 
 
 Cloth, 12 mo; preparing 
 
 In description, in vividness of character depiction, in clever 
 ness of dialogue, and in skill of plot construction, Miss Willcocks 
 previous books have displayed her rare ability. " The Will to 
 Live " is perhaps her most mature work ; it is a story with which 
 one is sure to be satisfied when the last page is turned. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
THE MACMILLAN FICTION LIBRARY 
 
 Each volume, cloth, I2tno, 50 cents net 
 
 NEW TITLES 
 
 Mother. By KATHLEEN NORRIS. 
 
 Adventure. By JACK LONDON. 
 
 The Loves of Pelleas and Etarre. By ZONA 
 GALE. 
 
 The Heart of Rome. By F. MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 The Justice of the Bang. By HAMILTON DRUM- 
 MONO. 
 
 The History of David Grieve. By Mrs. T. HUM 
 PHRY WARD. 
 
 Disenchanted. By PIERRE LOTI. 
 
 Four Feathers. By A. E. W. MASON. 
 
 John Ermine. By FREDERICK REMINGTON. 
 
 Fair Margaret. By F. MARION CRAWFORD. 
 
 Patience Sparhawk. By GERTRUDE ATHERTON. 
 
 The Long Road. By JOHN OXENHAM. 
 
 The Convert. By ELIZABETH ROBINS. 
 
 The very best fiction, attractive and durable binding, 
 and clear readable pages, all these are represented in this 
 new library, the first volumes of which, published last 
 spring, have served favorably to introduce the series. 
 That there is to be no let up in the excellence of the 
 reading is indicated by the authors now announced for 
 inclusion. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
THIS BOOK IS DUE ON THE LAST DATE 
 STAMPED BELOW 
 
 AN INITIAL FINE OF 25 CENTS 
 
 WILL BE ASSESSED FOR FAILURE TO RETURN 
 THIS BOOK ON THE DATE DUE. THE PENALTY 
 WILL INCREASE TO SO CENTS ON THE FOURTH 
 DAY AND TO $1.OO ON THE SEVENTH DAY 
 OVERDUE. 
 
 28 1933 
 
 LD 21-50m-l, 3 
 

 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY