THE, OSINISTERO REVEL Lillian Barrett , / / 1 ' . i/- Lit The Sinister Revel NEW BORZOI NOVELS FALL, 1919 BRUTE GODS By Louis Wilkinton THE TUNNEL By Dorothy M. Richardson CONSEQUENCES By E. M. Delafield THE SINISTER REVEL By Lillian Barrett LINDA CONDON THE LAY ANTHONY MOUNTAIN BLOOD By Joseph Hergeshtimer The Sinister Revel by Lillian Barrett New York Alfred A Knopf 1919 COPYRIGHT, 1919, BY ALFRED A. KNOPF, INC. Published August, 1919 Second Printing September, igig PBINTE0 IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA To My Brother Richmond Brooks Barrett 2134236 Part I THE SINISTER REVEL Chapter I Craig Van Dam was eight years old when first the idea of nerves as an integral part of human life en- tered his calculations. Of course Craig didn't go into the matter analytically, tag his feelings with a pathological title and deduct things. One doesn't at eight. But there is born of instinct a knowl- edge none the less accurate for all its lack of con- formity to rule. Craig knew something had happened to him, some- thing vital as well as very, very tragic. The old life of well-fed, careless young animalism was over, and he had evolved, a thinking being with nerves and responsibilities. He felt old and shaky. He was too dazed to think; he realized only vaguely that he wanted to get off by himself and cry. Dur- ing the whole of that wretched drive home he had sat, still and white, listening to Horton's very Eng- lish endeavours to explain away the dreadful thing that had happened. No one would have guessed to look at Craig the quiver of his little body, the seethe of images in his little brain. 9 The Sinister Revel As they had come through the lower district of the town on their way home from the customary afternoon drive, they had run over a child, a tiny tot with dark curls. She had darted out from the sidewalk with a peal of laughter that echoed mer- rily even as she was trampled under the horse's hoofs. There had been a sharp cry from the by- standers. But after it was all over, it was not the upturned face of the little girl, as she lay still and quiet, that haunted Craig, but the crowd as it had surged angrily about them. He could not shut out from his vision the sinister aspect of those faces, craven even as they muttered and threatened. There was no ac- tual danger; the blooded defiance of the horse was sufficient protection until the police arrived to tender an obsequious service. Craig, however, had recog- nized for the first time the existence of a force an- tagonistic to himself. He was aware of a menace that terrified because of its very intangibility. There was something in the attitude of that sullen crowd that awakened a formless dread. His child- ish imagination was tortured the more keenly in that he kept his fear to himself. His strange silence might have been set down as indifference. When he reached home he was put to bed, but not for one minute was he allowed a respite in which to give way to his tears. His nurses hovered about the room, exchanging indignant remarks at the ex- pense of the poor in general, the parents of the little 10 The Sinister Revel girl in particular. His mother came in on her way to a dinner party. She held his hand for a while and told him to forget all about it. " Father will make it all right when he gets back," she had said with conviction, and enjoined a strict night watch on the attendants. His brother Tony had crept in with curious, round eyes. u Did she scream? " he had whispered, with child- ish delight in gruesome detail. Craig had shivered and shut his eyes. Tony was immediately ejected in bawling disgrace. " Where did Master Tony get hold of it? " asked Marie, Craig's special nurse, taking no pains to con- ceal her suspicions of Susan, a recent addition to the nursery staff. " Out in the stable, of course," came the ready answer from Susan, throwing off all responsibility. " Where does Master Tony get hold of every- thing?" And she proceeded with a giggle to relate an anecdote exemplifying the remarkable acquisitive powers of her young charge. " James says that Master Tony said " Craig turned over with a sigh. Susan's volubil- ity subsided for a minute. Old Nanna came over to the bedside and patted the pillow. " Poor lamb ! " she exclaimed kindly. " What a blessing he wasn't thrown out! " There was a pause. Susan was at one of the II The Sinister Revel dressing tables, patting a curl in place, making play with a powder puff. " Did the child die? " she broke out at last. Marie had, settled to a novel and did not hear. " Like as not," answered Nanna. " But they'll make a good thing out of it. One less mouth to feed and a tidy sum in the bank " Susan began to hum an air popular below-stairs. " Shut up! " said Marie, without taking her eyes from her book. Susan stuck out her tongue. Then to show her- self still unsubdued, " Horton says the crowd was inclined to be ugly-" At that point the unexpected happened. Craig sat up suddenly in bed. His face was flushed and his dark eyes showed feverish depths. Old Nanna reached him just in time. Clinging to her wildly he burst into an agony of sobs and incoherent cries. The effect was startling. " Delirium! " pronounced Susan. Marie was already at the speaking tube. Two footmen came in. The housekeeper was sum- moned It proved to be scarlet fever, the first of the child- ish diseases to invade the Van Dam establishment. There seemed, somehow, a mysterious connection between the accident and the disease. Mrs. Van Dam argued cause and effect Horton was repri- manded. 12 The Sinister Revel " But it's impossible," protested the Doctor. " A contagious disease has to have a certain length of time, you know " Mrs. Van Dam didn't know and showed very plainly she didn't want to be told. Details were al- ways tedious; it was part of her code to ignore them. So she continued to blame the little girl. That her household was very much upset, how- ever, she did know. Mr. Van Dam had been tele- graphed for and arrived with a specialist. An army of trained nurses was billeted upon them. Consultations ran riot. Be it said to Craig's credit, he did his best to justify the general excitement for he nearly died. The disease would have gone hard with him under any circumstances, for he was the highly strung type that could run a temperature at the slightest provo- cation. But, following so closely the accident, the shock of which had undoubtedly weakened his pow- ers of resistance, the fever found him a still easier victim. His delirium ran ever on the crowd, the sardonic faces that jeered and threatened. One minute he would cry out in terror, struggling wildly as against some unseen force; the next he would cower pitifully, whimpering like a hurt animal in its pain. But al- ways, whichever way he turned, the crowd persisted, muttering and sinister. He got well eventually. Tony, in the meantime, had been stricken, but, singularly unimpressed by the '3 The Sinister Revel dignity of his affliction, romped through his weeks of quarantine with all the joy of a new experience. Having a light case himself, he didn't see why the Hell (this to Susan, who passed it on to the others) , Craig had kicked up such a row about it all. In Tony's estimation the thing savoured decidedly of a lark. The two boys were permitted to spend the last few weeks of their convalescence together. Then it was Craig realized what an essential change had come over him. He thought about things, about Tony, his mother and father, Horton. It was as if for the first time he could really see. He took his new vision rather shyly at first, unable to lose the sense of responsibility it involved. A curious thing, this awakening of the childish mind, the quick change from the purely sentient to the rational. It comes usually as a result of some chance incident, trivial and out of all proportion to the awakening itself. A beautiful sunset, a pair of tawny eyes caught in a crowd, a coarse word heard on the street, and thought fastens ruthlessly, never again to loose its hold. Yet it must be this casual disparity is but a surface thing, that the chords in a child's nature respond to those special influences vital in the working out of his own future. Else why that lure of beauty for the one, that sinister appeal for another?. Craig's awakening had come late, yet his eight years had been vivid in actual events. There had 14 The Sinister Revel been the summers in Newport, winters in Palm Beach or on the Riviera. There had been long ocean voyages and deep blue sparkling trips in the Car- ibbean. Yet all had passed, leaving him singularly unaroused. It had taken the accident with its note of tragedy, its suggestion of menace, to dispel that apathy fostered unduly by the unctuous ease of his existence. It would have been far easier for Craig had he begun to think at an earlier age. As it was, he developed a self-consciousness that made all thought and the probing of life a culpable thing. It was as if he were constantly surprising himself at a key-hole, guilty of a furtive practice. His intercourse with Tony, as it developed now, served to strengthen this idea. Tony had a sordid little soul and stable instincts. Though a year younger than Craig, his mind had been busy for some time with gossip below-stairs and its bearing on the essential facts of life. He had a certain tricky intelligence that got results where a finer mind would have failed. He sensed at once the change in his brother and proceeded to make of him a confidant. There was nothing too ugly of detail for Tony to pass on. Craig listened. He was too proud to admit to his own ignorance, but his sensitive soul continued to suffer, for all the in- different sophistication he learned to assume. He even brought himself to the point where, with an essay at carelessness, he could discuss the acci- The Sinister Revel dent. Tony had forced the issue so many times; it was not for Craig to show his feelings in the matter. One conversation is perhaps typical of many. " Horton says there was blood on the horse's hoof." Thus Tony a propos of nothing one day. Craig continued to fold and unfold the blades of a new pocket knife. "Was she pretty?" persisted Tony. Craig nodded. " So so," he answered. Then Tony sagely : " It's just as well she died. Horton says poor girls when they're pretty always come to a bad end." Of course," commented Craig, but he felt a sudden strange shakiness almost as if he wanted to cry. He cleared his throat, and then, thrusting his hands into the depths of his pockets, began to whistle. "Is father coming home tonight?" he asked suddenly. " Maybe so, maybe not! " answered Tony slowly, and there was a world of wicked wisdom in his little rat eyes. Craig saw his mistake at once. He had let him- self in unwittingly for some new revelations Tony had been preparing for some time to make and he became almost panicky. r '" he said 16 The Sinister Revel "Why not?" answered Tony in a flippant tone. " He's as good as another." " I won't listen," said Craig with rising defiance. Tony brought his lips into position for a pro- longed whistle and then winked knowingly. " Miss Sunday School," he taunted. Craig flushed hotly. It was Tony's way of eliminating all opposition at once. Craig winced under the lash of the hideous appellation. Then with a forced laugh and a show of bravado he settled himself to attention. After all, he would teach Tony how little scandal of any sort affected him. So it was Craig's apprenticeship to life went on. As the boys grew older they were put in charge of a tutor; old Baintree they called him, although in reality he was but thirty-two. " Get them into college when they're eighteen," directed Mr. Van Dam and felt his responsibility was at an end. Craig studied hard, for he liked old Braintree and thought in that way to win his approval. Tony dodged always, but had a happy faculty of bluff. He trotted everything with the result of a fluency of translation that quite put to blush poor Craig's efforts, the fruit of honest toil. " It isn't fair to Braintree," Craig had protested, whereupon Tony had burst into a loud guffaw. " You bet he knows," he said with conviction. He did, but Craig could never be brought to be. 17 The Sinister Revel lieve it, holding to the end that the tutor was an honest man duped. When the boys were thirteen and fourteen re- spectively, there first entered their lives the factor of girls as girls. This was brought about one sum- mer by the institution of a dancing class at the Casino for the children of the cottage colony. Tony thrilled to the idea; Craig held back. " I don't want to learn to dance," he protested almost sullenly and stayed awake the night before the first lesson with the image of his own awkward- ness to haunt him. Yet the thing that caused him to hold back ran deeper, in reality, than the fear of blundering. It was that shrinking from the new, always instinct in natures of sensitive timidity. Each fact of life learned had brought Craig a distinct shock, followed by a revulsion from every- thing and everybody. At such times he would shut himself in his room. " Master Craig has the sulks again," was the usual verdict, and Craig let it go at that. Anything, provided only he could be left alone till the depres- sion passed. Small wonder then he feared each fresh experi- ence as it came to him. So with the dancing class. He denounced it sweepingly for he sensed all too surely new complications, the particulars of which he shrank from realizing. Being " teased " about some girl loomed the blackest danger, for that seemed to Craig the depths of all shame. 18 The Sinister Revel So he had a dismal time preparing for the " party," as Tony styled it. The first lesson did prove a horrible ordeal of line work and embar- rassed bows and scrapes. Even Tony's enthusiasm waned, for there wasn't the slightest opportunity for larking. The second lesson went at a quicker tempo; they all got acquainted, played tricks on each other in the dressing-room. The third lesson brought utter disregard of everything the teacher had to say, with the result of an uproarious frolic. Affairs of the heart got well under way and rivalry ran deep. Tony was smitten among the first by a little dark girl as chubby as himself, her claim to distinction being a hoarse voice and the name Vera. Larry Winters ran a close second in devotion. He and Tony spent all the intermissions punching each other out on the side piazza. William Manning, Willie they called him for he hated it so, glowered attention on pretty Madeleine Sears. Willie had rather an ugly disposition, said sarcastic things even to Madeleine; she was too stupid, however, to know what he meant so they made an excellent pair. Carly Andrews backed a little red haired girl who knew a lot about dogs, while Billy Severn with his hands in his pockets, prowled about with the air of a connoisseur " looking them over." Craig, when he saw the trend of things, scowled disapprovingly and held aloof. There seemed, 19 The Sinister Revel somehow, in this so public declaration of favour a bad taste, merging very close to the indecent. He would have none of it. As the other boys, poised atiptoe in the accepted Marathon style, awaited eagerly the order to choose partners, Craig sulked. When the scrimmage of selection with its aches and its ecstasies was over, Craig took what was left. What was left never proved to his liking, but he would not admit even to himself his disappointment. For, after all, was he not totally indifferent? Yet there was a hope in his heart, vaguely felt, that some day the slim, blonde girl they called Constance would fail of selection and fall to him. She al- ways looked so cool and restful. Her face never became flushed, nor her sash awry. There was a dignity about her that compelled respect. It was evi- dent she, too, felt superior to all this child's play; that in itself constituted a bond. Craig took care, however, never to direct his scrutiny of the slim Constance in the open; the dressing-room door offered itself as a comfortable covert from which he could gaze his fill without provoking comment. If Constance, on her side, had noticed his presence, she, too, was skilful in couching her interest. The fifth lesson brought an incident, diverting even while it aroused violent indignation. It was to prove of vital importance to Craig. There had appeared on the scene a child of six, all big dark eyes and a fluff of party dress. When she was dis- 20 The Sinister Revel covered as a candidate to the class, feeling ran high. Tony, in particular, could hardly brook the insult. The dignity of all as " grown-ups " was imperilled. " Anybody'd think it was a kindergarten," Tony had cried and then swore so the teacher could hear him. This by way of proving conclusively the ab- surdity of such an hypothesis. Miss Redpath showed herself quite impervious to criticism, so there was nothing for it but to wreak vengeance on the child herself. The little Mimi proved excellent sport, her flares of temper provok- ing the wildest hilarity. Direct treatment was in order. Craig had felt more keenly than any one else the slight of the child's presence, but he had to admit the baiting of the little creature was being carried too far. He brought himself to smile at her once by way of encouragement in her plight. When it came to the grand march the teacher planned a cunning revenge. " Mimi is to lead," she announced in deliberate tones, " and may choose her partner." A groan arose from the male members of the class; earh boy, artlessly confessing his own charms, sought to obscure them by hiding behind his neigh- bour. Constance seemed to get the humour of the situa- tion; so did Craig. For the first time their eyes sought each other's and they smiled a wonderful deep smile of understanding. Craig's heart stood 21 The Sinister Revel perfectly still, preliminary to a wild beating that sent the blood surging to his head. He felt dizzy and could hardly breathe. But even as he strug- gled to calm himself, a loud shout went up from the assemblage. The little Mimi was coming di- rectly towards him. It was a terrible moment for Craig, a moment when he realized for the first time that his nature was capable of a brutal act. He could have struck that tiny face raised so eagerly expectant, roughly thrown off the little hot hand that fastened on his. He felt that he was being made a fool of His eyes sought Constance's again in the desperation of his indecision. Her quiet smile calmed him, and there seemed, somehow, almost an approval in her placid blue eyes. After all, the thing was a joke. Craig rose with a laugh, even as Miss Redpath was heard to ask that one girl stay out, as the number was odd. Constance quietly volunteered. The march proved an uproar, and no effort on the part of the director could bring order from its chaos. Little Mimi showed herself perverse, but it was not entirely her fault that things went wrong. For Craig, himself, did the strangest, most erratic things. Tony and Larry jollied him unmercifully, but he did not hear them. He was conscious only of those calm blue eyes that followed his vagaries- around and around the ballroom. Then suddenly the little Mimi had given way un- der the strain. Craig all unknowing had given her 22 The Sinister Revel arm a pull. Instantly she had jerked away from him and bursting into a storm of tears rushed head- long to the arms of her waiting bonne. There was much disorganized activity, a swell of indignation. In the meantime Miss Redpath had motioned to Constance. In a second, before Craig had time to grasp the significance of what was hap- pening, he felt Constance's cool hand slipped into his. It seemed as if that was what he had been waiting for always. His nervousness disappeared, and a great placidity settled upon him. The tangles of the grand march smoothed themselves out to a spiral denouement of unprecedented brilliance. Craig had come into his own. Afterwards as they stood on the piazza awaiting the carriages, the little Mimi was brought out. Her face was tear-stained, the eyes big dusky shadows. She peered out of the carriage window as they drove off and Craig had suddenly a swift vision of the little girl his horse had trampled under foot. Again he felt that strange shake of his nerves. He turned quickly to Constance; it seemed he could not bring himself at that point to let -her go. " How about Huyler's? " he suggested gruffly. Constance smiled her assent. They decided to walk. Then, going up through the grounds on their way to Bellevue Avenue, Craig began to talk of the accident of years before. It was quite unex- pected, but Mimi's tiny face had startled a memory that could not be put down. Craig talked on and 23 The Sinister Revel on, finding infinite relief in unburdening himself. Constance listened, saying little. If what she did say meant nothing at all, Craig was unaware of it; the sympathy in her placid eyes seemed a panacea for all ill. The walk was a short one; they lingered uncon- sciously. Groups of other children had preceded them, having raced ahead or packed themselves, a squealing crew, in Vera's pony cart. As Craig and Constance entered the store there was a suppressed giggle. Tony poked Larry in the ribs; Larry nudged Vera, thereby upsetting her soda. William smirked disagreeably. Constance seemed serenely unconscious of the eclat they had created and settled herself with easy grace at a table. Craig glowered at everybody, tripped over a chair and decided he al- ways had hated Tony. The conversation that had been so intimate and eager up to that point flagged pitifully. Flavours formed the principal theme of discussion. Con- stance liked vanilla; Craig confessed to a penchant for strawberry but liked vanilla second best. When it was over and Constance had been given back to her waiting attendant, Craig got into his dog cart and took the reins from the footman. Tony was seen signalling wildly from the curb. "All right! " said Craig sullenly and waited till Tony had scrambled in. Then he gave the horse, his favourite one at that, a vicious cut. 24 The Sinister Revel " Whew! " whistled Tony. " What did she do to you? " " Shut up, damn you ! " said Craig through his teeth and lashed the horse anew. It was the first time Craig had ever used an oath. The satisfaction he took in seeing Tony cowed to stupefaction soon merged : nto a bitter remorse. Constance passed them with a vague wave of her hand and Craig got all too surely the sense of his own violence by contrast. There was present, even more poignant than before, that feeling of a beau- tiful thing spoiled. The venture of the dancing class was- a success- ful one in that our young people very soon became welded into a distinct organization, " the bunch " in Tony's vernacular, but in Constance's more ele- gant diction " our set." " Our set " was soon recognized by younger New- port as a power to be conciliated. It showed its strength by acknowledging no law but its own whims. It was captious, fickle, displaying a broad leniency here, drawing a sharp little line of distinction there. It professed a frank democracy but was known to snub outrageously. It had its own code of ethics, its own gossip. It lived up to its own traditions. For instance, lollypops were considered " not the thing " after a certain age. Though lack of a transition stage rendered the renunciation a difficult matter, there was never any fuss made. One simply 25 The Sinister Revel awoke to an existence of non-lollypops, and made the most of it like a good sport. Sodas began to be spoken of apologetically. Tony still suffered himself to be led to Huyler's, but his air bespoke a condescension as of one who, if pressed, could say much as to real vintages. Roget '69 stuck in Tony's head, as Magna Carta T 2i5 had always failed to do. Vera confided to Larry she hoped Tony wasn't going to be " fast "; Tony's swagger after that was the talk of the Avenue. As time went on violent enthusiasms came to be suppressed as " young." Such a power of contumely as could be compressed in that word " young " ! Reservations were in order; a restraint imposed, personalities tabooed. But never could they bring themselves to the point of curbing their exuberance upon the advent of one of their number into long trousers. On such occasions all game laws were off with the result of tremendous sport. Words cannot describe the agonies of mortifica- tion suffered by Craig the day of his initiation. As he stood before Constance's clear gaze he might have been as unclad as Adam for the intensity of shame he experienced. The rough treatment of the boys was as nothing to the ordeal of her placid scrutiny. All in all, the set made for a glorious good time; the allegiance of its members was absolute. Every minute was accounted a loss when they were not 26 The Sinister Revel foregathered, tossing tennis balls on the Casino green, basking in the sand at Bailey's, revelling at birthday parties that terminated far too early. In the winter they rode and skated together in Central Park, or extended their summer program to Palm Beach. So the years passed with the inevitable sophistica- tion of our young people in the making, the elements in fusion having cooled sufficiently to take the final stamp of character. With the fact to be faced that some of the boys were ready to go away to college, there came to all the consciousness that one chapter of life was ended. They took the realization each according to his nature, with a hearty regret for the good times that were over, or a straining at the leash of the future. Tony swore himself into a purple rage when in- tercollegiate reports came in, to the discovery of his very ignominious failure. He had been talking in large terms of entering with Craig, and confi- dently expected to get by on his usual bluff. He covered his flunk jauntily to the world, however. " I've decided I'm too young," he confided to Vera. " So I think I'll just stick around for an- other year." Craig, on the other hand, was horribly depressed by his success. Again, that apprehension of the future even when he could most reasonably expect it to be happy! He would gladly have sacrificed 27 The Sinister Revel his college career and gone the old youthful round always and always, granted of course the haven of Constance's pure eyes. Craig's nature was essentially a reticent one. He was singularly afraid of his feelings; never admitting an emotion, even to himself, rather taking refuge behind a certain indifference. The restraint im- posed blocked all the natural outlets by which the alloy of youthful emotion could have been worked off and the basic elements purified. The good and the bad were at odds within him; his turbulent moods were the inevitable result. It was only natural, therefore, that Constance, with her clarity of gaze and soul, should appeal to him by a very contrast of values. There seemed al- ways a great rest in her presence. He had been conscious of this from the first moment she had slipped her cool little hand into his and straightened out the fevered tangles of the grand march. That sense of rest had pervaded their relation ever since. It was to her he turned in those moods of sullen unrest that came upon him so unaccountably; with her he found always the peace he craved. She stood to him for an ideal, an ideal of purity and goodness, the conviction of which he might other- wise have lost. In contemplation of her he could regain his faith in the beauty of life and so rest in the sense of a larger freedom. Not that Craig resorted to a diagnosis of his case in those cub years before he went to college, any 28 The Sinister Revel more than he had worked out analytically his at- tack of nerves at eight. He knew simply that he didn't want to go away to college for he didn't want to leave Constance. If there was a vague suspicion in his mind that he was what is ordinarily termed " in love," he refused to face it. 29 Chapter II So Craig went to Yale. His equipment of idea was about the same as that of most of the boys of his set. He was sophisticated. How could he not be, with Tony ever at his ear? He knew of the ex- istence of evil in all forms. He knew morality as a negligible quantity in the equation of social life. He knew yes, he knew everything, but with an oddly abstracted head knowledge. The particular appli- cation of evil, the emotional sensing of the grip o-f it, had never touched him. To be sure, Tony had gossiped of his father, but one look into the keen kind eyes had always been sufficient to dispel any shadow of doubt. Then there had been some sort of scandal about Vera's mother. But Craig remembered her only as charm- ing and rather wistful as she had been wont to pre- side at Vera's parties. The vicious talk affected him not at all. There had been an incident of Tony's and Larry's with some shop girl they had picked up on the street. Craig had set the thing down as " common " and let the details go un- heeded. But evil real evil no, he knew noth- ing of it. Craig's first year in college proved a very happy one. He was free to do as he chose, absolutely, and 30 The Sinister Revel he took a certain pride in the use he made of his independence. His devotion to Braintree, who was beginning to seem not such an old codger, after all, had continued with the years. His last words to his young pupil, whether spoken in jest or in the serious- ness proper to the occasion, had lingered in Craig's mind. "Make Phi Beta Kappa," he had said as he shook hands. " Is that much? " Craig had asked rather shyly. " The best there is," Braintree had answered. It was exactly this, Craig had decided he would do. To win Phi Beta Kappa seemed the highest tribute he could pay to Constance in gratitude for the influence she had exerted over him. He studied hard, wresting a certain pleasure from his efforts, the goal ever in mind. He made few friends that first year and was gen- erally set down as a snob. It was strange that Craig, for all his intense humanity, should have been destined to go through life stigmatized as a snob. It was the accident, possibly, of his careless bearing, of his dark slant- ing eyes, which, even as they smouldered, showed an insolent indifference. He was slight, nervously agile, of vivid colouring. Had he been a less con- spicuous figure, he might have been more popular. He kept his own horses, another fact which helped to set him apart. Had his fellow students been told he kept so much 31 The Sinister Revel to himself for the purpose of study, they would have taken it as a sally. They set his aloofness down as sheer boredom. One looks to the scion of a wealthy stock to be blaze; Craig's diffidence fitted neatly the role he was expected to play. Yet, in reality, no college boy ever took a more naive delight in the little things of community ex- istence than did Craig. The hit-or-miss scheme of eating anywhere at any time with anybody never failed of its charm. He loved the informality of it all, the hearty comradeship. Class meetings thrilled him; chapel impressed him. His recitations filled him with awe; the professors seemed of a world apart. His attitude was one of the freshest enthusiasm. The idea of criticizing anything never occurred to him; his allegiance to the university was absolute. William Manning had entered Harvard at the same time Craig had entered Yale. The two boys exchanged visits. Craig had come back from Cam- bridge with an even deeper satisfaction in the college of his choice and an impression of Harvard, induced by William's destructive tongue, as one grand bungle. Craig had yet to learn the fundamental of view- point. The end of freshman year found Craig among the first ten in his class, in line for the coveted Phi Beta Kappa. This more than compensated for any bad moments he might have had as the result of a 32 The Sinister Revel gradual realization that he was not popular with his fellow students. Of course he hadn't expected to be, really; but he had intensely wanted to be one of the crowd. There was a dull resentment each time he was made to feel that he was distinctly an out- sider, one whose presence could easily be dispensed with. The particular impression the boys tried to give him was that they didn't give a damn for his money. Well neither did he; that's where the unfairness of the deal came in. He had been per- fectly unconscious that he was richer than the rest, till they themselves had projected the brute fact upon him. He had spent no more money than the others at first, for, lacking in self-confidence, he had taken care to do only as those about him did in every particular. Then rumour drifted to him he was be- ing designated as " stingy." That cut him. He be- gan to take the crowd out to dinner after that, only to be accused of trying to buy his popularity. In the end, he saw the futility of attempting to conciliate public opinion. So he went his own way, pretending not to care. Even his honours he came to see were begrudged him. " Why shouldn't he cinch a key? Money can buy anything." That was the verdict. Craig thought of his persistent toil. But, after all, what did it matter the boys' slurs? He had had a glorious year; no amount of petty annoyance 33 The Sinister Revel could spoil the satisfaction of an object achieved. Particularly when that object seemed to bring closer to him the girl he loved. It is indicative of what the year had done for Craig that he could now admit quite openly his feel- ing for Constance. To be sure, it was only gradu- ally that he had been able to bring himself to the idea of being in love, as he had accepted the idea of long trousers and shaving only gradually. But, once acknowledged, these ideas became fixed with a finality it was impossible to deny. So, the fact of his being in love once admitted, the idea of marrying Constance as soon as he finished college immediately took definite form. The next few years, therefore, assumed a deeper significance as preparation for the event that, by the light of his young experience, he read as the culmination of life's happiness. There had been a correspondence between them, very formal, absurdly stiff, but Craig had always the delightful thrill of tremulous expectancy as he opened each missive. Then, too, the length of time spent in careful composition of the answers con- stituted a happy intermission in the routine of his studies. Craig wrote nothing of the honours be- stowed upon him ; he saved that for the telling. It was surprising how little eclat his home-com- ing created that summer. His mother was out at tea somewhere when he arrived. Tony was play- ing polo. His welcome resolved itself into a formal handshake with Horton. 34 The Sinister Revel " Glad to see you back, Mr. Craig. Come in and have a look at the horses." Craig had not rated his return from college as epoch-making, but he had expected a little warmth of attention. His sister, whose existence he and Tony had al- ways comfortably ignored, was playing on the ter- race. She stopped long enough to kiss him. He had a sudden startled idea that she was no longer a baby. There was actually intelligence in the pretty blue eyes. " How old are you, Lili? " he asked irrelevantly. " Twelve ! " she had answered. Then with obvi- ous pride, " I go to dancing school now." This brought home to Craig a sharp sense of his own maturity. He felt distinctly of a generation that had passed. He patted Lili's curls with all due dignity and then, with the admonition that she be a good girl, went into the house. The two hours that elapsed before dinner time dragged an endless length. Craig's spirits flagged to the setting in of an apathy that had its root in a dull feeling of neglect. " As sullen as ever," his mother concluded that night at dinner, as she tried with ill success to draw him out in regard to the boys he wished to visit him. " I wonder how deeply the boy's gone into things," speculated his father with a keen appraisal of Craig's particular kind of good looks. 35 The Sinister Revel They discussed the shipping of Craig's horses back from New Haven. There was a silence. Then, just as Craig, having warmed a little under the influence -of the claret, was about to mention his honours, Tony broke in. I say " he began, the fact that his mouth was full giving an added force to his statement. " Did you know that William had made the Crew?" Craig sat perfectly still before the sudden swift vision that came to him of the waste of his own year's efforts and the misdirection of his energies. His strange silence was interpreted at random. "Jealousy! " flashed through his mother's mind. " Some town girl 1 " was his father's verdict. As to Tony well Tony was too full of him- self and the season's gossip to notice anything. He prattled on, but Craig heard nothing. He was conscious only that in some mysterious way, by a stupid misconception of values, he had bungled his first year pitifully. The question he sat facing was what would Constance think? The summer began badly for Craig. He was at that susceptible age when the slightest influence can work to a lasting impression, an age that through its lack of perspective creates an image of life in grotesque proportions. Just because things hadn't turned out as he expected them to, he set himself down as a cynic, a misanthrope, and proceeded to act according to rule. This attitude was to be de- plored the more, because, in reality, he was still as 36 The Sinister Revel boyishly simple as ever. His nature was full of in- finite little enthusiasms; his reactions were perfectly normal. Craig's objection to his home-coming in the begin- ning had been that everything was the same when he had expected things to be intensely different. As the summer wore on, however, his viewpoint veered all unconsciously, and he found himself protesting bit- terly because everything had changed. This was indeed true of " the bunch." The girls were all making their debuts and very soon made clear to the boys of their own age a preference for the older men. The younger set soon lost its iden- tity entirely, becoming effectually merged into that of the " old people," as they had been contemptu- ously tagged but a short while before. It was not at all to Craig's liking, nor to Tony's either for that matter. " You're just as likely to run into your mother or your grandmother in the next cosy corner," Tony had exclaimed in indigna- tion. " And who the devil wants to be cut out by his own father? " Larry had added with a bluster. Craig did not voice his protests but they were none the less heartfelt. He saw less and less of Con- stance, but this in the end worked out very happily. For his gloom became so obvious, his sarcastic cuts at life so a matter of note that Constance felt called upon to seek him out and remonstrate. This marked the turning point in Craig's summer. 37 The Sinister Revel Constance had fixed him with her translucent gaze, as she pleaded earnestly that he throw aside his cyn- icism. " But why should I? " he had demurred with all the delicious ' thrill of the hundredth sheep being rounded up for fold comforts. " What's the good? " Constance had sighed. That sigh was epoch- making for it fired Craig with sufficient courage to say, " Does it matter to you? " There was a fluttering second in which Constance had put her hand on his. Then "Didn't you know it mattered? " she said quite clearly. He was grateful to her for her coolness that was all a part of her wonderful strength. She stood to him for all the dim high things that his young mind had lumped together in an ideal. His own tremu- lous emotion by the side of her perfect poise gave him the measure of his unworthiness. But the joy her words started in his heart was no less buoyant for that. For the rest of the summer Craig's happiness knew no bounds. The mists of his cynicism were dispelled by the ecstasy of the realization that Constance did care. This gave him a sort of proprietary right to her time. He dared now to seek her out almost boldly. They rode, drove and danced together con- tinually, their understanding the more beautiful, per- haps, because it was unspoiled by crude declaration. 38 The Sinister Revel The first of September Mrs. Edgemere took Con- stance away to Lenox. Craig was disconsolate, for he interpreted her move as disapproval of his suit. He had yet to learn something of the tactics of moth- ers, as well as the significance of the fact that the millions, one day to be his, heralded him the biggest catch in the country. When it came time for college to open, Craig was surprised at his own eagerness to get back into the old round again. He liked the idea of having Tony with him this year, for there were never any lonely moments with Tony about. He took a certain satis- faction in the thought of initiating his young brother into college mysteries, at the same recognizing that Tony, on his side, could do a great deal for him. With Tony as a medium he might at last succeed in winning recognition from the other fellows for there was never any question as to Tony's popularity. Tony was undoubtedly a mixer, for all a certain snobbery so obvious it was absurd. He talked about democracy in loud, crass tones; he thumped indis- criminate backs. The condescension was most bla- tant, but, somehow, it got by to the general acclaim- ing of Tony as a jolly good fellow. "You'd never know he had a penny"; thus the butcher's boy once when Tony had seen fit to beat him up. " He'd as lief black my eye as one of the nobbies." It is given to few to be of such magna- nimity. So Tony had the precious gift of winning friends 39 The Sinister Revel whom he bullied and maltreated at will, all under the guise of a beautiful democracy. His first week in college was a triumphant one. He was hailed an infant prodigy and folded warmly to the class bosom. Craig enjoyed it all immensely, for he could not help getting by reflection the glow of good feeling. The Van Dam rooms were immediately put into com- mission as a general lounge; the Van Dam traps appropriated for public use. It was all very jolly, very sociable, very humanizing in fact. The year stretched ahead rich in promise. The night of the Freshman Rush, there was the first general jollification. About ten o'clock Craig made some excuse and went home. The crowd on the Campus, struggling and yelling, confused him and he felt dizzy. It would seem that he had never quite lost the vision of that sinister crowd of his childhood delirium. His mind blurred always to that recollection with a sickening dread; so now. He hurried away, seeking to dull with distance the din of voices, the trampling of feet. He threw himself into a chair by the open window of his study. It was one of those sultry nights the early Fall sometimes brings. He tried to relax but could not. His brain seethed with a confusion of images. Details of yesterday and today merged into plans for tomorrow till his head ached. There seemed no respite ever from the drag of thought. Then suddenly the vision of Constance as he had seen her last came to quiet him. He rose and turned on 40 The Sinister Revel the light. Taking from his desk a picture, which he had acquired with Mrs. Edgemere's reluctant con- sent, he gazed a long time into the clear eyes. The picture, like Constance herself, had always the effect of a balm upon his tired nerves. Sinking into his chair again, he settled to a somnolent reverie that soon became a deep sleep. About three o'clock he was roused by an infernal racket which, as he collected his startled senses, he placed as a violent kicking outside in the hall. With the dazed thought of fire in his mind, he tumbled to the door and threw it open. There in ludicrous dis- array and absurdly drunk was Tony, supported on the one side by Larry, and on the other by an un- known creature whose uniform confessed the " Jackie." A roistering crew as they stood re- vealed ! But the sudden apparition of Craig and the bright light of the room startled them out of all cal- culation. They fell back precipitately. Tony lost his balance; so did Larry, and the three fell with a thud upon the floor, where they lay an indiscriminate heap. There was a stifled curse or two, a groan, a foolish giggle, and then all was still. Craig stood trembling. He got the significance of the scene only gradually for he was but half awake. The revulsion that came to him was none the less violent for all his sophistication that had learned to look on such scenes, theoretically, as an essential part of life. That people got drunk he knew; that he himself would, at some remote future 4 1 The Sinister Revel date, likewise get drunk he accepted as inevitable. But here, now, face to face with the thing in partic- ular application, he felt a sickening disgust, not of the boys lying there in grotesque helplessness, but of the whole sweeping scheme of life that embraced in its system so sordid a tenet. The sound of an echoing footstep in the black length of the hall brought to Craig the necessity of immediate action. He mustn't let Tony get caught. Poor, naive Craig, who fancied this scene a suffi- ciently signal one to bring the authorities down upon them! He stooped and shook the sailor boy, who hap- pened to be on top. He, in turn, with a mutter pro- ceeded to kick Tony. There was at once a violent upheaval, during which everybody, struggling up, threatened to break the head of everybody else. Craig's own had a particularly narrow escape as he tried to force the combatants within the door. Once they were inside, the bright light made for a general weakening of brute energy and the revival of a glim- mer or two of intelligence. Tony rubbed his eyes, looked sheepishly at Craig, and then with elaborate politeness offered his sailor friend a seat. A moment later with a clutch at his head he lunged into his own room. Craig followed, with a dim perception that in situations of this sort the services of a second were indispensable. He had quite recovered his equilibrium by now, and his eyes 42 The Sinister Revel showed hard with the grim determination to see the thing through in the accepted manner. Tony, as a very small boy, had once remarked in a plaintive tone, " I wish I was old enough to get married." Mr. Van Dam, deeming such a domestic trend should be encouraged, pressed for reasons. " Because then I could get drunk at my bachelor dinner," explained Tony with all lucidity. The child was reprimanded roundly, but Mr. Van Dam couldn't reach his Club quickly enough to pass the joke on. It was all in keeping with Mr. Van Dam's theory " Of course the youngsters know everything. But my idea is to keep the check rein tight till they get to College Then, give them their heads." It was the virtue of one particular head to ache in a very dull and dreadful way the morning after the incident just described. Tony presented a sorry ap- pearance as he lay with ice bags on his throbbing tem- ples and begged Craig in a hollow voice not to men- tion such a thing as breakfast. The night had been an equally heavy one for Craig, who showed himself, likewise, a prey of iner- tia. Strange as it would seem, he could find no blame in his heart for Tony. He saw him simply as the victim of a cruel order of things, and felt closer to him than he had ever felt before. He decided to chuck his classes for the day; he had never dreamed 43 The Sinister Revel of doing it before, but, somehow, this morning it seemed all in the natural course of events. As Tony's aches subsided, the boys began to talk. It was the first time Craig had ever given himself unrestrainedly to any one with all the intimacy of touching fundamentals, but there was something in the hush of the darkened room that so intensely in- vited revelation. It was with difficulty he persuaded Tony of his own ignorance in regard to the bibulous art. Tony would have been contemptuous, had he not been so sick. But, after all, Craig did have a little the ad- vantage at that particular moment as he looked so damned well. By afternoon they had threshed out quite thor- oughly the matter of getting drunk. Craig was re- warded with the astonishing discovery that Tony was not at all sorry for what he had done and, moreover, bore not a trace of ill will against the general comp- troller of destinies whose carelessness had made his spree possible. " Next time " Tony had begun, but Craig caught him up abruptly. " Next time ! " he echoed. " You don't mean to say you'd do it again ! " " Of course ! " Tony had answered with a show of bravado. " What the devil is a little headache to the joy of getting drunk! " There was ill-concealed mockery in Craig's eyes as 44 The Sinister Revel they rested on his brother, who presented anything but a joyous spectacle. " Joy ! " he repeated ever so faintly. Tony nodded sagely. " Oh, it isn't what you drink, you know. As for that, the stuff's rotten at the Hof-Brau. It's the the " He hesitated for exactly the right word. " It's the letting down," he wound up triumphantly. Craig said nothing. " It's the letting go of yourself that counts," Tony went on in amplification. Then, turning over wear- ily, " The trouble with me is I think too much." Craig could not help laughing. Tony's state- ment brought a vague wonder, notwithstanding. After all, perhaps there was something in it. He balanced the thought a second. Then with a swift vision of some of the details of the preceding night, " But it is disgusting," he said. " Hell ! " was Tony's only comment. Later, after a brief nap, Tony confided to Craig that he intended in the future to work out his sprees according to a system. " It doesn't hurt you if you do it right. Larry says his brother George " Craig listened. The very lurid narrative of George Winters' dissipations succeeded in dispelling his incipient leniency. In the end he shut Tony up abruptly and with a fine anger left him alone to his sufferings and his sophistry. 45 The Sinister Revel Late that afternoon the boys began to drop in to offer Tony condolences and to indulge in much chaff at his expense. The occasion was such as to provoke anecdotes. ,If one were rash enough to judge from the general trend of these, " to go out on the loose " was an accepted part of the college curriculum, one that made more than anything else for a general bond of sympathy and community of interest. All seemed seasoned Bacchanals, a staggering discovery to Craig. Then his eyes fell on Tony, who appeared veritably transfigured. Here in truth was one who in swagger and tavern lore outshone the rest of the crew! Here was one who long ago had cast all scruple behind him, who vaunted loudly the brute fact of having brought dissipation down to schedule ! Craig was conscious of floating in an atmosphere of large phrases, big ideas. He learned that one owed certain things to one's manhood, that there was a greater force than moral law. He learned oh, lots of things, to his utter bewildement. Then, of a sudden, he saw it all quite clearly, the absurdity and pathos strangely mingled. These boys, for the most part, were playing a game of bluff, in the carrying out of which they would make of themselves irrevoc- ably the dissolute wags they now aspired to be. To have admitted to a fine feeling, a moral sense, would have been to expose oneself to ridicule. His own problem to a nicety ! All based on a tradition, deep rooted, that deemed evil a fit boast, a good impulse a thing of shame. He could see these boys as they 46 The Sinister Revel grew up. Carly Andrews and Larry Winters, rep- licas of the men in his father's set! He could see Tony. He could see, God help him, himself. As he stood there, staring wide-eyed at his vision, some one was thumping him on the back. It was Trubey Diehl, the foot-ball star, whose bulk had al- ways aroused in Craig the intensest loathing. " You must go out with us next time ! " Trubey was saying with his fat leer. As Craig stood looking at him, in proportion as disgust increased, courage to assert his own princi- ples ebbed. To yield seemed, somehow, less a sac- rilege of those principles than to bring them down to the level of open discussion. Craig shrugged. He had been given his chance to make a definite stand for the right and had failed of the strength. He got all too surely the craven concession of his answer, " If not next time some night." It was not the next time, nor the next. Tony made an elaborate toilet every Saturday night, re- marked he was " out on the town," dropped a casual invitation to Craig to join the gang and then disap- peared. It was surprising how quickly Tony learned a few things, about pick-me-ups, rubdowns and the like. He languished less and less on succeeding days, and seemed well on his way to be the accom- plished sport of his dreams. Craig watched, not less disapproving but a little more curious. There were Saturday nights when 47 The Sinister Revel he was tremendously lonely. He asked himself at such times if he were not a fool to stick by an idle prejudice. To let go! Tony's phrase rang in his mind till it became almost an obsession. That was so exactly what he had always wanted to do, from the instant the killing of the little girl had awakened his reason. He had been thinking ever since, strange, tormenting thoughts, his brain asurge. Then about Thanksgiving had come a succession of rainy days, when life resolved itself into the drear- iest monotony. One tramped to recitations through the wet that seemed to pervade body, mind and soul with its grey drizzle, or else sat at home, brooding on the vista of rain-swept roofs outside. Craig's nerves were in a desperate state. He took things out on Tony with a quick irritability, or settled to a dull apathy from which it was impossible to rouse him. It was indicative of the trend of his thoughts that Saturday night found him quite pre- pared to join the boys and to let go at any cost. It seemed, somehow, inevitable. The astuteness of the gang was shown in that, following Tony's cue, Craig's presence was accepted as a matter of course. There was no comment made as, donning hat and overcoat, Craig stood ready with the rest. Craig came to a sullen realization that night as the party started off that for him there could be no such thing as half-way dissipation. To get the proper effect of a complete let-down, that part of him that watched and thought and reasoned must be reduced 4 8 The Sinister Revel to absolute inactivity. This flashed upon him as, still not wholly drunk, he was obliged to force an hilarity to match the others' mirth, with all the while a sense of disgust at the whole proceeding. He de- liberately drank after that till all vestige of his rea- sonable self had disappeared. Then it was he got the glory of the experience as he had so wanted it, a lifting out of himself, a treading on air, a fusion, as it were, with the elements in a wilder, freer atmos- phere. He was aware vaguely that he talked a great deal and unburdened his heart of a weight of confidence. He laughed till he couldn't see and sang lustily with a delicious abandon. Later came the perception that the situation was not without its ele- ment of sadness. He felt himself suddenly over- whelmed by a great love, born of the hour, for all those dear comrades gathered there together. Yet time would steal them from him. But no 1 It could not be. He cried out his determination to stick by them always in sickness and health. " Till death do us part! " He called for more champagne and of- fered the toast with tears in his eyes. Trubey Diehl was next him. He turned to see if he, too, nice old Trubey, were likewise impressed by the transitoriness of all joy. But something star- tling had happened to Trubey. The big fat face with its leering grin seemed floating in space at least a foot above the hulk of a body to which it belonged. The sudden apparition brought a white terror to Craig. Then with the flash idea some one was play- 49 The Sinister Revel ing a trick on him, he struck out blindly. There was an instant's hurly-burly, a great crash. Craig was conscious of falling, falling, and then all was black- ness. It evolved the next morning that Tony, impervious to his brother's fate, had rushed off later in pursuit of other ventures, leaving Craig, in a drunken stupor under the table, to the tender mercies of Trubey. The doughty Trubey had risen to the responsibility and shown that, even in his cups, he had a nice appre- ciation of class when he came in contact with it. For, taking Craig home to his own dingy quarters, he had given up the one bed without question to his guest, while he himself had rolled into a blanket on the window-seat. Incidentally he had made things all right with the waiter Craig had assaulted with such unexpected violence. As Craig came slowly and painfully to his senses the next morning, Trubey's bulk, silhouetted against the window, was the first thing that caught his flicker- ing attention. He tried to think, but, dizzy and sick and with a terrible ache everywhere, he couldn't concentrate on anything long enough to bring it to definite form. The ache he connected with a certain hardness, the sense of which had been with him dur- ing the whole black awful night. It was yes he knew now what it was. There was something the matter with the bed. It was hard. He sat up. It was not his bed. The linen was dingy, the blank- ets coarse, the Well, what the devil? He had 50 The Sinister Revel his clothes on Then his eyes fell again on Tru- bey's bulk, a blot against the pure morning light, and the whole scene of the night before flashed in all its sordid detail upon his poor sick brain. This was the sequel of the glory of his night's freedom, this the penalty of letting go. He tried to get up, but, finding himself unsteady, was obliged to sit down again. He wanted to put some cold water on his head. So, having rested a minute he got up again, this time gradually, and fum- bled about trying to find a bath room. There was none. Then he sat down on the floor and in his weakness and despair went to sleep again just as he was. An hour or two later he awoke with a start. He had dreamed he was falling. Trubey still slept. Then Craig forged the determination to go back to his own rooms. It was quite simple just across the way. He longed so to get under the cool of his own shower, into the refreshing cleanness of his own soft bed. Odd, but he had always thought it was of the nature of all beds to be soft. Well, he knew better now. He was learning much. Poor Trubey, how pathetic he looked sprawling there with his mouth wide open! He liked Trubey. He would go down that morning and buy him a real bed. He shut his eyes to the vision of it. He pictured Tru- bey's bulk sinking deeper and deeper into the soft- ness of a nice new mattress, till he disappeared with a gurgle. Craig made a grab for him, only to real- 51 The Sinister Revel ize he was clutching the leg of the table. He had dozed again. How stupid! But why on the floor? He strained his eyes open wide and perused the pat- tern of the rug. Of course he had sat down to think. He always thought better sitting on the floor. But the thing he wanted to think about evaded him. He traced the outline of a florid rose in the Brussels. Oh it was about going home and the shower ! He rose, feeling his way up by the table. He looked again at Trubey. Yes, he was sorry for Trubey. He liked Trubey, but the filth of his rooms was disgusting. It made him feel sick to think of it. He must get some air. What time was it? He heard a tick somewhere but he couldn't locate it as coming from anything but a picture of Trubey in foot-ball costume on the mantel. This struck his sense of humour. He sat on the edge of the table and laughed. Tick! Tick! He doubled up in his mirth. Trubey stirred. This brought Craig a pause. He must get out before Trubey woke up. Trubey was a good fellow, but one had to draw the line some- where. And when it came to a chap who didn't have his own bath Why, damn it, it wasn't decent! He began to tiptoe elaborately to the door. A sec- ond's pause to adjust his balance a little, and the sharp little tick overtook him again. With a burst of laughter which he smothered foolishly in his hands he staggered out into the open. Those going to chapel that morning were treated 52 The Sinister Revel to the sorry and yet somewhat ludicrous spectacle of Craig, in the saddest of disarray, clinging to the campus fence and indulging in uncontrollable mirth. The ringing of the bell from the Chapel Tower had brought back in full force the absurdity of that " tick, tick, tick " he had adjudged as coming from the very pit of Trubey's prodigious stomach. " Van Dam drunk again! " was the contemptuous verdict of the passers-by. Chapel time in a college community is not an hour conducive to charity even in the breasts of the most lenient. However, Larry was destined to come to the res- cue before any drastic measures could be taken against this so signal disturber of the morning's peace. S3 Chapter III It was given to Craig never to lose completely the sense of his own degradations. As a child, he had suffered deeply from the impact of the sordid facts of life upon his sensitive nature. He would not be- lieve that life could be so ordered till time had forced a dull acceptance of the truth. So in his own dissi- pations. The fact that, granted human nature, cer- tain excesses were not only accepted but expected by the world, intensified rather than lightened his own sense of guilt. It was as if the weakness of his sur- render to existing conditions constituted a greater crime as helping accelerate the evil he should have strained every effort to check by deprecation. His drunken spree brought him a deep gloom, for he recognized the fact it was but the first with many others to follow as a matter of course. He man- aged to keep out of things, however, for two weeks, tormenting himself mercilessly with the vision of Constance. He could not write the usual weekly let- ter, so had let it go. Then he had lied to her. " Work has been piling up, my only excuse for not having written before." He hated himself for the subterfuge, but what was there to do? To tell her the truth might have worked to his redemption, but he deemed her too innocent to understand. 54 The Sinister Revel The parties that followed brought the same ruth of indecision, the same relief of abandon, the same trail of disgust Each was different from the pre- ceding only in that it seemed more inevitable. It was about this time a new factor entered into a situation already too intricate. Craig had come to realize that his presence for some reason or other acted as a check upon the other boys' freedom of dis- cussion. This was evidenced by many an exchange of innuendo behind his back, by a sudden embar- rassed drop of the conversation when he came un- expectedly upon the scene, above all by an unusual furtiveness of action on the part of Tony. A clue to the mystery was furnished one day when he and Tony were out driving. They passed a crowd of girls on Chapel Street. What was Craig's surprise to see an extremely self-conscious Tony bow- ing and smiling to the diverse members of the group, each eager for individual recognition. Craig said nothing but there flashed into his mind a passage between Tony and himself his first vaca- tion. " Any girls? " Tony had asked with his customary air of all-world experience. " No," Craig had answered. Then as an after- thought, " Of course there's the Dean's daughter and Professor Bateman has one or two " Tony had given him a queer look. " How about town girls? " he had pursued, bold of suggestion. 55 The Sinister Revel " Oh, yes, but they don't count," Craig had an- swered. It is exactly this virtue of not counting, as Craig was afterwards to learn, that makes the town girls such an insidious influence in the lives of the boys with whom they are brought in contact. There is no moral responsibility assumed in dealing with these girls, a fact which tends to undermine the sense of moral responsibility in general. It would seem that a kindly providence out of a mistaken charity had placed a given number of these girls in each col- lege town as so much free material to be used for experimental purposes. They are there, to hand, waiting to be dealt with, and they have no more power to alter their status than the little guinea pigs who give their squealing lives each day in the labora- tory that science may progress. The guinea pig is learning not to struggle at his sacrifice. So is the lit- tle town girl. The tradition of her class teaches her to smile even as she provokes her destiny on the street corners. Another day, as Craig was driving Tony and Larry out to the athletic field, they encountered the same group of girls. "Stop a minute, will you?" cried Larry, and Craig drew up at the curb. He kept his eyes on his horse, flicking an imag- inary fly off here and there from the glossy hide. Had he studied his effect he could not have produced a more powerful one. He was so essentially the 56 The Sinister Revel young plutocrat, insolent in his indifference, yet with a suppressed intensity in his strange dark eyes. Lit- tle did Craig guess that for a year and a half he had been the centre of interest to that group of girls, who had watched him with an all-absorbing curiosity as he rode and drove through the streets, who had waited and hoped and finally despaired of his remote- ness. As they drove off that day there was no conscious- ness in Craig's mind of having created an impression, only a certain envy for the knack of easy badinage that seemed so delightfully Tony's. Craig celebrated his twentieth birthday soon after this little incident. There was a surprise involved in regard to which Tony was particularly mysterious. Telegrams flashed back and forth between him and his father, and there prevailed an undercurrent of excitement equalled by nothing that the advent of a birthday had ever produced before. The surprise itself more than justified the blaze of its trail. It was a brilliant red motor. Automobiles were the latest fad, an expensive one, however, but few could afford to take up. It was given to Craig to be a pioneer in the new field. A demonstrator brought the machine down from New York and nothing would do but the boys must have immediate instruc- tion. They piled in, some half dozen of them, and started off with a yell. Their progress through the town was marked by a confusion on the part of the natives that well- 57 The Sinister Revel nigh approached a panic. Women and children screamed, horses ran away, men swore. The police intervened but, as the demonstrator proved conclu- sively he was keeping well within traffic limitations, nothing could be done. Tony and Larry roared with delight; Dick kept punching the horn. Only Craig was uneasy at the menace of the gathering throng and welcomed the country roads with a sigh of relief. The car was soon christened " The Red Devil " and made for a notoriety of its owner very little to his liking. He felt himself pointed out, a conspic- uous object, every time he appeared, and recognized again that force antagonistic to himself and what he stood for. Yet in time the threats that blocked the progress of the machine gave way to a lively curios- ity. A pushing crowd surrounded the car every time it was left to its straining, panting self. A certain pride that New Haven was holding its own when it came to the patronage of new inventions caused " The Red Devil " to be made boast of in neighbour- ing districts less able to keep up to date. " Ninety miles an hour," the good citizens boasted, whereas in reality Craig conscientiously kept his man down to fifteen. He did not deceive himself that the growing leniency toward the car extended to its owner. It was the possession of the car that precipitated the first really tragic event in Craig's life. As may be imagined " the girls " had been in a state of ex- 58 The Sinister Revel citement bordering on hysteria ever since the Red Devil had arrived. They haunted the street corners to get glimpses of it as it streaked by; they panted through cross streets, doubled on their tracks, climbed fences and in general resorted to the most drastic of measures to cut it off in its progress. The days were accounted worth while in proportion to the number of glimpses of " it " and incidentally of " him " each brought forth. It was Tony who, running into the crowd at a variety show one afternoon, had been brought to a proper appreciation of what a ride in " it " would mean to these simple uninitiate. So he had broached the subject to Craig. The next day they had picked up four fair ones waiting in all eagerness for just such a possible event. Craig was driving. So en- grossed was he in doing deftly what he was supposed to do in regard to gears and speeds, that there might have been just the usual crowd of boys in the ton- neau for all the difference it made to him. The in- cident was repeated again and again. Craig came to know one of the girls was called Ann May; an- other, who seemed Tony's special protegee, he identi- fied as Babe. He listened in an abstracted way to the babble of voices, took as a matter of course the general jollity and then quite lost the sense of it all as he speeded up his machine in the long country roads. Tony had eventually suggested " supper out there somewhere for the bunch." " Out there " meant 59 The Sinister Revel any of the outlying inns frequented by the boys for their sprees. " But you couldn't take the girls so far out," ob- jected Craig. " Don't be an ass," rejoined Tony. " We'll take Godwin," suggested Larry. " Then you can get squiffed, too, Craig." Craig swore hotly. The party was not at all to his liking and he would have none of it. Prepara- tions went on apace, however; the supper was set for the following Saturday night. Craig's objection was rooted in the deepest disap- proval, ill-defined, till Billy Severn pointed it neatly. " They're such a cheap crowd," Craig had vouched by way of excuse. " But that's just where the sport comes in," an- swered Billy. " They have to stand for anything." Exactly the point! It was because they would have to stand for anything that Craig held back. An unfair advantage, like the baiting of helpless ani- mals! He was beginning to realize vaguely what the town girl represented; it revolted him. But as for Tony and Larry pure josh there ! Granted, however, the harmlessness of it all, he could not bring himself to the point of seeing any woman cheap- ened to make sport for a lot of cubs. Then in the intricacies of his thought had been born the idea, none the less disconcerting for its un- reason, that not to go was in the nature of a conces- sion that endowed with a certain force the very 60 The Sinister Revel thing he meant to deprecate. Once started this idea worked to a vacillation that rendered Craig an object to be shunned by the other fellows. He actually snarled at them, went off and got half drunk by himself and was generally miserable. Then the thought struck in the others didn't want him anyway. That settled it; he decided to go in spite. Saturday night found him waiting with the others for the car, but with a countenance that boded ill for the jollity of the coming party. " I'll drive," he had said, and motioned Godwin to the seat by his side. They picked the girls up at Poll's. After they had piled into the tonneau with much affected commo- tion, Craig slammed the door with an unmistakable viciousness, just missing one of Babe's bejewelled fin- gers. The look in his eyes quite quashed her out- cry. " Gloomy day! " muttered Tony, and Babe pro- ceeded to smother a laugh on the comfortable ex- panse of his shoulder. It was raining. Craig drove on recklessly, soon leaving the town far behind. He thought of noth- ing but the gloom of the night that seemed but the reflection of his own thoughts. He wished intensely he hadn't come. Damn it all, if those girls didn't stop squealing every time the car skidded, he'd run afoul the next tree they came to. He hated parties. He hated girls, these girls in particular. So he brooded on. The rain splashed on the wind shield 6l The Sinister Revel and blew into his face. He speeded up and felt sud- denly better. After all, he was sorry for these poor girls, for what could life have in store for them worth while? Doubtless this outing meant much, and they had been looking forward to it eagerly the whole week. He began to wonder what they did when they weren't hanging about on the street corners. Some factory ! Maybe the five and ten ! Well it wasn't up to him to gloom their party. A burst of laughter caused him to turn around; he forced a smile through the darkness. " Almost there ! " he called out cheerfully. One of the girls, leaning forward, put her hat on his head; he could even endure that a second before he tossed it back with a laugh. " It's clearing up ! " said Tony, and one got in- stinctively the accompanying wink. At which, in Babe's vernacular, they all nearly " split their sides." The girls were cheap, unquestionably so, but their cheapness was not without its element of the pathetic. For they struggled to keep up an appearance of a misconceived gentility with all the while a sense of their belittlement at the hands of those they were at- tempting to deceive. Babe, in particular, with her elaborate affectations, her pretence at ease and air, was the most conspicuous failure of all, and so the better sport for Tony. She was big and dark and tawdry. Pearl and Marguerite were the Irish type, failing only Irish simplicity. Then there was Ann May. 62 The Sinister Revel Things began well, for there was something in the air of the old Inn conducive to irresponsibility and a tendency to let go. They had a private room, lighted by candles; a roaring fire made for an inti- mate comfort after the chill ride in the rain. " We'll have champagne," announced Tony as master of ceremonies. The girls tried to look indifferent but their eyes were eager. At last they were to be treated as the real thing. " Eight beers ! " said Tony, turning to the waiter. Larry and Billy guffawed loudly. The girls joined in to hide their mortification; they were used to such treatment. But Craig was furious. " This is my party," he announced and turned to order cocktails and champagne. " How much champagne? " asked the waiter with deference. " As much as we can drink, of course," Craig had answered and determined it wouldn't be his fault if the party was not a go. The first hilarity was strained, depending for the most part on slang phrases aptly rendered, catch lines from popular songs, jolly, josh, suggestion and evasion, reference to other parties and the like, with all the while a byplay of little familiarities ill con- cealed. The whole thing was extremely artificial. " If these girls would only be themselves," Craig had thought, even as he found himself saying to Ann May, The Sinister Revel " Where do you live? " " In Congress Avenue," came the ready answer. " Babe and I have two rooms on the top floor in a boarding-house there. We live together because it's cheaper." It was the first human note Craig had heard struck, and he looked, suddenly intent, at the little girl who had dared to strike it. She was small and plump, of pretty, elusive colouring. The only thing that made for individuality was a mass of yellow hair. This held his attention now. Odd, he hadn't noticed Ann May's hair before ! " I should like to see it down," he had ventured with a daring look, as he poured out more cham- pagne for them both. But she had not followed. " What? " she asked with a blush in answer to his scrutiny. At that, there was a general pushing back of chairs and shouting. Some one had begun to play the piano. Artificiality and restraint broke down now from their own weight and eternal youth took possession. They sang and danced, grew drunker and drunker, revelled in nonsense and absurdity. Babe officiated at the piano for a while with sentimental arpeggios till her discords were caterwauled to nothing. Then I arry played, swinging the stool about between notes. It was very exciting for the dancers, thus obliged to hold balance till Larry came back to tempo. All went well till the top of the piano-stool 6 4 The Sinister Revel turned ugly, coming off at an inopportune moment and giving Larry a nasty spill. Nothing daunted, however, he went right on playing with his feet. The resulting crash of notes called forth on the part of the others a new, most startling kind of dance of Apache order, accompanied by disorganized yelling. The intervention of the manager at this point saved their reason to say nothing of the furniture. Then Larry squirted a bottle of champagne at Billy, who in turn threw lobster claws at the girls. Marguerite, in her efforts to smoke with the aban- don of a vaudeville adventuress, set fire to her beruf- fled blouse. The damage was slight but two more bottles of champagne were sacrificed. The little lady showed a signal discretion even in her cups, for she draped herself modestly in the table cloth while the gutted waist was spread to dry. Oh, it was all quite wonderful! Craig took back everything he had said or thought detrimental to the members of the party. He revelled in the glorious intimacy of it. Poor fat Babe over there, nearly prostrate, with Tony making heroic attempts to hold her up. And Billy Severn struggling with a pun, something about his brogue Pearl. He was too far gone to get it over but there was a lively screaming at his attempts. As to Ann May Craig had danced every dance with her, pressing her close in the frenzy of the music. But, with it all, things were quite all right. So Craig kept reminding himself. The Sinister Revel There was a glow over everything, a hazy warmth of good feeling that made the eventual breaking up of the party seem like a tragedy. Craig didn't want to go home. He kept trying to order more cham- pagne but his objections were overruled by the oth- ers; before he knew what was happening they were all singing " Good-night, Ladies " to the tune of Boola Boola and climbing into the car. Once set- tled in the darkness, it seemed as if their words and voices and actions were not their own, an illusion which gave a pleasant feeling of easiness, conducive to anything. Craig felt only a vague desire to have Ann May next him. "Ann May!" he murmured and felt a pair of arms about his neck. The next second with a strange blur of all his senses he found himself kissing her. It was a wild ride home. Godwin had been inter- rupted in making love to one of the maids whom he had been plying with champagne to advantage. " I'll be back in an hour," he had promised when summarily called. The reckless plunge through the driving rain was the result. The car swayed and swerved; the blackness rushed by. But Craig was conscious only of the spell of Ann May's kisses and the soft curves of her body as she lay contentedly in his arms. A cluster of lights, irregular, eerie through the steady downpour, flashed upon them. Craig roused 66 The Sinister Revel himself and realized they were within reach of New Haven. " Go slowly! " he cried out but Godwin did not hear. They got into town, dropped Billy and Mar- guerite, Larry and his baroque Pearl. They turned into Congress Avenue. " Drive about! " shouted Craig but they were al- ready at a standstill with Tony and Babe on the side- walk. Ann May was getting out, too, and pulled him with her. Craig's whirling brain not yet took the full significance of the move ; not even as Godwin pulled off with a surly " Good night " and he saw Tony fumbling with a latch key. " Just a minute ! " Ann May had pleaded and they were suddenly inside, stumbling up a creaky old stair- case. Tony's voice could be heard ahead. They got to the top, out of breath, dizzy. Tony opened a door; there was the splutter of a match. A flickering light brought a certain self-consciousness to all. Babe and Ann May made essay at straightening tumbled locks. Tony looked at Craig. " Hell! " he exclaimed, and before Craig in his bewilderment could grasp what was happening Tony and Babe had disappeared into a room beyond and shut the door. It was evidence of how drunk he was that Craig felt only a wild surge of joy at the revelation that 67. The Sinister Revel now came to him as his eyes rested on Ann May, tremulous, waiting. "Ann May! " he cried in an ecstasy of strange unbelief. " Ann May ! " It was all but a part of the moment's glow, an incident in the night's revel, but it seemed, somehow, to poor Craig in his drunken muddle the culmination of life's glory. "Ann May! " he cried once more. Then, with the sweep of an emotion that overwhelmed him com- pletely, he staggered forward. With an odd little laugh he pulled a pin from her hair; then catching her wildly to him, he buried his hot face in the yel- low masses as they came tumbling down. 68 Chapter IV It was to the sickening sense of having sunk to the lowest depths of all depravity that Craig awak- ened next morning. How he had managed to get home he never knew. His passion had been like a furious flame burnt out quickly, followed by the con- sciousness of an irreparable calamity that had driven him out into the blackness of the rain, overwhelmed by the horror of the thing he had done. But his maudlin self-condemnation of the night was as noth- ing to that which came with the cold light of reason in the morning. He felt that he had for ever sullied his relationship to women, and set himself down as a libertine. Simple, frank and fraternal intercourse was no longer possible. He could never again meet the clear, pure eyes of Constance; he had forfeited the right to her love. It was all very absurd and very young, but his sufferings were no less real for the folly of his youthful viewpoint, which accounted death the wages of sin. It was but the accident of Craig's temperament that he could never bring him- self to make compromise with his weaknesses. He had risen slowly and painfully that morning to find it was after twelve. He looked into Tony's room. Tony was sleeping peacefully. There were no agonies of self-accusation depicted on his bland 6 9 The Sinister Revel countenance, only an infinite contentment as of satis- faction with the scheme of life in general. Craig had turned away hurriedly. He dressed and rushed off to the stable for his horse. The quick gallop failed of its usual effect, however. It was a beauti- ful day, the sky a deep blue, but his depression was intensified by contrast. He rode himself to a numbed fatigue and then went to a small inn to din- ner. He was tired, dead tired and drank much to revive his energies. As he sat there he brooded over the details of the party the night before and found only detestation for it all. But because this was so, there came a little hope. He had tried himself out, and could now put evil behind him forever. It was given to just such women as Constance to point the way to better things. But there must be honesty and understand- ing between them. No more evasions ! He would tell Constance the truth, confess it all. He would write her at once. This seemed no longer a viola- tion of her innocence, but a tribute to her strength He paid his check and started home. He would write that night. He rode slowly, a tender, melan- choly look in his eyes. He put his horse up at the stable. " Nice ride, Mr. Craig? " his coachman asked. " A wonderful ride," Craig exclaimed, and there was a vast satisfaction in his tone. As he neared his own dormitory he saw lights in his study and the grotesque shadows of heads against 70 The Sinister Revel the curtains of his bow window. He hesitated. A post mortem of last night's orgy! It sickened him. Then he looked up at the sky above him. The moon was just mounting the blue wall of the heaven. A moment's vacillation, another glance at the lighted windows and he registered the determination to chuck it all for an hour or two at the Hof-Brau. Two hours later Craig turned unsteadily into Con- gress Avenue, and mounted the steps of a shabby boarding-house. A woman opened the door fur- tively. There was a brief exchange. Craig stepped inside and the door closed with a dull thud. Craig did not struggle after that. He took this phase of life as inevitable, as he had taken his child- ish diseases. Yet, side by side with the conviction that it was all just a part of the universal scheme, there was a feeling of dismay at the weakness of his surrender. It is given to the illogical to suffer most keenly, perhaps, through the very confusion of their perceptions of value. Craig became surly with the other boys, except when he was drunk. Gradually all banter in regard to his continual pilgrimages to Congress Avenue ceased. One little incident will tend to show some- thing of the state of Craig's nerves at this time. He, Larry and Tony, while driving one day, were hailed by the doughty Diehl. Craig had pointedly avoided Trubey since their first spree, but occasional encounters were unavoidable. Craig was feeling particularly down this day. His gloomy counte- 71 The Sinister Revel nance was made at once the subject of Trubey's coarse jocularity. Craig kept still. Then Trubey with his usual leer ventured a remark about a " cer- tain little blonde." Craig's eyes smouldered as he turned his attention to his horse. Larry giggled; so did several other boys who had joined Trubey on the curb. Trubey, wishing to point the intimacy with Craig that had been so widely his boast, now essayed a familiar wink and began to whistle a catch lay " Who were you with tonight, tonight? Oh, who were you with tonight? " Then a very startling thing happened. Craig had leaped from the box and thrown himself in an impo- tent fury upon Trubey. It was childish; it was ab- surd. Trubey could have knocked him all to pieces had he so desired, but still in the grip of class tradi- tion he had simply dodged the onslaught. Tony and Larry had now interceded and managed to get hold of Craig. " I'm sorry, old man, didn't mean anything," Trubey hastened to say, and there was nothing for Craig to do but let it go at that. How he hated that servile deference though ! He would have infinitely preferred a square deal and the thrashing he knew he deserved. He took his anger out on -the horse, which he drove to a white foam. The parties were the only occasions upon which Craig was able to assume any cheerfulness, and it was for this reason he saw to it that sprees were regularly 72 The Sinister Revel instituted. Three or four times a week the crowd gathered for their fun, which became more and more unlicensed as time went on. Not that these parties were orgies, for an orgy is entirely of those whose senses are jaded with satiety. A youthful exuber- ance, bubbling enthusiasm, marked these meetings; nothing was too insignificant to be reckoned as a lark. They romped and danced, got boisterously drunk, and then went home tired and happy in each other's arms. It never occurred to Craig to take Ann May out by herself. He had gauged all too accurately the shallowness of her cheap little soul. What was there they could have said to each other? It was simply that she fitted in with the bunch, that she had been the first to stir his senses. Had he fallen to the charm of any special woman he might have worked out a justification for his actions. But it was des- tined that it should be just Ann May, Ann May with her tawdry shirt-waists and absurd high-heeled shoes. However, Craig did not think of all this when he was drunk. He thought only, as on that first night, of the glory of being young and eager and foolish, of the joy of letting go. So for six months our revellers continued their fun. With the coming of spring a still livelier party was planned. ' It was carried through with a daring of intention, a disregard of expense and effort quite be- yond ordinary comprehension. Craig was the ring leader. It would seem as if that element in his na- 73 The Sinister Revel ture, that was to strive continually for something a little beyond what the present offered, was beginning to assert itself. The old Inn that had been the scene of their first party was selected, not because of any sentiment in- volved, but owing to the greater leniency of its con- cierge. Decorations, costly favours, an Hawaiian orchestra, lured from Poli's, were all in order. It smacked of high life; the youngsters thrilled accord- ingly. It was a lark, a rip-roaring one. As they were piled into the machine afterwards by Godwin and the rubicund proprietor, they could have wept that it was over, that life couldn't always go on just that way to the wild sweet strains of Hawaiian music. Craig, as host, felt it incumbent on him to make a speech from the top of the stairs, but, overcome by emotion, he lost his balance and fell full length below. God- win picked him up but before he had a chance to re- gain the thread of his discourse he found himself thrown ignominiously into the car with the rest of the bunch where his beautiful sentiments were wasted in the darkness. Craig was conscious of very little that happened from that time on. He remembered only stumbling up the crooked stairs of the boarding-house with his arm about Ann May. He remembered the black- ness that pressed close about them as they fumbled with the key, but that was all. Everything else blurred to nothing. 74 The Sinister Revel Craig was awakened an hour later by a shouting and din that seemed all a part of his turbulent slum- ber. There was a confusion of voices, a rapping somewhere. Then he was conscious of being vio- lently shaken. The next minute he was on his feet. There was the splutter of a match and he found him- self staring into Ann May's terrified eyes. He was conscious of her flushed face and dishevelled hair, of their huge grotesque shadows hovering about them on the slanting walls. Then the match flickered out and they were in darkness. " It's a raid," Ann May barely articulated, and there came in confirmation gruff voices below, a more insistent rapping, a woman's scream and something that sounded like a scuffle. Then as they stood, clinging together in their apprehension and fear, heavy footsteps started up the stairs. Ann May rushed to the window. Craig followed her. Grabbing his raincoat he threw it hastily over her night dress, but he lost time by it for she was already out on the crazy fire-escape. " Let me go first," he cried, but she was too fright- ened to give heed and started, stumbling and crying, down the steps. Craig's coat caught in the shutter as he climbed over the sill; he wrenched it loose with an oath. Ann May was already a flight ahead of him, a slim white figure in the blackness. Then there flashed into the yard below the light of a lan- tern, another and another. A shout went up, their escape was cut off. 75 The Sinister Revel Craig had almost overtaken Ann May now. "Stop!" he cried desperately. "Stop!" His foot caught on the coat that had fallen from her shoulders. He put out his hand to stay her, but as he did so another shout went up from the gathering crowd below, this time sharp and threatening. Craig caught one glimpse of those upturned faces, lurid in the light of the flickering lanterns. The old instinctive dread proved stronger than his conscious will; before it everything collapsed. He stood sud- denly still, trembling, and then covered his face with his hands to shut out the sinister vision. Even as he did so Ann May had stumbled over some old flower pots and with a wild cry of terror plunged through a gap in the rusty rail to the pavement, thirty feet below. The faint thud of the body was drowned in a great shriek that went up from the crowd, a shriek of execration, unmistakable in its menace. At the same instant lights and faces ap- peared on the landing above. Craig had a second's sharp pain as of a pointed instrument on a nerve, and then sank a huddled heap on the landing. In his mind was neither horror for the tragedy, nor pity nor grief, only the indifference of overwhelming prostration. Part II Chapter V Mr. Renway Potter was distinctly put out. The idea of taking an eight o'clock train didn't win him at all, even in the interest of his best client. He set- tled himself as comfortably as he could in the dingy coach, and proceeded to think things over. Mr. Van Dam's telephone had roused him from that first heavy sleep which invariably follows a late Club supper. Needless to say, he had not grasped very clearly the details of what Mr. Van Dam was seeking to convey. There was something about his boy being in trouble. As Mr. Potter concentrated now he seemed to remember Mr. Van Dam as men- tioning the fact that his boy was in jail. Jail! Oh yes, the thing was beginning to straighten itself out now. Town girl ugly business a couple of years abroad carte blanche. Mr. Renway Potter jotted down a few notes in his note book, blew a cinder from his cuff, and then settled again to medi- tation. This time thought was not without its balm. Mr. Van Dam was recalled as having added quite casually and at the moment of shutting off that his private car, then in New London, would be in New Haven at noon at his (Mr. Renway Potter's) dis- posal. Mr. Potter glowed and expanded. It would sound so well in retrospect. 79 The Sinister Revel " I was coming up from New Haven one day in the Vagrant " A remark of the sort, dropped cas- ually, would give tone. It might even be worked into an after-dinner anecdote, for that matter. Mr. Potter felt much better, with the result of warming somewhat to the work ahead of him. How bad a scrape, he wondered, had the young Van Dam managed to get himself into I But then, whatever the business, it would be fairly easy of adjustment with the Van Dam wealth to be tapped. As for that his mind swept numerous little difficulties of Mr. Van Dam's own making. The rest of the trip was pleasant enough, Mr. Renway Potter investing in his mind's eye the neat little income that would undoubtedly accrue to him when both the young Van Dams came into their oats. " History repeats itself," he said with no sense of the banal. A complete satisfaction, rather, with this neat arrangement of Destiny! Godwin was at the Station to meet him, excited and loquacious. Godwin had ever a lean to the dra- matic, and was now in his proper element. He told the story, the details rendered no less lurid by his tell- ing. Mr. Potter showed the proper appreciation. Then Godwin went over the salient facts again, by way of philosophizing here and there. " Mr. Tony was at the same place," he said, " but he knew enough to pass over his wad and so got away. It's Hell beg pardon, sir what money can do, isn't it now? " 80 The Sinister Revel Mr. Potter admitted that it was, certainly, and Godwin continued. " The girl's not dead yet, but close to it, I reckon. It's all in the mornin' papers. Feelin's high in the town. But there's worse things than Death for a woman." " Infinitely worse things," murmured Mr. Potter. " A crowd of loafers threw stones at me up in the Square there," Godwin went on. " I guess the Red Devil's done for in this town. But the common peo- ple always hate the swells. Poor Mr. Craig! If it hadn't a been for one of the coppers he'd a been all beat up by the crowd. There's a strike up at one of the mills and a lot of bums hangin' 'round all night just waitin' for a row. I didn't get there till he was all locked up, an' Mr. Tony he blubbered so, it was up to me to telephone the old man. He took it mighty calm. ' Oh, we'll fix it up all right, Godwin,' he says. * Tell Mr. Tony not to worry but to keep under cover for a couple of days ' " A number of people were gathered about the jail as they drove up. A mutter or two greeted Mr. Pot- ter as he alighted. He rather enjoyed the situation. So did Godwin, as he rested in an insolent indiffer- ence at the wheel. Mr. Potter's reception was a most cordial one. Those who in the excitement of the raid had treated Craig most shamefully regretted it over night. Moral indignation had ebbed. In its place was a speculation, running rife, as to the exact number of 81 The Sinister Revel figures at which the Van Dam fortune was esti- mated. A feeling of importance pervaded all the officials of the jail as of those in touch with big finance. Besides, the girl was not going to die, the newspapers notwithstanding. This fact, in itself, was sufficient justification of so sudden a change in attitude. Mr. Potter showed himself superbly master of the situation. He shook hands indiscriminately, exuded, as it were, a clubby atmosphere, under the genial spell of which he in short order reduced the tragedy to the slight proportions of a college boy prank. There was a sort of " we men of the world " idea conveyed, and our officials hastened to measure to the standard. Mr. Potter called the chief " old chap," spoke of a little dinner at the Club next time he came to the City, told a racy story. There was a little talk of technicalities, a mention of Mr. Van Dam as a man of signal generosity, quite by the way of course. Then Mr. Potter looked at his watch; a half hour had been quite sufficient to settle everything satis- factorily. " I'll be back in an hour for the boy," he had dropped. " Which reminds me " Another an- ecdote! Mr. Potter felt the responsibility of making his get-away a graceful one. He left them a minute later with a swelling sense of their own im- portance and smiling broadly at his last " mot." 82 The Sinister Revel The hospital was the next stop. A consultation with the Doctor ensued, a young man of ambition and gloom, as Mr. Renway Potter read him. He had shaken his head. " No, she won't die, just linger on." Mr. Potter was very solicitous, listened with the keenest interest to the particulars of the case. He took occasion to congratulate the doctor on his clever diagnosis. " Spinal injuries of this sort are quite incurable? " he had asked. The Doctor had nodded glumly. Mr. Potter gave a deep sigh. It really was depressing, and he could so little afford the time to be depressed. "Are there any relatives?" Back on business ground again, he breathed more freely. " Only a brother," answered the Doctor. Mr. Potter extracted the necessary details as to this brother. He was a ne'er-do-weel, on the town for the most part. Was planning to make a good thing out of his sister's accident Mr. Potter did not doubt his own efficacy in dealing with a person of this sort, so dismissed him summarily and turned again to the disposition of Ann May. " It's tremendously sad," he said thoughtfully. Then as if balancing a new idea a second " If we could find the right man to give her the 83 The Sinister Revel best of care always it might be the nucleus of a private sanitarium. Mr. Van Dam's recommenda- tion of a place, you understand " The Doctor's dull eyes showed, as they lighted up, that he did understand. Mr. Potter, on his side, was seijene of his choice. The Doctor was an honest man, and Ann May would be in competent hands. Mr. Potter, before leaving the hospital, had asked to see the patient. It was a sudden curiosity that prompted, one he regretted intensely, however, as he stood with the Doctor in the darkened room. Ann May was strapped to the bed; her face, strained and contorted with pain, seemed all the whiter for the halo of yellow hair on the pillow. She was in a stupor, but moaned now and again. Mr. Renway Potter controlled himself sufficiently to ask: "How long will it last?" but the words were barely articulate. The Doctor shrugged. " She will probably live to be an old woman. It happens that way often when they're taken young." Then, turning to the nurse who hovered in the background, the Doctor gave a few directions. Mr. Potter heard something about hair. " Must it be cut? " the nurse asked sadly. The figure on the bed stiffened somewhat. The eyes opened and Mr. Potter for one fleeting instant looked into them. But that instant was sufficient for The Sinister Revel him to get the full force of the dumb appeal in their depths. " See here," said Mr. Potter as, trembling vio- lently, he turned to the Doctor. " Don't cut it." Then in a low voice: "Not yet awhile, anyway." A second later he was outside, steadying himself with deep breaths of fresh air, but the vision of that darkened room stayed with him even as he drove through the noisy streets. He went to the dormitory next. It was a very subdued and chastened Tony who greeted him. Larry and Billy were there, too, white and scared. They had apprehended an arrest or a subpoena at Mr. Potter's knock and became almost hysterical when the tension was relieved by the disclosing of their visitor's identity. Mr. Potter conducted himself breezily. Simp- son, the boys' valet, had also come down on the eight o'clock train. Simpson, through long service, was considered quite one of the Van Dam family. His jargon was a particular delight. He was " h'originally born in London," as he put it, but his cockney had long since blurred into a lingo all his own that was not without its air of drawing-rooms. He was at his best in situations of the present sort. He was now packing Craig's things; two trunks already loomed ominous of departure.' Mr. Potter's advent presented a nice opportunity; Simpson fairly bristled as host. The two exchanged The Sinister Revel unique bits as to the weather and then made play at the expense of the New York, New Haven and Hartford, all in an endeavour to put the boys at their ease. In vain, however ! Tony continued to stare blankly; nor did Larry's monosyllabic replies exactly, as Simpson put it, " give them a leg up." Newspapers were lying about everywhere, of un- mistakable headlines. Godwin's contributions to the general cheer, so it developed. A complete col- lection ! Mr. Potter's eyes could find no place to rest without being confronted by the lurid things, so, being a man with a certain claim to ingenuity, he ended by perusing the pictures on the walls. Simp- son's comments were very lucid on " modern h'art." Finally Tony, in desperation, blurted out, "What are they going to do to him?" Then, covering his face, he burst into a giant sob. The rest was simple, the boys proving easy ma- terial to Mr. Potter's hand. Simpson played up beautifully, too. In twenty minutes all gloom was dispelled, the sting of tragedy drawn. The reaction made for jollity. As Mr. Potter was leaving he adjured Tony to be at the train promptly at a quarter to twelve. "You bet! " answered Tony jovially, and there was nothing in his voice to mark him as the con- vulsive sufferer of a few minutes before. Mr. Potter had one other little errand to do. He stopped at the Registrar's office just long enough 86 The Sinister Revel to tender Craig's resignation from College. 'Twas well to anticipate expulsion ! Mr. Potter then drove to the jail. The Vagrant was surrounded by a curious crowd as Mr. Potter and Craig went aboard. Tony and Simpson were already there. The two boys had shaken hands formally, as over a gulf of years. Tony's sang-froid deserted him suddenly and he stood a full minute gulping down his feelings be- fore he could bring himself to say: " It'll be lonely as Hell without you." So stunned had Craig been by the tragedy that he had lost all sense of the future. But at Tony's words, he got all of a sudden the waste of years as they stretched ahead. A great wave of homesick- ness swept him. Again that old shake of his nerves ! He felt that he must break down or cry or faint. Simpson, in the meantime, at a motion from Mr. Potter, had brought forward some whiskey and a siphon. Tony had turned to the window and was struggling heroically to work off his emotions in a scraping whistle. Mr. Potter poured out some straight whiskey for Craig, which he took at a gulp. High balls were in order for the rest. Even Mr. Potter wasn't so awfully sure of himself. And as for Simpson well, Simpson took occasion to blow his nose very frequently, between jokes, as it were, intended in an English way to liven things up a bit. By the time the train was ready to start Craig The Sinister Revel had found voice, a hollow sepulchral one, but never- theless a voice. He promised to write Tony every Sunday and Tony promised to write him every Sun- day. " And when exams are over, maybe Dad will let me join you abroad " Tony was now showing the stuff he was made of. Craig must have a jolly send-off. He pulled him- self together with a supreme effort. "Paris! Whew! Can't you see us?" He cocked his hat on one side, gave a sly wink, executed a quick step. Mr. Potter smiled his appreciation. Simpson roared deferentially. Craig brightened immedi- ately. " I hadn't thought of that," he said. There was a hurried discussion of ways and means. " Leave it to me. I'll fix it up," Tony cried gaily. " All aboard ! " came the shout. " All aboard ! " And before the bubble of excitement could be pricked Tony had shaken hands and darted out. On the platform he stood waving wildly and contorting his face without scruple into last messages, until the train had pulled out of the station. The trip to the City dragged an interminable length. Craig was tired, dead tired. He had gone to his own bed room, his and Tony's, and thrown himself on the bed. He did not sleep, but sank to a coma of dulled perceptions, and deadened pain. A The Sinister Revel passing train crashed into his apathy ever and again and left his nerves jangling. Just before reaching New York, Simpson, who had been having a nip with Mr. Potter and extract- ing an extra detail or two in regard to the scandal, came in elaborately atiptoe. He brought fresh linen, laid out another suit, tempered the water for shaving. Craig roused himself to ask the time. " Twenty minutes more! " said Simpson cheerily. Craig sat up. A glance at Simpson's prepara- tions, and he realized for the first time how dis- hevelled he must be. He got up hurriedly and went to the glass. The face that looked back at him was haggard. There were sharp little lines about the eyes and mouth. His hair was rumpled, his coat badly torn. One pocket flap was pulled off en- tirely; some one in the crowd " Hell ! " he exclaimed as the car zigzagged and he nearly lost his balance. Simpson with a swift guess at his nerves withdrew softly. A minute later he returned with some brandy. " All right! " Craig had said after he swallowed it. Then with another glance at himself in the glass, he gave an odd little laugh. " The crowd nearly finished me, Simpson," he said. Then, after a pause, " Would to God they had!" Byronic, to be sure ! But it must be recollected 8 9 The Sinister Revel Craig was only twenty and had spent the night before in the close blackness of a cell. Simpson met the situation adequately. Nothing could have been more effective than the timely tear he dropped, as he stood, of melancholy mien, sharp- ening the razor. They drove, Mr. Potter and Craig, to the Union Club, where Mr. Van Dam awaited them. The three lunched together. Craig had never felt at ease with his father; he felt even less so in Mr. Potter's presence. He was painfully conscious of being young and awkward, the more so as the others made such obvious attempts to make him feel as one of them. There was no mention made of the rumpus. After lunch Mr. Van Dam suggested that Craig go to his rooms and rest. " An hour or so, while I have a chat with Mr. Potter," he said breezily. " You're no doubt tired from the trip " Craig followed the suggestion dumbly. Up- stairs he sat down and stared into space. His brain was a blank except for a wisp or two of thought that floated across the open of his mind and disappeared. How handsome his father was ! Strange, he had never noticed it before. And Mr. Potter failed so of the right air. He wondered vaguely what Tony was doing Mr. Van Dam joined him an hour later. " How about a drink? " he asked, glancing at Craig, then rang for some whiskey and soda. " By 90 The Sinister Revel the way, have you tried these Club cigarettes?" Craig roused himself to light one. It went out a minute later but he did not notice it. Mr. Van Dam did, however. " It's struck in, poor cub! " he thought, and judged it the kindest policy to go to the point at once. It was his cue to make light of the incident. " It's the sort of scrape every man gets into at your age. That is, every man of mettle." So he wound up. " As for the girl " Craig winced. Mr. Van Dam took a short cut. " Of course Mr. Potter has told you " Craig nodded. " Well, then, there's no necessity of our going into the matter. Now to another point how old are you?" " Twenty ! " said Craig. Whereupon Mr. Van Dam proceeded in the most businesslike of tones to sum up what he termed the Van Dam policy. This consisted in short of leaving the bulk of the fortune to the eldest son. " I got fifty odd millions," he went on to explain, " against your Uncle Billy's five. It seems hardly a fair division of spoils, but family tradition you know " Craig had a vague idea that this exposition on family finance, a thing never brought to open dis- cussion before, was by way of preliminary to a formal disinheritance. He was to learn, however, in blank astonishment, that his father had in mind 9 1 The Sinister Revel something quite different. Not only was he still accepted as the rightful heir, but a sum of two millions, which his father had intended to settle upon him on, his twenty-first birthday, was to be his now, at once, as soon as they could get to the solici- tor's office and sign some necessary papers. " I want to break you in, you see " Mr. Van Dam had answered to Craig's obvious bewilder- ment. u And as you are starting out in the world earlier than I expected " Craig lost the rest of it. The thing was incredi- ble. In his heart he felt no gratitude, nor pride of possession, only a dull wonder at the world's ways. The afternoon was spent with Mr. Van Dam's solicitor in chief. Craig signed where he was told to sign, but the legal points of it all passed quite over his head. He had brought himself later to ask about his mother and Lili. " They're in the country," Mr. Van Dam had said. " I think it's just as well they are. Not that your mother would blame you at all, but she might balk at the notoriety " They were lucky enough to catch Braintree by phone just as he was leaving for the Adirondacks. This as a result of Mr. Van Dam's asking if there wasn't some one Craig would like to take along with him. The choice had brought Mr. Van Dam faint surprise. Craig, too, for that matter, for old Braintree had quite passed out of his life a year 92 The Sinister Revel since. The sudden impulse may have shown an unconscious reaching for some straw of the old ex- istence of simplicity and innocence. There followed an hour's lounge at the Club. Then Craig and his father dressed for dinner to- gether, an unprecedented event. Craig rose to meet the intimacy of the occasion with difficulty. It was all a part of that chaotic arrangement of things out of which he could bring no semblance of order. That his father could bring himself to condemn his guilt seemed of itself incomprehensible; but that he should make of that guilt a bond, as it were, to put them on the grounds of a good fellowship that had never existed before, worked to a swift per- ception of the looseness of all morality. His fath- er's leniency, instead of letting him down easy, suc- ceeded only, through the larger vision of depravity it projected, in intensifying his own sense of par- ticular wrong-doing. The wages of sin in his instance had proved the neat settlement of two million dollars, to say noth- ing of a beautiful equality with those whose part it should have been to ostracize him. That nice, white-haired, fatherly old man at the bank Mr. John Wellington Ames, his father's broker, desig- nated as " A man of iron principle." Then there was Braintree. Did Braintree know? But there had been no hesitancy in Braintree's tone as he had answered with a heartiness that made the wire ring, " Europe ! With you, Mr. Craig ! You bet ! " 93 The Sinister Revel Mr. Van Dam talked on as they dressed and Craig found himself answering mechanically even while his thoughts ran riot. " How about a show after dinner? " This, as they were having a preliminary cocktail before going downstairs. Craig didn't know, didn't care really. A bottle of champagne later brought the dim perception that an act or two of a musical comedy might not go so badly after all. He was finding it easier to talk to his father as time went on. Mr. Van Dam glanced at a few of his own past indiscretions with such a delicate drollery Craig could not help smiling. Then they got together on Tony. " He systematizes his dissipations, you know," Craig had wound up, at which Mr. Van Dam laughed long and heartily. " A common little chap," Mr. Van Dam com- mented at length. " But damned lovable." After a pause he continued, " Tony is the sort that gets by always, just because he has no fine feelings. Fine feelings, somehow, never score." Then as if Craig might make too particular ap- plication of the remark Mr. Van Dam hastened to find another topic. Only once did he strike the note of paternal advice and this was at the end of the dinner. 11 There's just one thing I ask of you, Craig," he had said with decided emphasis. " Don't marry out of your own set. We don't do that, you know." 94 The Sinister Revel Craig said nothing. " And marry a good woman." " But " Craig began, and then reddened. His father got his thought, however. " You can marry any woman you choose, what- ever you may do. I could have," he added drily and rose to go. They were late in getting to the theatre and were obliged to take a box. The stage revealed the bevy of beauties advertised, but Craig got no thrill of them. They were not flesh and blood to him, only a succession of painted puppets. Mr. Van Dam was recognized at once and be- came the focal point of interest for the rest of the performance. A couple of his friends joined him in the box. Later they all strayed out into the lobby between acts. Craig was still extremely con- scious of his youth, but he enjoyed, notwithstanding, the quiet subtlety of his father's friends. He recog- nized the fact that their worldliness was based on the sound footing of good taste. " A handsome boy, Henry." This, Mr. James Winslow Brittingham to Mr. Van Dam as his eyes followed Craig. " I read of his little escapade in the evening papers!" Mr. Van Dam grew thoughtful. " It's gone hard with the boy. You see he's af- flicted with ideas about right and wrong. I'm sending him abroad for a couple of years." 95 The Sinister Revel " Europe's the gin mill." The eyes of both rested on Craig a minute. He was flushed and his eyes smouldered as he talked. " A woman's man! " Mr. Van Dam commented. Then the two older men sighed; Craig seemed so vivid an embodiment of the youth no longer theirs. " I want to get the youngster drunk so he'll sleep," Mr. Van Dam confided to Brittingham later. " To- night's the crisis. Once on shipboard, and excite- ment will effect its cure." So they all went to Sherry's for a bite after the Show. As Simpson was getting Craig to bed that night, Mr. Van Dam hovered about. " You'll look out for the boy over there, won't you, Simpson? " he asked. Then he went over to the bed and put his hand on Craig's hot head. He had a sudden vision of doing the same thing years before as Craig, a tiny boy, had tossed in the fever of delirium. He had taken him in his arms then. But now Craig was a man to go his own way, lead his own life. He saw as in a vivid panorama the brilliant crowded years that stretched ahead for him, years the every de- tail of which he knew thoroughly for he was painting Craig's future with the pigments of his own past. But Simpson was saying something. He pulled himself together. " I'm half drunk myself," he said, and, with a slight shiver, went into his own room. Chapter VI Henry Van Dam had miscalculated; the crisis for Craig was only intensified by being postponed. The morning of the sailing things had gone with a rush. There had been a wire from his mother, her good wishes being swamped in a long list of the right people with whom she wished him to become iden- tified on the Continent. Then Braintree had arrived. The hand clasp was an affectionate one. "You know about things?" Craig had fal- tered. He didn't want to take unfair advantage of Braintree. Braintree nodded. " Of course," he said in a matter-of-fact way and proceeded to ask after Tony. They reached the steamer a few minutes before sailing time. There was the usual crush on the decks, a confusion of voices, a shouting from the dock. People chattered in groups, with a cursory glance now and then at other groups and a vague speculation as to " Who's on board? " Mr. Van Dam was quite at home. He hailed one of the stewards by name, recognized a deck hand, found his way unaided to the suite that was to 97 The Sinister Revel be Craig's. Then, back on deck again, he was dis- covered as the centre of a jolly group. The Ander- son Prescotts were sailing, too. Jolly for Craig! But Craig hung back. Mr. Van Dam disentangled himself gracefully. Next he bowed low to a charm- ing woman, a prominent actress Craig knew by repu- tation. A good-natured exchange with a camera man who insisted on " a snap " and Mr. Van Dam was back at the gang plank ready to say good-bye. He had purposely made everything quite casual, as if a two years' trip around the world were but a trifling incident, not to be reckoned with emotion- ally. " If there's any trouble about money, go to Mor- gan Bleecker in Paris," he said. They shook hands. Craig's strange silence and tense hand-grip were a little disconcerting. Mr. Van Dam felt his own spirits ebb somewhat as a re- sult. He had a swift desire to duck everything and go with the boy himself. But even as the thought came to him there were cries of " All ashore! " Again they shook hands. " Oh er by the way. If you decide to go in for racing at all, I'll send over your horses " Mr. Van Dam was shaking hands with Brain- tree now. An official touched him on the arm. " All right," he said jovially. " I'm ready," and in a second he was being hustled off the boat. The rest was all a blur to Craig. It seemed as if, when the gangplank was drawn up, the last con- The Sinister Revel necting link with the old life had been severed. He clung blindly to the rail, waving a vague farewell at the receding dock. " Next stop, Paris ! " Braintree had said by way of lightening a situation that threatened to become awkward. At which Craig gave him the oddest look and dis- appeared below stairs. It was a wretched trip, stormy and dismal. Craig was a bad sailor; the sea depressed him with its perpetual rise and fall, its sullen treachery, its waste of gloom. He shut himself away from it always. But before, on other trips, there had been Tony, Lili, plenty to amuse him. Now he had only Brain- tree, who didn't seem to count much, and his own thoughts. He stayed in bed for three days during the worst of the storm. The brandy he drank continually stimulated rather than deadened his brain. So in the long swaying days and nights, there was noth- ing for it but to give himself up and face things squarely. He lived the tragedy all over again, spared not a detail. The image of Ann May was with him, not Ann May as he had known her in the flush of her little triumphs, but Ann May, strapped to a bed, white and suffering, her yellow hair fad- ing with the years. He had thought her dead dur- ing the whole black length of that night in the jail. The truth had brought an even more poignant suf- fering; yet he recalled the indifference of his tone as, 99 The Sinister Revel on his way to the train next morning, he had ques- tioned Mr. Potter and drawn from him the details. Then there constantly confronted him another image, the image of himself. And always the back- ground was the same, the little shabby room where he and Ann May had had their fun. The slanting walls, the old walnut dresser with its array of Ann May's cheap silver, the dilapidated screen confessing a washstand behind it! Oh, he knew that room thoroughly, in the bright sunshine of a spring after- noon, in the gloom of a winter's night. He could see the dawn, as he had come to see it so frequently, struggling, dirty and yellow, through the dingy panes of the little window. And always that figure of himself, flushed, in disarray, now standing before the little glass with his collar in his hand, now quaffing some whiskey from an old cracked mug. Little incidents floated across his memory. He had wanted to give Ann May a present but had hesi- tated. Then one day she had asked him for money. He could see her now, her upturned face. How stupid he had been, really! Poor Ann May! And how cold they had been at times ! But it hadn't mat- tered. Then there was the crowd again, pushing, jostling. He could hear their jeers mingled with the clang- clang of the patrol as they started off. Afterwards that group of men at the station ! He remembered striking out wildly, hitting one of them who called him an evil name. Then the terror of the black- IOO The Sinister Revel ness as they shut him in the cell. He had cried out and beaten against the door. After that, he must have lost consciousness for there was a blank. Then towards morning the pain of awakening, followed again by the indifference of mental exhaustion. So Craig lived through the tragedy again and again. It was as if by dwelling on the details he might escape the vital issue, the loss of Constance. The sense of that had been with him from the be- ginning, overwhelming, irretrievable, but it was only by slow and painful degrees he could adjust him- self to the fact in definite form, its bearing on his future. Another boy would have found a ray of light in possible compromise. But as for Craig well, as his father had said his the affliction of ideas as to right and wrong. So he lay torturing himself in the darkness, facing the years ahead in blank despair. His father's words, " You can marry any woman you like," had slipped away from him. Had he remembered them they would have brought little comfort, only wonder, perhaps, at the ignorance that prompted them. The afternoon of the last day out Craig decided to get up and go on deck. The cabin seemed heavy with his own thoughts. Besides, he was tired to death of Braintree and Simpson. Their carefully modulated voices as they tendered sympathy every hour got on his nerves. He suffered Simpson to get him into some steamer togs. 101 The Sinister Revel " People have been asking about you, Mr. Craig," he volunteered as he surveyed with pride his handi- work. This brought Craig a flare of anger. He had that very morning come across some newspapers ac- cidentally brought on board and had been confronted with most lurid accounts of the accident. There were pictures of himself, pictures of The Red Devil, a picture of Ann May, even a sketch of the shabby boarding-house. The headlines stared at him: " Boy millionaire trapped " " Young Van Dam laughs while girl " It was humiliating. It was disgusting. How he hated newspapers, anyway ! So he had kicked them out of sight and tried to forget. Simpson's words, however, brought back the degradation of his publicity. So people were ask- ing for him, wanted to get a look at him as if he were a criminal. Well damn it all he'd fool them. He'd stay in his rooms till the boat docked. He took off his hat and threw it violently on the floor. The bewildered expression on Simpson's face brought him unexpectedly a laugh and another veer. " I don't want any hat," he said and, turning, stalked out of the room. " Those as is seasick is apt to be erratic," mut- tered Simpson as, picking up the discarded hat, he began to brush it with melancholy air. Craig was unquestionably the Cynosure of all eyes. Mothers had long since begun their calculations; 102 The Sinister Revel the girls were ready with becoming blushes and gentle arts. But Craig stormed by. The charming actress bowed invitingly; Craig pretended not to see. A group of ordinary western girls made comments out loud as he passed; he made no effort to conceal his contempt for the vulgarity of their class. The curiosity he aroused but confirmed his sus- picion that he was being looked upon as of the order of a White Chapel murderer. His anger got the better of him eventually and he rushed be- low, white with rage. Braintree knew enough to stay on deck, so Simp- son had to bear the brunt of the storm. His solici- tations were sincere even if banal. He erred in that he mistook the nature of Craig's complaint. " A little vinegar on the back of your neck, sir." At which Craig, driven to desperation, burst forth, " Get out, damn you ! Can't you see I want to be alone?" Whereat Simpson slunk away, as a dog limps off to hide his hurt. Craig was left to huddle in his chair, and pronounce judgment on himself for his own unreason. They went to the Savoy in London. It was a rainy week and every one was out of town. The Treshams were on the Continent, the Belgraves in the country. So it went. Craig didn't care much one way or the other; he had gone through certain formalities for his mother's sake, that was all. He and Braintree dined about at the restaurants. I0 3 The Sinister Revel He liked that, because Braintree wasn't of a pres- ence to exact conversation. They just sat and drank and looked about. It was odd, however, that in spite of the paucity of their remarks to each other, Craig was beginning to see his old tutor in a new light. To be sure he was the same lean figure, wore the same dun clothes, had the same old habit of peering over the top of his spectacles. But there was lacking the old dignity that had so compelled Craig's youthful respect. It was almost as if Brain- tree at times were seeking to convey a sense of his own moral laxity. He hinted at past indiscretions, showed a tendency to sneer at anything even dimly suggestive of moral rectitude. It was bewildering; Craig had to admit to himself he didn't exactly fol- low. The situation when he did grasp it served to dis- tract him somewhat from his gloom. It was all so ludicrous, so utterly, absurdly incongruous. Brain- tree had started out with the idea of " going the pace," as he put it to himself, seeing real life for once and getting down deep. The indisposition of his young charge to stray from the beaten path was filling him with uneasiness. He had expected the primrose path of dalliance ; cosy, intimate little sup- pers with sirens of the footlights. He had expected but what does it matter? Suffice it to say, Brain- tree was getting restive under the existing condi- tions. Craig got the thing one night as they were sit- 104 The Sinister Revel ting in a restaurant, dully stupid. It brought him a quick laugh. Tony had said once a lot of women were good because they never had a chance to be bad. Now here was Braintree, a man, likewise pin- ing his opportunity. Braintree roused himself and joined in the laugh. Not that there was any joke, but he wanted to prove himself amenable to jollity. This was the first gleam the trip could boast. " Have you ever been really drunk? " Craig had asked at last by way of a startler. Braintree was indignant. " Many a time ! " he answered and, raising his glass, drained it as if to the dregs. "How about women?" Craig pursued. Direct treatment he had seen Tony apply often in dealing with the unsophisticated ! "Oh, I've had my day!" Braintree articulated with an effort. " I say, let's go to Paris ! " Craig had thrown out and then roared at the eagerness that lit up old Braintree's eyes at the suggestion. If Braintree had never been drunk before, he made up for the lack in a spree that night. Craig plied him with champagne to such a pitch of hilarity that neither would have reached home at all, had it not been for the discretion of the waiting cabby. " The Professor, too ! " said Simpson with the utmost disdain, as he threw a comforter over Brain- tree's ungainly length as it sprawled on a sofa. 105 The Sinister Revel Then he proceeded with a tenderness that was not without its element of the maternal to undress his young master, give him a rubdown, and tuck him in with care. "Poor Mr. Craig!" he muttered and removed the whiskey on the night-table to his own room for safe-keeping. They reached Paris the next afternoon. It had cleared up, and, as they drove through the busy streets, Craig could not help feeling a certain glow of suppressed excitement. It was simply that, as now there was no fixed goal ahead, the future par- took of the nature of a giant lottery, and the gam- bling spirit, instinct always in youth, stirred to the uncertainty involved. He had lost Constance; henceforth there was nothing for it but to take life at a canter and ride down all regret. It was for circumstance to point the goal. He gave Braintree choice of hotels; Braintree ten- tatively suggested the Ritz, so the Ritz it was. Circumstance took the heavy form of George Winters, encountered that night in the lounge of the hotel. George was in the thrall of a great depres- sion. His running mate, Fellows Milburn, had just been summoned to the States. " His father's passed in his chips," he had ex- plained rather thickly, " and Fellows' off for the funeral." " Too bad," Craig had murmured, feeling the 106 The Sinister Revel occasion called for sympathy. But he had quite misread the situation. " Too damned awkward ! " George had corrected irritably. " We've taken a house together for the Deauville races, and now the son of a gun has gone out from under me " Then, by way of throw- ing off a disagreeable topic " I say, what are you doing to-night? How about dinner? " Craig assented laconically. As they turned, George caught sight of Brain- tree, hovering in the background and casting proprie- tary glances at Craig. " Oh, I forgot ! " Craig hesitated a minute, catch- ing an unmistakable signal from the same direction. "Does it belong to you?" George asked with a grimace. Craig nodded. " Let's lose it," came the prompt suggestion. " Haven't the heart," Craig answered. " It's seeing life." At which they both laughed loudly. " By God, let's take it to Deauville ! " George burst out. " What sport! " Braintree had stood it as long as he could. George's florid face and loud clothes savoured of high adventure. A party seemed imminent; he mustn't be left out. The laugh was the last irri- tant. Plunging his hands deep in his pockets he sauntered up. 107 The Sinister Revel "How about er a drink?" he said, and joined heartily in the merriment that greeted his bold suggestion. So it was by the very oddest of whimsies George Winters and Craig joined forces in a combination soon to become the scandal of two continents. George was fifteen years older than Craig, of a seasoned dissoluteness. He had run through one fortune and was playing ducks and drakes with a second. His credit already needed a little bolster- ing; Craig's arrival was opportune. It was for Braintree to be the stalking horse. They began modestly the first night by all getting drunk in the conventional way. The second after- noon George took a promiscuous party from the Hotel out to Versailles in his drag. Dinner was in order later. George, however, apprehended re- spectability in their midst; the party acknowledged limitations. " We're letting old Brainy in by degrees," George confided to Craig later. But, in reality, it was Craig he was sounding for his own satisfaction. The results were evidently to his taste for, at the end of a week of nicely graduated dissipations, he brought about neatly the suggestion of " a little place some half dozen girls quite the best sort patronized by the Duke de Quelque Chose, etc." " Madame Georgette's Saturday night dinner par- ties are the smartest things in Paris," he wound up. " I'll put the girls on to make sport of Braintree." 108 The Sinister Revel George was ready for Craig's almost impercepti- ble hesitation. " Will he stand for it ? " George asked. The two looked at each other steadily for a full minute. Then Craig, flushing hotly, turned away. " Oh, yes, he'll stand for it all right," he muttered, with the knowledge that he was being called on in- directly to declare for himself. Direct probing would have produced less that sense of guilty sur- render. Nothing further was said. The night of the party arrived. Braintree spent hours dressing; the effect was shining and meticulous if not convincing. Craig vacillated from gloom to indifferent accept- ance. A preliminary round at the hotel bar, how- ever, wrought to an almost lively anticipation as to what the evening might bring forth. The ladies were gathered together when they ar- rived, of blonde allure for the most part with here and there a striking brunette by way of contrast. They were grouped prettily about, making play with a magazine here, a piece of music there. The draw- ing-room represented the last word in tasteful mod- ernity, a few very fine paintings on the wall. Madame Georgette, a beautiful woman of per- haps thirty-eight, was a charming hostess. Her poise and grace made her a delight to watch. Sev- eral men had already arrived. She introduced the new-comers to them in an under-voice as a thing to get over quickly, and then made a sweeping gesture to indicate the ladies. 109 The Sinister Revel " My girls ! " she said and succeeded quite easily in hitting a tender maternal note. A few more arrivals distracted the attention and then dinner was announced. The proprieties were observed strictly, even to severity. That is, at first. The general talk was of the weather till the popping of the first champagne cork gave the signal for a greater latitude. The hum became a buzz. High voices began to penetrate, guffaws grew un- restrained. One or two ladies flung back in their chairs and laughed themselves to tears. The cham- pagne corks continued a steady bombardment. Stories began to circulate. There was a marked tendency on the part of the men to sag in the direc- tion of the fair ones given temporarily to their keeping. Some of the men went so far as to stroke a particularly white arm or place a well-aimed kiss upon a provocative shoulder. This, however, only here and there, doubtless a privilege of long-stand- ing intimacy. Madame Georgette did most of the open talking, which related to horses, yachting, opera, sport in general, the Deauville races in particular. George was booking bets, the Duke running him hard. Craig had warmed to the point of telling an anecdote or two and was rewarded with fair smiles. A laugh was rippling among those who surrounded old Braintree, first low, then of resounding peal. He was evidently holding his own. Later he was no The Sinister Revel caught promising his fair Loretta a pearl necklace on certain conditions which he whispered into her shell-pink ear. Mirth grew more and more unrestrained. Only the lady Georgette kept her dignity. With the coffee there came a lull, but sentimentality and liqueurs took up the wondrous tale later on. There was a feint at dancing in a gem of a ball room; one or two couples strayed to the terrace. Soft music pervaded the atmosphere; there was rumour of a moon Craig found himself in a conservatory making ardent love to Georgette. "You silly boy!" she had said, looking deep into his eyes with a lingering delirious sparkle. Then she had suffered him to put his arm about her. It was not so different from the old love-mak- ing with Ann May, only enhanced by the feeling of a brilliant worldliness that flattered him. "You silly boy!" Georgette had repeated, this time more softly. The taunt put him on his mettle. Seizing her in his arms, he covered her face with kisses. It was but one of the lady's formulas, one proved of re- markable efficacy in dealings with the young; but how was Craig to know that? He got all the wild thrill of masterful possession as he felt the slender body in his arms yield its struggle and with a quiver of submission settle to his embrace. ill Chapter VII " I like women who are brave enough not to be hypocrites," Craig had dropped casually the next day by way of letting old Braintree out, as well as himself. He talked of frank sin for a week or two and felt the expression redeemed him. Besides, there was nothing to offend the finest sensibilities in Georgette's charming place. The realization came, however, that this party was but an " eye opener" to use George's own phrase; a realization forced gradually by other sprees in less fashionable quarters. Craig took doggedly everything that came, drinking himself to a sodden acceptance of the worst de- bauchery. It was simply life, that was all; better take it at a dose In the end, however, had come the old sickening revulsion, and he had turned definitely away from it all, welcoming heartily the move to Deauville. A clean slate there ! And he loved racing! Cecil Brenchley, a young Englishman and member of the Cercle de Deauville, took some half dozen men over in his drag. It was jolly fun. They took two days at it, stopping over night at Evreux, chang- ing horses now and again. An English venture in a French setting! Deauville, as they came upon it, lay warm and 112 The Sinister Revel bright in the afternoon sun. There was an under- current of excitement in the air. Horses with their attendant jockeys in vivid regalia passed up and down the Rue Edmond Blanc. Markers hurried to and fro, note-books in hand, voluble as to a point in a passing favourite, or with ominous headshake at a new claimant to distinction. La plage fleurie stretched inviting and sociable. Hundreds of peo- ple still lounged on the white sands, although the bathing hour was long past. Graceful yachts could be seen side by side with the packet boats, in the Baie de la Seine. The hotels and the Casino wore a festive air. George Winters and Cecil Brenchley were well- known figures in the racing world. Their progress through town was a triumphant one. Nothing would do but they must stop at the Casino for a look around, and an exchange of gossip with the manager. Then followed a trip to the Hippo- drome; the track was pronounced in capital shape. Then out towards Villers to George's villa, which proved a sumptuous one of ample accommodation. A look at the horses before dinner, three of Craig's in the number ! They had arrived only a couple of days before. The sight of the familiar grooms and welcoming neighs of the animals filled Craig with an almost childish delight. After dinner the other men went to the Casino for a little play but Craig stayed at home. After another trip to the stables he went to bed. The freshness of the two days' "3 The Sinister Revel drive had brought him a feeling of regeneration, and he had a condescending smile of pity for old Braintree, who had preferred to linger in Paris. His last thought before going to sleep was that he hoped the women who were to join them later would prove a decent sort. The women arrived in force on the first of August; the races began the second. Craig was to learn that the demi-mondaine of Paris was as nothing in the line of original sin to the flotsam and jetsam col- lected for house parties during the racing season at Deauville. The presiding genius of George's party was a Mrs. Margrave, a woman of forty, all blondined hair and sumptuous curves, indecently exposed. Vivie, short for Viviandiere, she was to her intimates. George had run into her the preceding fall at Monte Carlo. They had yachted somewhere after that, George wasn't quite sure where. " But you'll like the old girl," he had said, and they did. Then there was an Egyptian woman, the oddest creature, who displayed psychic tendencies at un- comfortable times. Hari Kari, George designated her, for she had tried to cut some one's throat one night in Cairo. Fidette, an actress from the Theatre Frangais, as unscrupulous as they're made, but a dainty rogue withal; the sisters Pom Pom from the Folies, and the party was complete. They all knew 114 The Sinister Revel one another, for Paris is the world melting-pot of those who live by their wits. The Duke had joined the party during the day; also Natty Weyburn, George's trainer, a social outcast in the ordinary run, but cock o' the walk in racing season. The party went at a furious pace from the be- ginning, with Vivie setting the tempo. An easy community existence found favour generally, the pos- sible exception being Simpson, who never could work out what was expected of him and when and where. The situation required a delicacy of treatment he found quite taxing. Night was turned into day, day night. People gambled till morning, took their rest at the oddest times, in the oddest places. All managed to round up at the racing hour, however. A plunge in the breakers was found efficacious now and then in sobering some one up. Fidette adored Tir Aux Pigeons. Vivie promenaded in off hours the grand corridor of the Casino; it was her way of taking outdoor exercise. As for the Egyptian woman, les Kiosques du Figaro held her in thrall. A picnic at midnight was instituted in the ruins of the glise de Trousseauville. Natty said it was quite the thing, everybody did it; so our party, loath to miss a thrill, selected the darkest night and camped out. All went well till Vivie saw a ghost, a slithery, shivery white thing over by the old altar. A panic ensued, a dash back The Sinister Revel through the town accompanied by shrieks that made night hideous. The Duke had a quiet talk with the authorities next morning. Then there was the night they tried Opera. " Carmen " it was with la belle Otero in the lead. Their box was a sheltered one; they slumbered peacefully until George fell out of his seat with a deal of unnecessary noise and disorganized things. Yachting offered a diversity of sport. George's Kittiwake came around from Marseilles and Craig chartered a smaller craft, christened The Rowdy. Other house parties of the same cosmopolitan tone merged activities with theirs. Occasionally one encountered a woman of one's own set at the Casino or Hippodrome. Craig ran into Mrs. Anderson Prescott. The slight raise of her delicate brows, as she took in the tone of his ladies in waiting, indicated amusement rather than criticism. After all, something of the sort was ex- pected of a man in the racing season. And there is ever a certain beauty in wholesale democracy. The Duke got into a row at the gaming table one night with a chap who winked at Vivie across the green; they came to blows afterwards in the Terasse Fleurie but the management interceded be- fore anything disastrous happened. Then George had an ugly spill one day playing polo. He was taken off the field for dead. " Dead, or dead drunk?" asked Cecil when the 116 The Sinister Revel rumour reached him at the track. There was no excuse for such flippancy. However, George re- ported at the Casino that night. In spite of little incidents of this sort, our party pricked on merrily. The races gave the necessary outlet for high spirits. One screamed wildly, what- ever the issue; the measure of sportsmanship being gauged by the amount of noise made. George lost systematically, but, as Cecil said: " A man owes it to himself to be ruined once a season, and it may as well be a horse as a woman." Craig was lucky, taking the Prix Florian de Ker- gorlay with his Vixen the last week. The forty thousand francs he threw into Fidette's lap ; she lost them all that night at the roulette table. Needless to say, Craig covered. Cecil won the Prix Morny the next day; George took occasion to borrow it all within the hour. So it went. They were a dissolute crowd, but, brilliant and daring, they knew how to have their fun. Craig kept himself sufficiently drunk to drown any protest that threatened to disturb the even course of their debauchery. He recognized vaguely there must come a day of reckoning, but what odds? Fight it off indefinitely. For two years Craig identified himself with the fastest element the continent flaunted. There were races, races everywhere, Ascot, Longchamps, Vichy, Baden Baden. There was a season on the 117 The Sinister Revel Riviera; a run in the Kittiwake across to Egypt; a spectacular trip up the Nile. Then, somewhere east of Suez ! Mr. Van Dam made a hurried trip to Paris; Craig was in Yokohama at the time. Mrs. Van Dam took the baths at Carlsbad one winter; that was the winter Craig spent in Java. Rumour followed him everywhere. It spoke of his amours, his extravagance, his indifference. It placed him as the lover of a princess of the blood; it followed him across the Sahara in pursuit of a Bedouin dancing girl. His career was a vivid one, of kaleidoscopic bril- liance. " Exactly what we expected," pronounced Society and turned its attention to a newer scandal. " It will blood the boy," reflected Mr. Van Dam and sent on fresh credit to Craig's banker. As for Tony his scrap book of newspaper clip- pings was becoming of unwieldly proportions. " Craig always was the devil for luck! " he com- mented and sighed deeply with a full sense of New Haven limitations. At Deauville, two years after his initiation into the racing world, there occurred the incident which altered the whole course of Craig's existence. Otherwise, the waste of his powers might have gone on indefinitely. There had been a desultory correspondence with 118 The Sinister Revel the people at home. Cables of congratulation on racing victories from his father; holiday and birth- day wishes from his mother; a couple of stiff letters from Braintree, following his speedy return to America that first summer; and then, most welcome of all, Tony's scrawls. Tony, in the beginning, had poured out his young exuberance at great length, but gradually a certain shyness took possession of him. Perhaps it was that contrast of a continental career with his own picayune existence! Perhaps the decline inevitable to all correspondence ! At any rate, Craig was left singularly without news of the people in whom he had once been so in- terested. George had regaled him with an escapade of Larry's one summer an affaire with a chorus girl who had beguiled him of a new car and several thousand dollars. Craig and George had enjoyed the thing together; it seemed so in the nature of child's play. Yet Craig and Larry were of an age. Tony had admitted to a wane of affection when it came to Vera. " No figure ! " he commented. Craig had smiled. The same old Tony ! Lili had been sent to school in New York. " And the first person she ran into " Tony went on to impart, " was Mimi Poitier, who asked all about you. She's been in a convent in Paris for ten years. I'm going to a dance at the school soon. Not that 119 The Sinister Revel I care about it; it will be awfully tame, but Lili wants me. I'm running down to New York a lot week-ends with Carly " So the letters rambled on. Craig looked in vain for a mention of Constance. Tony made none, per- haps his way of being supremely delicate. Craig followed the newspapers faithfully at first, but the Edgemeres decried publicity. In the end he gave up the search. " It's just as well," he told himself. The thing was over; news of her would but irritate his hurt. As it was, he succeeded pretty well in for- getting. That is, when he was drunk and he was drunk most of the time. The Deauville season this year threatened to outdo all preceding ones in extravagant gaiety. Craig had his own villa, brought down his own crew. The women were a new lot and promised good sport. George Winters was coming over from London and arrived after dinner the first night. There was a batch of mail awaiting him. A hundred bills easily pink and lavender epistles from every quarter of the globe a note from Fellows Milburn still in the States George tumbled everything else on the floor to the end of perusing this last with comfort. " Gad ! " he cried, hardly launched, and putting back his head roared lustily. "News?" asked Craig. 120 The Sinister Revel George nodded. " Listen ! " he cried, then pro- ceeded in a thick voice to read : " Learn, old fire-eater, that I'm on the verge of taking a serious step. Matrimony, by God " Several men gathered about. George continued to chuckle as he reached to pour out another pony of brandy. " The little Edgemere filly has won me with her heavenly eyes " As to the cause of the rumpus which ensued no one in the room could give a guess. Craig had turned dead white and then hurled himself in a wild fury upon George, who, taken off guard, rolled over like a ninepin. The two grovelled on the floor in a desperate struggle. Craig smashed out blindly. The men rushed to separate them. Then in a second Craig was on his feet again. He was conscious of being held, his arms pinioned behind his back. There was blood on his shirt front. He looked about. Winters was stretched on a sofa; some one was undressing him. The servants were running about with scared faces. Craig's fury had spent itself. He shook off the men who were holding him, and went over to the couch. " Get the Doctor ! " he ordered, and his voice showed him complete master of himself. " Send Simpson, and the rest of you clear out." He took a basin of water from one of the trem- 121 The Sinister Revel bling footmen and proceeded to wash the blood from George's face. Simpson came in. There were no questions asked, no explanations given. " Let's get him to bed," Craig directed, and they carried the heavy body between them up the stairs. " Just a little shake-up ! " the Doctor pronounced later and seemed not at all alarmed. Maladies of this sort were prevalent in Deauville. George in his recovered consciousness was not at all sure of what had happened. That some one had been beaten up he remembered; that he him- self was that some one he suspected from a certain tendency to ache all over. But as to the why and wherefore of the scrape, well, it didn't matter anyway. And there were Craig and Simpson fuss- ing about. Craig was talking to him. He focussed his attention with difficulty. Craig was explaining that he was going away. " But why the Hell " George couldn't see it. "With the races just onl The house The women " He did get it eventually, however. The house was to be his while Craig was away. The horses " And the women, too ! " Craig wound up grimly. George's gratitude threatened to become maudlin. " But you'll be back? " he whimpered. " In a few days! " Craig assured him, at which George, with still a befuddled wonder at his young host's perversity, suffered himself to be turned over with a groan and then dropped off to sleep. 122 The Sinister Revel That night Craig left Deauville for good. He and Simpson went on board the Rowdy at midnight, making Havre in a few hours. The next morning at eight they sailed for New York. 123 Chapter VIII It was August, a perfect time for a voyage, deep blue above, and a deeper blue below. There seemed no palpable movement of the steamer. Craig would have preferred a storm to the monotonous placidity. He had tramped the decks violently the first morning, and then shut himself away from the bright calm that seemed such a mockery of his nerves. He drank nothing. His brain cleared slowly, painfully; the time of accounting had come. As Craig faced squarely his excesses of the last two years they seemed the more revolting as he failed to take into account the nice graduation of his de- pravity. Evil, full blown, is an ugly thing; only those who have tended its growth can have any toler- ance of it. Craig forgot his months of apprentice- ship; so he could find in his heart nothing but dis- gust for his dissipations. He would sit for hours and hours, still and white, horrified at the stretch of uselessly squandered time, forgotten feelings, wasted powers. Colourless fragments of memory flitted across his vision, a woman's face, a woman's lips, a drunken brawl, an evil story. A drink, and he could shut it all out ! He poured out a glass of whiskey and then threw it on the 124 The Sinister Revel floor, glass and all. The crash set his nerves jang- ling; he was all unstrung. But he must keep sober. He was going back to save Constance. How? He did not know. Tell her the truth, perhaps, about Milburn, about himself, about the whole damned world at large with all its senseless depravity. But if she would not listen? What then? He closed his eyes to steady his brain. And as. he did so, she seemed to stand before him, calm and placid, her beautiful eyes steady in his. "The Edgemere filly! " He started up at that and clenched his fists The seven days' trip verged almost to a delirium for Craig. It was only to be expected, of course, the natural outcome of a heavy dissipation curbed up short. Had it not been for Simpson's care, it is a question if he could have pulled himself together at all. As it was, the last day out found him white and shaky but otherwise quite composed. As he watched the familiar landmarks come to view one after another, he could not help smiling a little at the image of the miserable boy who had watched those same landmarks fade away just two years be- fore. Only two years! And he had condemned himself then as a finished libertine! He was feeling a little calmer now. The thought that he would soon see Constance again brought him a certain rest, a momentary forgetfulness that his errand was an ugly one. He smiled happily to him- self. 125 The Sinister Revel A man, leaning on the rail at his side, took cour- age. "Jolly day! " he ventured. "Beautiful!" answered Craig with enthusiasm and offered him a cigarette. The two walked the deck for an hour after that in easy converse. " We're docking tonight? " Craig asked, running across the Captain. But the Captain shook his head. " They're holding us up over night. There was a death in the steerage a beastly lot of quarantine stuff to go through " Craig's spirits drooped. " Let's go and have a drink! " his new friend in- tercepted. Force of habit is ever stronger than conscious will. Craig found himself at the bar before he realized what he was doing. But, after all, one drink ! So he tossed off some whiskey, his first since he left Deauville. It produced a nice exhilaration. Eti- quette demanded that he stand for the next round. He did. His friend responded in kind. It fell to Simpson's lot to interrupt the jovial ex- change about midnight and to carry his young master off to bed. Craig raved through the night hours that dragged themselves out to a sickly yellow dawn. He railed and stormed, and Simpson caught ever and again 126 The Sinister Revel the name of Fellows Milburn. Once he muttered " Matrimony, by God! " and then cried out, cursing. Simpson hurried to put a fresh ice bag on his head but he would have none of it. H*e struck out wildly and crashed over the night-table. "What is it?" he said, and sitting up, startled, peered through the blackness. " Only the night-table," murmured Simpson, as he struck a light. Craig gave a strange laugh. " I thought it was Milburn," he said thickly. Simpson shook his head sadly as he mixed some- thing in a glass. " Here, take this ! " he said. And lifting Craig's head he poured some chloral down his throat. A few minutes later he tiptoed to his own room. The morning began inauspiciously with a drizzle. Craig felt miserably sick; strangely forlorn, too, as he balanced on the step of a taxi and tried to decide where to go. Simpson had just reminded him his people would be in Newport, the town house closed. " Union Club ! " he said at last sullenly. Simpson got in with him on his own initiative. They drove up town through streets that had never seemed dirtier. Even Fifth Avenue presented a be- draggled front. Craig was trying desperately to focus his thoughts. Simpson kept clearing his throat preliminary to various sallies that died in utterance. 127 The Sinister Revel Outside the Club, with one of those flash deci- sions to penetrate the gloom of his uncertainty, Craig turned to Simpson. " There's some one I have to see. You fix things up here " Simpson was almost pathetic in his vacillation. " But " he began; then as he saw Craig's eyes narrow his protest failed. He hastened to get out, nervously officious as to baggage. " Knickerbocker Club! " directed Craig, and gave a short laugh at the dismay that swept Simpson's countenance as he heard the order. The apprehen- sion written on the old man's face as he had stood there on the curb was not without its effect, however; hardly had the cab started off before Craig changed his mind again. " 72nd Street, East," he almost shouted this time and sank back in the corner in a violent agita- tion. With that second's reading of Simpson's fear had come the realization that before he settled with Milburn he must see Constance. By every social law the Edgemeres would have been in Newport at this season of the year; but when did law ever weigh against those deep unanalysable instincts that furnish us direction in times of great crises? Craig knew that Constance was in town and he knew that he would see her. The cab drew up at the curb. Craig could hardly get out he was trembling so. 128 The Sinister Revel " Mrs. Edgemere has gone out," said the butler who answered the door. " Miss Edgemere, then." Craig articulated the words with difficulty. The man looked at him curi- ously. He waited in the familiar drawing-room, walking up and down. A glass gave back his image; he stopped in front of it, suddenly apprehensive of the havoc his dissipations might have worked. He had changed very little in reality, as boyishly fresh and slim as ever; but as he studied himself, the flushed face and burning eyes seemed unmistakable to him as indications of past excess. Again that flood of emotion, that sweep of degrading recollec- tion ! As he stood there, she came in, a Constance of fuller beauty, of deeper calm. Nothing was said; they simply looked at each other across the room, a long inexpressibly wonderful look of quiet and understanding. Then Craig felt suddenly some- thing give way within him. He was conscious of stumbling to her, seizing her hands roughly, almost brutally, as he dragged her down beside him on the divan, pouring out wildly, incoherently his sins, his hopes, his despairs, his love. " I'm bad ! I'm bad ! " he reiterated, holding her hands as in a vise. The ugly facts ! He must con- vey them, break through the faith he still read in her dear eyes. The words came, crass sordid. 129 The Sinister Revel "I am evil. You understand? Evil streaked. I've led a terrible life drink and women, the worst kind Oh, do you see? Can you see? " She sat white and still as she listened. His words came with a rush. Then suddenly his chaotic vio- lence fell, and burying his face in his hands he be- gan to weep. She said nothing, but rising quietly went to the window. Then Craig realized he had hurt her, perhaps; grossly outraged her innocence. He had stumbled to his feet. Her back was to him but he was vaguely conscious that she was pressing a handkerchief to her eyes. " Forgive me," he cried. " I am so wretched, so miserable. I have told you all this God knows just because I love you " His voice broke harshly. Constance turned sud- denly and faced him. He saw her through his tears a luminous, slender figure, a great trust, a great love shining through the translucent quiet of her eyes. She stood there, a radiant manifestation of pure love, glorified by its power to raise up and forgive. As Craig looked at her, all the evil and passion and tragedy that had been pressing so closely about him seemed to fade to indistinctness till they were lost, the darkling disorders of another world. He put out his hand blindly as one whose dimmed vision is too quickly flooded with light. Constance put her hand in his. "My dear one!" she said softly. "My dear 130 The Sinister Revel one ! " Then leading him again to the divan she drew him down beside her and soothed and quieted him as a mother does a wayward child. Part III Chapter IX Craig's reactions were as little to be accounted for as a child's, yet his responses were simple. His gloom was an irrelevant thing, casual, careless, as liable to be penetrated by some ridiculously unim- portant thing as by a big thing. So with his joys. A chance word, a wisp of cloud in the sky, a badly adjusted saddle on his horse, and his feeling of con- tented well-being would turn to irritable unrest. It was for the influence of Constance to bring him, for a while at least, to a greater stability of mood, to the recognition of a nicer balance between cause and effect. He had left her that morning, deeming himself quite the happiest man in the world, for with the dis- pelling of his gloom there was wrought, also, an eradication of his sense of guilt. This was due in part to the fine quality of Constance's forgiveness; in part also to Craig's own innocent naivete. So little evil was he by nature, so really unformed in character, that excesses, ordinarily indelible of im- pression, passed him by without leaving a trace. It is, after all, inherent evil that is the recording finger of sin. As he drove back to his Club after the interview with Constance, Craig was at heart the same un- '35 The Sinister Revel sullied boy who had rushed home in an ecstasy of joy four years before when Constance had admitted for a fluttering second that she did care. There was the same strange incredulity and wonder that such a happiness could be his, the same fine appre- ciation of love as a pure experience, the same trembling response to the beauty and mystery of it. It was all a glorious reality and yet not a reality, for it was too big a thing to be brought within the range of finite understanding. Craig could only close his eyes as to the strange, relentless beat of wings upon his consciousness. He dismissed his cab after they had gone a block or two and turned into the Park. The rain had cleared; the green freshness seemed all a part of the cool of his happiness. He wandered to a remote corner and threw himself down under a tree. There was a little artificial lake to the left, very bright and sky-like. He remembered skating there as a young- ster. The heavens, through the leafy branches, seemed far away, remote but no longer indifferent. A few wisps of cloud floated across the open and then were gone. The ground about him was freaked with sunshine and shadow. His hand, too ! He moved it as a child might have, with amusement at the changing patterns. And all the while that beat of his happiness, silent but of resistless power! %ti a little while his eyes closed and he slept. It wasn't till the middle of the afternoon that he awoke. His sleep had been the sleep of utter brain 136 The Sinister Revel exhaustion; his awakening was a quiet one, the nat- ural termination of a rest that had worked itself out to completion. He opened his eyes with no surprise at his surroundings; perhaps he had never lost the sense of them. There was a fluttering movement in the bushes near him. He looked in that direc- tion. Two tiny tots were peering out at him with round curious eyes. They had discovered him in his sleep and were noiselessly covering him with leaves. He laughed as he sat up, and shook him- self free of his vernal covering. The children dis- appeared with an answering peal of laughter. All as it should be, that he should wake to that glimpse of the naive child world which represented life at its freshest and best. He mused on the old dancing school days that seemed now not so far away. Constance in her white party dresses! Constance with her clear eyes ! Constance, now his Constance ! Then suddenly came the realization that he was wasting time. There was much to do, problems to meet. He had slipped away without seeing Mrs. Edgemere. Constance's suggestion ! They were on their way to Lenox. "Wait till we get back to Newport!" she had said. He understood now; as he had been then he would have cut a sorry figure in Mrs. Edge- r"re's critical eyes. He smiled tenderly. That had been Constance's kind way; she wanted to give him the advantage of appearing at his best in her mother's eyes. 137 The Sinister Revel He looked down at himself. He was a wreck. What time was it? Four o'clock! Simpson would be fussing. Simpson Then his face brightened. He would tell Simpson. He got to his feet quickly. The one thing necessary to complete his happiness seemed now to communicate it to some one else. And old Simpson ! The very one ! He hurried out of the Park, smiling blandly to himself in anticipation of the coming scene. " Union Club ! " he shouted at the first cabby that chanced along, and then settled back in his corner humming a vigorous tune. A few minutes later he walked into his room at the Club. Simpson had had a nervous day of it. The more he tried to think out this sudden move back to the States, the surer he became there was ugly business on hand. The call of the extras out- side made him panicky; he was obliged ever and again to fortify himself alcoholically by way of keep- ing his nerve " in case something h'awful did 'appen." Mr. Craig's temper was up; his strange threat of Milburn had been more than just the night's delirium. Yes, Simpson was decidedly uneasy. That men of Craig's position were exempt from ordinary law and convention he knew perfectly. Law and con- vention were, of course, quite outside a gentleman's game. But still, as he kept saying to himself, " a row's a row," and he didn't like the look of it. 38 The Sinister Revel The hours dragged on. Simpson had telegraphed on his own responsibility to Newport, announcing Craig's arrival. " If only we could get the governor here ! " he reflected, and began to calculate, but soon lost him- self in the mazes of a New York, New Haven and Hartford time-table. Then there was the yacht, another bewildering possibility, even to one as versed in yachting lore as Simpson. For there was always so much to take into account about winds and tides. He gave it up eventually and dozed a little. Craig's arrival brought him out of his slumber with a start. " Something's happened ! " Craig cried and seiz- ing both the old man's hands whirled him about till he was dizzy. Simpson brightened as much as he could with his head going around. One look at Craig's face had been sufficient to dispel all idea of disaster. But he might have known; Mr. Craig was a weather- cock for moods " There, there ! " he said and leaned against the wall to steady himself. " Now tell us what 'as 'appened!" Craig laughed gleefully. u I say, Simpy, what do you say to our getting married? " Simpson saw light at last. He grabbed Craig's hand and shook it violently, then turned away to 139 The Sinister Revel blow his nose. There was a suspicious moisture in his eyes as he tried to articulate the proper congrat- ulations. 11 The last wedding I did," he managed to make out at last, " was your father's." Craig stared a second, then laughed loudly. " So Father had a wedding, too! 'Gad! I never thought of that!" A remark, not at all clever, but he and Simpson proceeded to get quite uproari- ous about it. " But you don't know who " Craig began at last. Simpson nodded sagely. "Wait! " he said, and made a rather wambling way into the next room. A minute later he came back with the old picture of Constance that had stood on Craig's desk at College. Craig pounced upon it. " But why?" he expos- tulated. " I thought it had been left behind. If I had known all this time these years " For a second he felt a faint stir within him Those years! He turned away quickly. " But it was just as well " Simpson was explaining, " I thought as it would make you 'omesick " At which Craig patted him in commendation. All the while he had the picture, perusing each line of the dear face. " You can't know how happy I am, Simpson ! " he broke out at last. 140 The Sinister Revel Simpson sighed. "Your father " he said re- flectively. " 'E was that 'appy, too! " "Was he?" said Craig vaguely, but he wasn't listening. " 'Ave some tea, sir? " Simpson suggested a little later. " No," answered Craig. " That is, yes. Oh, I don't care ! " The telephone rang. " Your father's 'ere, sir ! " announced Simpson, and there was a secret satisfaction in his tone as of one who, if pressed, could tell much as to the ar- ranging of dramatic climaxes. A minute later Craig and his father were shaking hands with a grip that left nothing untold of hearti- ness and good will. Mr. Van Dam had felt an unmistakable alarm on getting Simpson's wire. Craig's unheralded return argued trouble of one sort or another. One glance at his son, however, and all apprehension left him. The boy looked younger than ever, in the best of health and top spirits. Craig fairly glowed as his father kept repeating, " But what a jolly surprise! What a lark! You can't know how glad I am! " There was a warmth about it all, a genuineness in his father's pleasure at seeing him again that made what Craig had to tell fairly easy in the telling. They sat and talked and talked over their tea, while Simpson with benign countenance tended their wants. The Sinister Revel " 'Ow about a little rum, sir? " he would murmur, poised at Mr. Van Dam's ear in the attitude of an angel of the annunciation. Or "A bit of a bun, sir?" when Craig showed himself indifferent to the sweets. It all helped immensely; it had ever been Simp- son's art to create atmosphere. The old awkward- ness Craig had felt in his father's presence disap- peared entirely; in its place was a feeling of friendly security, a sympathetic understanding as of man to man. It was all a part of their new-found intimacy that they should decide for a trip back that night on the Idler. Dinner on deck, a chat later in the moon- light that provoked revelation and low-voiced confidences! Those confidences held for Craig, however, no semblance of reality; so imbued was he with the graceful charm of the night the poignancy of their message quite escaped him. Years later, words, phrases, his own, his father's, would drift to him, fraught with the deepest significance. They had talked of women; Mr. Van Dam had spoken of himself as an idealist. " Your mother," he had said, " she has been the one woman in my life, really. And yet only a vague beautiful presence. " But Constance is different," he had gone on. " I have watched her closely. She is more than a lovely illusion. She is a woman, a real woman with a clear vision. As long as she keeps that vision " 142 The Sinister Revel A clear vision ! How intensely Craig was to re- member that afterwards! And yet, at the time, the words had meant little. They had been spoken, only to be lost in the silvery moonlight. " As long as she keeps her vision, you cannot go wrong! " But Craig's attention was wandering. He had closed his eyes. A few minutes later his father, thinking him asleep, had thrown a steamer rug over him and gone below. Craig was left alone to the sensuous spell of the glorious night. Again that beat of his happiness, silent, steady . . . 143 Chapter X They found breakfast and the family awaiting them the next morning on the terrace overlooking the ocean. Just the right note of welcome was struck. Everything was jolly and comfortable, yet casual. No one thought of taking the occasion sentimentally. Craig fairly glowed. His mother, drooping, charming as ever, had kissed him twice. Lili had clung to him. Lili, a lovely girl now ! How pretty she was ! How slender as he held her in his arms! Tony had gripped his hand till it hurt, the nearest point to the dramatic the situation could boast! Tony was little changed. The same sup- pressed beam on his countenance, the same would-be swagger ! "By Jove! Isn't it wonderful?" Craig had cried. The familiar faces of the servants with their defer- ential smiles of welcome filled him with a great con- tent. He had a word for each. Horton was haled from behind some shrubbery where he was trying to get a glimpse of the proceedings. The old man was quite overcome, whether from the ignominy of being discovered in hiding or the cordiality of Craig's handshake, it is impossible to say. They sat down finally at the table. Tony had al- ready begun on the gossip, and wanted Craig's 144 The Sinister Revel opinion on his new tailor. Had Craig heard about Larry's last scrape? And did he know Vera was engaged? What would he advise as to his (Tony's) raising a moustache this summer? What did he think of a chain drive ? And had he ever run a Fiat? Yes, it was wonderful. And Lili! He couldn't get over the idea of Lili He let his coffee get cold and forgot to eat. He lighted a cigarette only to let it go out and light another. Later had come rather shyly the announcement of his engagement. Mrs. Van Dam and Lili had taken it calmly. Tony had shown a lively resentment, however. This the end of a brilliant, continental career! The devil of an anticlimax in Tony's esti- mation ! " Hell," had been his only comment. Two weeks later Constance and her mother re- turned from Tuxedo. It was a strange characteristic of Craig's that his decision in regard to the vital questions of life should be of a ready definiteness, seemingly incompatible with the shifting quality of his moods and his weak uncertainty in regard to the trivial matters of exist- ence. His college scandal had brought the sense of a complete degradation, involving the loss of Con- stance. During the whole of the two years abroad there had been no thought of compromise, no hope of reinstatement. The thing was over and done for, as absolutely as if Constance had died. The Sinister Revel He had come back to America with a confused, disordered sense of helping her, of protecting her against another man, but not for a second did he think of making a claim for himself. The rush of emotion, the wild declaration of his love, the lumi- nous reconciliation had come of sudden flare. Craig could marvel that things had turned out as they did, but, even so, his sense of possession was as clearly defined as ever had been his sense of loss. Constance was his. How could she not be? It was quite in keeping with his sense of security that the interview with Mrs. Edgemere should hold for him no terrors, her consent should bring no sur- prise. The engagement was announced in due or- der. Society approved. If there was a slight feel- ing of disappointment that Craig's spectacular career had ended so tamely, it soon passed. " We expected at least a Nautch girl in his train I " Andre le Conte had said and then went on to specu- late as to how the Lady Edgemere had brought it about. " She played Milburn as a counter suit," Mrs. Hamilton Raleigh had pronounced with conviction. But Mrs. Raleigh had three marriageable daugh- ters, poor thing, a scant income to back them. A fair verdict couldn't be expected from her quarter. What will Lady Asburton say? Could the little Connie hold him? Speculation as to the amount of the nuptial settlement mingled with alimony ap- praisals. 146 The Sinister Revel Andre ended by predicting fireworks, but that might have been just Andre's way of keying one up. It was Andre's part, as Society's wag, to bring about just the right flutter of expectancy, that nice titilla- tion of nerves so delicious a preliminary to a real thrill. Society had failed of a real thrill for some years. It was high time In the meanwhile the wedding was coming on apace, and there was no question, for the present at least, that the young people were very much in love. They were in love, how deeply no casual observer could ever have gauged. Constance's life had been singularly lacking in those little affections and en- thusiasms that make up the usual existence of a child. Her mother, left a widow when Constance was a baby, was not the sort to encourage effusion of any sort without a practicable end in view. So Constance had been forced to curb her little childish exuberances, store her energy. In the end, that energy concentrated into a great worship of her older sister, who had married and gone to England to live when Constance was but nine. Separation intensified rather than lessened this devotion. In Constance's eyes, Helen was a paragon of the beau- tiful and the wise; it was in the measuring up to her standard Constance had attained that clarity of thought, that poise of idea that set her so apart from the other girls of her age. There was another side to Constance's nature, however, neglected and overlooked in those first H7 The Sinister Revel years of her persistent idealism. She was essen- tially a mother, the instinct of protection being as strong as ever the need to work to a lofty end. It was to this instinct in her Craig was to appeal. The very turbulence of his nature, the storminess of his moods stirred the maternal in her to a great tender- ness. It was the maternal in her that had responded as she led him first through the tangles of the grand march. It was the maternal in her that had fol- lowed sadly the waste of those years abroad, that had suffered deeply but had never despaired; it was the maternal, finally, that had been able to forgive with an unqualified forgiveness it is given to only a few large natures to understand. In the weeks that preceded the wedding there came to both Constance and Craig the sense of their love as something intimate and physical. They took it shyly though without question; the odd part of it was that Craig's awakening, for all his past expe- rience, seemed no less pure and naive than Con- stance's. It was in this new phase of interpretation and rev- elation that the woman in Constance gave place to the girl, quivering on the verge of new things. It was a trembling Constance Craig had kissed for the first time, her pure eyes clouded a little with the in- tensity of an experience she did not quite understand. It was a girlish Constance who sat with her hand in his and talked tremulously of the future. Their life together ! Vague, beautiful years on years ! 148 The Sinister Revel But Mrs. Edgemere and Mr. Van Dam -would bring them down to definite calculations, where they were to live and how and when? There was a fuss as to the prenuptial settlement. Craig always succeeded in blotting any paper that had a legal air, and invariably signed his name in out-of-the-way places destined exclusively for a notary's stamp. Then there was something about church decorations. Craig ecstatically put off every consideration till the morrow, but there was always some one lurking in his path to pull him up short: Mrs. Edgemere with a bridling " Now, Craig, as to this business about the ushers " ; his mother with a wistful " Couldn't you give me some idea, Raggy, just how many we'll have to put up? "; or Tony with a contemptuous " What the devil are you going to do about the bachelor dinner? " As if things like that really mattered ! There was one trip on the yacht; Craig liked that. A deep blue night with myriads of stars, and one fleeting tremulous moment on deck with Constance in his arms, the others dim shadows in the distance ! They had all gone up the Sound to look at a country house, Mr. Van Dam's wedding gift to the young people. It was a lovely old place of mellow, discoloured stone; wing on wing, terraces and gardens, a blue glimpse of the Sound in front, a stretch of Park to the back, big enough to afford a fairly decent run with the hounds. Its charm lay in the sense of re- moteness it evoked. And yet 149 The Sinister Revel " Only an hour's trip from the City," Mr. Van Dam had said. " Only an hour's trip ! " Craig had echoed, his eyes on Constance as she stood at a little distance, getting the old place in proper perspective. Mrs. Edgemere said the servants' quarters needed overhauling. " Overhauling ! " repeated Craig intelligently. " And the stables ! " Mr. Van Dam put in. Craig had stumbled off to look at the stables. He heard his mother murmuring something about a breakfast-room. "That's my idea, too!" Craig had said and nodded sagely. Well what need to follow the events of the next few weeks, that passed quickly and yet not quickly, for each minute was packed full of gaiety and joyous preparation ! The bachelor dinner had resolved itself, much to Tony's disgust, into a gen- eral dance. It was Craig's idea, the one point on which he had asserted himself. " Why should a man spree the night before he's married? " he had retorted when Tony had shown signs of turning ugly. " It's rotten form not to I " Tony had returned heatedly. " Everybody does." The argument seemed more than sufficiently convincing. " Well by God, / won't," Craig had cried, and flung off in a temper. The one ripple in the mill- pond of preparation I 150 The Sinister Revel So, one bright September day at old Trinity among roses and palms and with a flutter of pulses, Constance and Craig were married. They found it tremendously serious. The voices that swore to love and honour had a strange far-away sound and seemed not their own. Craig was very white; Con- stance's lips quivered sadly. " Till Death do us part." Death! The one discordant note in a beautiful ceremony I Craig felt again the old shake of his nerves ! Then there had been the glorious burst of the wedding march, the kiss. He and Constance had turned. He was vaguely conscious of the wedding party clustered at the sides of the old altar, the girls with their flowers, the ushers tall and straight. And there was Tony, quite close, hot and red, still conscious of that troublesome wrinkle in his new frock coat. And his mother and father there in the corner pew! They were smiling; everybody was smiling, in fact. Even Constance! He himself was smiling, too, as he bowed now here and now there. There were the Anderson Prescotts and Raleighs ! Andre le Conte was murmuring some- thing to Elaine Balsh ! Some mot, doubtless, at the expense of young love! And the Lawrences and Schuylers, the Hamiltons, and Mannings! A sea of people, all gathered there with happy faces to wish them joy, as they marched in triumph down the aisle to the inspiring strains of Mendelssohn. The Sinister Revel " The prettiest wedding of the season," Society pronounced. " Tout le monde se marie" mur- mured Andre. " It's all too tedious ! " " I'm looking for a fourth at bridge," cried Mrs. Prescott, elbowing a passage through the crowd. John Hamilton was offering to run some one over to the Pier in his motor. Mrs. Schuyler was vaguely seeking to evade her husband, with an eye to sup- per on Rideway's yacht. Polo tomorrow! The Manning dinner ! And u Is any one going to the Bay Shore Horse Show? " There was the continual bang of motor doors, the throbbing of engines, the hum of voices. Meanwhile the young crowd were thronging to the Edgemere house for the reception, eager for their fun that was scheduled to last till morning. But Constance and Craig they sat quite still in their carriage. Theirs was too intense a happiness not to be tinged with a little of the sadness that at- tends a great responsibility. They spent their honeymoon on the Idler. Moonlight and starlight, an ecstasy of tremulous romance, of gossamer dreams and tender realities! They 'accepted the glow of their experience as inex- plicable as it was beautiful, and drifted pensively with the tide of their emotions. They would sit for hours at a stretch, hand in hand, watching the blue of the sky, deep in vague formless thought of their love and each other. The evening shadows, blurr- ing the heavens and waters to a soft grey mist, would 152 The Sinister Revel settle gradually about them, seeming to shut them in to a tiny world of their own. Then Constance would sigh, and Craig, drawing her to him, would hold her close in his arms. So they would rest in- definitely, listening to the gentle swish of the waters about the boat, the creak of the rigging, the scream of a gull. As the days passed, they began to talk more, easily, without effort, letting idea brush idea lightly, with immense anticipation of the years and opportunities that lay before them. Very soon West Riding became their recurrent theme. West Riding! " Do you remember, dear, whether there was a terrace from the dining-room?" Constance would murmur pensively. " And I can't for the life of me think " Craig would bring out, " whether the boat house was to the left or right " Yes, reality was beginning to beckon, reality and West Riding, with the promise of a firmer grasp of this happiness that now, with its illusive skies and shifting waters, seemed in the nature of a beautiful dream. A beautiful dream ! A precious dream ! Yet "I'm almost eager to get home," Craig had admitted one day after they had been drifting about a fortnight, and Constance had responded warmly to the suggestion. After all, they were too young and vigorous for dreams to suffice for long. They wanted their love a clearly defined actuality. The Sinister Revel Their home-coming was a joyous one. The ser- vants, family ones for the most part, old retainers of the Edgemeres or the Van Dams, were gathered in the great hall to greet them, forgetting to be for- mal in the heartiness of their welcome. Simpson, as master of ceremonies, made a speech, all very in- tricate and elaborate. The fact that no one could follow the thread of his discourse made it in no way less convincing. Everybody had clapped and laughed. Whereupon they had all repaired to the dining-room and with much jollity had drunk a toast in the true old English fashion to the prosperity of the new master and mistress. If Craig's and Con- stance's little answering speeches failed of coher- ency, it was all just a part of the comfortable infor- mality. They were no less grateful for being slightly chaotic in the expression of their thanks. The months that followed were happy ones, in- deed. There was the daily exultation of getting used to hundreds of little things that had quite es- caped them on their honeymoon. The settling of their own particular rooms, the instalment of a breakfast porch, the shade of candles in Constance's dressing-room, all questions of moment, vital, ab- sorbing. Craig came to know every article on Constance's dressing table; each little vial perforce gave up its secret. He loved to handle the dainty fragile things as he sat and watched Constance do her hair. Constance always did her own hair. There had been one stab of recollection the first '54 The Sinister Revel night he had seen her take out the pins and let it down. He had closed his eyes a fleeting second to the vision of slanting walls, a flickering light But now he loved the little frown between her eyes when the golden locks refused to be piled in orderly array; or better still did he love the tender- ness of her smile as her placid eyes met his in the quiet depths of the glass. They exploited every corner of West Riding, walking hand in hand, driving, riding. They were charmed when the weather was fine; they congratu- lated themselves when it stormed. Nature seemed a staunch ally; sunshine or the beating of the rain, as their mood dictated. It is extraordinarily difficult to trace the phases by which Constance and Craig passed from the wonder and marvel of mutual discovery to the ac- ceptance of each other as a sort of comprehensive and beautiful generalization back of the thousand and one details that make up life, like the sky, the air. Each was just there for the other, but oh how intensely there! Yet with all this largeness of their comprehension, trifling things mattered enormously. There was the first time Constance had a headache. Craig sat in the darkened room, touching tragic depths of thought. Another time, Craig took a nasty cropper while breaking in a vicious horse. Only a shake-up, but poor Constance ! How she worried as to complications, internal injuries and contusions ! 155 The Sinister Revel They had many house parties that first year. How could they avoid them with their young world clamoring at the door? Vera and her young south- ern husband; Larry and Doris " as good as en- gaged," so Tony said; Carly Andrews and William Manning; others, new-comers on the field; one or two or a dozen at a time just as chance ordained. They had the best of times; it was simply that, as in the old dancing school days, they took a ready zest in one another that was quite sufficient to keep up the tempo. Craig loved it, once started. It amused him so to watch Constance in her role of hostess, dispensing hospitality, looking out for the observance of little proprieties. Yet, in reality, no need of a chaperone existed at West Riding, for there were no conventions dared. It was Constance's art to create in her guests a certain satisfaction with the simple pleasures of life. There was never any straining for the bizarre. The young people hunted and skated, danced or played cards. No one drank too much; very little money changed hands. It was just the natural thing under Constance's influence to desire the best. It had been that way with Craig from the begin- ning. There had been no dramatic struggle against temptation, no warring of elements within. He was content, that was all there was to it, simply, in- genuously content in a world where evil was not. So the first year of their married life passed with its round of harmless gaiety, its growth of deeper The Sinister Revel understanding, its greater dependency of each upon the other's presence. During the second winter Mrs. Edgemere had died of pneumonia. Constance's grief was deep, but there was a calmness of resignation in her atti- tude that made of her sorrow a thing of dignity. Six weeks later Henry Van Dam had died sud- denly at his Club. He had died as gracefully as he had lived. " Heart failure ! " the Dcotor pro- nounced. The financial world felt itself stricken; flags drooped at half mast. Newspapers flaunted his picture; people talked of his master coups. That is, for a little while The death of his father affected Craig strangely. Death had always seemed to him a terrible thing; he was pitiably afraid of it with almost the craven fear of superstition. It was his nature to fight the sense of his loss with a wild protest. His grief was a violent one, violent till it broke from the sheer weight of its emotion to a weak despair. He could not, would not bring himself to look upon the body till on the day of the funeral Constance had with quiet insistence led him to it. He had expected he knew not what, but his father's face, so fine, so calm and peaceful, exactly as he had remembered it in the moonlight on the yacht, brought a sudden strange quiet to his nerves. He had stood there with Con- stance's hand in his for a long time, giving himself up to the peace and hush that hover always about the dead. After a little he had taken Constance in 157 The Sinister Revel his arms and they had wept together. When they went away it seemed as if death were not so pitiless, for it had helped to bring them to a deeper sym- pathy, an even greater love. This was quite true in the months that followed. They were thrown absolutely upon each other, as the mourning period relieved them from every social demand. Craig reached the point eventually where he could talk of his loss. The protest had gone out of him as he stood at the coffin, but there remained an unrest and little haunting regrets. After that trip down on the yacht his father had shown himself so eager to follow up their new friendship. But well the years had stretched ahead. " Plenty of time, plenty of opportunities " Craig had kept telling himself. " Later, when Constance and I are more settled " That friend- ship, for all his neglect of it, had seemed so rich in promise, a strength for future needs. And now this strange terrible thing had happened to destroy his faith, to undermine his sense of security. He was apprehensive, nervous. Constance talked of a trip but he shook his head. Then as spring came on there were business claims to take him away from home. New respon- sibilities were piling up. Of course the executors of the Van Dam estate were quite efficient and could be counted on to do things properly; but, even so, Craig's presence was demanded ever and again in The Sinister Revel the city. It all came of having such a " damned lot of money." He didn't care about money, never had. The thought of the excess he possessed de- pressed him, weighed him down. He knew himself as a sorry business man, too; that realization didn't at all help matters when he found himself in con- ference with some financier of note. The very def- erence which greeted him everywhere seemed a mockery of his ignorance. June came. Tony and Lili and Mrs. Van Dam were going to Europe. Craig went in to the city to see them off. His mother seemed more fragile than ever in her widow's weeds, more beautiful, more ineffectual. Tony was quite the man now; respon- sibility had brought out the best in him. He had been on the point of starting around the world with some of his young friends when his father's death occurred. He had given up his plans promptly to take charge of his mother. Not that Tony intended to forego one oat of the crop that was coming to him. Still he deserved a certain amount of credit in that he consented so readily to postpone the sowing. It was all in keeping with Craig's new unrest that, as he watched the big steamer pull off, there should rise to confront him for the first time since his mar- riage the vision of the life he had lived abroad, that dip into dishonour and degradation. Those erratic shames, distorted desires ! He felt a sudden sharp fear at his heart. The stir of old scars It was raining. It had been raining in a dull hope- 159 The Sinister Revel less way for a week. Craig huddled into his ma- chine and gave the order for home. " Drive like the devil," he said. His chauffeur touched his hat. It took an hour to pull through the intricacies of city traffic. Craig's nerves were all on edge. But once out on the country roads of Long Island, with the image of a waiting Constance to blot out everything else, how different it all seemed! It was rather jolly, in fact, shut in the car with the rain teeming outside. He could even bring himself to smoke a cigarette with relish. Vera was there having tea when he came in. A fire blazed on the hearth and Craig had never felt a happier sense of security in his home-coming. He would have preferred, of course, to find Constance alone. However, he contented himself with watch- ing her as she busied herself with the tea things. Her quiet beauty ! Her wonderful eyes that seemed even deeper in the fire-light! They had waved Vera off in her motor a half hour later, returning hand in hand to the fireside. It was then Craig learned the news that was to dispel all shadows and haunting doubts as to the right work- ing of destiny. Of course he had expected to have a child some day. Most people did. Children were the natural corollary of the matrimonial theorem. Besides, a big fortune necessitated an heir. But as to anything 160 The Sinister Revel immediate Craig's surprise and joy and incredul- ity knew no bounds. What had, in connection with other people, appeared simply as nature's course, in his own experience took on the character of a miracle. Constance a mother ! Himself a father ! It was all too wonderful and yet too absurd! The nice part was they both saw it the same way, laughing happily as they clung together, even while the seriousness of it loomed stupendous. "We must talk! " they said artlessly, as if they had never talked before; and it did seem, really, as if their previous relation had been as nothing to that which developed in the next few months. They sat hand in hand, hours at a time, planning, always planning. " It will be a boy," Constance had said. "Of course!" Craig had answered and there was something beautiful in his young conviction. Then there was the matter of the clothes Con- stance began to collect, tiny, tiny little things; no detail was too small for Craig to be called in consul- tation. And of course the nursery! And sun porch ! " We will send him to Yale," Constance had said. Craig weighed that reflectively. " And we'll call him " Constance began. " Henry Bleecker," Craig said. Then after a pause, " If only father " He got instantly the thought that shadowed the 161 The Sinister Revel eyes looking into his. He had begun to realize but lately how unselfishly Constance had hidden her own grief to help him bear his. " If it should be a girl " he said softly, " we'll call it Helen for your mother." This brought them to the subject of the other Helen, Lady Asburton. " She may come over," Constance had said. Then they smiled into each other's eyes. " I'd rather she wouldn't, though," Constance went on, " till it was all over." This induced a confession from Craig to the effect that he worried horribly. He knew so little about such things, but women did die ' At which Constance laughed away his fears, proving conclusively it was all quite simple. So the months passed, months of tender anxieties and joyful anticipation. Craig watched develop a Constance of fuller beauty, of deeper calm. He was obliged frequently to be away from home. Those were long days; each ring of the office phone brought a panic of apprehension. But business, simply as business, no longer irked. He was beginning to take a certain pride in his career as a financier, and worked hard. It was as if the dig- nity of all fatherhood were at stake. Then two weeks before schedule and on one of Craig's days in town the baby was born. Craig had found a tearfully joyous but distinctly befuddled Simpson awaiting him on the piazza. The old man 162 The Sinister Revel was not too drunk, however, to read the sudden quick terror in Craig's eyes as the truth flashed upon him. " She's all right ! " he kept muttering thickly. " We 'ad a pretty 'ard time to be sure, but I says to the Doctor " Craig had already rushed blindly up the stairs and stumbled into the darkened room. He was conscious of Constance's white face on the pillow, the steady light in her eyes as they had opened to his for a fleeting second. Her lips moved; he caught the word " boy " as he bent over her. He was trembling, almost faint. He was aware vaguely of a white-capped nurse smiling and the Doc- tor smiling, too. There was a morsel of something in a cradle, a pitiful wail going up from somewhere. Then suddenly everything blurred and he turned and rushed away. He didn't know what happened after that. Only Simpson was in it somehow, lead- ing him with all kindness to his own room where he had thrown himself on the bed with a great sob. 163 Chapter XI It is characteristic of a nature like Craig's that it should take the great joys of life as hardly as its tragedies. The first few days, although Constance was pronounced perfectly all right and the baby in excellent condition, he suffered deeply just from the intensity of the experience. Besides, it might so easily have been different. He wandered about the house, dazed and restless, a prey to the most awful depression. Constance's work basket in the lounge he couldn't bring himself to look at it. Her riding crop in the hall ! Yes, suppose Simp- son had greeted him with other news But Constance, even in her apathy, realized some- thing of Craig's unhappiness. He presented such a scared, dishevelled appearance when he was allowed to enter the room. The third day she had begged the Doctor that he might sit with her. " I am lonely for him," she had said. " No, I won't talk." Craig sat there all the afternoon, her hand in his. After that things were different. The next day he showed an active interest in the baby. The nurse put it in his arms. He held it several minutes to 164 The Sinister Revel the delighted discovery of tiny hands and feet and features. " Blue eyes! " he had said, smiling bashfully at Constance. " They'll change ! " pronounced the nurse in a matter-of-fact tone. "Oh, no!" Craig said and in his eagerness to protest nearly dropped the bundle he was holding so carefully. Constance smiled and put out her arms. He gave the baby to her. From this time on Craig's spirits soared. There was so much that was cosy and intimate in Con- stance's convalescence. What a celebration they made of it when she first sat up ! Then there was the day she was allowed to walk a little, leaning on his arm. How patient she had been, but how very, very tired when it was over! After that, things went rapidly. Constance grew strong enough to come down stairs, and very soon they forgot that she ever had been ill. The baby now became the focal point of interest. There had been a day when he cried steadily and with phenomenal lung power for two hours. Craig had been frantic; he was sure the child was about to die, but Constance had shown that superior wisdom given to motherhood. "Only temper! " she pronounced calmly, and so subsequent events proved. It really was surprising what a remarkable The Sinister Revel knowledge Constance had when it came to babies; Craig was perfectly sure no young mother had ever before been gifted with quite so much. Craig, too, began to learn things. He came to know a baby's back was weak; that its eyes should be shielded from bright lights; that a certain con- tortion of the tiny countenance registered wind; that a certain other contortion registered obstinacy. He knew when to shift the tiny mite onto its tiny stomach, and how to administer a rhythmic pat, guaranteed efficacious; he knew when to look the other way and be stern and impervious to the most penetrating of screams. There came the time when the baby turned its head at the sound of his voice; he and Constance were ecstatic. Real parental responsibilities be- gan to loom now. They took to talking of educa- tional schemes and displayed much sageness and discrimination in regard to " systems." During the fresh spring evenings that followed they would sit on the terrace, still exhaustively planning. They traced each step of the little Henry's babyhood and boyhood. They sent him to college; they married him. They, themselves, grew old, became grandparents. Oh, it was very young; very sentimental, perhaps; but it was very beautiful. With the return of the family from Europe that June, came responsibility in definite form. Mrs. Van Dam had written she would like to get home for 1 66 The Sinister Revel the christening. Constance and Craig looked at each other guiltily; in the melange of their educa- tional and matrimonial schemes, the idea of chris- tening had quite escaped them. Neither Constance nor Craig had any definite religion. Constance's clarity of soul was a far more potent influence for the good than any accepted dogma could possibly have been. Still " We must give him a fair start," Craig had said in all seriousness. " We ought to go to Church ourselves," Con- stance had suggested. " Example is everything with a child." Craig assented. " We'll look into it," he said. Then they were stricken with the idea of Tony as godfather. "And if only Helen could be here, tool" Con- stance had reflected, after they had finished their laugh at Tony's expense. "Why not suggest it?" Craig had said. After all, it was only fair that Constance's sister should share in the joy of the occasion. Constance got the letter off on the next steamer. But Lady Asburton's husband had just returned from South Africa, and was inclined to be malarial. Besides, there was some election coming off shortly; Lady Asburton judged her presence in the district indispensable to her party's interests. It all sounded very formidable to Craig, as Con- stance read him the letter. He exerted himself to 167 The Sinister Revel interpolate a few sympathetic remarks here and there, but all the while he knew in his heart he was damned glad things had turned out as they had. Somehow, he never had fancied the idea of her lady- ship. A woman dabbling in political projects! It was preposterous; it was indecent. " I shall make it definitely next spring," Lady Asburton had ended, " whatever happens." " And she will," Constance commented with a smile. Then she sighed as with a sense of her own shortcomings in comparison with her sister's sterner virtues. " There is something almost heroic in Helen's nature," she had said reflectively another time upon receipt of a letter wherein was set down in her ladyship's bold hand a system of precepts recently drawn up by some committee of her county for the proper uprearing of offspring. " Destined origi- nally for distribution among the poor, but The keynote of the age is democracy," her ladyship had gone on to explain. " Why not begin at our own firesides? " Constance had not read this letter in full to Craig. Not knowing Helen, he might be inclined to mis- judge. The precepts were put aside for future con- sideration. But one day when Constance showed herself a bit anxious as to whether or not the little Henry was being brought up in the way he should go, Craig :had taken occasion to repeat to her his father's words. 1 68 The Sinister Revel " A clear vision ! " Craig had said softly, his eyes in her calm deep ones. " A clear vision ! " Constance had murmured, sur- prised. The tribute pleased her more than any- thing else had ever done; it seemed so all-embrac- ing of the good and gained a greater poignancy, coming from one who was dead. " A clear vision ! " she murmured again, with the strangest little tremble in her voice. Craig took her hand in his. " It was that saved me ! " he said quietly. The first reference there had been between them to Craig's past! But Craig, as a father, had been thinking deeply. He had forced himself to face the events of his years abroad, that he might make profit of them for his boy. He himself had started all wrong in a world that was muddled and con- fused; he determined his boy should be started right. That lurid vision on the wharf had frightened him, had taught him the folly of evading an issue. So, he had faced things squarely. And some day he meant to talk quite openly with Con- stance about it all. Some day, when the boy was older! That Constance realized something of the strug- gle that had been going on in his mind, he knew now for the first time, for as he drew her to him he found her face wet with tears. " Yes, it was that saved me! " he repeated. " My dear one ! " was all she could say. " My 169 The Sinister Revel dear one ! " and the words came to both as a strange echo across the years. The christening took place in Newport where they went for the summer. " Our set " was largely represented and they had a jolly time. Tony and Douglas Edgemere, a cousin of Constance's, were godfathers; Lili made a charming godmother. Tony was well-nigh overcome by the weight of spiritual responsibility thrust upon him. Each in- junction of the minister left him gasping with a deeper sense of guilt for past sins, but with valiant resolutions as to future conduct. Vera and Courtz were there; Larry and Doris soon to be married. Even Carly and Billy had consented to forego polo to grace the occasion. They had all gone home for an early dinner afterwards, a little dance. " A perfect day! " Craig had pronounced as he and Constance wandered about later in the garden talking it over. " Of course all babies cry when they're chris- tened," he had said later. He put it as a fact, but Constance knew he wanted the support of an answer. "Oh, yes! They're supposed to," she met his need promptly. " They cry out the old Adam " "And wasn't Tony funny? But did you notice Simpson? And when the baby grabbed the minis- ter's ear " So they talked on and on, contentedly, with no 170 The Sinister Revel sense of the banal, with no sense that others before them had been as happy as they, as secure in a pres- ent that seemed so full and strong it could never pass away. The summer and winter passed, each day differ- entiated from the preceding not by the variety of their social engagements a yachting trip here, a house party there but by the diversity of the baby's goos, the progress of its creeping, the unmis- takable development of its individuality. The little Henry from the beginning had been a personality to compel. No insipid babyhood here, no pink-and-white fatuity I A virile force, rather, that displayed an alarming tendency to dominate ! Prince Hal, they called him, and his moods certainly were something to be dealt with. When he was joyous he gurgled with an abandon that was not without its tone of ribaldry; his sobs bespoke a depth of disillusion no amount of attention could hope to salve. He was a stormy little youngster, all in all; Craig and Constance adored him madly. Craig's one regret was he had none of his mother's features. He would have preferred, of course, a replica of Constance's blonde beauty, but his own dark eyes and vivid colouring were unmistakable. " Still his hands are yours," Craig would say and managed to get a little consolation out of that. At thirteen months Henry was walking. He was tenacious of purpose, and no amount of bruises and bumps could deter him in his efforts. At fifteen 171 The Sinister Revel months he was talking the most surprising of lin- goes. Simpson's influence was dominant, with a bizarre mixture of French and plain east-side. Con- stance and Craig let him go. "Isn't he delicious?" Constance would say, in an undertone of course, for they had schooled them- selves to moderation in actual presence. " A regular little cockney," Craig would murmur. " Or is it Fourteenth Street? " " With a tang of the boulevards ! " Constance would supplement. Then they would laugh themselves almost to tears at some new sally the child had to offer. " The Van Dams are really too tedious I " So- ciety pronounced, but Andre le Conte had not yet despaired of pyrotechnics. " Wait ! " he cried impatiently. " Wait ! " And even as they waited, grumbling, but with still a faint stir of expectancy, Rumour had it Lady Asburton was on her way to the States. 172 Part IV Chapter XII Lady Asburton was essentially a " new woman," of the type that relies for its glow upon socialistic movements, political fracases and all-embracing re- form. To collect people, the right people, at her dinner table and control the conversation along strong intellectual lines; to attend every speaking in the county; to canvass frantically up and down the district before every election in behalf of some pro- tege or other from activities of this sort did her ladyship wrest her high moments. The best example of her efficiency along practi- cal lines was her capture of her husband. Marcus Evesham, of the house of Asburton, had come to America at the age of twenty-two. His title was an old one. He was rich. Rumour would have it, however, insufficiently rich, and attributed all sorts of mercenary motives to him. The fact that his little jaunt to the States was coincident with the debut of an heiress of note was a negligible one, how- ever, as subsequent events proved. Mrs. Edgemere had duly investigated the Eve- sham situation upon his young lordship's arrival. At cross purposes with her older daughter in every other line, she was singularly one with her on the matrimonial outlook. Consultation resolved into 175 The Sinister Revel speedy determination, Lord Mark the victim. Helen played her cards cleverly; Lord Mark suc- cumbed in short order. That, too, with the Edge- meres on the verge of bankruptcy! Mrs. Edgemere was reported at the time as say- ing, u I had hoped Helen would do better. But of course young love! It is really all too roman- tic! " which Society enjoyed thoroughly. But even if the Edgemere policy had been less obvious, any idea that the marriage had been a ro- mantic one would have been quite dispelled after a review, no matter how cursory, of Lord Mark's at- tributes. He was the sort of weak-looking young Englishman totally unamenable to classification. He might just as well have been a bank clerk as a scion of nobility. His sandy hair was there, though one wouldn't take note of it particularly, and the only evidence of his moustache was that he was con- stantly feeling it. For the rest, he was agreeable and could be endured with the least degree of dis- comfort possible. If his lordship could be said to have any marked tendency, it was that of taking up things remote in- stead of things immediate. Occasionally, however, he would throw out the suggestion of a line. It was for others to follow out that line, but of course no one ever did. As to his morals they were scarcely discernible; he was too weak to be or not to be anything, really. Of course there had been that little matter of Lady 176 The Sinister Revel Asburton's French maid. On the honeymoon at that ! But then, one would always expect little mat- ters of French maids and dancing girls and the like as far as Lord Mark was concerned. Lady Asbur- ton dismissed such considerations summarily, giving her husband to understand perfectly, however, she was " on." Only in being fooled lay disgrace, ac- cording to her twentieth century code of ethics. After her marriage Lady Asburton made a point of seeing little of her mother. Possibly she feared financial encroachment. Or still more possibly, the two had come to the realization that in separation only could they bring themselves to a sentiment proper to the relationship of mother and daughter. The little Connie was different; Lady Asburton had relished her blind devotion always, for the flat- tery involved as well as for the fact it constituted a sort of triumph over her mother, thus forced to take second place in the child's affections. Lady Asburton intended to do big things for Constance some day, but well England needed her and the times were critical. Meanwhile, Constance was fairly young. Plenty of time The marriage with Craig had wrung from her approval, reluctant approval however, for Mrs. Edgemere undoubtedly had scored in achieving such a brilliant match. The Van Dam millions were a world factor; Lady Asburton felt her own little light suddenly eclipsed. She was the more envious as the news had come at that season of the year 177 The Sinister Revel when retrenchments in the Asburton household were being vigorously enforced, to the end of meeting his lordship's annual Ascot deficit. Lady Asburton's nerves could ill brook at such a time another's good luck. She could find consolation for herself only in reviewing in her mind's eye the very lurid de- tails of Craig's continental career and predicting with an ominous shake of her head that the thing couldn't last. It might be all right in its way, a triumph of the moment, but no ! it couldn't possibly last. As for any financial benefit that might accrue to her through the connection her ladyship smiled rather grimly to herself at the thought. Her own home policy had never embraced generosity in its tenets; she expected nothing from her mother now. The sense of an opportunity wasted did not help to modify the acerbity of her temper. Her refusal to come to the States for the wedding was actuated entirely by pique. It was not surprising, therefore, that Constance's letters with their unqualified praise of her young husband should seem to Lady Asburton utterly ab- surd. " It's all right for Connie to marry him. But in God's name why let herself be bulldozed? " Thus her ladyship in monologue or to Lord Mark, as the case might be, each time one of Constance's effusions came to hand. She dismissed it all as mawkish sentimentality. Like most women of her 178 The Sinister Revel strong-minded type she was not given to nice distinc- tions of sentiment, and the fine quality of Constance's happiness was lost upon her. So at the birth of the little Henry. " Such a fool palaver! " she had exclaimed irrita- bly. " A baby's a baby. Besides " this last with her fine air of platform conclusiveness " it's every woman's duty." Lady Asburton had done her duty some fourteen years before. " There, that's over ! " she had pronounced with a good deal of asperity, and proceeded to take up again her golf and county meetings so awkwardly interrupted. There had been no interruptions since. The young heir had been educated, as he had been fed, by prescription. He was now at Eton, a splendid exponent of the gram system. Yet there had been no blare of trumpets at his arrival ! The rapturous accounts of Craig as father ir- ritated her ladyship more than had those of Craig as the model husband. She fumed even as she planned. Since her mother's death was not the responsibil- ity of the little Connie's happiness directly hers? A little timely advice! The child was so absurdly artless in her trust of that scapegoat of a husband. Early wounds scarred less deep No indeed, Lady Asburton was never the one to shirk ! As for Eng- land well England's need of her presented it- self as less pressing the more she thought it over 179 The Sinister Revel There arrived another letter, even more naive, rhapsodic, that provoked her ladyship to the point of being almost coarse. " My God! " she had cried hotly. " If she goes on this way, it will kill her when the break conies! " "Break!" echoed Lord Mark vaguely, "Break!" Lork Mark mustn't be misunderstood as attempt- ing to throw out opposition to his lady. This was simply his way of keeping her cognizant of his pres- ence. He was there to be talked at; one never in- curred the danger of his talking back. But this particular echo seemed to arouse in her Ladyship a suspicion. She fixed him, in that dis- concerting way of hers, with the lorgnette. "Yes," she repeated distinctly, "break!" Lord Mark fidgeted; he preferred to be taken as usual, simply a part of the general setting. Such immediate scrutiny unnerved him to the point of a startled query. "You mean" " I mean nothing," Lady Asburton snapped, and switching off her glasses left him to a confused speculation as to just which of his latest scrapes had leaked out now. " I suspect she meant some- thing," he reflected uneasily. "Break!" It did have an ominous sound. He communed with himself for an hour or more over a bottle of second-rate port, the best being held in reserve for her ladyship's county dinners. 1 80 The Sinister Revel " Yes," he murmured at last with a conclusiveness out of all keeping with his inconclusive mind. " Yes, she did mean something." Two weeks later Lady Asburton sailed for Amer- ica. The note of discord was struck almost immediately upon Lady Asburton's arrival. Craig was prepared to take as hardly as possible this invasion of his home and had already begun to feel on the fringe of things. Constance's blue eyes had an abstracted look as they met his; her hand was limp and irre- sponsive when he did succeed in capturing it. Yes, he was just comfortably ignored in the general bustle of preparation. At least, so he thought. He and Constance had gone down from New- port on the yacht to meet the steamer. They went to bed early, leaving a wasted moon. " To make sure we won't sleep over in the morn- ing," Constance had said. Craig forced himself to acquiescence. He knew perfectly he was destined to hate Lady Asburton. "There she is! " Constance had cried excitedly, as the next morning they had watched the docking of the liner. Craig looked up at the rail in the direction indi- cated. " She is very beautiful," he had said slowly. Strange illusion that one glimpse had brought him ! It was as if he had seen Constance in all her warm youth and eagerness suddenly hardened to a figure of 181 The Sinister Revel stone. The same features, only robbed of their mobility; the same eyes, the softness turned to steel! The effect was disconcerting. Her ladyship had now seen them, and was level- ling her lorgnette. There was that in the straight line of her brows, in the thin line of her closely compressed lips that conveyed even long distance a certain relentlessness of purpose. " She's looking at you ! " Constance said delight- edly, at which Craig stepped back with such precipita- tion he blundered into the woman back of them. The incident infuriated him, particularly as Con- stance was inclined to take it as a joke. Even as he controlled himself to apologize, the passengers were seen to be given right of way, and the gang- plank began to fill. In the confusion of greeting that followed Craig was aware of nothing but his own awkwardness. Again that painful consciousness of youth and ineffi- ciency that reduced him to a stupidity of inaction, incapable of taking any initiative whatsoever. Somebody mentioned trunks; somebody else men- tioned customs; then all looked at him. He con- tinued to stare stupidly, plunging his hands the deeper in his pockets as if to seek inspiration there. It was for Constance and the chauffeur to step in, busy themselves with this detail and that. He stood the while with her ladyship, the deadly lorgnette playing over him with a thoroughness that let noth- ing escape it. 182 The Sinister Revel Only once did he nerve himself to meet her. " So you are it I " she said breezily. " Constance should have warned me. I expected " "Well?" he had asked, looking at her squarely for the first time. " Never mind! " she had answered. " But you! You don't look sixteen! " Craig took his hands out of his pockets. " Whoever would have thought " her ladyship pursued. Craig got her implication; his two years abroad were the point of departure. He reddened, even as he flashed back: "Don't think! or we shan't be friends! " " Is that a warning? " her ladyship put in quickly. "Warning!" Craig repeated. Then realizing Constance had returned and was standing beside him, he had thrown his arm lightly about her shoul- ders. " My only warning is you will find us the silliest couple." At that with a sharp impulse he had drawn Constance to him and kissed her on the forehead. She let him, simply, for all the publicity. The two stood linked together as against some out- side force. " The silliest couple," Constance repeated softly. But Lady Asburton had already turned away, leav- ing Craig with a quick wonder at the strange stir in her grey eyes, as they had witnessed the caress. '83 Chapter XIII Years later if Craig could have reasoned the whole matter out, traced the phases by which he passed from a supreme content to the great unhap- piness of his life, his protest might have been less bitter. The memory of this event or that would arise though with no intimation of when it came in time, what led to it or with what it was joined. But for the most part impressions crowded so cun- ningly mingled it was impossible to disentangle one from another. Discords, surprises, disappoint- ments, misunderstandings, all so trivial and out of proportion to the crisis they precipitated. There was the night of the christening he and Constance in the moonlit garden, rapt in their happi- ness ! Then there was that other night, less than two years later, when they had faced each other in the drawing-room at West Riding with bitter re- criminations on their lips. And in between there seemed no actual hap- penings, only moods, vast resistless moods. But always his love of Constance was there, of clear and pure depth, for all the turbulence of surface emo- tion that seemed to obscure it. It was as if his mind, by a strange perversity, flowed at two different levels. There were times when he found himself 184 The Sinister Revel criticizing her with a surprisingly accurate appraisal of her little deficiencies; yet the old vision of her remained as luminous and bright as ever. All the while he was seeking justification for his own lapses in the contemplation of her shortcomings, he was ascribing to her the most impossible perfections. The greater his need of her as he had idealized her, the more intensely he saw her as that ideal. The strangest feature of their relationship as it developed was that Constance absent meant more to him than Constance present. The memory of her seemed to distil and become purified of all the little irritations that accumulated with time to make their life together such an intolerable burden. Away from her, he blamed only himself. With her but he was never with her in the old sense of quiet and peaceful intercourse after Lady Asburton's ar- rival. When they were left alone together there was a marked restraint upon them as if each feared the other's thoughts. The old restful talks gave way to a superficial relation that dodged every issue and relied for its existence upon artificial stimula- tion. Where bubbling exuberance had held sway before, conversations were now " kept up." It seemed as if Constance were continually warding off a criticism of her sister, a criticism she sensed un- favourable. She appeared of a sudden to lack in- tensely decision, she who always before had stood for consummate clearness of attitude. Her words became flat, banal. Constance, his Constance, whose The Sinister Revel every trifling utterance had before seemed of exquis- ite significance! She was forever seeking compro- mise, struggling in a bewildered way to work agree- ment between the two people she loved so dearly, with all the while a sharp, painful sense of break- ing down under a responsibility. Constance's devotion to Helen, her belief in her during those years of growth that take impressions so indelibly, was to prove more deeply rooted than her love for Craig, which, though no less fine and strong of itself, lacked the security of hold only years of struggle can produce. Constance and Craig had been too happy, the penalty for Constance, a dim- ming of her vision that might have remained clear had it been exercised by the need of penetration. " A clear vision! " he had told her. " It is that saved me." She had wept then; she wept now often and often, confused, bewildered. But always compromise seemed the wisest course, compromise and a forced passivity of attitude that succeeded only in working to Craig's greater desperation. In the beginning there had been only little things. Lady Asburton insisted on talking politics, always inevitably politics ! Craig grew more and more ir- ritable, his knowledge of the subject being of the vaguest. Lady Asburton saw her advantage, and followed it up with a sardonic humour. She wor- ried him; she chivied him. Tammany! Good God! What did he know about Tammany! And 1 86 The Sinister Revel the tariff, and the silver question ! Constance would intercede occasionally, a puzzled expression on her face, a murmured apology on her lips. She would change the subject now and again to spare him in his ignorance, a fact which angered Craig more in- tensely than her ladyship's direct attacks. " But railroads are Craig's line," Constance would intercede softly, her eyes offering him encourage- ment. " Damn railroads! " he would flare, with a ris- ing protest at her tepidity. He ended by damning everything. Damn this! Damn that ! And all the while he had the humiliat- ing sense that her ladyship scored the more through the very childish petulance of his profanity. Then there was the matter of the little Henry. A running line of criticism on her ladyship's part! The child's clothes, his nurses, his accent! Con- stance dismissed the French bonne; Craig had pro- tested till her ladyship's innuendo as to the girl's " proprietary attitude " had made it impossible for him to hold out longer in her behalf. Simpson, too, came in for his share of mistrust. It was as if, just because of his affiliation with Craig during the two years abroad, he were for ever aid- ing and abetting him in some evil purpose that it seemed her ladyship's special mission to thwart. So it went, disturbing, irking. Craig at first set down the petty arguments, the mean annoyances, as accident, circumstance. But later came the percep- The Sinister. Revel tion, his persecution was too nicely organized not to be the result of a deliberate scheme. Her lady- ship was working with a steady persistence to his undoing. Why? The subtlety of her motive as Craig came to grasp it with a startled incredulity made the struggle of their forces the more complex. Lady Asburton had come to America in the be- ginning with a clearly defined material purpose. The Van Dam money had been the lure. To open Constance's eyes to certain little weaknesses in her young husband, to effect a partial estrangement, the thing had seemed, fairly simple to one who de- rided all sentiment. She had expected well, what had she expected? A man like George Win- ters. And instead she had been confronted by this disconcerting youth, whose dark eyes had established at once his strange appeal. There had stirred in her something suppressed and forgotten long ago. Some schoolgirl phase that had had its dreams, per- haps 1 It was in keeping with her denial of every- thing that made for sentiment and emotion that she should persist in denying him. He represented for her the softer side of her own nature; so she showed herself merciless in her persecution of him. A pas- sionless intellectualism I It was that she had chosen in the beginning; it was to that she would adhere re- lentlessly to the end. The integrity of her life scheme was at stake; it was for Craig to be sacrificed before the eventual triumph of her bloodless theories could be secured. 188 The Sinister Revel " Of course, you are a woman's man! " she had said once, her eyes steady in his. " Your type will have to be hunted down before woman's cause can get a foothold." " A woman's man ! " How that had infuriated Craig! But it was exactly on this hypothesis her ladyship had started proceedings that first summer in Newport. She contended his devotion to Con- stance was but a surface thing. A jolly illusion! But en intime, why keep it up ? Suspicion lurked everywhere. Craig felt him- self living in a world of inaudible accusations. There was the matter of Ann Brittingham. He had given her a lift home from the beach one day. An incident passing trivial till her ladyship got hold of it to point a scandal! He had danced two or three dances in succession with Larry's new wife at the Brentons' ball. Lady Asburton took occa- sion to embroider on the theme of Titian hair. Craig found her interpretations intolerable. He grew more and more irritable, his flares of temper more frequent. He took to going off on the yacht by himself, pleading business in town. All excellent material to her ladyship's hand ! The men who came to the house took on the nature of fellow-con- spirators, were put through the third degree and then dismissed with a sweeping condemnation of the lorgnette. All the while, there was Constance standing by, struggling to keep up appearances, strug- gling to keep her faith, her belief, her love ! The Sinister Revel Eventually Craig threw all discretion to the winds. He had done everything in his power to allay sus- picion; he now wilfully provoked it. Momentary annoyances drove him to drink a little more and a little more till one day he deliberately got himself drunk and invaded the precincts of Constance's boudoir, where she and Lady Asburton were hav- ing tea. It was not that he wanted to get drunk particularly, but he felt a perverse delight in out- raging decency, in outraging Lady Asburton, in out- raging Constance. He laughed, how he had laughed at the horrified expression on Constance's face as she glimpsed him in the doorway, staggering, his clothes in disarray! Weeks of indifferent dissipation followed. Then an incident had occurred, absurd in the way it was brought about, irrelevant yet not irrelevant really for it had pulled Craig up short in his senseless de- fiance. There had been a scene at dinner one night. There was always a scene at dinner every night. Afterwards in the hall Craig had surprised Con- stance with tears in her eyes. He had dragged her out to the garden, begged her to go away with him. That had been in September and he had just learned her ladyship was prolonging her visit into the win- ter. It seemed more than he could endure. He was miserable, utterly miserable, unhappy, drunk. He had pleaded wildly, incoherently. Constance had hung back, white, frightened, uncertain. 190 The Sinister Revel " You have been drinking ! " she had brought out at last. Then she had broken down, and sobbed like a child as he held her in his arms. By a reversal of role Craig now acted the com- forter. It was as if Constance had been the erring one and must needs be forgiven. He held her to him with endearments, and all the while there was a moon somewhere, struggling from under the clouds. The silver light softened gradually the shadows of the dusky garden. Constance was soon smiling bravely through the tears Craig was per- sistently kissing away. A little later they had stolen off to the Idler like two truant children. It was part of the lark as they saw it by the light of their happy reconciliation that they should leave only a note to break the news to her ladyship. Lady Asburton smiled rather grimly as she read the hasty words Craig had scrawled on an old en- velope. " We're off for another honeymoon ! " The words with the haunting imagery they evoked did not tend to soften the asperity of her mood. The trip on the yacht merged into a two weeks' truancy before the renegades returned. Those days alone with Constance did much for Craig, steadying him, restoring for a time at least his sense of values. Lady Asburton's visit was, after all, but an incident to be endured for a little and then forgotten. He and Constance had had such a beautiful time on the yacht, he came back contrite for past misde- 191 The Sinister Revel meanours, resolute as to future leniencies. He even registered a determination to like Helen. The three took to talking over their winter plans almost geni- ally. The general scheme of things, as it evolved to the satisfaction of all, was to quarter at West Riding until after Christmas, and then return to town, that Lady Asburton might have a run at the New York season. Lord Mark was rumoured as about to descend upon them during the holidays. That was rather jolly, Craig thought. With the Evesham scion imminent to ease the strain of her ladyship's entertainment the chances were he could pull through till he and Constance were again left to their old round of mutual understanding and order. Thus it was when he encountered George Winters that fall in town, he was able to meet the experience squarely and with no apprehension as to future en- tanglements. They lunched together at Sherry's. George had just declared a spectacular bankruptcy in Paris, rushing over to New York directly after- wards to get the notoriety of it in proper perspect- ive. Craig, in his newly recovered sense of secur- ity, might have been accused of doing a little good- natured patronizing. He was able to meet George's " Happy, old man?" with a ringing "Absolutely." George had sighed a little at that, meditated a minute and then brought out: 192 The Sinister Revel " Egad perhaps matrimony i$ the thing! " " It is," Craig had affirmed, " and the only thing." Yes, he did feel superior. Poor old George! How sadly he'd bungled life! And he did look seedy ! But his spirits were in no way dampened by adversity. He was as amusing and jolly as ever. As coarse, too ! They took to recalling former exploits. Craig had long since passed the ticklish point of dodging reminiscences. There was much to tell for the two had not met since the notable evening in Deauville. Craig learned of Georgette's marriage to a young English lord. " A slick article, damn her ! " George had said. " The adored of her county," some con- servative paper had hailed her. Vivie was dead. Poor old Viv ! An ugly business in Vienna the pre- ceding winter ! Cecil was booked for a trip to the States during the winter. "Quite bald!" George had pronounced with a condescending air, and ran his fingers over his own carefully preserved locks with bland satisfaction. Then there was the Comtesse de Lavergne but that had come out in all the papers. And did Craig remember that little dancer they picked up at Nice ? Oh! the Duke was reported in India. And that young Austrian they had visited some- where in the Tyrol Well, by God, he shot himself 193 The Sinister Revel in Monaco ruined. A woman; no, a horse George's narrations were always enhanced by the insecurity of his detail. Craig listened. There were names that meant nothing to him. Faces and incidents had become blurred. But he encouraged George to talk on and on. The fact that he could take the old life so objectively brought an immense satisfaction he chose to prolong. The lunch had terminated comfortably. Craig drank but little. As they were parting he had of- fered to help George out financially. "Just till you get straightened out!" he had added to ease off the situation. George's sensibilities, however, were not over delicate; he managed to bear up admirably under the ignominy of having to accept the proffered loan. A loan as between friends, of course, precluding set- tlement ! Yes, there was one other little thing Craig could do for George. Natty Weyburn! George couldn't afford to keep him on; could afford even less to let him go, the scoundrel! This last with the most comprehensive of winks ! If Craig would take him on for awhile just till all this beastly hue and cry was over A thing very simple of adjustment ! Craig rather jumped at the offer, feeling the advantage very much on his side. Poor old Horton was getting feeble; the stables had undoubtedly gone off. His stud had 194 The Sinister Revel come to mean less and less to him since his mar- riage, but there was a certain pride in wishing to have things right for the arrival of Lord Mark. As he remembered, Lord Mark had the reputation for knowing horses, if nothing else. The deal was closed, all details left to George's discretion. Natty was then in Vienna. Or hang it all was it Geneva? " No hurry! " Craig had said, and dismissed the subject. He urged a week-end at West Riding. George had grimaced. " Lady Asburton's with you?" Craig confessed it. George decided for Hot Springs All passing trivial, but the incident of Weyburn was to be made the giant issue between Craig and Lady Asburton. He had mentioned tentatively that night at din- ner his encounter with Winters. The topic had passed with little comment to Craig's great relief. He was used, even during periods of armistice, to having every subject he saw fit to introduce turned against him. That of Winters bristled with possi- bilities, but her ladyship let it pass. Even as he exulted, however, the storm broke from another quarter about his head. He had gone on to speak of his acquirement of Weyburn, quite by the way and without attaching any significance whatever to the incident. He had thought of Weyburn purely and 195 The Sinister Revel simply as an expert trainer, a higher servant. It was for Lady Asburton to interpret him in uglier terms. Weyburn! The spark was struck; the old an- tagonism flamed the higher for the weeks of smouldering quiescence. Craig realized too late he had made a mistake. The man was notorious. Had he considered be- fore his lurid reputation But with Lady Asbur- ton barking at his heels it was too late now to re- tract. That first scene became confused with dozens of others, harsh, bitter scenes. It was in Lady Asbur- ton's power to bring out the worst in Craig. He surprised himself in little meannesses; he was petty, capable of a snarl. Lady Asburton plied him with example after example of Natty's perfidy. There was the matter of young Lord R ; the de Vieu- ville scandal And as for his relation with George Winters Her Ladyship grew less nice in her choice of words as she warmed to her subject. She called the man starkly a procurer, a pander. " But damn it all " cried Craig, inflamed to resistance at any cost, " the man's a servant. What have his morals to do with me? " " But the child " Ah, there Lady Asburton had the advantage ; how much so Craig came to realize as Constance sud- denly threw off her conciliatory guise and stood forth again clear of decision, calm of attitude. But this ,196 The Sinister Revel time Craig was to feel the steady force of her strength aligned against him. Lady Asburton had reached her at last through the child. There were times as Craig faced the two women when the identity of the one he loved merged com- pletely with that of the one he hated. The same cold critical eyes, the measured words! Bloodless, he pronounced, with all the while a grip at his heart, for he knew that back of it all Constance was there for him as she had always been, dear beautiful vision ! It was because he realized Lady Asburton's presence was working gradually to an obscurity of that vision that he completely lost his head. It was as if something had suddenly failed in; the essential confidence of life. He ended by blindly, stupidly deeming Weyburn the real is- sue. " Weyburn ! By God, I'll have Weyburn if it wrecks my whole life ! " So he had cried one night as he flung out of the house in a great rage. It had been the usual scene at dinner, different only in that it was destined to be the climacteric one. A steady goading on Lady Asburton's part, in- solence on Craig's ! Then beside himself at last, he had jumped up from the table with an oath, tipping over a glass of claret in his violence. He remem- bered that scene so vividly afterwards, the expres- sion on the face of the old butler, the red stain on the dead white of the cloth; the tense second his eyes 197 The Sinister Revel had held Constance's, before she turned in calm self- possession to engage Lady Asburton in some casual small talk. The footmen took up again their noise- less service and Craig was left to blunder, awkward and raging, out of the room. He had taken the train to town that night with the idea of getting drunk, beastly drunk. Yet he was singularly disinclined. Pathetic, this determination to do something dreadful, quite unsupported by in- clination! The perverse desire to outrage decency that was it! It is indicative of the life Craig had been lead- ing for four years that he was strangely nervous and uncertain as to ways and means of carrying out his intention. He simply hadn't mixed with the fast element that knows the New York game. He dropped in first at the Union Club and looked about. Everything dull and safe there ! A group of men hailed him at one point; a detached individual greeted him at another. He made his way to a remote corner and sat down. He had just passed Sargent's portrait of his father in the outer lounge; the eyes seemed to follow him. He mused a little sadly. Then suddenly he brightened. His mother ! Tony! Lili! He'd go home and spend the night. He'd been neglecting them lately. It was exactly the thing he wanted to do. A couple of days and he'd get his nerve again But Mrs. Van Dam was at the opera. Mr. Tony? The butler wasn't sure about Mr. Tony. The Sinister Revel Tony never would give you a clue as to his where- abouts, enshrouding his slightest move in a mystery that might have covered a Louis XV intrigue. Yes, Miss Lili was in. The footman would send word Craig preferred to go directly up himself, how- ever. He was just as glad that it had turned out this way. He felt suddenly tired. A quiet talk with Lili and he'd go right to bed. He hadn't been sleep- ing well lately. The door of Lili's sitting-room was ajar. He tapped lightly and then went in. The fitful glow of a fire on the hearth greeted him. Dim lights, each with its little orb of brightness merging to dusky shadows! Craig stood still a minute and drew a deep breath of tired content. The teeming irritations of the last few weeks seemed suddenly so remote, so incredible of accident. He took a step toward the fire. As he did so a slim figure de- tached itself from the general blur of objects. " Lili ! " he said and read his mistake at once in the strange tense eyes that smiled back into his. Then memory startled. The tiny face, the hair in dark confusion He had broken into a laugh, con- fused, pleased, amused. " The little Mimi! " he cried and took both her hands. She, too, laughed an odd little laugh as they stood looking at each other with surprised intent. Then she drew her hands away. 199 The Sinister Revel " I am tired," Craig had said. Irrelevant, but one had to begin somewhere. " Ah ! " The yellow light in Mimi's eyes soft- ened. " I am sorry, so sorry ! " She spoke with an inimitable little accent that made her sympathy the more appealing. "Won't you sit down?" She indicated the divan. Craig sank deep in a corner. Mimi settled on a low footstool. How tiny she was, almost sickly with her great dark eyes aglintl Again the image of the little girl under his horse's hoofs, and that strange stir of forgotten feelings! But she was becoming conscious of his too prolonged scrutiny. He roused himself to offer her a cigarette. They made play at lighting up. But always he was aware, intensely aware, of her eyes with their eerie flicker. He found himself watching them with a curiosity suddenly sharpened even as he was able to bring himself to follow her casual lead. Reminiscences were in order. " You jerked my arm. I can never forgive." He was contrite, admitted himself a brute. " But you were such a baby ! " he could only plead in extenuation. " My dignity was imperilled." " I had marked preferences even at six," Mimi had mused. He smiled his appreciation at her. " You seem," he said, and his eyes took in quite thoroughly her slight proportions, " not so very much older now." 200 The Sinister Revel She met this with puckered brow. "You mean your dignity is still imperilled?" " If it were only my dignity," he had murmured. Then they both laughed at his schoolboy tactics. Mimi veered a little now. " You know I have followed your every move since. The newspapers " Craig was sobered. He looked at her curiously. " It must have made ugly reading " Mimi shrugged at that. " Le roi s'amuse ! " she said lightly. Then rising, as if suddenly aware of formalities overlooked, she had broken again into her charming French. Lili was ill, had gone to bed with a headache. If he liked Craig admitted that he would like, and Mimi disappeared. A second later he was summoned to Lili's room. The scene was a familiar one. That Lili should have headaches in her fragile way he took for granted. His mother always had; it went somehow with their lovely dependent type. He took in with a sense of nice intimacy now the dainty Fragonard room, Lili in a filmy gown, her golden hair loose about her shoulders. She had drawn him down to kiss her. He was vaguely aware of flowers some- where, drapery blowing gently at a window. Then suddenly his eyes met Mimi's, as she sat at a dressing table, toying idly with the gold things. 201 The Sinister Revel There was a quick sensatory interchange, a second's illumination of vivid understanding. It passed, but it left Craig with a haunting sense of peril. That sharp pang of desire evoked by the little Mimi con- stituted a great injustice to Constance. Constance ! Her image presented itself now like something dramatically recalled, fine and generous, a refuge from temptation. And all the while he was staring wide-eyed at the little Mimi, muttering he must go home. Lili had again pulled him down beside her, was smoothing his hair. " You look wild, Raggy," she was saying. " Are you drinking now? Ah, no! You can't go. You must stay all night. Talk to me for a while, or else take Mimi somewhere to dance." Mimi's eyes, as he ventured to meet them again, indorsed the invitation, but Craig, almost in a panic, protested he had to go. " Some other time 1 " he kept repeating stupidly. " Some other time ! " He remembered vaguely kissing Lili good-bye. Mimi had murmured " A bientot." Then he was in a train plunging quickly back to West Riding and Constance. In Constance's presence only did he feel he could lose that sense of insecurity that had come to him so strangely. He would go to her as he had in the beginning when she had dispelled all doubt with her sweet benignity. In the contemplation of her as she 202 The Sinister Revel had been then, he lost all consciousness of the weeks that had worked to their estrangement. She was as essentially his salvation now as she had been then. He was all unstrung, his nerves on edge. The trip seemed interminable. The footman who let him in saw his plight, hastened to get him some brandy. He could hardly steady his hand to hold the glass. Then he had stumbled upstairs to his own room. The faint streak of light under the door leading to Constance's dressing-room brought an infinite sense of relief. She was there, and alone for he heard her moving softly about. That steadied him. He went to the door with a great thankfulness in his heart, but even as he put his hand on the knob, the key had been turned with a grating click. " Constance! " he cried as if the word had been wrung from him with a sharp pain. " Constance ! " The strange, almost uncanny silence in the next room was his only answer. He "fumbled the knob blindly. Then with a great rush of anger and disbelief and despair, he threw his whole force against the frame of the door. It resisted stoutly, hurling him back with violence upon his own strength. He was stunned for a minute, reaching out uncertainly to steady himself. Then, trembling with mortification, aghast at the signifi- cance of it all, he had felt his way to a chair by the window, and sat staring stupidly out into the black- ness of the night. 203 Part V Chapter XIV In the days following Constance's definite exclu- sion of him from her room, Craig was too stunned to think at all. He accepted the decree of exile dumbly, without thought of reprieve. After those first few moments of defiance and protest had come a hopeless feeling of finality. There was no sense of a crisis precipitated, of a thing done that might be undone. Craig, still, with all youthful simplic- ity, believed in Fate. It was Fate, then, that had closed down upon him so irrevocably. It was sim- ply life, that was all, so inexorable toward those who dispute its detestable tenets. The other married men he knew I He had con- demned what he judged their laxity, developed, in the smug security of his own happiness, an unchari- table sneer for their vagaries. He had seen his friends divorcing and being divorced, making love and remarrying. He had watched the growth of the mistress problem, thrusting relentlessly into the so- cial order with an ever-recurring demand for recog- nition. He had come to believe such things were im- moral, objectionable, unnecessary and contemptible. Now he was beginning to see them as simply in- evitable. Had he judged himself in the wrong; had he 207 The Sinister Revel deemed Constance mistaken; had he continued even in his blame of Lady Asburton, there might have been still an incentive to readjustment. As it was he saw himself in all helplessness but a phase in the great disintegration of moral force going stead- ily on behind the surface interplay of individual lives. He found himself contemplating men like John Wellington Schuyler with the deep sympathy of un- derstanding. And Morgan Bleecker, his father's friend Not that Craig, in the formal existence he and Constance now came to live together, felt he was in any immediate danger of falling into the customary disorders of the men of his class. The swift per- ception that had come to him that night in Lili's room, the vision that had driven him back to Con- stance, had strangely enough been lost in the very crisis it had helped bring about. So Craig felt himself in no imminent danger. It was simply that the wonder and glory of a beautiful relationship had been spoiled. Yet, it was not this sense of hopeless waste, of fine possibilities marred for ever, that depressed Craig the most; it was the little things, the details that pointed so deliberately and so pathetically his exclusion. The little Henry had been threatened with whoop- ing cough; Craig was doomed to hover awkwardly on the outskirts of all consultations. Then there was the day the child appeared in a 208 The Sinister Revel queer little something called an Oliver Twist, diminu- tive trousers buttoned tightly to a still more diminu- tive blouse. He had twisted his face into an odd smile as his eyes met his father's. "Pants!" he had said, and then chuckled as if fully aware of the absurd figure he cut. Craig had snatched the child in his arms and kissed him again and again. Poor Craig! He was too drunk that night to come down to dinner. Then Lady Asburton and Constance were for- ever coming and going. One or two nights in town every week! Craig was simply ignored, left to glean what details he could from desultory dinner talks. He was no longer given the satisfaction of making a violent scene. An apathetic politeness was instituted that overrode every topic he saw fit to throw out by way of opposition. Not even the safety valve of a faint damn or two was left him. His force, compressed, was working to a dangerous ferment. Then it was the little Mimi came again into his life, Mimi and the strange perversity of the passion she aroused in him. He had been thrown at a most critical moment back upon himself and his turbulence. And Mimi well Mimi was all a part of that turbulence. Mimi and her dark eyes with their eerie light of suppressed emotions ! So often she seemed just a great mood, his mood ! Her petulances, her depressions, her inconsistencies 1 Constance had planned a house party, announced 209 The Sinister Revel it dispassionately one night at dinner. " That Helen might get to know the younger set better ." She had gone on to enumerate the guests. Craig listened indifferently till the mention of Mimi brought him up sharp with a quick flush. Lady Asburton had eyed him curiously. He found himself stammering out, " Let's make it a big party. Billy and Larry everybody ! We'll hunt." That Mimi's image with its strange intimations had been haunting him during the weeks of his unhappy isolation was evidenced in the perturbation he now felt at the suggestion of her presence. He felt a stir that was of the nature of a protest and yet a quickening interest. But it seemed as if a crowd, a big one, would be the only thing that could make the party bearable. To sit at the table with Mimi, to meet her feverish eyes " Ask everybody " he kept insisting. And he wasn't perfectly sure as he held out for numbers whether he was seeking to shield himself in a furtive something or fortify himself against temptation. Then before he could unravel the tangle of his feelings the party was in full swing. It had begun so innocently. The incidents of the first day stood out the more distinctly from the disaster of subse- quent events. It was the day before Thanksgiving with an old- fashioned snow weighting down the trees, piling into drifts. A buzz of excitement pervaded the house as 210 The Sinister Revel the young people stamped in; three, four or five at a time. The station wagon plied back and forth to meet the various trains. There was much warmth of greeting; bursts of laughter; a running back and forth in the corridors upstairs; a slamming of doors. " It's snowing ! " was generally acclaimed as each group made entrance. " I say, did you order it this way, Craig? " "Where's the baby?" "Who's here?" "Are we first? " " Haven't you done something to this hall?" and "Oh, can we hunt if the snow keeps up?" Craig's spirits responded to the warm intimacy of the scene. It was the first time in weeks he had felt in touch with humanity. He played the host all day with genial cheer. Then Mimi, Lili, and Tony were booked to arrive on the five o'clock. As Craig heard the station wagon approaching, he felt suddenly, unaccountably, nerv- ous. " Hell ! " he said as he sought to steady him- self; then plunging into the billiard-room dragged Larry out by a side door to view his new stallion. It wasn't till the others had all gathered in the hall that night for dinner that Craig could bring himself to put in a formal appearance. Simpson had found him irritable in dressing. Even when dressed he had delayed to the length of half a ciga- rette. He had halted on the landing, as he came down, 211 The Sinister Revel to get the scene in perspective. A gay crowd! The girls piquant and lovely in their gowns of il- lusive colouring, the men so slim and brown and straight I All chattering, laughing, eager for their fun ! Yet underneath vague and dim yet stu- pendously significant things, dangerous, interfer- ing Then he had seen Mimi sitting on a low stool, her eyes two dusky shadows in her tiny face as she mused into the fire. Her hair was piled high in dark confusion and she was all in brilliant orange, waving slowly a great orange fan of ostrich. Tony and William Manning were with her: Tony, shy and awkward; William, surly, calculating, deter- mined. Both had their eyes on Mimi. After that, Craig remembered nothing but Mimi, always, intensely Mimi. Mimi as she dominated the dinner table with her wild fire of wit, her whim- sical perversities; Mimi, daring everything in the saddle; Mimi, her dark eyes meeting his across a crowded room! She sang her little French songs, charming and mirthful. She danced ah, how Mimi could dance ! a gypsy revel, a crashing czardas, a dainty Chopin motif. And Craig Craig could only stand by and watch. They struggled yes, they did struggle and heroically to keep apart, only to react with a force stronger than their conscious wills. Unas- similated motives, perverse curiosities drew them to- 212 The Sinister Revel gether. They were seeking what was it they were seeking? Something too formless to define, something vague and irrelevant, yet a constantly re- curring demand. It was there, this strange haunt- ing solicitude, to fill each hour of the day; it was there with its dull urgency in the endless hours of the night. Besetting, interrupting, demanding I Yet when they were alone together, moments they struggled for, contrived, only their eyes indicated the intensity of their attraction. The words they stam- mered were stupidly banal. A passing flirtation! So Craig sought to justify himself. But even so, it would have been far, far easier for him had the little Mimi been less un- protected. She seemed so singularly alone ; her very freedom constituted a reproach. Mimi's mother! Craig recalled the scandal that had shaken all Paris some fifteen years before. He remembered Tony's round eyes as they had dis- cussed the matter over their school books, old Brain- tree hovering at the window, pretending not to hear. A Viennese lover, and Mr. Poitier had shot him I Craig remembered vividly how the thing had taken hold of him at the time. There was one newspaper picture in particular, Mr. Poitier, fine-drawn, nerv- ous, leaning slightly forward. " Pleading the great unwritten law " ; that had been the caption. A year later had come the announcement of the death of Mrs. Poitier in some remote Austrian town. She had died of grief, so Rumour carried. The 213 The Sinister Revel scandal had been revived smartly at the time, by way of paying tribute to the dead; then the Poitiers and their affairs had become veiled in itinerant ob- scurity. And now here was the little Mimi upon the scene with her feverish eyes, her heritage of high dramatic moments. A trivial flirtation! A game! Passer le temps, and who could gainsay him? All the while there was Constance looking on, the shadow in her blue eyes growing heavier with the pain of a great fear. And there was Lady Asbur- ton with her nod of confirmed suspicion; Tony, hurt, uncomfortable ; William with a snarl on his lips. Groups collected to gossip. The house party split in camps, each person condemning or condoning ac- cording to his own little light. Then one night, it was the night of the hunt ball, a night of costumes and music, a great crowd and high mirth, Mimi and Craig had found themselves in a recess of palms, somewhere, dangerously remote. They had not planned it; it simply happened that way. Their casual words dropped on the sudden; they had turned abruptly and faced each other, in- tensely aware that a crisis of one sort or another was at hand. By a strange chance they were both in Pierrot costume, a fact that fostered the strange illusion of merged identity. The eyes of the one seemed to mirror exactly the eyes of the other, turbulent, eager, fearful, reluctant. Mimi had 214 The Sinister Revel smiled bravely. Then everything went down be- fore the sweep of their emotion. Craig had Mimi in his arms and was kissing her, her shadowy eyes, her dusky hair, her sensitive lips, again and again. They clung together desperately with an abandon that seemed to make for the wild Tightness of it all. " Mimi 1 Mimi ! " was all Craig could cry to the insistency of his passion and crushed her to him the more as the dark eyes closed to the urgency in his own. Then as unaccountably as they had been drawn to- gether, they fell apart. Mimi had swayed a little and reached for a chair to lean on. She looked suddenly so tired, so weak, so helpless, her great eyes so tragic. Craig had a quick pang of contrition. He could only wait, mute and trembling, to give her the sec- ond's respite, to let her make of the scene what she would. She was so young, for all her eerie sophis- tication. They hung so, till she collected herself and smiled a queer wan little smile. " Le roi s'amuse ! " she said, echoing her own words of that first night. "Ah no!" Craig had protested; then realizing she wished to discount the scene by treating it flip- pantly, he fell in with her intention. He shrugged, drooped, as if to indicate his violence had quite spent itself. " Le roi est mort," he said. 215 The Sinister Revel At which, in gratitude for his generosity, she had quite unexpectedly brightened and placed a fleeting kiss on his lips. " Vive le roi 1 " she had said laughingly, but be- fore he could catch her in his arms again she had slipped away from him and was gone. 216 Chapter XV It was because Lady Asburton had been the one that next morning to break the news of Mimi's de- parture that Craig was to prove so unreasonable? He had seen no more of Mimi after the scene in the conservatory; she seemed to vanish completely though the mood she evoked remained during the hours of revelry that swept on to a wakeful morn- ing. Craig had risen early, nine o'clock it was, with an immense anticipation of the day. Any idea of trag- edy and disaster that might have haunted was soon dispelled in the crisp atmosphere of the winter's morning. It was the light note struck at the parting that lingered. " Vive le roi I " He smiled to himself at that, felt the brush of her lips on his. No clumsy af- fair there, nor mawkish sentimentality! Mimi was so essentially just Mimi, a bright something beyond the acquiescence of daily commonplaces. And then, then, he had found only Lady Asbur- ton in the breakfast room, who, bringing him up short in his eager anticipation, had announced that Mimi had gone. There was a note left to explain a sudden call from her father. But Craig took into account nothing but the cold exultation he read 217 The Sinister Revel in her ladyship's eyes as they mocked his disappoint- ment. So he had proceeded to get himself absurdly drunk, but not content to stop there had, by force of example as host, instituted a regular orgy. Tony fell in line ; so did Larry, Carly, Bronson, Simpson. Even William succumbed. Not a man was left sober. The scandal of it spread to town; the house party disintegrated. Indignant mothers telegraphed summons. West Riding! Good heavens, what next? And yet, of course, a man of Craig's ques- tionable record As Andre had said, "In the ashes live their wonted fires." Society argued Lady Asburton the bellows; but Andre shook his head. " La petite Mimi ! " he said. " Else why this California flight?" Quite true! There was the Poitier trip to be reckoned with. So it was the little Mimi with her dangerous eyes who had stirred in Craig his old dis- ordered perversities. A slip of a girl! Well there was no telling these days; scandal seemed no longer the matron's prerogative. Lady Asburton and Constance had withdrawn hastily to town and ensconced themselves at the St. Regis. Gossip as to a definite break flared, only to flicker out tamely when Craig a couple of weeks later himself came to town and joined quite con- spicuously the family group. It was a fact. Mrs. Anderson Prescott vouched for it; so did Mrs. Ham- 218 The Sinister Revel ilton Raleigh. The three could be seen any night, so these good ladies declared, dining en famille at their hotel or at Sherry's. Meanwhile the Poitiers were speeding westward. The realization that he was responsible for this sudden move was the thing that had eventually brought Craig to his senses and curbed his defiance. Mid-channel in the carouse into which the house party had resolved itself after the precipitate de- parture of the women, Craig had learned of the projected Poitier trip. Drunk, he had stormed into town and presented himself, a sorry spectacle, at the Plaza. His one thought was Mimi. Her dis- appearance at the very top moment of his interest in her had served only to inflame him. He remembered getting somehow to the Poitier apartment, sullenly determined, blindly regardless of appearances. And then then Mr. Poitier had met him, un- steady, trembling, a wreck of nerves. But the eyes were the same as in that old picture for all the strange glaze upon them. Morphine! Craig had heard the rumour, but forgotten it. The truth brought a compelling pity. This man, once so capable of splendid sacrifice ! But he was speaking. He said little, as if words were a stupendous effort. He asked simply and with all courtesy that Craig leave Mimi alone for a while, at least. By the light of that request Craig read with a sud- 219 The Sinister Revel den sharp contrition the sordidness of the thing he was doing. He had managed to get out, somehow, a minute later, overwhelmed with a terrible dismay at his own contemptible selfishness. He could find relief only in a sense of pitying protection for the little Mimi. The little Mimi ! His resolutions were violent ones. It was after this interview Craig had gone directly to the St. Regis and attached himself to Constance. The fact that he could do this, be received without question, taken in as an unexpected dinner guest is taken in, is perhaps the best indication of the wide divergence of their interests. Craig would have preferred intensely to be called to account. That he had been in the wrong he knew. He saw the orgy in which he had been em- broiled as a piece of childish stupidity and was pre- pared to admit it. He would have gained a certain satisfaction from self-abasement, relief from con- fession. But as it was a polite indifference, a cas- ual acceptance that chilled all generous impulse! They met, the three of them, to dine formally every night. Craig joined them at the theatre or opera afterwards. The rest of the time he was left to sulk at his Club. No opportunity to fight things out, no chance of readjustment! Never for one second did he see Constance alone ! It was the sort of relation that existed for dozens of his friends, a relation recognized, even encour- 220 The Sinister Revel aged, approved. For that reason there seemed nothing for it, in the end, but to submit dully; the very prevalence of the thing seemed to constitute an indisputable warrant for its necessity. "Tout le monde se marie; tout le monde s'ennuie." So Andre had croaked it once. " How detestable ! " Craig had thought at the time, but now, thrown continually back on his dis- content, he reflected bitterly, " How true ! " The last week in January Lady Asburton and Constance declared for a month at West Riding. Craig, for the simple reason he could think of noth- ing better to do, went with them. Then the belated Lord Mark had arrived, Lord Mark and, by one of those freaks of chance, on the same steamer Natty Weyburn. Natty had not par- ticularly relished George Winters' transfer of him to Craig. He remembered Craig at Deauville as for- ever putting him in his place with an easy insolence he could ill brook in one so young. Natty knew himself a servant in Craig's eyes; he was used to being something more. Still, the Van Dam millions were not to be ignored; they carried a conviction con- tinental fortunes quite failed of. Natty weighed it, then decided for. And after all, Craig might prove more amenable to suggestion now It was undoubtedly a stroke of luck for Natty that he and Lord Mark should book on the same steamer. He had smiled his obsequious smile at 221 The Sinister Revel the discovery, and then proceeded to stack his cards with an eye to his lordship's well-known little weak- nesses. It was for Lord Mark to take the initiative in a patronizing "Oh er Weyburn, isn't it?" This, the first night after dinner! A casual discussion of Longchamps followed, all by way of preliminary, as Natty too surely gauged, to an " Oh, I say, is she with you? " and a stupid stare in the direction of an auburn-haired fair one hovering at innocent range. " Hum. Not exactly with me. Want to meet her?" Lord Mark was charmed; so was the lady, Cecily Pennell she called herself. " I've seen you before." Lord Mark always shone in preliminaries. She confessed to the footlights. " How awfully jolly ! " said his lordship. The lady showed herself communicative, almost, one might say, ebulliently so. She was on her way to visit a friend, Flora Hardy. Did he know Flora ? The most beautiful woman on the American stage. Oh, dear me, his lordship must certainly meet Flora. A perfect back! But what were his lordship's plans? And how long had he known Natty? Natty was a dear. So nice to run into some one on board you knew. There was something so cosy and intimate about shipboard acquaintance So it proved. When his lordship arrived in New 222 The Sinister Revel York, he and Natty were boon companions, not to mention the lady, who had done her utmost in the promotion of the general cheer. Yes, it had been cosy. As to the details Lord Mark could hardly wait to buttonhole his young relative with a salacious wink his first night at West Riding. " You see, old man, she " Craig's reception of the anecdote was not at all what his lordship expected. There was even an air of disapproval conveyed, quite incompatible with his preconceived notion of the Van Dam code. A sudden moral simoom 1 But no, it couldn't be I Natty's presence was sufficient warrant for that. Diffident, by gad! It was for Lord Mark then, in all charity, to put Craig at his ease. The immediate method em- ployed was to leave him entirely alone while his lordship spent his time in the stable regions. Nat- ty's quarters over the tan-bark ring proved of far more potent attraction than the big house. There were trips to town with Natty, trips to neighbouring centres. Craig looked on, silent, disapproving, but what was there to do? For Natty in dealing with him was open to no criticism whatever. He man- aged to strike just the neatest attitude of genteel servility, a sort of well-bred deference. It was: " Will you come out and have a look at the new horse, sir?" with just the right touch of the hat. Or " The new groom's no good, sir. Would it be possible " The nicest shading of tentative sug- 223 The Sinister Revel gestion! Craig could not help being grateful to him for not pressing an advantage Lord Mark's latitude made possible. " The man has a level head," Craig said to him- self again and again. " Thank God for that! " Lady Asburton, also, seemed to recognize some- thing as due to Weyburn. She became comfortably tolerant, even encouraging the intimacy between him and Lord Mark. Constance, however, still pre- served her rigour of attitude, as if her ladyship's incipient leniency threw the greater responsibility on her. Though gracious in her efforts to make Lord Mark feel at home, on the point of the trainer she was unyielding. She so distinctly classed him. She refused pointblank to patronize the stables, gave up her riding. She found the little Henry and his nurse lingering outside the ring one day; she began immediately, close lipped and secretive, to ne- gotiate for a town house. Even Lord Mark, for all his stupidity, sensed her opposition to Natty, sought to overcome it in subtle dinner converse. Natty became, to the awkward- ness of all concerned excepting his lordship, an ever recurrent theme. Extravagant praise was in or- der " Natty is so so you know good hearted. And by Jove, generous, too ! " Craig was to discover more in regard to that gen- erosity. Natty was lending his lordship money. He took occasion to interfere. 224 The Sinister Revel " Oh, if you look at it that way, of course of course ! " His lordship was very bland. " Yes, after this I'll come to you. A little short just for the present you understand A horse, excellent horse, I backed at Vichy this fall " The end of February they all moved to town on Constance's initiative. She had leased a house on her own responsibility, a fact that made Craig feel more than ever a negligible quantity in the equation of her existence. The season, and it proved a gay one that year, was in full swing. Lady Asburton was generally feted; she and Constance were continually dressing, going out to this or that. Craig tried to do the decent thing, too, which seemed to consist of rushing madly about in motors, paying unsatisfactory visits, dining brilliantly, going to the theatre, meeting in lobbies. He dropped into half a dozen places a night, seemed ever in a state of going on somewhere else. He drifted into several flirtations that meant nothing to him. All forced, artificially stimulated I There was Mrs. Tim Watson, a pretty, pretentious little creature. When Craig discovered she considered a liaison imminent he chucked it all in disgust. Then there were the debutantes. They sought him out with a furtive curiosity that argued illicit dreams. And even the older women, those he had always deferred to as to his mother Yes, he was a target. That realization forced 225 The Sinister Revel itself eventually. How could it not? The reaction was inevitable. He had turned about in exaspera- tion and thrown his lot in with Lord Mark, who, having evaded every social demand from the be- ginning, had put the weeks to good advantage in the city's great half-world. There was an auction one night at the Horse Ex- change, a dinner afterwards. Craig had sullenly suffered himself to be included. It was exactly the sort of thing into which George had initiated him on the Continent; of a certain cheap brilliancy, vul- garized by the most intolerable interpretation of re- lationship. Craig knew most of the men, all of indifferent age and reputation. The women were exactly what he expected, Cecily and the others of her kind. Lord Mark was obviously in pursuit of the Hardy woman. Blonde, of a plastic beauty, she was lovely to look at. But stupid, God, how stupid ! Craig could find nothing to say to her. She had eyes like a great dumb animal. There were dozens of women and girls present at those parties that winter, Broadway's most " fas- cinating sirens." Craig took them all like passing figures in a gaudy pageant. They touched him no more than the masques in any Mi-careme festivity. He usually looked in on an affair, lingered with care- less indifference and then went home. Anything to pass the time, to divert him And at the heart of it all was the secret of his 226 The Sinister Revel passion for Mimi, thrusting relentlessly into his every thought, colouring his every mood. It was this with its haunting insistency that drove him on from one thing to another. He was striving what was he striving for in this senseless round of activities? Those weeks were full of the quality of time and energy wasted, of insecure resolutions. Mimi ! It could not be ; it must not be ! The months passed. Rumour drifted that Wil- liam Manning had attached himself to the Poitier party; the conclusion seemed obvious. It was with a quick stab of pain, a confused protest that Craig had heard the news. Then with the Poitiers suddenly back in town, he found himself his desire quick- ened, unreasoning, desperate at the end of his renunciations. 227 Chapter XVI Society, as it came to watch the affair that spring, interpreted it in the usual terms of conventional in- trigue. Mimi and Craig became a public scandal. Of course Craig should have waited till Mimi was married. Rather hard luck for Jean Poitier 1 Was William still in the running? And how did Conny take it? If any one had put in a claim for the innocence of the two young people involved, it would have been greeted as an hilarious sally. For had they not been discovered, the incorrigible ones, riding daily in the Park, taking tea a deux at indiscriminate places? They danced the length of many a program to- gether at the different balls. Disgraceful, quite ! " And if we all know so much " Mrs. Tim Wat- son was unusually emphatic for her " just fancy what we don't know! " Before the profundity of logic like this, argument is helpless. The affair could not be otherwise than the accepted liaison. However, in spite of everything that was said and delicately left unsaid, in spite of evidence most in- criminating, Mimi and Craig were not lovers. They had been so intensely glad to get back to each other, yet singularly shy and timid in the expression 228 The Sinister Revel of their feelings. A snatched embrace, a capricious caress, an endearment but faintly murmured They said little that was worth saying; the haunt- ing awareness of each other's presence was sufficient. They met on impulse, yet their impulse had in it a certain necessity. They had no idea they were con- spicuous, that people were talking. They found themselves included in the same week-end parties. They were unaccountably confronted with each other on yachts or at mountain camps. They accepted it all simply with no realization they had come to be looked upon as one of those pairs of illicitly cor- related figures Society invites together. Theirs was a passion illusive for all its urgency. The tensest scene was apt to end in a light jest. Mimi would laughingly turn away to arrange her tumbled locks ; Craig would stoop to pick up a fallen hairpin. They were eager yet reluctant, their de- sire strangely perverse. Small wonder Society did not understand; Mimi and Craig themselves had only a dazed perplexity at their predicament. Then suddenly the realization was started that scandal was afoot against them, had been for some time. It came to Craig at his Club. Lili took Mimi aside. " Why can't you be a little more careful, dear? " she had asked. It was of Mimi's peculiar evasiveness that she should run away after that. She and her father went to a Camp in the Adirondacks where she wrote 229 The Sinister Revel Craig of doing healthy out-of-door things, walking, fishing. " To exorcise the demon of unrest," she had said. " No, I'm not coming to Newport. The Ander- son Prescotts' for September " It was only Mimi's way of asking for time. What could he do? The very indirection of her plea gave it the greater potency. Craig was to discover during the months that followed that Mimi absent was more tormenting than Mimi present. Always that haunting solici- tude ! The end of the summer found him reckless, defiant. He had told himself in the beginning he must think. But he could not think; he would not think. He shut his eyes to the fact that Constance must know. As for that, however, he didn't care if she did. Damn it all, she'd closed her door on him. It was as if, he tried to reason, she no longer existed for him. He met her, as he met Lady Asburton, indifferently. They lived under the same roof; that seemed to constitute the only bond. There were times when he was aware of nothing but his intense need of Mimi. The interpretation Society had put upon their relation was to prove a dangerous one for him through its very power of suggestion. " The Anderson Prescotts' in September." Meanwhile July and August had to be covered. There was the usual round of summer things, with 230 The Sinister Revel here and there a dip, harmless enough, into Lord Mark's world. His lardship's " set " had strangely enough migrated complete to Narragansett. The Hardy woman had taken a cottage there. Cecily Pennell was at a neighbouring hotel; so was Lorraine Comstock. They became at once the focal point of interest at polo, on the beach. Cecily's red hair, Flora's back, Lorraine's dark eyes, all engrossing topics to the masculine world, gathered there for just such commendable discussion. Speculation ran rife. Lord Mark George Winters Carly Andrews! A tremendous amount of money in- volved somewhere ! Then rumour had it The Idler was in, that long white yacht just over there. Ah 1 The Idler! Field glasses were plied assiduously from hotel piazzas, from the beach pavilion. It was all quite simple of explanation after that. Come to think of it, nothing but the Van Dam mil- lions could have hushed up that disgraceful dinner during Yacht Club week that had brought even Nar- ragansett a startled gasp. In reality, however, Craig suffered himself to be dragged into Narragansett activities very little. To be sure it was his money that was floating the party, but the moral responsibility was Lord Mark's. Since Craig's tentative suggestion that his lordship come to him when in need, much money had changed hands. Craig had the novel experience of being entertained, when he went to the Pier, quite lavishly 231 The Sinister Revel at his own expense. It was rather amusing, but the humour of the situation seemed quite lost on his lordship. Flora Hardy, likewise, seemed unaware of any incongruity in the arrangement. Did she, by any chance, think his lordship a Croesus? Then came the astounding revelation direct from Lord Mark himself, that for all the money squan- dered on the lady's entertainment she remained ob- durate to his every advance. " It's all damned nonsense," Lord Mark had said fretfully. " I'm as good as another." Craig had thought so, too, when it came to a woman of the Hardy type. He felt in a way they had both been tricked and by a " cow of a woman." So he took occasion to mention the subject to Natty. " No, his lordship will never make it," Natty had responded, as he met Craig's eyes quite frankly. " Why not? " Craig demanded. " She's out for big game," Natty had said, a world of significance in his quiet tone. Craig flushed hotly. After that he kept away from the Pier. The first of August he went to Tuxedo for a couple of weeks with Billy Severn. Then a jaunt in Canada by himself! September! Thank God, the summer was over. With a quickened impulse, a confused anticipation, he had returned to New York. A wire from Colby Beach awaited him at his Club. " Stag party Berkshires r- Come any 232 The Sinister Revel time " The thing was well staged. Colby and the Anderson Prescotts were neighbours. Mrs. Anderson Prescott's house party at Lenox was a brilliant one. Mrs. Prescott at no time was hampered with many ideas of convention. When playing the role of hostess she was hampered by none at all, a fact which worked out very much to the pleasure of those she gathered together. She fur- nished the setting, a most charming one, and every facility for enjoyment; the guests followed their own vagaries. Mimi was a great favourite of Mrs. Prescott's. There was that in her ready zest of amusement, in her quick wit and free thinking that gave, as Mrs. Prescott confided to her husband, " a continental air to things." " I've asked her for the whole of September," Mrs. Prescott had announced. At which Andy had disconcertingly exclaimed: "How about Craig?" Now Mrs. Prescott liked Craig. Everybody did; that is, all the women. But she had watched his af- fair with Mimi apprehensively. It was too precar- ious a matter for a young girl, with no money to speak of and a father apt to die any moment, to get herself entangled with a man as notorious as Craig. Mrs. Prescott, it must be understood, was not nar- row; if she was condemning the affair it was purely and simply on an economic basis. She considered it 233 The Sinister Revel her mission for the present to bring Mimi to a proper appreciation of her situation. Matrimony as a pro- tection Mrs. Prescott felt herself in a position to do the theme justice. The trend of the lady's thoughts may be guessed from a little exchange with her husband a few days before Mimi's arrival. " About how much is William Manning worth? " she had asked pensively. " Two or three million ! " answered her spouse. " Why? Planning to make a touch-down? " Andy could be so coarse at times. Mrs. Prescott dashed off a charming little note to William. Would he join them? They were going to hunt a little. Some dear girls ! Madeleine Kemp and Nina Wilcox, Mimi Mimi arrived a couple of weeks before the others. It was surprising how much she came to learn in a short time of Craig's summer escapades. " That red-haired Cecily creature ! The Eng- lish actress, you know. What was it, Andy, you heard at the Club last week? Something disgrace- ful as I remember. Oh, yes about the bathing party " And " Of course Craig's backing that whole gang at the Pier. As far as that goes, though, I can forgive a man a mistress or two, but they do say Mrs. Tim Watson, etc., etc. " When William arrived he found a gentler Mimi 234 The Sinister Revel than he expected, seemingly less defiant, of a more yielding grace. Mrs. Prescott was delighted at the turn of affairs; her scheme seemed near fruition. "A week or two more!" she reflected. Then with a sigh, " But I won't feel quite easy till they're married. Mimi is so so " She could only re- sort to her old expression " so continental." Then one morning had come a note for Mrs. Prescott from Colby. " Incorrigible as ever ! " she exclaimed as she read: " Know, dear neighbour, we are hunting tomor- row. Respectably so I swear it and solicit your presence. Come and bring the young charges." " Respectably so! " murmured Madeleine Kemp. " Hardly an inducement from Colby's viewpoint." " He's putting a stag party on later in the week," volunteered Jack Harding. " All values are rela- tive " Marie Wainwright wanted to see Colby's new lodge and declared for going. Mrs. Prescott took a vote with the result that two o'clock saw half a dozen of the party galloping off to the meet. William had demurred, but Mimi insisted a cross-country run was the only solution to her morning's mood. " I feel so so suppressed today! " she had said almost plaintively, at which even William had to smile grimly. There were gathered at Colby's new hunting 235 The Sinister Revel lodge some twenty men and women. The brilliant colour of the men's coats flashed in and out of the trees. There was a mingling of light laughter with the neighing of the restive horses and the barking of the dogs. As Mimi held her horse in check and responded to the banter of her host, there appeared in a clear- ing on a slight rise of ground another horseman. The careless droop of the shoulders, the ease of gesture Mimi gave a quick start, even as Colby quite broadly laughed at her. " Young Lochinvar has come out of the west " he joked and then cantered off to give a few last di- rections. Several other belated ones appeared. " Train's just in," Bronson Todd was explaining at large. The round of greetings was somewhat hurried as the aniseed had already been trailed and the dogs were straining at their leashes. Mimi and Craig avoided even a casual exchange of for- malities. Then they were off. The dogs were released with yelps and a headlong rush. The horses plunged after them. It was a glorious fall day with just enough breeze to whip the blood into action. Over ditch and hedge they dashed, crashing through the underbrush of the wooded lanes, out over the open expanses. Mimi was conscious of the whole thing but vaguely. She plunged on and on. At first William 236 The Sinister Revel was with her. Then she realized she had out- stripped him, that it was Colby now straining over his horse's neck to keep up with her. After that she was aware only of a blur of faces, although that of Seward Ross stood out more plainly than the others. She had aroused herself to express a faint surprise at his presence. " I thought you were fishing in Alaska," she had said. His answer was lost in the fresh crisp air. Then she was alone on an open stretch, until sud- denly a shadow loomed beside her. She knew it was Craig, but did not look around, only strained her- self to keener efforts. There was a stiff hedge at the end of the open. The two rode at it almost wildly. The horses rose together, cleared it with a desperate heave. Then even as the animals were struggling for a steady foothold, Mimi and Craig slipped from their saddles to the ground. A bright joyous look of under- standing and then they were in each other's arms ! All about them was the cool green of the country lane. " Mimi, Mimi ! " was all Craig could say with that intense sense of a happiness recovered. She closed her eyes with a sigh and yielded the more to his kisses. " It has been so long! " he protested, " so long! " She smiled her strange little smile. " Yes," she said. " Yes." He kissed her more insistently. 237 The Sinister Revel " Mimi ! " he had managed to stammer at last, "If if only " " If only what? " she murmured to his pause and opened her deep eyes quite steadily to the light in his. Then again with her odd tragic smile, " What does anything matter but just this " He had drawn her to him at that with a sharper in- tensity. But even as he did so, there sounded close by, clearly distinct, the call of the hunting horn. The notes cut in on their consciousness. They fell apart as the pounding of hoofs bore down upon them from the farther end of the lane. " Tomorrow! " Craig had said. " Yes, yes! " cried Mimi. " The old hunting lodge at three." " Yes." The two had made their saddles just as the rest of the party broke upon them with much noise and commotion. William looked quickly from one to the other. So did Colby. Several of the women exchanged glances. " Confounded dogs lost the scent, turned on their own trail " Colby was voluble. " Nice run, just the same. Carly took a nasty cropper, went home. Come on, Mimi, I'll race you to the lodge." William and Craig rode back slowly side by side, following the others, who scattered into groups. The two presented a signal contrast. Inhibitions controlled the one, impulses the other; yet for the 238 The Sinister Revel moment Mimi's peculiar fascination held them both. There was much they might have said to each other to mutual advantage. As it was, however: " Stunning weather! " Craig had brought out. William was more conservative, would not com- mit himself. He perused the heavens to the dis- covery of clouds. " There's going to be a storm," he said. Craig had the clouds pointed out to him. " Jove, I should say so. It's blowing up, too! " The weather disposed of satisfactorily, they rode the rest of the way in silence. When they reached the lodge they found Colby pleading with Mimi. " But the supper's the best part of the hunt, and we want you to dance for us " Mimi showed herself obdurate. " No," she said, " I'm tired. The others will stay." She avoided Craig's eyes almost furtively as he cantered into the circle. " I'll take Mimi home," William put in. Mimi glanced at his determined face. Bronson had interposed a remark to the effect she'd better stay, as in his opinion it was going to storm. Mimi found her inspiration. "Storm!" she exclaimed, "storm! Ah, then we'll have to make a run for it, William. Adieu, everybody," and with a quick laugh and a wave of her riding crop she was off. There were only six or seven at dinner that night, 239 The Sinister Revel so Mrs. Prescott was able to concentrate on each in turn. She found William unpleasantly sullen, Mimi erratic of response. Something undoubtedly had happened to strain a relation hitherto all harmonious. Mimi's stray reference to Carly's cropper brought Mrs. Prescott a glimmer of light. If Carly was on hand, an even chance Craig was, too; an accident quite out of the excellent lady's calculation. Now Mrs. Prescott knew something of youth's whimsies, to say nothing of the charm of men like Craig. One thing was perfectly clear prompt action was called for if he was lingering in the neighbourhood. So after dinner Mrs. Prescott tried to incite her two young charges to billiards. This device fail- ing, she lured them to the terrace and then promptly deserted. It was one of those strange sinister nights that come at times of equinox. Heavy clouds swept across the heavens; the air seemed fraught with forebodings and depressions. Mimi shivered invol- untarily as she looked up into the rush of blackness that appeared denser for the fitful light of a moon struggling in its depths. Tomorrow would un- doubtedly be stormy. She had roused herself at last with a supreme ef- fort to strike a bantering note. In that way only could she hope to escape the scene that had been impending so long. 240 The Sinister Revel " It wasn't done very deftly, was it?" she had asked. "What? "said William. " Just this " Mimi smiled. " You and I and the moonlight ! Mrs. Prescott " " Oh ! " William showed his comprehension. " You didn't think / was the strategist, did you? " Mimi continued and her laugh rang out genuinely now. This had wrested from William a smile. " Well then, in justice to our hostess's plan " he began. " I hate plans," Mimi had flashed. " You prefer impulses." " Certainly." The two looked at each other quietly. " I think, William," Mimi had brought out at last, " you'd have a better chance if you proposed some- time when I didn't expect it." She thought he would submit with his usual grim- ness. Instead, however, victim of a sudden flare of anger, he had seized her roughly by the arm as she turned away from him. " Mimi ! " he cried. " It's it's Craig! " At that she turned full upon him the quickened light of her strange eyes. " Yes ! " she said softly. " Yes, it's Craig ! " There was a sudden drop of the wind and a great stillness. Then the patter of the rain on the trees 241 The Sinister Revel swept nearer and nearer. A few large drops fell on Mimi's flushed face as she raised it in defiance. William could not stand that light in her eyes. He let her go and she turned to the approaching storm. "Isn't it wonderful?" she exclaimed and put out both her hands like a child to get the feel of the rain. But William was already at the door. " We'd better go in," he said curtly. " Come, you'll get cold." Mimi submitted with a sigh and the two passed into the French window. " You'll have to take her unawares," Mrs. Pres- cott had decided as late that night she forced William to consultation. " But I haven't a doubt you'll win out." William's only answer was to gloom for a while into the fire, but the relentlessness of purpose in his grey eyes made for the firmest support of his hostess's conviction. 242 Chapter XVII It was a wild night. Mimi lay awake staring into the darkness. Her surrender to Craig was not a surprise. The summer months had forced the con- viction with her, too, that the thing was inevitable. For six months she had been trying to bring her- self to marry William. Not to protect herself in an affair; to protect herself against. For Mimi, at first, with her tragic heritage, was full of strange fears and apprehensions. Her father's suffering in itself constituted a great reproach. But in the end everything that was reckless and defiant in her na- ture had risen to decry the ignoble compromise of a marriage of convenience. A compact of insinceri- ties and accommodations I Her passion had as- serted itself in contrast as a glorious freedom. To love, if only for a little while And always, every minute, the haunting image of Craig with his dark eyes and careless mouth! It was for the reason that she had decided defi- nitely against William's suit that she could bring herself these last few weeks to be so kind to him. Yet, she was afraid of William. He seemed at times the harsh impersonation of that very law and order she was seeking to defy. Life with him would 243 The Sinister Revel have meant the pitiless crushing out of everything warm and sentient in her nature. It was because he had seemed so implacable as he watched her on the terrace that she had declared so openly for Craig. " Yes, it is Craig! " she had said. So she lay in the darkness and thought. The scene in the lane was ever vivid in her mind, and her senses, so recently stirred by that swift embrace, showed still their fine capacity to throb. "Tomorrow!" The words seemed to echo from somewhere. Tomorrow and tomorrow ran through her tired brain till she realized with a stab that the day was probably dawning and tomorrow was now today. She rose and switched on the light. It was nearly four. She looked out of the window. The force of the storm had spent itself, but it was still rain- ing dismally. The dawn seemed a yellow, dirty thing as it struggled up back of the pines. Mimi had shivered a little and then huddled back to bed. Yes, tomorrow was now today, but how intensely she wished as she fell into a fitful sleep that it might have dawned of as brilliant sunshine as yesterday. The people gathered at eleven o'clock breakfast that morning reflected the dreariness of the weather. There were unmistakable signs of nerves everywhere, alarming tendencies to be quarrelsome. It took the greatest amount of tact on the part of Mrs. Ander- 244 The Sinister Revel son Prescott to keep her guests from actually brawl- ing in manner unseemly for a respectable house party. " If people feel this way, why under the heavens didn't they all stay in bed?" she commented to herself, all the while with a smiling graciousness ministering to the general need of coffee and news- papers. Conversation had been deftly steered out of the depths of Balkan politics, had been piloted carefully through the shoals of gossip. Mrs. Pres- cott was beginning to have hopes that breakfast might be safely achieved without any one's going on the rocks. At that point those who had stayed at Colby's for the hunt supper came trooping in. They pre- sented a somewhat haggard front. " Colby put us all up," Jack Bering explained. " It was raining so like the devil ! " " Such a party," drawled Madeleine Kemp. " We got away early," volunteered Cass Wil- lard. " Guests arriving on the eleven o'clock Colby thought it expedient the girls shouldn't meet " Mrs. Prescott raised her brows delicately. " Colby's learning discretion," was her only com- ment. " Well, I should hate to let my imagination run riot as to what's happening over there this rainy day! " said Madeleine with obvious ill nature. Mrs. Prescott was about to frown down the con- 245 The Sinister Revel versation at this point. Gossip needs, somehow, the dimness of candle light to soften its harsh out- lines. Breakfast is the last place Mention of Craig brought a swift perception, however, benefits might be derived from a frank expose. Mrs. Prescott turned right about face and gave the necessary cue to prolong the subject. " Made a fool of himself? How? And what women are they expecting? The Pennell creature, I suppose, and the Hardy woman, too " Mimi had gone to her room later to rest. The gossip had affected her not at all. Everybody knew Madeleine had made a desperate play for Craig's at- tention last winter and failed pitiably. And if Craig was drunk well Mimi smiled her odd little smile. That was one way of getting through the hours. No, nothing mattered, nothing except that she and Craig would soon be together in the old hunting lodge. At two o'clock, trembling, apprehensive lest she be discovered, Mimi got into a raincoat and slipped out of a side door. It would take not more than twenty minutes by the short cuts, but she decided to assure her escape early. A few minutes after she had disappeared into the thick drooping trees by the side garden, William Manning came out of the house. He had seen her and with all shrewdness had drawn his own conclu- sions. He went to the garage and asked for his motor. His chauffeur was not there. 246 The Sinister Revel " Never mind," he said, " I prefer to drive my- self." The men, idling about the place, looked at him curiously. " Bad day to get back to town, sir," one of them ventured, as he stowed William's bag in the back of the machine. " If you'd wait just a few minutes, we could find Baxter. Just stepped out " William said nothing. He got into the car, tested the engine. " Plenty of gas?" "Yes, sir!" He started off down the long driveway. For half an hour he wandered about vaguely in the rain, for the purpose of killing time, however, not from any indecision as to his destination. At last, looking at his watch, he speeded up. A few minutes later, he drew his car up by the roadside within fifty yards of Colby's old hunting lodge. Then very softly he made his way to the clearing. The lodge presented a dismal appearance. Colby had purposely allowed it to go to rack and ruin with the intent of making the place more picturesque. The roof sagged; the shutters creaked; the vines ran riot everywhere. On a bright day it was a charming spot to come across accidentally in the heart of the pines, but today, as William viewed it in the steady downpour, he was conscious only of the waste and useless decay of it all. The place had not been dismantled. The long 247 The Sinister Revel room where so many gay hunting parties had gath- ered in the past was still comfortably furnished. An old attendant slept in the place at night; during the daytime it was quite deserted except for a few itinerant lovers. William walked up the path that led to the piazza and quietly mounted the steps. The shutters of the long windows were closed but he could see through the chinks into the room within. Mimi was sitting, a huddled heap, in one of the big chairs by the fireplace, that seemed the more cheerless for the ashes of a fire that had once been there. She was evidently cold, for she had her feet drawn up under her and seemed to shiver in her big coat, that she had wrapped closely about her. The dark eyes were closed, but the whole figure, though relaxed, gave the impression of an intense expectancy. William turned away and sheltered himself in a shadowed corner of the porch. He, too, was intensely waiting. Half an hour later he came back and looked again. The slight figure moved a little restlessly as he watched it; there was a look of pain on the tiny face, that showed drawn and white in the dreary light of the half-closed room. And once she made a feeble effort to look at a little watch she had hung about her neck. Another half hour passed. William looked at his own watch. It was four o'clock. The rendez- vous he guessed was to have been at three. Craig 248 The Sinister Revel had forgotten. With a grim appreciation that this time luck was his, he went to the door, opened it and stepped in. The little figure by the fireplace gave no indication of having heard his entrance. He went over to her. She opened her eyes wearily and looked at him as if in no way surprised at his presence. It was almost as if she had expected him. Then, turn- ing her head away, she again closed her eyes. "Mimi!" " Yes " "You came here why?" His words were measured with care. " You know," she answered with her eyes still closed. *' Tell me," he pressed her sharply this time. At that she looked him full in the face. " I came here to meet Craig," she said. The words were steady; only the glowing dark eyes showed her pain. William smiled rather grimly. " Are you sur- prised he has forgotten? " That wrung from her a sharp little " Don't! " as with a despairing gesture she again turned away and closed her eyes. William looked at her. The long dark lashes rested heavily on the cheeks that appeared worn, almost emaciated in the dim fitful light. She seemed to feel his scrutiny for she moved restlessly. " Mimi," he said at last with an almost cruel 249 The Sinister Revel deliberateness. "Will you marry me now?" Then with an attempt at flippancy that quite failed: " I have the advantage this time of doing the un- expected." For a startled moment she opened her eyes to him, but in their fantastic glints he could read noth- ing. Then, burying her face in her hands, she had burst into uncontrollable weeping. William went over to the window. A few min- utes later Mimi's sobbing broke. William could see her wiping her eyes. Then she had risen and faced him. " You understand exactly why I came? " she de- manded. " I understand perfectly," William had said. " It makes no difference." She looked at him long and musingly. " Why do you want to marry me? " she asked at length. But he would give her no satisfaction. Perhaps, after all, he did not know. " That I do want to is sufficient under the cir- cumstances " he began. Another storm of weeping seized her, only for a brief moment, however. Then, " I am ready," she said, with a great weariness in her voice, " but it will have to be at once." William put out his hand quickly, then let it drop. He turned again to the window and looked out. " It's raining hard," he said in a matter-of-fact 250 The Sinister Revel tone. " My car is out there. We could make Wil- liamstown by seven o'clock." She had only a gasp for this and a white stare. "Shall we try it?" William said. " Yes," she had whispered faintly at last. " Yes." At that he had with a semblance of carelessness pulled up his collar and buttoned his coat. Then he had gone out and left her alone. It proved a terrible trip. For four hours and a half they rode through the dripping trees. The roads were rough and William lost his way time and time again. His coolness had suddenly deserted him; he became prey to a feverish excitement that robbed him of all power of concentration and sense of direction. They blundered about in the cold grip of the darkness. The woods seemed full of strange fears. Mimi sat huddled in her corner. She felt sick and weak. Once a lurching jolt of the big car wrung from her a whimper of pain. After that she slept for a while from sheer exhaustion. About eight o'clock a cluster of lights flashed out suddenly upon them and Mimi roused herself to ask the name of the village. It proved to be a small place within easy reach of Williamstown. More lights twinkled ahead, of almost sinister aspect in the steady downpour. Another village 1 At nine o'clock they reached Williamstown, and a half hour later were married in the little vestry 251 The Sinister Revel room of the old church with the minister's house- keeper and a decrepit sexton as witnesses. It was still raining when they came out. William helped Mimi into the motor and then got in him- self. " Good-night! " he called to the three old people grouped with their smiling banalities in the doorway. " Good-night 1" Mimi stared straight ahead till they had started. Then, suddenly overwhelmed with a feeling of dread finality, she had again given way to an uncontrollable sobbing. 252 Chapter XVIII It was Simpson, poor old Simpson, who bungled things this time. Craig had come home from the hunt in a state of turbulent excitement. He in- tended to go directly to bed after the hunt supper, but the rising storm made him restless. He spent the evening in one of the card rooms with Cecil Brenchley, who arrived on the eight o'clock. The two got themselves into a disgraceful state of drunk- enness as they sat and reminisced of Deauville orgies. When, about twelve o'clock, Craig crashed over the table of siphons and bottles to prove to Cecil he was still in the best of trim, some one had presence of mind enough to send for Simpson. But even when safely stowed in bed there seemed no rest for him. The wild agony of the night tor- mented him, and he could not sleep. God, how it rained! The old hunting lodge tomorrow, and Mimi with her strange, strange eyes ! But the wind in the pines depressed him. It rose and fell mono- tonously; the rain pattered on. He tossed himself almost to a delirium till Simpson toward morning took pity and resorted to the kindly chloral. Then Craig had fallen into a heavy dreamless sleep. He awoke late in the afternoon to the same dreary patter of the rain. It was quite dark. He peered at his watch on the night table. Five o'clock. The 253 The Sinister Revel day had not yet dawned then. His head felt dull, stupid; he could not think clearly. There were women's voices outside in the hall Then Simpson had tiptoed in, a complacent, "Well, well!" on his lips. The rest was all confusion, the wild panic of realization that it was afternoon and he was two hours late. He had cursed Simpson, cursed him- self, cursed everybody as he got into his clothes in violent haste. As he hurried down through the big hall, a half dozen women tried to intercept him but he stormed by, unheeding. He was conscious only of the glint of red hair The Pennell ! Then the party was on ! Damn it all, how he hated their shrill voices ! A horse was ready for him; he was trembling so the groom was obliged to help him mount. Then he started off with a reckless leap for the old lodge, but he knew as he mounted the steps Mimi was not there. One look around, and he was again in the saddle. Through the dripping trees he rode, this time in the direction of the Prescotts'. Mrs. Prescott was the only one down-stairs. Thank God for that! " Mimi ! " was all he could say. She looked at him compassionately. Poor fel- low! Obviously the worse for drink! She took him into her private sitting-room, administered a little absinthe even as she was sending a message to Mimi's room. 2 54 The Sinister Revel With the discovery of Mimi's absence, of Wil- liam's departure in his car, Craig had quite collapsed. He remembered only vaguely that Mrs. Prescott was very kind, that she had stood with her hand on his shoulder and told him he must make the best of it, if what they feared proved true. There were interminable hours during which a lot of people did a lot of telephoning with no results. Scouts were dispatched here and there. Mrs. Pres- cott made a brave story of it. " I'm afraid there has been a motor accident," she explained generally. " The roads are bad from the rain " But she knew the truth. So did Craig. So did everybody. Neighbouring houses and wayside inns were con- sulted. All quite useless ! Then the news came definitely. William had tele- phoned from the old Williamstown Inn. " A real romance ! " Mrs. Prescott had laughed over the phone. " You have furnished us excite- ment, William. Why not come back here for the honeymoon? " She had turned to find Craig on the point of leav- ing, already at the door. In the face of certainty he had been able to pull himself together. He wanted now to get away. But Mrs. Prescott showed dis- may. Then only did he get the significance of her sympathetic attitude. " Ah no," she pleaded. " Don't go. Stay here 255 The Sinister Revel all night." She again put her hand on his shoulder and smiled up into his eyes. He was conscious of her as a slender, satin-clad figure, with an unmis- takable invitation in her blue eyes. The incident disconcerted him. " No," he had muttered. " I must go. I prom- ised Colby " She scored in that she surrendered so gracefully to his rebuff. Her good-night, as he mounted his horse, was as careless as any one could have desired. He did not go back to Colby's at once. It had occurred to him that William, undoubtedly, in a mo- ment of grim exultation had telephoned the news there, too. He felt he could not meet just yet the mocking that would await him. So he had turned, sick at heart, to the old lodge again. It seemed even drearier than before. The keeper had returned now and let him in. " I want to rest here a minute," Craig explained. " Bring me some whiskey." The man made a feint at laying a fresh fire. " Let that go," Craig said impatiently. He wanted so intensely to be by himself. The man shambled off, returning a few minutes later with a bottle. Craig dismissed him generously, but even so the old man lingered. "Are you er expecting some one, sir?" he managed to make out at last with a furtive look in his old eyes. 256 The Sinister Revel " No ! " answered Craig shortly. It was this little incident together with the un- mistakable suggestion in Ann Prescott's eyes that worked to a quick and complete change in Craig's viewpoint. He seemed to find himself suddenly in a world of clumsy intrigue, of sneaking assignation. It disgusted him; it depressed him. He had come there to fight out his grief, but, instead, the wild pro- test, the hurt of disappointed desire seemed suddenly swallowed up in the realization of a sordid danger escaped. Illicit intercourse ! Yes, that was the thing he had planned to achieve. He sat there facing the ugly fact till he could almost bring him- self to a certain thankfulness. Mimi, with her will- o'-the-wisp charm, her illusive fascination! It would have been like pulling down to earth with a net something delicate and shimmering that should have floated always in rainbow mists. The torches about the wall burned on fitfully. The keeper shambled in once or twice to tend them. The evil in the old man's eyes ! Craig could not lose the sense of it; it haunted him. Evill There was evil everywhere. Evil in him, in Ann Prescott, in Colby and his whole dissolute crew. There was evil in everybody. Then, suddenly bringing with it a renewed faith, there arose in his tired, confused brain the old image of Constance. All the discords and defiances that during the months had blurred its brightness fell away. Constance! She was there, luminous and 257 The Sinister Revel pure, his answer to the world's evil. He felt an extraordinary accession of tenderness, a sharp re- morse. Yet above everything an infinite relief. He rested so, for an hour it seemed, content in a recovered security. The future shone forth with an even greater promise now, rising from the ob- scurity and dubiety of the past. He roused himself at last from his reverie. Yes, he would go back to Newport tomorrow. He rose to find he was shaking violently. He must have taken cold. An object on the floor caught his eye. He picked it up. It was Mimi's tiny glove, mute evidence she had kept her faith. His calm broke suddenly. With a sweep of the old de- sire for her, he found himself kissing that tiny gaunt- let with a wild protest at his loss. Then gulping down what was left of the whiskey, he had plunged with an oath out into the blackness. Colby's stag party was now fully mobilized, re- inforcements having arrived at intervals all during the day. There were about twenty in all, to say nothing of the Hawaiian singers, whose weird strains began even at teatime to echo through the house. Dinner had proved an hilarious function. The guests were ready for anything. When Craig blundered into the hall about mid- night, he was greeted with a wild shout. The sorry figure he cut as he stood there blinking in the light promised excellent sport. Be it said to William's credit, he had not telephoned Colby, but how was The Sinister Revel Craig to know that? He saw nothing but mocking in the eyes of those drunken men and women all gathered there to bait him in his misery. He'd show them, damn it all ! He staggered in, defiant. " He's drunk! " some one said. " Here ! " Brenchley cried and caught him as he swayed. That inflamed Craig the more. " Drunk! " he cried, infuriated. " Drunk! I'll show you if I'm drunk, damn you ! " He shook Cecil off with the ferocity of a wild animal. Then with a show of bravado he started for the stairs. He reeled; a laugh went up. He steadied himself only to lunge again. " Fifty-fifty he breaks his neck," a man's voice jeered. Another lunge ! But this time in a rage of morti- fication Craig realized he was done for. He clutched the air blindly to break the crash that seemed inevitable. Then suddenly he felt himself steadied. An- other laugh went up, this time of a better nature, and Craig realized he was encircled by two white arms that held him securely. His anger broke. He himself could see now the fun of his predicament. He laughed uproariously. Then, as his dazed vision cleared, he found himself looking into the dumb, kind eyes of the Hardy woman. He had started back unconsciously. She let him go. Then 259 The Sinister Revel feeling himself again swaying, he had caught her wildly to him. Another shout of mirth went up, as, leaning heavily upon her white shoulder, he had steadied himself to cry: "Drunk! I'll show you if I'm drunk!" And at that with a laugh he had again taken her in his arms and kissed her. 260 Chapter XIX Six weeks later Craig was on his way to West Riding. The orgy at Colby's had lasted ten days; the rest of the intervening time Craig had spent at his camp in the Adirondacks, alone, except for Simpson. His reckoning had been a hard one, in- volving the loss of his fundamental belief in chance in which he had inevitably taken refuge in times of emotional crisis. He saw now this chance as but a superstition of which he had been a victim from his earliest youth. He had blamed Fate for this or that, dramatically, protested himself not a free agent. Now, suddenly, it was as if he had cornered that Fate, forced it to unmask, and dis- covered simply himself. He was face to face now for the first time with his own weaknesses. To fight a temptation without is one thing; to root out an evil within, another. Craig was afraid. For this very reason he must go to Constance, tell her the truth. His need of her was far, far greater than ever before; the very urgency of it constituted a claim he felt she could not refuse to meet. He had wanted to go to her at once. But he had been miserably sick after that party. The cold he had caught racked him terribly. And besides, he wanted a little time. To go to her direct from that dissolute crowd was an impossibility. Only in 261 The Sinister Revel the clear mountain air could he hope to lose his sense of pollution. So he had lingered, and here it was the end of November. West Riding had never seemed more beautiful than it appeared the day of his return, an autumn sunset back of the old house. He had gone in, a little sadly. He encountered Lord Mark in the hall, an unpleasant reminder of Colby's party. " You should have stayed for the wind-up," his lordship began, but Craig cut him short. " Is Constance here? " he asked. Lord Mark nodded. He went directly to Constance's room. Her maid opened the door. He heard Lady Asburton giving directions. " Will you tell Mrs. Van Dam I'd like to talk to her in the library?" he had said. He had not realized he was so excited, but he found he could hardly control his voice. The maid returned. Mrs. Van Dam would be down immediately. Craig breathed a deep sigh of relief. He had feared, somehow, a refusal. As he went down-stairs he encountered one of the parlour maids. She purposely got in his way, and gave him an odd provocative look. The incident annoyed him. Lord Mark, doubtless There was a certain confusion in the drawing- room. He passed by and went to the library. A number of books had been taken from the shelves 262 The Sinister Revel and were piled about. He opened one of them, " The Return of the Native." He and Constance had read it aloud that first year of their marriage. He turned away quickly. On the centre table were some recent snapshots of Henry. He looked over them. The trembling of his hand showed his nervousness. Then, as he stood fumbling the pictures, he real- ized Constance was standing at the door. She rested a minute, her hand on the portiere, and then came calmly in. Craig tried to speak but could say nothing. The quick perception of how thin she was brought him a sharp pang. She looked ill and worn. There were fine-drawn lines about her mouth, shadows un- der the blue eyes. She seated herself on one side of the table and Craig sank into a chair on the other. " Constance I " he began at last in an unsteady voice, " Constance, I have something to tell you " She shaded her face with her hand a minute as if unable to meet the intense appeal of his eyes. Then " I have something to tell you," she answered and her voice gained strength with the words. " Let me speak first." Then as they sat there facing each other, she had stated, quite clearly and with a legal precision that would have done justice to a practised lawyer, the fact that she intended to divorce him. 263 The Sinister Revel Craig listened dumbly. But, as her words grouped themselves to a slowly apprehended mean- ing, he had started to his feet with a quick, pro- testing cry. " Constance ! " was all he could say, "Con- stance! " but the sharp pain in his voice carried his appeal. She rose, trembling, to confront him. Only in re- iteration of her claim could she hope to retain her courage. " You have been unfaithful " she faltered. "Unfaithful!" He did not seem to hear her, however. He was conscious only of the rush and turbulence of his emo- tion his great love of her, his greater need. He took a step forward " Constance ! " he said, the whole force of his desperate plea in his eyes. But even as he felt, with a quick sweep of joy, that he had reached her, even as he saw her weaken to a trembling response, the door opened and Lady Asburton came into the room. 264 Part VI Chapter XX A month later Constance was granted her divorce, the woman, Flora Hardy, being named as co-re- spondent. Craig's discovery that Lork Mark was the traitor had proved the point where his resistance broke down. As he and Lady Asburton faced each other that afternoon with Constance between them, Craig had a swift, sharp perception that the great crisis of his life was at hand. He had gathered his forces for a last supreme appeal, which he made with a passion that could not fail to carry its conviction. Con- stance had broken to a sob and turned away. He sprang eagerly to her side but Lady Asburton was there before him, there in all grimness to be dealt with. She started to argue coldly; she stated stark facts. Craig blundered in impetuously only to be ignored, to be reduced to absurdity. She, too, kept reiterating, as Constance had done, that he had been unfaithful. He gave an angry impatient gesture, which she misread as denial. " Lord Mark " she said with a cold conclu- siveness. At that, face to face with the perfidy of Lord Mark, with a wider comprehension of her lady- ship's scheme, Craig in a quick violence of temper 267 The Sinister Revel lost control of himself completely. The scene that followed was a bitter one; Craig showed to little advantage in the harsh abuse he hurled at her lady- ship. " But Mimi Poitier " There she had him! He had staggered back a little, feeling the probe. His eyes sought Constance's. She had suddenly ceased her weeping; even as he looked, her indeci- sion dropped from her. Calm and direct she came forward and putting her hand on Lady Asburton's shoulder faced him. The sense of failure at the very moment of victory, the realization that he himself in some unaccount- able way had bungled, deprived Craig of the last vestige of reason. A half hour later, he had flung out of the house with the awful conviction that he had irrevocably wrought to his own defeat. Three days later when he came back to West Rid- ing, miserable, sordidly drunk, he discovered that Constance had left for good. Not once, after that, was he allowed to see her. He had written her wildly, dramatically; he had attempted to force an entrance at her hotel. But always did he find him- self thrown back upon his own violence. Her lawyer was suave. " If Mr. Van Dam had something to say, he would be only too happy to report it to his client " Her secretary, with a smug look, brought paper and pencil. "If Mr. Van Dam would er in- 268 The Sinister Revel dicate exactly what he er wanted to say to Mrs. Van Dam " What could he do? Craig slouched off after each attempt, raging, mortified, wretched. He was drunk all the time; that hurt his cause. He knew it, but the perversity of his nature drove him on. His lawyer took occasion to remonstrate with him. But Craig's " By God, I'll do as I please," pointed the futility of tendering any advice. So he was left alone, eventually, to wreak his own wilful destruction. Then, as if his unhappiness were not complete, there had happened something else to make him still more miserable. His mother and Lili were in Hot Springs. That they had heard the wretched news he was sure, for the newspapers were full of it. He had wanted so intensely a little sympathy, but the weeks passed without word of any sort. Then one morning reading by chance of their re- turn to town, he had rushed at once to the house. He went to Lili's room first. She greeted him radiantly. " Of course you've heard? " she asked, almost as he kissed her. He was taken aback. Full of his own trouble he had expected immediate response in others. " Heard? " he stammered at a loss. " What? " " Hasn't George seen you? " she asked with faint surprise. 269 The Sinister Revel " George ! " was all he could echo stupidly. She laughed. " Probably he forgot it." Then, seeing Craig still in a daze, she had gone to him and put her hands on his shoulders. " George and I are engaged," she said. The horror in Craig's eyes was unmistakable as the truth flashed across him. " George Winters ! " he gasped. Then without thought of any incongruity in what he was doing, he had gone on blindly to protest. He ranted and railed, was morally indignant. Lili had listened, amused, let him work off his violence. " Good God, Lili ! " he cried at last. " You don't know what you're doing. He's he's " She smiled a knowing little smile. " Vile " she had supplied quite calmly. This brought him up with a stare. Lili had again gone over to him as if sorry for his bewilderment. " Raggy dear," she said in all kindness, " you take life too hard." Then as if to point out to him for his own good the inconsistency of his attitude, " If George is bad, you know, dear, he's not a bit worse than the papers say you are " The only reference there was to his own trouble ! He had gone to his mother later, but before her ineffectual acquiescence in Lili's plans, and with that new sense of the absurdity of his own attitude 270 The Sinister Revel in the matter, his objections had dropped weakly. Tony had intercepted him in the hall. Strange to say they saw little of each other now. They withdrew to a card room for a cocktail. " Tell me about Cecily Pennell," Tony had said curiously. " I'd like to meet her " Craig met George Winters at the Club that after- noon and forced himself to the proper banalities. " Your mix-up is an ugly one," George had re- marked incidentally. Craig could have struck him for the note of patronage in his stupid thick voice. Good God ! Winters would be cutting him next ! Craig went about very little now, but even so he had come to realize that Society was taking a defi- nite stand against him. Absurd and inexplicable in a world where divorce was as simply recorded as birth or death! He found acquaintances, men of open scandal, evading him, making elaborate ex- cuses. He became doubtful of the return of a nod. He had one or two open slights from women, dis- concerting beyond measure. And always, every- where, there were the newspapers ! Not an incident of his career but was dragged to the light in horrid, sinister detail. Ann May ! He had struggled so with the years to forget her! His continental career! Mimi! Yes, there lay their neatest chance. Her elopement followed so closely by his divorce was seized upon with hue and cry. " This page of Berkshire intrigue," so they called it, made interesting reading to the great public that fattens 271 The Sinister Revel its crop on the scandal of the rich. Then, the Poitier tragedy was again revived It was loathsome; it was sickening. Yet, per- haps, the notoriety was not without its mead, for so exasperated was Craig by the petty irritations each day brought forth that he did not once in those weeks preparatory to the divorce face squarely the real significance of it. His mind had always been capable of queer dis- tortions of value. He seemed now to lose all sense of the barren years that stretched ahead in his blind fury at being turned away from Constance's door. The Asburton treachery he lost sight of utterly in an impotent rage at the vagueness of Mrs. Andy Prescott's nod when he encountered her on the Avenue. So it went. In the end, so disgusted was he, so sickened of it all, he was relieved when the pro- ceedings had worked themselves to their honourable climax. The hearing was private. Craig himself did not appear. So it was this big momentous thing that happened to him never seemed a reality even with the years that pointed so cruelly its truth. A week after the divorce, Craig, desperately, piti- fully drunk, sailed for Europe; Natty and the Hardy woman went with him. 272 Chapter XXI Two years later we find Craig living in Cannes, the central figure of Riviera brilliancy. There was that in his nature which found response in the shift- ing crowds. Restless, unscrupulous, satiate and in- satiate, they came and went, of fitful, kaleidoscopic interest. It was all a part of his own insecurity of foothold, that ever-changing throng; for Craig did not yet understand, could not understand how events had overtaken him. With the passing of the months, however, he came to realize painfully and slowly the tragedy he had wrought in Con- stance's life. He saw her now no longer the lumi- nous vision of beauty and calm; he saw her simply as a woman and a suffering one. It was given him to follow, now that it was too late, the developing phases of her relation to him. Incidents, that be- fore seemed inexplicable, irrelevant, now fell into their proper order and he could trace all too surely her struggles from their trivial beginning through to their disastrous end. At first, she had been so eager that he measure to her ladyship's standard. What more naive, more natural! And he had mortified her, wilfully it seemed to him now, by projecting all his little mean- nesses and petty instincts. 273 The Sinister Revel In the matter of Weyburn she had been carried away by the unselfish motive of protecting her child. It was the element of the heroic in this that had carried her through the pain of the gradual estrange- ment. Then Mimi had come. Constance was but a woman after all and had proved the victim of an un- reasoning jealousy. It was because Mimi was so like him, so of him in his moods and perversities, that Constance could not forgive. In her well-ordered scheme of things she seemed so outside the turbu- lence that was essentially their bond. Craig had found in her a refuge, a comfortable sanctuary; in Mimi he had found a throbbing, vivid response. Poor Constance! She would willingly have sacri- ficed her every virtue to be, even for a brief second, of Craig's nature as Mimi was of it. Mimi's marriage she had read, as Lady Asburton had read it, as the world at large had read it, a pro- tection in an affair, with William the stalking-horse. This had driven her to a desperation that made her easy prey to Lady Asburton's malignity of pur- pose. The divorce had been the result. It was evidence of Craig's new penetration that he no longer took refuge in abuse of others; he knew that he himself in his weakness and violence and passion was essentially to blame for the disaster that had come upon him. He had wrecked his own life; there might be a certain justice in that. But Constance's face with its lines of pain rose to 274 The Sinister Revel confront him as a great reproach he had dragged her down, too! There lay the crying shame that brought the greatest bewilderment of suffering. With the realization of dread finality forced upon him by the months, with the fact there to be dealt with that he must go on and live, his protest dulled and a strange apathy fastened upon him. That was Natty's chance and, needless to say, he made the most of it to his own sordid profit and Craig's eventual ruin. Craig lacked utterly the incentive even to live ; Natty found him the more plastic ma- terial, as a result, to shape to his own evil ends. There were months in Paris of brilliant debauchery, a season in Vienna, Moscow, London. It was the sort of life Craig had led under Winters' tutelage, only of a more seasoned viciousness. He was still the slim boyish figure as in his college days, but his eyes now showed hard in their restless- ness and there were sharp lines about his mouth. Society again followed his career, but this time in greater detail, for it was part of Natty's policy to keep well in the limelight. Escapades, that might have passed unnoticed with any other man, were blazoned forth on two continents, and out of all proportion to the events. Craig cursed the news- papers bitterly, spent vast sums of money to hush up this or that. All quite useless! The infernal no- toriety followed him everywhere. Not till too late did Craig discover it was just Natty's way of keeping his old friends cognizant of his movements, friends 275 The Sinister Revel who, less fortunate of lot, were gradually sinking to an ignominious obscurity. So it was the world was enabled to follow Craig's every spectacular move. He, himself, however, seemed strangely cut off from the old life, and knew but little of what was happening to his friends. He had learned through his lawyer that Constance was in London, that she and Lady Asburton had taken a house in Grosvenor Square, Tony wrote persist- ently of coming to join him; he discouraged that, though with a sweep of homesickness as he did so. He had run into Larry and Doris the first winter in Paris. Larry was interested in a little dancer at the Folies and quite deliberately threw the respon- sibility of his wife's entertainment on Craig. Doris with her insolent red hair! She had managed to hold him for a while, but he soon tired. He spent three days one spring with his mother in Munich. She was interested, in her graceful way, in a famous seer preaching there at the time. Craig could not help feeling himself out of place in an atmosphere that made for seances and mystic moves. So he had curtailed his visit. He read of Courtz's death in a motor accident at Palm Beach, " leaving a widow and three chil- dren." Three children! It didn't seem possible. Poor Vera! They had been such a happy couple. Colby Beach shot himself. Finances, the papers said; but Society knew better, recalling Colby's ex- cesses. 276 The Sinister Revel Then in the second year news came that Tony was on his way. Craig felt a quick pleasure in spite of general misgivings. He had been lonely; he was lonely, miserably so. He thought of going over to Liverpool to meet the steamer. But well people didn't do those things. Tony would prob- ably set it down as sentimental, anyway. So he stayed in Paris and waited. Tony's coming he kaew meant a vital change in his existence, and he was glad that it was so. He would give up his place at Cannes, dispense, as quickly as he dared, with Natty. He and Tony would have a gay time, but, hang it all, not too gay. For he intended to look out for the youngster, tell him a few things in genuine good faith . The steamer docked; he read of it in the newspapers. No Tony, however ! A week passed; he began to get alarmed. Two weeks I Then the news flared out one morning in the Paris Herald. Tony had been married in London to a Mrs. Edith Goodhue, a divorcee of Washing- ton reputation. The lady had had a somewhat lurid career, but, at the tender age of forty, was all pre- pared for another turn at domesticity. Craig could not help getting the humour of the situation, though his own disappointment endowed that humour with a certain quality of sardonic grimness. " They say she booked on the same steamer pur- posely," Billy Severn remarked that night as he and Craig were talking it over at the Ritz bar where they had run into each other accidentally. 277 The Sinister Revel " What is she like? " Craig had asked. " Hum Auburn hair, last report ! But it can't be entirely a question of money. She has a lot herself, you know." "What is it, then?" Craig asked. "Hardly love's young dream! " Billy was sage. " She's tired of the life she's leading and genuinely wants to settle down. Some- times women do when they're forty." Craig showed his comprehension with a laugh. " And Tony'll have to settle down with her." " A sure bet! " Billy answered. " Tony'll never get off on that world spree he's been banking on since college days " " Since his cradle ! " Craig interpolated. Then after a second's reflection " Odd how things go ! " They separated soon after. "What are your winter plans?" Billy asked, as they parted. " Oh " Craig looked suddenly at a loss. " Cannes, probably. Look me up if you're down there." The next morning came a wire from Tony, a mes- sage exuberant in the plural pronoun. The sub- stance was this: They were arriving on the six o'clock and would count on Craig for dinner at eight. It was a very, very important Tony Craig en- countered as host that night. " This is Edith," he had announced with a sweep 278 The Sinister Revel of his hand, the great pride of possession in his voice. Craig got at once the fact that Billy had done Edith no injustice in placing her at forty. She was forty and showed it. The accident possibly of her dyed hair, of her flaccid chin ! Her eyes were hang it all, what colour were they? Craig knew only that in their rather watery depths was the hard determination to oust him as quickly as possible from her husband's young affection. In Tony's life hereafter there was to be but one motif. " Well it's good-bye, Tony ! " Craig had said to himself with a deal of bittnerness as he listened to Edith's dulcet tones. " We've decided to live in Paris," Tony had an- nounced. " Of course we'll see a lot of you." " Of course ! " Edith had echoed. " Of course ! " Craig agreed. " I'm leaving in the morning. However, next time Be it said to Craig's credit he did his best to keep the relationship a pleasant one. He wrote to Tony, whose replies became more and more er- ratic and finally spluttered out entirely. Three months later on his way through Paris he took occa- sion to call Tony up. " How about dinner ? " Tony demurred. "We can't!" he said rather weakly at last. Then after a second's pause, " But I'll tell you Wait a minute." There was the sound of a door being closed in all furtiveness. " I say, I'll meet you for a few minutes at the Ritz bar " 279 The Sinister Revel He arrived nervously. It was obvious he had something to say, but it took several gulps of prepa- ration before he could manage to say it. " Look here," he brought out at last. " You know Edie's so damned particular; wives have to be. And as long as everybody knows you've got that Hardy woman on the string why er oh Hell, don't you see? It's damned awkward for us to be seen in public with you." Craig saw perfectly. It was just as he had ex- pected. He felt no resentment against Tony; he was only a little sorry for him. " But we can meet this way " Tony had has- tened to add. " You mean without Edith's knowing it? " Craig had pressed. That was rather mean, though. The thing didn't sound well, starkly expressed. Tony had reddened violently. Craig took it as a solid proof of Tony's affec- tion that he could still stand up under the indignity with a " But, by God, Rags, I'm fond of you. Promise now " Craig did promise and heartily. Three months later, again in Paris, he had con- trived that Tony join him in another clandestine cocktail at the Ritz bar. This time there was even more to communicate as Craig could tell at once from the very expansiveness of Tony's back before 280 The Sinister Revel he had swung around in greeting. The news evolved at last. Tony had drawn himself up and with an air of supreme majesty had remarked: " By the way, we're expecting " " No ! " Craig's surprise was everything Tony could demand. " Fact! " Tony had rejoined. With a lordly sweep of his hand he indicated to the waiter that their order be renewed. Then, turning to Craig again, he condescended to a greater ex- plicitness. " In August," he added. That was the last time Craig and Tony met as anything but the most casual of acquaintances. The next time Craig called Tony up, he pleaded a former engagement. That spring at Cannes, Craig had a letter from Lili. She was on her way to the Jimmy Treadwells in Vallambrosa. " I'll stop off and have dinner with you," she had written. " Take the night train for Florence." Craig was still capable of sparks of his old en- thusiasm. He was immensely pleased. Let's see he hadn't seen Lili since before her marriage, nearly two years ago. He recognized with a quick flash of relief as she stepped from the train that she was the same slender, girlish Lili. A little more talkative, however, he pronounced as she chattered on. And George? How was George? 281 The Sinister Revel Oh, in capital condition ! She was to join him in London later. He was trying a new kind of bath to reduce his nice old fat self Dinner was jolly. Lili adored Craig's place, in- sisted on going over it all. She picked a rose for herself in the garden, affected a tinge of melancholy as they strayed through the cypress walk. And that one mountain peak back of the house, jagged against the shadowy heavens! Ah! Lili breathed a sigh, then lighted a cigarette. " Let's go inside," she suggested. " They say there's malaria in the night air." Ensconced in his lounge, they got down to facts. Craig urged her to stay with him a while but she shook her head emphatically. " Quite impossible ! " she pronounced. Why? Well there was no secret about it. She was to meet Bronson Todd at the Treadwells'. Oh yes, George knew; but it didn't matter. " Don't you see, Raggy " Lili puckered her brows preliminary to exposition. " That's exactly the point of our being so well-suited, it's just so wonderfully comfortable to get back to each other." She mused a little and then gan^o. pensive sigh. Craig was beginning to recognize in ner a ,new ele- ment he did not quite like. " There's a terrible rack in any love affaE-i," she went on. " Nine tenths of it is living up to some- thing you don't feel. Now here am I, rushing wildly across the continent, sleeping on night trains, eating 282 The Sinister Revel a lot of badly cooked food " She shook her head. " It may be picturesque, it may be romantic, but " She rose and tossed her burnt-out cigarette into the grate. " It's all damned awkward! " Craig looked at her quickly. " But why? " he began seriously. Lili shrugged. Her sally had not been accorded the amusement she expected. Craig was too tire- some at times. She did not bother to answer, but began to wander up and down listlessly looking at this or that. Her eye caught a picture on the mantel. " Ghanzita ! " she exclaimed as she went closer to examine it. " Is she here? " " Yes, singing at the Casino They stood looking at the picture. Then their eyes met. " Mimi ! " Lili murmured. " Yes," Craig said. " She is like Mimi, without any of Mimi's charm." Then after a pause, " What about Mimi? " " They have lived in Ceylon entirely since their marriage," Lili answered. " Carly ran into them last year. He said Mimi was not at all well. ^She writes, occasio"" n v, in her old wild-fire way Then by a strange thought transition, they had both . ted at once to talk of Constance. " IT ive you seen her? " Craig had asked. " Once, in London," Lili had answered. " She's living there, you know. They say the Asburtons are doing her outrageously. Let's see, it was in 283 The Sinister Revel some store. Oh yes, Peter Robinson's! She was buying the little Henry a toy automobile. An ador- able youngster! What! You haven't seen the child!" " I have asked twice," Craig had said, " but been refused." Lili was indignant; Craig changed the subject. "And Tony?" Lili assumed a look of broad importance. " You knew er didn't you?" she said, lowering her voice to a confidential undertone, " that we were ex- pecting " "In August " Craig supplemented, and they both laughed heartily at poor Tony's expense. " But how about you, Lili?" Craig had said at length. " Aren't you going to do your duty by the next generation? " " Well, I should hope not! " she brought out with conviction. Then, as if realizing her tone had rung harsh, "Have children?" she said gaily. "To inherit George's vices? Why, they'd begin to curse in the cradle " She dismissed the subject lightly at that, asked for some cognac. Anecdotes and gossip were in order. It was cosy; it was jolly; it was like old times. But the realization was forced, notwithstanding, that Lili had undoubtedly changed. The delicacy that had been so subtly her charm had gone; in its place was a hard kernel of worldliness overspread with a 284 The Sinister Revel tinselled wit. She seemed always playing for an effect. "It's all damned awkward!" That still rang in Craig's ears. He hated to hear a woman swear. He hated, too, to see Lili sitting there drinking brandy. In the end, he felt himself restless, almost cross, and was glad when it was train time. Lili, too, drooped, took no pains to conceal the constantly recurring yawns. Craig could bring himself to no regret as he kissed her at the station; his good-bye was apathetic. " We're going back to the States in a month," she had said. " Perhaps you'll be back some day." " Perhaps," he had echoed. " Till then - As the train pulled out, he turned, irresolute, and got into his car. " Home 1 " he said to the chauffeur. But they had hardly started off before, with one of his old quick flashes, he had changed his mind. " No," he called, " The Villa Rosa." 285 Chapter XXII " She's out for big game." So Natty had said it; so Craig had accepted it. The only conclusion possible, granted the premises! Flora's career had been a noteworthy one. A telephone girl in an obscure hotel, she had been dis- covered by Oscar Rosenal, of musical comedy repute. He saw in her beauty a good investment, one that with time worked out its justification in lavish re- turns. Flora's star rose rapidly in the theatrical heavens. Mr. Rosenal was a clever manager; Flora proved amenable to suggestion. Publicity played its part, too, in her success. Her classic profile ! Her perfect back! The highest paid chorus-girl in the country I One got used to confronting her in picture sections on Sunday. Then suddenly Flora ceased to be a chorus girl. She was featured. A joke rippled along Broadway, set in motion by Mr. Rosenal, himself, so the rumour carried. She had twenty-six words to say, and for- got twenty of them. But what did that matter, really? She was taken very seriously for the most part, her beauty the drawing-card. It was for her beauty men like Tracy Woodworth fell. Her es- tablishment on Riverside was a gorgeous one, too gorgeous, but how was Flora to know that? Mr. 286 The Sinister Revel Rosenal, either, for that matter? John Durland had his day; another lover and yet again another. Then came the matter of Preston Loring. The crash of the firm " Loring & Loring " was sufficient excuse for Flora to look elsewhere. But at this critical juncture in her career Rosenal had very in- discreetly died. The coming of Natty in Cecily's train was timed neatly. What more natural than that he should manfully shoulder the dead Jew's responsibilities? "What are you doing over here?" Flora had asked him, even at the steamer where she had be- taken her fair self to meet Cecily. " Oh, I'm to be with young Van Dam," Natty had replied jauntily. At which their eyes met quickly. Natty read her as more the sort he was looking for than the too vivacious Pennell. Flora saw her chance. The thing was a frame-up from the beginning. Craig understood the situation perfectly. He preferred to have his relation with a woman like Flora entirely on a commercial basis. But, before the first year of their sojourn abroad was over, Craig came to realize that, whatever her original intent, Flora was actuated in her dealings with him no longer by material motives. She was, in her stupid, dull, unenlightened way, in love with him. He re- sented this. He treated her abominably. He was coldly sarcastic. He was arrogant, intolerant of her stupidity. He made no attempt to conceal his 287 The Sinister Revel affairs with other women. Why should he? What consideration could Flora exact? Flora with that dumb look of devotion in the depths of her depth- less eyes! How that maddened him! Yet, in a world all too shifting, too casual, he found himself becoming singularly dependent on that devotion. Through all the phases of his continental career Flora had stayed with him. She was just there, that was all, there with her beauty, her stupidity, her dogged worship. In his growing dependence on her being there, however, lay the ignominy of it for Craig. On the night of Lili's departure, just because there seemed no one else to turn to in his loneliness, Craig had flung into Flora's house in a temper. He had gone directly to her room. She was dressing, but dismissed her maid and smiled timidly up at him. " Well," he asked with irritation, " what are you smiling at? " She ceased smiling. "Nothing! " she murmured. " Then for God's sake, stop ! " he said harshly. She sat there, stupid, her arms at her sides. He looked at her critically. " You're getting stout! " he brought out at last. " Ah no! " she cried and there was genuine pain in her voice. He laughed at her dismay as she reached hurriedly for a hand-mirror. He twisted the mirror out of her hand and threw it back on the dressing table. " Don't be a fool! " he said. " I was only jok- 288 The Sinister Revel ing. I was thinking you would get stout some day." Then, as he noted an evening gown laid out on the bed, " Where are you going? " " I had thought, perhaps, the Casino. The Baron and Ghanzita " Craig rose and stretched himself. " I'll go, too," he said. Flora brightened. He watched her dress in trembling haste. She talked, a remark here and there to catch his attention, but he didn't listen. He never listened to Flora. But she was beautiful. There was a certain satisfaction in having the best to look at. He rang for a drink. " Brandy and soda," he said to the footman who answered his call. Flora was putting on her cloak; he put out his hand to help her. Their eyes met; he took her in his arms and kissed her. Her look of rapt sub- mission annoyed him. His sudden passion flickered out and he let her go abruptly. The footman returned with the drink. Craig drank it off hurriedly. Then, as Flora stood in obvious uncertainty as to whether they were to go or stay, Craig burst out : " I'll be damned if I go. I'm tired." Flora took off her coat hastily. " I'm going home," Craig wound up. Only in irrelevance and inconsistency did he take satisfaction at moments of this sort. 280 The Sinister Revel Flora started to protest. " Ah, no, no ! " she cried but her entreaties dropped before the hard light in his eyes. He gave her one sweeping look of contempt, then, in an unreasoning fury, he went out and slammed the door behind him. Downstairs he met the footman, who obsequiously hastened to open the front door. Craig stood staring at him a minute. Then, " Send the car home ! " he said, and, turning, walked quietly up the stairs. It was directly after this Craig declared for a motor trip. He was tired of crowds and lights, for the Riviera was still gay; he wanted "to get away somewhere, damn it all ! " as he expressed it to Natty. His decision had been precipitated by an incident that seemed the last goad to his aching nerves. He had come across a picture of Constance one morning in a London paper. " Mrs. Constance Van Dam, whose engagement to Lord Chesham is being rumoured " Craig knew it a lie, the sort of thing every woman of conspicuous fortune is subjected to. But the quick pang he felt as he read the item evidenced how little divorce had effected of vital severance. Yet, he had spent two years trying to teach himself the finality of their separation. " To get away somewhere." Yes, that was what he wanted, but he didn't have the courage to go by 290 The Sinister Revel himself, so he took Flora, Natty, Ghanzita and the young Baron de Croisic. The idea was to motor back in the Esterels to the Mont du Cheval Blanc through the Castellane country. It was rather a rural venture, not at all to any one's liking except Craig's. There were some rough roads back in the mountains. " And the inns are abominable ! " the Baron had complained to Natty. " But you know what he is when he gets a no- tion " Natty rejoined. " Have you any idea how far " the Baron asked in plaintive tone. " He talks vaguely of Grenoble " laughed Natty. " My God ! " gasped the Baron. " We can play cards," ventured Ghanzita. " He's evidently in a mood to lose " "We could have played cards in Cannes! " the Baron said. However, they went. Craig was too valuable a friend to lose on a slight issue of this sort The party started off in low spirits. It was a bad day to begin with and even Natty's hampers failed of the good cheer expected. No amount of anything put inside could obliterate the sense of the discomforts outside ! Their first night on the road, spent at a damp and dirty little inn, was a thing to be put on record in the de Croisic annals. 291 The Sinister Revel " It's these damned Americans! " pronounced the Baron, and felt he had said the worst that could be said of his young host. The second day started off, of better promise. Even the Baron responded to the morning sunshine, and could bring himself to smile, forgetful of the night's ignominy. The motor trip, however, was destined to run the briefest course. Noon saw the event that all but ended in a general disaster. It came unheralded, as such events always do. They had climbed laboriously up one of the moun- tain roads, winding around and around to a region of hardy pines, of cooler atmosphere. Below them lay the rich, green stretches of valley; clinging dan- gerously to the steep slopes were the tiny red-roofed villages, picturesque, romantic; the Mediterranean in the azure distance. It was a gorgeous scene, and above it all the bright, clear spring sky. Craig could almost find a little calm as he gazed; they were so high up, so above the moil of things. The steep drop to the right of them, the high cliff of the mountainside to the left! Craig himself was driving. In that he still got a certain relief from tension; his mind seemed to smooth itself out as he covered stretches of the open. Then suddenly they were to find themselves brought up short on a curve, with the road ahead piled high with rocks. A landslide, doubtless the result of yesterday's rain! How awkward! The 292 The Sinister Revel way was obviously impassable so there was nothing for it but to go back. A feat that seemed fairly sim- ple of performance, till Craig and his chauffeur dis- covered simultaneously the road was too narrow to afford a turn. " We'll back! " Craig announced doggedly. This wrested a scream from Ghanzita. The Baron was already precipitately alighting from the other side of the car. Natty himself turned pale, vacillated, as his eyes met the scorn in Craig's, and then tumbled out on the heels of the chauffeur. Only Flora re- mained. Craig looked at her. She was dead white, in an unmistakable state of terror. " Well ! " he said irritably. She nodded her head. " I'll stay," she gasped, and even as she spoke Craig started up the engine with a jerk. A sharp cry went up from the others. Craig was half drunk and they all knew it. But it was too late ! He was already blundering down and there was nothing to do but follow in a disorderly panic, Ghanzita whimpering hysterically, the Baron all of a tremble, Natty and the chauffeur shouting in wild alarm. The car zig-zagged this way and that. They stumbled after it, panting, terror-stricken. Now they were almost up to it; now it was out of sight. Another turn! Thank God, there they were ! Craig in an insanity of drunken recklessness, Flora the more ashen and ghastly for the rouge on her cheeks ! The car was on the inner side of the road; then suddenly it was on the outer with only 293 The Sinister Revel a couple of inches between it and the drop. The back wheel slipped. Ghanzita screamed and cov- ered her eyes. But at the very second the car seemed to be hanging in the air over the precipice, Craig was seen to look at Flora. With a laugh at the horror frozen in her eyes, he put on all power. The car as it toppled on the edge seemed like some gigantic animal that struggled at its fate. With a strain, a heave of almost superhuman power, it pulled its great length together arid leaped to safety. But in leaping it was blind to the height of cliff that towered on the other side of the narrow road. Against that it crashed with all the violence of its spring and then, panting and broken, toppled over on its side. 294 Chapter XXIII ^ The wonder was, of course, they were not killed. Craig was in the hospital at Grasse for two months, Flora a little longer still. The good doctors who hurried officiously to consultation from all over the Riviera could only marvel at such an escape; those who had witnessed the accident were still more in- credulous. But the facts remained, the injuries sustained were apparently surface ones. The weeks saw the two patients discharged, pronounced " in as good condition as ever." The accident, as was only to be expected, won much notoriety for itself. There were incidents connected with it that savoured almost of mediaeval lore. There was one rumour that Craig had been stoned in the mountain fastnesses by a gang of labourers who decried him as the " evil eye." There was a little trouble of the sort with some road workers who had been summoned in assistance, but nothing to warrant the luridness of the newspaper accounts. Another report had it that Craig attempted to crash the whole party to death in a fit of jealousy for the beautiful Ghanzita. Only Natty's qu-ick pres- ence of mind saved the situation, so it was generally believed. The Baron, too, figured in heroic pro- portions. 295 The Sinister Revel Again, forced to live down a notoriety he loathed above everything, Craig shut himself up in his place in Cannes, refusing every diversion. As he saw less and less of the outside world he saw more and more of Flora, to the gradual discovery that the accident had, highly paid medical opinion to the contrary, worked a subtle change in her. He came to realize with a strange terror as of the uncanny that her mind was affected. Whether from actual injuries sustained, or from the strain of horror to which he had subjected her he never knew. He noticed the change at first in little things. There was an unusual glitter in the eyes that had al- ways been so dully soft and submissive. An almost furtive habit of movement replaced her former stupid obviousness. Her lips moved when she was unaware he watched her; and once, as he came quietly to her dressing-room, he heard her laughing to herself, a low almost sinister laugh. With a dread uneasiness he had taken occasion to speak to Natty about it. Natty had nodded. " Oh, yes, I've noticed it. They're apt to go that way. We could put her away somewhere sani- tarium " Craig had cut him short with an impatient gesture. " Can't we do something? " Natty shrugged. " I doubt it." Then by way of warning, " But I'd be careful. Don't take any chances " " Chances! " Craig repeated. 296 The Sinister Revel " She might prove dangerous." " Oh ! " Craig hadn't thought of that. He pon- dered a moment. Then " No," he said with con- viction, " she won't touch me. Let her go for a while. It may wear off." It may wear off. He kept telling himself that till the weeks proved definitely the disease had fas- tened its hold for good. Yet Craig found himself spending more and more time at the Villa Rosa. Flora held a sinister attraction for him now; he could not keep away. He would sit and watch her by the hour, brood on the strange glint in her eyes, the nervous movements of her hands. And every so often her head jerked back. H would provoke her deliberately to some erratic response, and then go away, trembling, fearful, horror-stricken. He was obliged to go to Paris now and again on business, but always he hurried back of a dread curiosity as to the inroads of the disease during his absence. For three months after her return from the hos- pital Flora had been content in the isolation Craig had enforced upon her as well as upon himself, but with the return of the Baron and Ghanzita from a season at Ostend, she became restless, determined in a furtive way to take up the old life with its daz- zling round of gaiety. Craig had a desperate strug- gle to fend off the Baron's importunities, to distract Flora into forgetfulness of her purpose. To that end he spent most of his time with her, for days at a stretch giving himself to her amusement, never going 297 The Sinister Revel home. During his trips away he enjoined strict watch on Natty. Then one night he had returned after a brief ab- sence to find Flora was in Monte Carlo with the Baron and Ghanzita. That marked the beginning of a new phase. The initial step taken, Craig gave in to a renewal of the old life of dissipation. The more readily so, as he came to discover Flora's de- rangement was of so subtle a nature that it defied the observation of those brought into casual contact with her. She had ever been but a decoration; she could still qualify as such. It was with a certain re- lief of tension, therefore, Craig gathered about him- self the season's throng. To the outside world that winter seemed different from -the former one, only in that it was a little more brilliant, a little more disso- lute. The Idler was in the harbour; there were count- less gay yachting parties. Flora wore a hundred superb costumes, the delight of every fashion maga- zine. There was a three hundred thousand dollar pearl necklace of the famous old house of de La- vergne added to her already notorious collection of jewels. But at the heart of it all was the insidious dis- ease, forcing its way relentlessly to the surface. The season flared to a dazzling climax and then flickered out. Not a moment too soon, for already there were whispers going about, strange hints and surmises. Ghanzita and the Baron, who threatened 208 The Sinister Revel to stay late into the spring, had to be dealt with directly. The Baron showed himself cold-blooded. " Put her away " came as a prompt suggestion. " I'll be damned if I will," Craig cried, the angrier in that he had a shrewd guess at the Baron's intent. With Flora summarily disposed of, what more natural than Ghanzita in the role of Craig's consoler, to the B'aron's eventual profit? A das- tardly frame-up! 1 He came to suspect Natty, too, of being in the league and for that reason shut off abruptly his every suggestion as to the disposition of Flora. " By -God! I'll manage this -business myself! " he cried, and blind with obstinacy persisted beyond the point of all reason. For Flora was unquestion- ably getting worse and worse. Her insanity was developing along the line of an intense jealousy; she watched Craig with a furtive closeness that let noth- ing escape it. Upon Ghanzita she came at last to centre all the force of her suspicion. Craig had attempted to argue with her, losing none of the fine sardonic quality of the situation. That he should explain to Flora, seek to justify himself She had listened with downcast eyes, avoiding his look. He could see -the twitch of the muscles in her beautiful throat. Then, " When are you going to marry me? " she had said, raising her eyes at last to his. Seeing the 299 The Sinister Revel startled dismay in his face, she had burst into a shrill laugh that broke -to dire invectives against Ghanzita. Craig had turned ghastly white. There was a new quality in this scene that shook his nerves. He sought out the Baron in trepidation, warned him. " You had better go away," he said. " She's jealous of Ghanzita; she may take a vicious turn." But the Baron would hear none of it. " My dear fellow! Certainly not. We'll stick, see the thing through " After that Craig consented that Flora have a nurse. June found Craig a wreck of nerves. He had gone over to Villefranche one day to some races and encountered Seward Ross. Seward was only too glad to come home with him. It was then, see- ing his effect upon another, Craig came to realize the ravage of the last year upon him. " But you're ill, man ! " Seward had cried. " You're sick. It's this beastly Riviera Come to Paris." Craig had only shaken his head. After dinner as they were sitting in the lounge with the French windows open to the terrace, Craig had felt himself trembling violently. It was as if suddenly he felt the eyes of Flora with their furtive watch upon him. A strange illusion he had been prey to time and again these last few weeks ! In abject terror he had staggered to one of the win- 300 The Sinister Revel dows. Only the deep night outside, and the great sombre cypress walk with its whispering depressions ! He had shivered and shut all the doors in nervous haste. " I got overheated jumping this morning," he explained, but could hardly control his voice. Seward looked at him curiously. The Clubs were not without their gossip of Craig's present compli- cation. " Damn it all, if I could only get him away," Seward thought even as he was saying aloud, " You're drinking too much." Then after a sec- ond's reflection he pulled out his watch. "A snap decision, now! How about the mid- night for Paris? " But before Craig had even grasped his meaning, Seward had taken his consent for granted. He rang for Simpson. " We're taking the night train for Paris, Simp- son!" he had said, which move Simpson had in- dorsed with a look of the deepest gratitude and a heart-felt "Thank God!" Paris in June was even jollier than Craig remem- bered. He found himself exhilarated. There were some races in the suburbs; coaching was in order. He and Seward looked up Carly, ran into Bronson accidentally. They met a few charming French women of the right set, and, all in all, had a delight- ful, refreshing, wholesome time of it. Craig was all for a summer in Paris, decided to take a house Then one night in the lobby of the Ritz he had 301 The Sinister Revel run into William. A startling encounter! It was for Craig to ease off the situation with a "Jove! What a surprise! I thought you were in Yokohama ! " " Ceylon," William corrected. The two men shook hands. William explained rather stiffly they had come to Paris to settle up Mr. Poitier's affairs. "Yes, I read of his death," Craig had said. " About a year ago, wasn't it? " " About a year," William admitted. There was a moment's silence; each was fully aware the other was floundering about for a line. " And Mimi? " Craig brought out at last. Then a strange thing happened. William was seen to weaken to a vacillation that was almost pa- thetic in one of his grimness. " Would you er She's not very well, but would you care to to see her? " Craig had gone to their rooms that night for din- ner. The dizzy rise in the elevator seemed all a part of his bewildered joy. His spirits soared. Mimi with her strange eyes, her wild-fire whimsies And again it was to be Mimi and only Mimi to haunt him. She was just the same, only a greater restlessness in her glowing eyes. She had taken both his hands as she greeted him, and talked her lovely, piquant French. Craig could only stammer awkwardly, with all the while the tense conscious- 302 The Sinister Revel ness of that new disconcerting look in William's eyes. They dined brilliantly in the big dining-room down-stairs. Mimi had insisted on that. " It is too stupid up here," she said. So William had given in. Craig welcomed the confusion of it all, the hum of voices, the shifting crowd, the music in the distance. Mimi chattered on, talking of Lili, Tony, Vera, everybody. " And you you are living in Cannes ! " she said at last. " Yes," Craig answered. " The old de Lavergne place " " Ah! " Mimi became pensive. " I lived directly next, at the Californie, when I was a child. Many a time have I crept into the de Lavergne gardens. And your great cypress walk " She sighed a lit- tle as she mused, " I used to think it haunted; I be- lieved in ghosts so thoroughly then." She raised her eyes a fleeting second to Craig's at that. " I think I almost believe in them now," she said a little sadly. Then brightening on the instant " And how was Duke Mike? Was he still across the way? " Mimi had always adored Duke Mike. And the yellow Mimosa! The roses at Grasse! The gulls at Cannes ! Then Craig suddenly realized the dark eyes that had been so illusive up to now were resting for the first time in his. The strange, quickened light of them, the tense repression ! 303 The Sinister Revel After that, she had drooped pitifully, pleaded a sighing surrender to fatigue and they had left the dining-room. " It's always this way," William had said. " She overdoes." Mimi put her hand in Craig's. " Tomorrow," she murmured. Then as if the word had cost her too much effort, tears of weakness came to her eyes. She turned helplessly to William, who put his arm about her and half carried her into the lift. A second later, they disappeared. The next morning Craig had received a note from Mimi. " Go back to Cannes and the cypress walk," she had written in her odd, erratic hand-writing. " Yes, I do believe in ghosts, ghosts of our dead selves, our dead passions. . . ." She ended gaily with a line from one of her French songs. There was in the note, as in Mimi's eyes, that strange mingling of the tragic and the gay that was so essentially her charm. Craig had rushed off to Cannes immediately to fight it out there by himself. He left no explana- tion of his sudden departure with any one. Seward Ross had shaken his head ominously. " Craig's going to pieces," he said. " That mad woman he has in Cannes has taken the best out of him " But Bronson had a swift guess at other complica- tions for he had seen the little dinner-party the night before. 304 The Sinister Revel "One woman or another!" he said. "It doesn't matter. But the world hasn't heard the last of Craig's escapades." 305 Chapter XXIV Mimi ! Yes, it was again Mimi! That his pas- sion for her was still there Craig had realized vaguely through the years. A pair of strange eyes caught in a crowd, a French word heard in passing, a strain of Gipsy music, little things of the sort would bring him ever and again a quickened memory. But for the most part he had been too dulled, too circumscribed by events, to feel any real intensity of regret. Had he never seen Mimi again, the old de- sire, so long quiescent, might have flickered out entirely. As it was, Mimi's immediate presence fanned it of a sudden to a startling flare. " Go back to Cannes," she had written and he had obeyed. But he had gone only to torment himself with the thought of her. Again that haunting solici- tude, that fierce urgency of his need! Mimi, and she had sent him away. Why? Then he had come to realize perhaps, as in that other summer years before, it was just Mimi's way of asking for time. That had brought a sharp hope, an eager expectancy that had sufficed to carry him through the hot length of the summer months. The Mannings were still in Paris; he kept himself assured of that and simply waited. But the quickening of his interest in Mimi, though arousing him at last from his apathetic indifference, 306 The Sinister Revel worked also to a disastrous end. He came sud- denly to hate Flora with an almost malignant hate. He had found her worse, much worse, upon his re- turn to Cannes. His absence was responsible, for she had brooded on it unceasingly. There was a general let-down in her appearance; it seemed as if this were the thing Craig could not endure. She was stouter, her skin flaccid. Her yellow hair showed too yellow; the rouge was obvious on her cheek bones. The old dignity of her reserve was quite gone. She fawned on Craig, whimpered about him like an animal, fondled him till he would strike her away from him in his exasperation. Then she would come creeping back, the old look of dumb de- votion in her eyes; she would seize his hand and kiss it. How he loathed her ! But strange, strange perversity, he spent most of his time with her. He denied flatly to Natty and the Baron that she was worse. God! They tormented him like gnats. In October Flora was taken ill and nearly died. Craig suffered intensely, not because he cared but because he was afraid of death. He would have had to see her die; he knew that, for he could not have kept away. He would have been obliged to look upon her dead. But she spared him; the poor feeble mind struggled back to life again. She had recognized him first as he stood by her bedside, and tears of joy came to her eyes as she reached out for his hand. Craig had felt a wave of pity; he was kinder to her after that. 307 The Sinister Revel Two months of convalescence ! The doctors took occasion to reason with Craig. He had given in eventually for he was weary of arguing. " All right ! " he had said. " If you think it wise. Make your own arrangements. Perhaps if it has to be done, it should be done at once." He had gone to Flora's room before leaving. Again that overwhelming sense of life's waste as he stood looking at her. And he was suddenly so lonely. " Good-bye," he had said in a shaking voice. She had sprung to her feet at that with a sharp little cry. Perhaps, even in her darkness she sensed the separation that was coming. " I am going away for a day or two," he fal- tered. She threw her arms about his neck and burst into a wild fit of weeping. He held her till her violence had spent itself; then, loosening her hold, and even as she sought still to cling to him, he had turned hastily and gone out of the room. After that he remembered nothing except that it was late at night and that he had been drinking. He was in his lounge, with the cypress trees outside brooding to his own melancholy. He was bewil- dered and confused. His thoughts were all of Mimi and yet of Flora. And Jean Poitier haunted him, for some unknown reason, with his strange glazed eyes. Jean Poitier! Another life wasted in the upholding of a silly ideal ! 308 The Sinister Revel Then, sharply conscious of a light footstep on the gravel outside, he had sprung to his feet, Flora his first terrified thought. The French window swayed, a slight black-clad figure in the opening. It seemed to Craig that something in his fear- crazed brain snapped short as the eyes that looked into his revealed themselves as Mimi's. Then in a minute he had her in his arms. They kissed each other; they clung together. " I have come to stay," she murmured, but he did not understand. He knew only that she was there, trembling, eager, there in his arms as he had wanted her so long. She seemed once again so es- sentially himself, his passion, his mood, his unrest. He kissed her again and again in the joy of his disbelief. He took her hat off and tossed it away, then put his hand on her tumbled hair. He kissed her slender neck; he kissed her eyes. He was boy- ishly, exuberantly happy. " I have come to stay," she had murmured again. He grasped it this time. Then suddenly seeing her tired, he had led her to the divan, piled the pil- lows high behind her and seated himself at her feet. The lights were dim and they had talked on and on. At first a little consciously, but later, warmed by the response in each other's eyes, with an intensity of earnestness that showed the depth of their mutual understanding and sympathy. They spoke of the years that had separated them, touched on events in general terms though each knew what particular ap- 309 The Sinister Revel plication was in the other's thoughts. They both confessed to a great unhappiness, a bitter disappoint- ment in what life had brought. It was then Mimi made her only reference to William. " He's in London," she said. " I wrote him I would be gone when he returned to Paris." She re- flected a moment. " I think William has come to care enough," she went on softly, " almost to give me you if he thought it would make me happy." She smiled into Craig's eyes at that. u He thinks I am ill, very ill " She sighed a little; then, " Perhaps I am," she said. " Ah, no, no ! " Craig cried. His protest rang the sharper, for that very minute he had had a swift perception that Mimi did look ill. Her face, as it saddened in the firelight, was worn and thin. With- out the flame of her beautiful eyes she seemed so small and pathetic. Craig had sprung to his feet; Mimi, too, rose as if to throw off her momentary depression. " I come to you a waif," she said and flashed at him her odd provocative little smile. His only answer was to draw her to him gently. They rested in the embrace with all contentment. Then Mimi had again sighed softly. " We'll be just one of those outcast couples doomed to wander about the face of the earth " 11 Yes," he had answered. " But what does that matter? " 310 The Sinister Revel " What does anything matter except just this?" Mimi had whispered. At that echo across the years from the sunlit Berkshire lane, Craig had drawn her with a sharper insistency toward him. " Mimi! " was all he could murmur as he buried his flushed face in her dark hair. As Craig looked back afterwards at the terrible tragedy of that night there seemed to him no inter- mediary stages of events. At the one moment he was holding Mimi in his arms, their eyes on the glow in the grate. At the next Startled by a sob behind him, he had turned in a sharp terror to find the tall white figure of Flora at the window. The rest was all a blur, the sharp recognition that she had a revolver in her hand, Mimi's cry of warning, the shot that left him stag- gering and dizzy with blood on his cheek. He had stumbled forward in a fury of anger and pain, but vaguely aware of Flora, stretching out her hands to him in an agony of terror at what she had done. And there was Mimi with wide, wild eyes. She had stooped quick as a flash. The revolver I Good God! " Mimi ! " he cried. But she had already fired even as she covered her eyes. Flora gave a sharp gasp, staggered and then fell just as Craig reached her side. But in a second she was struggling up again, her arms about his knees. The Sinister Revel The old dumb look of devotion lighted her eyes that yet seemed half blind with a heavy pain. She seized his hand and drew it to her lips. With a flare of the old rage at her stupidity, he threw her off roughly. Then beside himself at the horror of his brutality, but with a confused idea of taking Mimi's guilt upon himself, he seized the revolver as it still smoked on the floor and fired a direct shot into Flora's heart. 3*2 Part VII Chapter XXV The autopsy went off very well with suicide the verdict. Mr. Renway Potter, who had found it rather to his advantage to take up a continental abode during the last two years, was summoned from Paris. He arrived in all smooth efficiency the day after the tragedy. Morgan Bleecker's chief solici- tor, Henry Carson, was also forwarded to the scene of action. Suicide and mental derangement; it was convincing. Even the newspapers took the story in all faith. There was to creep in, however, an element out- side the nicest legal calculation, an element that was to prove disturbing, startling. The Syrian Serosha, a menial at the Villa Rosa, was discovered as hav- ing a very ugly story to tell. Moreover, he was discovered as actually telling it. He had seen Flora leave the house the night of her death, and had fol- lowed with an eye to her protection. The man was a fanatic, of course, obsessed by a strange worship for his fair-haired mistress. So horror-stricken was he at what he had witnessed, so almost crazed, that it was impossible to meet him on any ground of rea- sonable adjustment. Natty did his utmost; Mr. Potter argued. But the man went on talking. His very incoherence carried conviction. He talked in 315 The Sinister Revel his wild way and with graphic gesticulation to the other servants at the Villa Rosa. He was ejected forcibly from the house. He talked the length of the Rue d'Antibes to the shop-keepers. He talked to the authorities. It was most unfortunate ; it was most awkward. Mr. Potter lost his head; Mr. Car- son floundered helplessly. Natty made evil sugges- tions. The people began to mutter; the newspapers, given the cue, were sarcastic. Serosha continued to talk. The authorities of a sudden became fussily busy over something else. There was the matter of the Comtesse Ferraud, who had been robbed in the train on her way to Monaco. It was an unusual case and required much attention. But no, the peo- ple were not to be distracted. Flora's death had taken hold, of a dramatic grip. There was a demon- stration against Craig in the public square one night. A procession marched to his house and shouted and jeered. He was burned in effigy; he was denounced from the pulpits. The matter was becoming ur- gent. " Get away," Mr. Potter insisted. " At once," Mr. Carson supplemented. But Craig was sick, utterly prostrated, and could be brought to no decision whatever. " How about the Idler? " suggested Natty. The Idler was up for repairs at Marseilles. They wired. Then the authorities, pushed by public opinion, suddenly discovered this awful thing that had been The Sinister Revel perpetrated in their midst. They held up their hands in horror; their moral indignation threatened to run away with them. An investigation was duly instituted and Craig was arraigned. The trial was listed at Nice some weeks later, probably the most spectacular thing of its kind since the Poitier scandal. Craig's lawyers held out for a private hearing, but public feeling was too high to allow of discrimination. By a strange accident of circumstance, the trial took place the day after the Mi-Careme carnival. The people, as always re- luctant to give up their fun, were still in costume, crowding the streets. Excitement was running high ; the mob showed itself of a vicious turn. Craig was recognized with a yell as his motor swung in from the Rue d'Antibes. A stone rattled against the side of the car. Another and another, then a veri- table hail of them ! Mr. Carson talked on casually. Mr. Potter had presence of mind enough to draw the curtains of the limousine. But not before Craig had glimpsed the sardonic crowd that terrified him the more for its grotesque array. Fantastic creatures; distorted bodies; calsimined, grinning faces The car drew up at the court house; the mob had concentrated there. As Craig alighted, trembling, dead white, a great red scar on his left cheek, a shriek of execretion went up. He shut his eyes and was seen to sway. But the police had calculated on trouble ; they were there to bear the brunt of the 317 The Sinister Revel crowd's first wild dash, to force the people back step by step, as they jostled and jeered and mocked. Mr. Potter put his hand on Craig's arm and guided him slowly up the steps of the court house. Inside there were the same confusion of shouts, the same sinister faces that seemed to sway and blur. It was hot, stifling hot. Craig thought he was going to faint, but some one held a glass to his lips. He drank and steadied himself. But always the threat- ening cries outside, the ugly mutterings about him, the sea of evil faces " It'll come out all right." So Mr. Carson had assured him; so Morgan Bleecker, himself, had said in all confidence as, on a fleeting visit the day before, he had sought to put a little cheer into his young friend's heart. " It'll come out all right." Yes, Craig knew that, but the old instinctive terror of the crowd was there and would always be there. That and the horror of the thing he had done. He had tried to tell his story but had broken down in the midst of it. Whereupon Mr. Potter, pleading ill health on the part of his client, had taken the stand and presented the case directly. On the night of the tragedy Mr. Van Dam had been entertaining at dinner the Baron de Croisic and Mademoiselle Ghanzita. After dinner, as they were adjourning to the lounge, the Baron had stopped in the hall to exchange a few words with Nathaniel Weyburn, Mr. Van Dam's trainer, in re- 3-8 The Sinister Revel gard to the purchase of a new horse. Mr. Van Dam and Mademoiselle Ghanzita had passed into the lounge. As they stood before the fireplace Mr. Van Dam lighting a cigarette for his companion the woman, Flora Hardy, whose mind had been deranged for over a year, entered by the French win- dow and fired at Mademoiselle Ghanzita. The aim missed, the bullet striking Mr. Van Dam on the cheek. He had cried out and the woman, Flora Hardy, thinking she had killed him, had turned the revolver on herself. The Baron de Croisic and Mr. Weyburn had arrived on the scene just in time to wit- ness the final act. It made an excellent story and hung together well. There were a half-dozen doctors most eager to tes- tify to Flora's mental condition, to previous attempts she had made upon her own life. The Baron was ready with easy corroboration of every detail. So was Natty. So was Ghanzita. Jealousy was alleged by Mr. Potter as Flora's motive. On that implication Ghanzita felt perfectly secure of her next opera season. Managers were already wiring from Paris; a cable had been forth- coming from New York. She had been paid a royal price by a Monte Carlo modiste to sport a particu- larly superb costume at the trial. Well, what was there to do? The evidence was quite convincing. Monsieur le Baron, smooth, pol- ished, suave, represented the best tradition of Riviera aristocracy. What chance had the squalid, uncanny 3*9 The Sinister Revel Serosha in contending with him? Noblesse oblige. So the authorities construed it; so the jury read it. Not guilty ! But the crowd was controlled by no tradition. There was a cry of rage as the verdict was ren- dered. They had been tricked. In a second the court house was a seething, yelling, shouting mass of humanity. Craig had managed to get to his feet, then closing his eyes to the menace of the onslaught he had fallen prostrate, unconscious. It was quite dark as Craig left the place that night. The police had driven the crowd away, arresting the most troublesome ones. But there still lingered out- side a few incorrigibles. There was one clown, the ring-leader. Craig had been intensely aware of his grinning face from the beginning. It had been there to mock him as he left his motor; it had pressed close as he fainted. And now, as he came down the steps, it was there lurking beside him, the more ghastly for the lurid light of a red torch brandished high in the air. There were other torches blurring the darkness, other fantastic painted faces Craig had hestitated weakly, but the police urged him on. This time there was no shouting, only a sinister muttering, the uglier in that it held an ele- ment of cowed defeat. Then suddenly the clown had begun to execute some grotesque steps. A laugh went up. Craig had stood still, unwittingly, and looked at him. 320 The Sinister Revel Whereupon the creature had pointed his finger at him in mock terror. " Jettatura! " he cried harshly. The crowd took up the imprecation with a yelp. A stone was picked up and thrown. But the gen- darmes were already striking out this way and that. The clown made an obscene gesture. Some one struck him across the face. With a whimper of pain he had cowered; then, with a last look of malignant hatred at Craig, he had slunk off. The mob, without their leader, lost courage. They turned, disorganized, and fled away, their torches flickering out in the distance. A minute after, there was the bang of a motor door. "Rather a nice night!" said Mr. Potter as a little later they were speeding along the Rue d'An- tibes. Mr. Carson likewise put his head out of the win- dow. " Jolly! " he pronounced. " A cigar? " suggested Mr. Potter. The two men proceeded to light up. By the fitful flicker of the match they caught one glimpse of their companion, huddled helplessly in a corner, his face buried in his hands. The eyes of the two lawyers met. Mr. Potter shook his head. " Thanks awfully," said Mr. Carson. 321 The Sinister Revel After that there was silence. A week later Craig went on board the Idler, tak- ing only Simpson with him. Mr. Carson and Mr. Potter went down to the dock to see him off. Craig was still ghastly white, his dark eyes aglitter. The men shook hands with him, touched casually on this topic or that. " I've never been to Egypt," Mr. Potter said. " Where did you say we could reach you? " Mr. Carson asked. " The Savoy, Cairo ! " Craig answered dully. " I'll keep in touch with Morgan Bleecker " Mr. Potter was diligently perusing the yacht rid- ing at anchor. "Were your deck rails always that colour? " he asked with the air of one deep versed in yachting craft. Craig nodded. The launch was waiting. " Well " said Craig uncertainly. Again Mr. Potter and Mr. Carson shook hands with him officiously. Good wishes were in order. Craig and Simpson got into the launch, which shoved off at once. The two men left behind watched it ply its trig way to the side of the Idler. They could easily distinguish the two figures as they climbed up the side. Mr. Potter waved. Some one waved back; it was Simpson. A minute later the beautiful yacht, poised like a 322 The Sinister Revel bird for flight, gave herself up gracefully to the di- rection of her white wings. Mr. Carson and Mr. Potter watched till there was only a faint outline in the blue distance. Then they turned simultaneously and started to walk back up the quay. " Is he going alone? " Mr. Carson asked. Mr. Potter was busy cutting the end from his cigar with an elaborate gold cutter. " No," he brought out at last. " She's going to join him at Frejus." "Mrs. Manning?" " Yes. It's only twenty miles up the coast. Natty whisked her off the night of the rumpus." " Oh," Mr. Carson reflected. " Has he seen her since?" Mr. Potter shook his head. " He's been too ill " " An ugly mix-up I " Mr. Carson commented. Then after a pause, " Hardly my idea of a starter for " he indicated the azure waters in the dis- tance, " for a yachting trip a deux! " They could both laugh at that. " You know, I'm hungry " Mr. Potter was ir- relevant. " What do you say to a run to Monte Carlo this afternoon? Dinner at the Hotel de Paris" " And a little play afterwards," supplemented Mr. Carson. 323 The Sinister Revel " We can stay on a while at Craig's. He's going to keep the house. Natty might give us a pointer or two. And the Baron " Mr. Carson showed himself open to suggestion. " I can well afford a vacation now," he said. " Capital idea ! Just look at that Mimosa tree over there " " Isn't the air gorgeous? " Mr. Potter was dis- covered as breathing deeply. One last look out into the clear blue of the Medi- terranean, that seemed almost as one with the blue of the sky, and our two estimable lawyers turned up a side street and were lost to sight. 324 Chapter XXVI " There is one glory of the sun and another glory of the moon." So Mimi had murmured in her whimsical way that night as she and Craig had stood looking into the fire. " We will tire," she had said, but he covered her mouth with kisses. " / will tire," she had corrected with her strange smile. It was but her way of discounting his obligations. Yet it was quite true that theirs was a bond of the flesh, an attraction of mood, but of such an unusual potency that under fair conditions it might have en- dured, and brilliantly, to all time. As it was, this love of theirs, this passion, was not big enough to survive the shock of their crime. In the weeks of separation directly following the tragedy each longed wildly for the other as the only possible com- fort in a world of crowded horror. They had gone off on the yacht with the misconceived belief that in each other's arms they might forget their wretched- ness. Instead, they found the pain of their guilt only intensified as they clung together. Flora's revenge proved a neat one. Not once did they lose the haunting sense of her presence. She was there in the long days of brilliant blue as 325 The Sinister Revel they sat on deck and tried to talk. She was there in the dark hours of the night as they lay, restless and wide-eyed, waiting for the morning. Alessandria at last! They went on to Cairo. Cairo with its jagged shadows and white, white sun- shine ! They wandered about for awhile among the fantastic shops where the glowing things dis- played seemed instinct with fragrance and light and beauty. They roused themselves to an inconsequent interest in it all, the mixture of tongues and creeds, and faces of many colours. But they soon grew tired of the town with its rest- less throng. " Let's ride out over the desert," Mimi had sug- gested. So they wandered far, over the yellow dunes that stretched to the sky line. They slept out under the stars, and watched the morning break. Deep crimson stains in the fawn-coloured mist! There were storms and they huddled in their tent for days. So strangely out of the world they seemed; the silent white-clad figures of the Arabs in their caravan were like ghosts, not fellow-men. " Let's go back," Mimi had said at last with a little shiver. So they retraced their steps. They took a house this time out toward the Khedivial. They went up the Nile as far as Assouan in a dahabeah. So the weeks passed into months. Summer found the Idler in northern waters. But Mimi didn't like Norway. Then they wandered to the Tyrol. 326 The Sinister Revel At length, by an odd perversity Craig had sug- gested Cannes. Mimi had given him a startled look. Then " Very well," she said, and there was an odd little quaver in her voice. " After all, the thing we are running away from is in ourselves. We might as well be there as anywhere." " Mimi," he had cried sharply. It was the first open recognition of the fact that their life together had been a failure. Their relation so intense of promise had become but an ignoble compromise, a sham, a pretence. Had they been quite honest with each other in the beginning they would have been far happier. The affection that takes root in a dead passion may be made a beautiful and tender thing. But Craig and Mimi were to find that out too late, after the worst in them had been sounded by the daily struggle to live up to an emotion they did not feel. Their passion had been such a vivid thing; they could not, would not believe that it was dead. As Mimi had boarded the yacht that night at Frejus Craig had been unable to understand the sin- gular apathy of his attitude. The beautiful Medi- terranean night, the woman whose kisses had stayed strangely on his lips during all the wretched weeks that had separated them ! He had watched dully as the little launch left the yacht, watched dully as it returned, a slight black-clad figure in the bow. She had a veil fastened across the lower part of her face, so only the eyes were visible, the wild, tense eyes. 327 The Sinister Revel But he felt no response to the eagerness he read in them as they rested with their peculiar gleam in his. He led her to the salon, then awkwardly took her in his arms. She had drawn back a little as he did so. Feeling that perhaps she guessed his indifference, he had pretended to a quick flare of passion as he drew her sharply to him and kissed her eyes. That had been their beginning. It was tragic, tragic! But they blundered on stupidly, hoping, waiting, concealing and forever acting. Disagree- ments, discords, misunderstandings were the inevita- ble outcome of their high-strung, ill-directed in- tensity, of a passion too little felt, too often forced ! As time went on Craig found himself becoming the victim of a strange illusion; he came to lose all sense of Mimi's soft charm, came to see her entirely as she had stood before him the night of the tragedy, wild-eyed, of a demoniac violence. He saw her as the embodiment of his own guilt, of his own treacher- ous cruelty. He came, almost, when he had been drinking to excess, to look upon her with a certain horror. She represented the thing, the evil in him- self he was trying to deny. And all the while he must needs act the lover, must exert himself to play the role with conviction. Another point that made his task the more diffi- cult Craig had discovered very early, even as they first were crossing the Mediterranean, that Mimi was addicted to drugs. She had pleaded a headache one day and gone below. The hours passed, but he did 328 The Sinister Revel not disturb her, thinking her asleep. Dinner-time found her still absent. He went to her, solicitous and tender. The eyes that opened to his were heavy and yet so bright; the voice that asked plaintively that he let her alone seemed so far away. Craig had stood horror-stricken a minute as the truth flashed upon him. Then he had turned quickly and plunged out on deck. The revulsion had been a sharp one. So that was the secret of her ill health, that the reason for William's tolerance. Mimi's words, " He cares enough to give me even you to make me happy " rang with a new significance now. He had gone without dinner that night, stayed on deck and fought it out. At length, with the thought of Jean Poitier, a wave of pity had swept him. Poor Mimi, how little responsible after all! So he had tried to be patient, so patient. He talked to her in all fairness, asked her to put away the drug for his sake. She would listen with a peculiar light in her eyes; she would promise or she wouldn't promise. Craig came to find it made little difference which, for he would surprise her ever and again with heavy eyes, and limp, damp hands. She began to shut her- self away for two or three days at a stretch. As the months passed Craig's repugnance in- creased; the moments when pity and consideration held him grew fewer and fewer. So obsessed was he by his own unhappiness, his own wretchedness, he was unable to take a reasonable view of Mimi's atti- 329 The Sinister Revel tude. He saw her blindly, senselessly, following a course of erratic shame. He grew harsh with her; the scenes between them were unpleasant and bitter. Craig was thrown back upon drink, Mimi upon her drugs; both upon the intense consciousness of their crime to which their passion had been forfeit. The suggestion that they go back to Cannes was made by Craig in a fit of desperation. It proved a fortunate one, however, in that in its consideration the two faced each other for the first time squarely and honestly. Mimi's words, " The thing we are running away from is in ourselves," had brought Craig up short. But in his perversity he chose to misconstrue her meaning. Quite brutally he had pointed out to her the sordidness of her habit. If she was unhappy, she alone was to blame. He expected the usual de- fiance. Instead, she only closed her eyes and the tears trickled down her cheeks. His anger broke; she seemed so wan and ill. " It was the only way," she almost whispered at last, " the only way when I was first married.'" " And it is the only way now," she was saying, "to forget this last dreadful thing " But Craig had her in his arms and was kissing her wildly. "Mimi!" he cried. "Mimi!" Of a sudden the old resentment, the horror, had given way; in its place was an infinite tenderness, a sharp contrition. 330 The Sinister Revel " I am to blame," was all he could say. " I have been to blame from the beginning." " Yes," she murmured sadly. " Yes." They clung together helplessly and Craig for the first time began to understand. How blind, how selfish he had been! What a wreck of things he'd made ! It was for Mimi to act the comforter now, to laugh away his gloom, and cheer him with her erratic whimsies. " We will begin over again," he said. " We will begin over again," Mimi repeated. Craig put his hand on her hair; their eyes met. He kissed her. " We will never begin over again," Mimi said with a sigh. " The world credits us with being lovers. We lack sufficient courage not to be. Yet that would be the only way." Craig knew she spoke the truth, yet he could still protest. " It means nothing to either of us," she went on. " Don't, Mimi, don't I " he said sharply. She put her tiny hand out to stay his as it stroked her cheek. " If it were the only way we could work out for ourselves a little happiness, what then? " "No, no!" he cried almost violently. "It couldn't be. It couldn't be." " To go on and on and on," she mused, " follow- 331 The Sinister Revel ing the phantom of a passion that might have been " " I haven't the courage to give it up," he said. " I haven't the courage to give it up." He raised her face to his and kissed her lips. She drooped a little. Then, brightening, " We haven't," she murmured. Then, brushing her cheek lightly against his, she evaded his embrace and left him. They went back to Cannes, but, although their relation was now based on the more solid ground of understanding, the absolute solitude in which they lived threw them so intensely upon each other that their small reserve force of patience was consumed at a fearfully prodigal rate. They were both too nervous, too highly strung to endure for long the drain of personality upon personality as necessi- tated by complete isolation. The tenderness was there, the more insistently so, strange to say, as the old irritations and disagreements began to assert themselves once again. Only one way, and they didn't have the courage to take it ! Rather, they forced themselves to ex- cesses that left them the easier prey to their discon- tent. And always the phantom eluded them, vexing, tormenting Again Craig took refuge in drink, Mimi in her drugs. The weeks passed, the months. "How will it all end?" Mimi had cried in 332 The Sinister Revel desperation one day. "How will it all end?" How would it end? That thought haunted Craig, hammered in his brain incessantly. It seemed at times as if they could not go on together. And yet, a hint that they separate, and loneliness, an infi- nite loneliness would sweep him. No, they must go on for always and always, whatever their unhappi- ness. Then there was Natty forever at his elbow. He had come to loathe Natty, but Natty, quite secure of his grip now, could not be disposed of as casually as in the old days. He resented Mimi's influence and talked of other women. " Leave me alone," Craig said dully. " I'm through with all that." Serosha, too, had reappeared and, whining, com- plaining, dirty, demanded money. He could not get work; he was starving; he was sick. The popu- lace, fickle as always, had turned and were now de- riding him as a crazy fanatic. " Buy him off. Get rid of him, for God's sake 1 " Craig said. " Back to Beirut for him," Natty decided. So Serosha was duly disposed of. But after all, it made little difference, for Serosha was but one of the many shadows Craig, in a sense of perverse bravado, had come back to lay. The place seemed full of strange fears, indefinable de- pressions There had come at the end of that first year in 333 The Sinister Revel Cannes a peremptory summons from Morgan Bleecker. " You have been neglecting too long your affairs. Come to Paris, it is urgent." So he had gone to a week of tedious business and legal detail. Only one incident remained in his memory. Morgan Bleecker had found him singularly moody and attempted to draw him out. " Are you and Mimi happy? " he had asked, his hand on Craig's shoulder with true fatherly kindness. The question probed deep; Craig winced. He had drawn himself up stiffly, then turned away. He could not meet it. Morgan Bleecker's hand dropped rather ineffectually to his side. Craig was the devil to understand, not at all like his father. Well, let him go, fight the thing out by himself. He turned to his desk. " Now, as to the matter of this railroad stock " Craig had a sharp pang of contrition; he had not meant the rebuff. Morgan Bleecker had been his father's friend, had been his friend. Craig floun- dered about, struggled stupidly to indicate he had not meant to fend him off in his sympathetic inter- est. But he could not find the right words. The interview had ended coldly, of strictly business tone. Only as they had shaken hands Morgan Bleecker said, " If at any time I can help you for your fa- ther's sake " 334 The Sinister Revel Craig had muttered a surly thanks and rushed away. But the incident served to intensify his al- ready tragic realization that the issue between him and Mimi was approaching a dramatic settlement. The perspective their few days' separation had brought disclosed only chaos and wreckage. "How will it all end?" Mimi's strange eyes and worn face rose to confront him. Again that infinite tenderness that took into account nothing except their being together! So he had hastened back to Cannes, impatient, sad, eager, denying everything but his intense need of human companionship, whatever it entailed of misery and wretchedness. It was for Simpson to welcome him back with his usual genial warmth. Simpson had been the one bright spot in his life during all these years on the continent. Poor old Simpson! He had gone to pieces utterly the night of the tragedy. It was only in solicitude for him that Craig had been able to lose the sense of his own catastrophe. The old man had pulled through eventually with humble apologies for the untoward trouble he had caused, but he seemed to have aged and was almost feeble from that time on. He could still bring himself to a wondrous cheer, however, as he came to gauge with the weeks the extent of his young master's unhappi- ness. So now, upon Craig's return from Paris, it was Simpson who was waiting at the door for him. A little of the old formality of their relation had 335 The Sinister Revel slipped away. The two had gone upstairs together, slowly, for Simpson had to be helped. " I'm leaning 'eavy now," the old man panted, at which Craig protested, " Not a bit of it! " " It's been h' awful lonesome like ! " Simpson ram- bled on. " And 'ow's Paris ? " Craig gossiped about Paris and Morgan Bleecker. Simpson was delighted that Morgan Bleecker still remembered him and had sent his best regards. " Your father now and Mr. Bleecker They did 'ave great times, in the old days " Then as if to offer Craig a crumb of comfort, " And they both turned out respectable-like." Craig showed his amusement. " So you think there's hope for me, eh, Simpy? " he laughed. Simpson laughed, too. They'd reached Craig's room by now. As Simpson proceeded with all care to shut the door Craig knew revelations of one sort or another were due. " What's the news? " he asked, giving the cue. " Nothing," Simpson answered. Then, as if by way of an afterthought, " She 'ad a letter two days ago." Craig was silent. " She's been in there ever since you left," Simpson went on, indicating a door leading to the next room. " 'Asn't stirred." Craig frowned at that. And yet, it was just as he had expected. 336 The Sinister Revel " That's why it was so jolly for 'er to get a letter, to sort of take 'er attention like." " Yes," said Craig. " The letter was from Paris," Simpson went on. " I thought at first it was from you. H'only it wasn't your 'andwriting." Silence. Simpson shambled into the bath room. A sound was heard as of a tub in preparation. Simpson came to the door and leaned against the jamb. " Big 'ard writing! " he threw out. Then as if something must be done to rouse Craig from his un- seemly apathy, " Clemence says," he brought out very slowly and deliberately, " that the letter was from Mr. Manning." "Oh!" That did bring Craig around. But even as he stood, a slow speculation in his eyes, there was a knock at the door leading to the next room and in a second Mimi was standing on the threshold. She was in a tea-gown of her own Sienna, a long slink thing, that made her taller than she was. She presented a brilliant picture, with her hair piled high, her face flushed, her dark eyes burning. " Mon Dieu, the light! " she exclaimed, and put her hand over her eyes. " I have been lying down in the dark." Craig had felt a quick pleasure at the sight of her and had taken a step forward. But at her words he had stopped short, the old protest in his heart. 337 The Sinister Revel " Mimi ! " he said. " Why do you do it? " He threw himself into a chair and sat looking at her. The scene struck him as the more tragic in that he had hastened back to her, so eager, so firmly re- solved upon tolerance. Simpson was heard to be withdrawing elaborately; a door shut. Craig roused himself and put out his hand as Mimi came towards him. He drew her down upon his knees. " Why do you do it? " he could only repeat dully. She tried to free herself from him petulantly but he held her. "Mimi!" he pleaded. "Couldn't you try not to, for my sake? " The old plea, but it was the only one he knew how to make ! She had quieted now and shut her eyes. He knew what that meant, refusal to talk, refusal to listen. How wilful she was ! He accepted his defeat with a sigh and kissed her eyes. She opened them and smiled at him. " Tell me about Paris," she said. " Are you lonely for Paris? " he asked. She thought a minute. " I don't know," she an- swered at length. Their eyes held for a moment. Then " Mon ami," she murmured tenderly and putting her face close to his began to weep quietly. He let her, 338 The Sinister Revel stroking her dark hair, intensely conscious as he held her close to him of how thin she was. " You are not happy, Mimi," he said. " We are not happy," she answered. " And we never will be." She had dried her eyes at last and sat up. " I had a letter from William a few days ago," she said quite unexpectedly. " He has again of- fered to get a divorce." " Well," was all Craig could bring himself to say. Then feeling the inadequacy of the remark he added, " We could marry then, as I have said be- fore." Mimi's eyes had a strange glitter in them as she said rather sharply, " Why should we marry?" " Why shouldn't we marry ? " Craig put in. " We could at least have children." He read his mistake in the uncanny horror that crept into her eyes. " Children 1 " she gasped. " What right have ive to have children? " He saw the usual violent scene impending and had sought to soothe her. But she pulled herself away from him and burst into wild hysterical sob- bing. He had risen wearily. She seemed more nervous and uncontrollable than ever tonight. He led her to her room and Clemence took her in charge. He hovered uneasily at the door. The French woman returned. 339 The Sinister Revel " Madame is not well," she had said, and came all too insolently close as she spoke. How Craig loathed her with her undulating shoulders and bold eyes ! He suspected her and Natty. " But she is getting worse," he found himself stam- mering stupidly. " Isn't there something that can be done?" Clemence had only shrugged. " It is the mor- phine," she said. " For that there is but one cure more morphine." Her laugh rang out pertly. Craig turned away. Dinner proved a long, lagging process. He had been so eager to find Mimi herself tonight, with the old readiness of comment, the flares of wit. But the flashes of her brilliancy were becoming rarer and rarer; he should have known his hope a stupid one. He had become used to dining alone, but, somehow, he was particularly blue tonight. It had begun to rain. It always rained at critical moments in his life. Or else it was moonlight; he didn't know really which was worse. After dinner he had wandered desultorily into the lounge. The same room, the same ghostly whisper- ing of the cypress trees outside He kicked a log in the grate; the fire flared up, and then died miser- ably down. He lit a cigarette and threw himself onto the divan. Natty sauntered by in the hall. Craig closed his eyes and pretended he was asleep. But Natty, con- trary to all precedent, came into the room unbidden. 34 The Sinister Revel He went to a table and helped himself to a cigar. Then, as Craig kept his eyes closed, he deliberately kicked over a stool. Craig sat up. " What do you want? " he asked irritably. Natty proceeded to light his cigar with assurance, then very coolly remarked: " How about the Casino tonight? It's a gala performance, you know. Ghanzita's premiere! The public's gone mad about her Craig had risen angrily. " Let me alone, damn you," he said sharply, and then took a hurried step backwards as Natty sprang towards him, an ugly look in his eyes Craig had never seen before. " Here, none of that ! " Natty muttered. " Re- member " Their eyes met, insolence in Natty's, a sharp dis- may in Craig's. Craig caught the back of a chair to steady himself. Natty! The French woman upstairs! Ghan- zita ! The whole dastardly crew of them ! He pulled himself together sufficiently to shrug in deprecation of his anger. " My nerves," he said weakly. " I'm sorry." He did not need Natty's patronizing " Good- night. You'll sleep them off!" to point the ig- nominy of his apology. He had gone upstairs to bed soon after. Simp- son was asleep, and he did not choose to wake him. 341 The Sinister Revel He listened at Mimi's door. Everything was per- fectly quiet. " More morphine," he said to him- self. " Poor little Mimi ! " Then he undressed and went dully to bed. At about two o'clock he awoke with the intense consciousness of some one at his bedside, of a muf- fled weeping. He sat up quickly. " Mimi ! " he cried, startled. Then with the night breeze across his face, " Mimi, you will get cold. What is it, dear?" And he had drawn her still weeping into bed with him. Then it was, as she lay in his arms, she told him she was going away, going to leave him. "We are both so unhappy!" she had moaned. " As long as we stay together we can never lose the sense of that terrible night. I am so ill, so tired. I must go away Ah, mon ami, it is for the best" And Craig in his unhappiness could not but see that she was right. So they lay there and talked, disconsolate. The day broke; they watched it, as they had watched it first the morning after they left Frejus. But with the dismal straggling light Craig felt again the old sick loneliness, that must deceive itself with a false hope. " Go away for a little," he had said. " A few weeks a few months ! But you must come back " He blinded himself wilfully to the truth of their 342 The Sinister Revel separation till the moment of the good-byes had come. " A few months " he persisted doggedly. " A year perhaps! " Mimi had faltered. But as they faced each other that last morning, they were done with subterfuge. Their eyes were full of the consciousness of a tragic finality. In her own room, stripped of all the dainty things that had made it so essentially hers, Craig had taken Mimi in his arms and cried out that he could not let her go. "I cannot! I cannot!" he said. "I am so lonely," and he had clung to her desperately, his eyes blinded with tears. " Mimi ! " he kept crying, " Mimi ! " and kissed her eyes, her mouth. Mimi, too, was weeping. " Mon ami," she kept saying softly, " mon ami," and her quivering lips sought his again helplessly. But she still had the strength of her resolution, and had drawn gently away from him. " It is best for me," she said quietly. Then even as he sought in his wild grief to take her in his arms again she had evaded him and, lightly brushing her lips across his, had slipped away. " Mimi! " he cried; " Mimi! " but the closing of the door was not needed to stay his steps, for her words, " It is best for me," had at last brought the vision of a complete unselfishness. Craig's protests fell; he turned, and buried his face in his hands. There were voices in the hall be- 343 The Sinister Revel low; there were voices outside on the driveway. There was the steady persistent throb of a motor en- gine, but with its sudden quickened beat, Craig's re- sistance broke. He had stumbled to the window. " Mimi! " he cried desperately; " Mimi! " She was already in the motor but must have felt his cry. The dark eyes looked up at him, but even as they met his with their strange baffling intensity they seemed suddenly the eyes of the little girl his horse had trampled under foot so many years before. He had drawn back quickly; then, with a sob, he threw himself on the bed and buried his face in the tiny pillows to shut out the crunch of the motor wheels on the gravel outside. 344 Chapter XXVII " I am lonely! " So Craig had cried as he clung to Mimi in the despair of their parting, but he was to find an even greater loneliness in the year that fol- lowed. He was waiting, intensely waiting for her with the complete realization all the while that she would never return. He had stayed on at Cannes; in that lay his mistake, for the house was full of haunting memories of Mimi's charm and Mimi's whimsies. The image of Flora, too, still lingered. He took to drinking heavily again and brooded con- stantly. Even Natty, seeing him ugly in his cups, let him alone. A year passed, a year of racking solitude. Then Mimi's letter had come with still its false note of hope. " Not yet," she had written. " But I am better. And I can now think of you as in the old days, so bright and eager. Ah, mon ami, we paid for our crime, didn't we? Our wonderful dear passion the forfeit. But I am not coming back to you, not yet awhile " Craig foresaw the end when, soon after, he read of William's return to Paris. Craig had never been able to understand William's attitude toward 345 The Sinister Revel Mimi, that strange, tender, erratic devotion, so in- consistent with the surly grimness of his nature. It would be for William to take her back but to take her as one does a sick child, to watch over her, to care for her and to exact nothing in return. William could do what he had been too weak to do. He shut his eyes to the image of Mimi, in her weary protest. " If it were the only way, if our happiness were at stake, what then?" And his answer had been a caress. So when William's note came, it brought no sur- prise, only a dull pain. " We are going back to Ceylon. Mimi is very ill. I do not condemn you; I simply do not under- stand you, that is all. She wished me to write you and sends adieux " That spring Craig came back to America. " I will be back," he told Natty, " very soon," but he knew in reality he was leaving Cannes for good. Natty knew it, too, but what did that mat- ter now? The house was Natty's to all intents and purposes; his income was steadily increasing. And well he was beginning to find favour in Ghanzita's eyes; it was to his advantage to have Craig out of the running. The first person Craig ran into in New York was Seward Ross. " I'm off to South America," Seward said. 346 The Sinister Revel " Consul in some place I can't pronounce. I think it will be rather a lark, senoritas and all the rest of it. Come on down with me. Hardly the time of year for an equatorial visit but Yes, of course I mean it." Craig had jumped at the chance, not because of the languorous vistas evoked but because he liked Seward and a genial word meant much to him. So, hardly landed in one place, he was off to another. Six weeks of it, however, he found sufficient. Seward was so busy with diplomatic details and his senoritas; Craig refused to go anywhere, and once again was thrown back entirely upon his own thoughts. The hot nights, the long, idle days ! Craig had always loved the tropics, but now the tropics meant Mimi. Mimi, heavy-eyed, listless, sleeping away her life He could endure it no longer and rushed back to New York, without the usual blaze of trail, however. But Society very soon awoke to the fact of his presence. His slim boyish charm was dis- covered as enhanced by the vivid scar across his cheek, the greater restlessness of his eyes. Of course, the ludicrous reconciliation of the Mannings had reduced that little scandal to the proportions of a farce. And as to the ugly Riviera business Well, it was all a part of Society's privileged perversity that it could forget, as well as remember, at convenience. So, Craig found himself 347 The Sinister Revel welcomed warmly back to the fold. Men went out of their way at the Clubs to make a jovial remark to him. He began to get dinner invitations. He encountered Mrs. Andy Prescott at the St. Regis. "Craig!" she exclaimed, and her voice struck just the right note of tender recovery. " You are so exactly the same," she murmured. " Not a day older." "Andy? Oh, Andy's at Hot Springs." Then, melting to a soft plaintiveness, " I am so bored. Couldn't you er arrange to have dinner with me tonight? " He declined awkwardly. He declined every- thing awkwardly. This new move of Society dis- gusted him. He knew, he understood; he was an evil thing to be exploited. It was the women who tormented him for the most part, openly or furtively as the case might be. He received letters. This one or that one lay in wait for him in the lobby of his hotel or contrived to ride in the park and effect a surprised encounter. He felt himself pointed out every time he appeared in public. He took to riding in taxis to get away from identification by motor. So it went. Society's pursuit of him caused him a greater revulsion of feeling than its complete os- tracism had ever done. Then he was stricken with some sort of malignant malaria contracted in South America. He was at no time seriously ill, but the malady hung on to weeks 348 The Sinister Revel and weeks of intermittent fever and limp exhaustion. He was delirious at times, but he minded less the moments of crowded horror than the moments when, fully conscious, he lay and faced the stark facts of his life. For the first time since the tragedy he gave himself up to the thought of Constance, the pain of his sin to her. That thought had been there through the months, hovering in the background of his mind, demanding to be dealt with, but he had doggedly, persistently denied it. Now in his weak- ness he could no longer hold it off. It took posses- sion of him, ruthlessly fastened upon him with its mood of an immense despair, its terrible reproach. Constance! And yet It would seem as he lay there through the wretched lagging hours as if the lines of suffering in the dear face, the look of pain in the blue eyes gradually faded. She seemed to be looking at him as in the old days with a great forgiveness, a tender pity, a transcendent love. Yes, their love! It was still there as the great calm is there back of the moil of things. It was there for both of them, there for him in his blind perversity, there for her in her mistaken suffering. But they must go on denying it, miserable, unhappy, apart. If a woman could forgive, Constance could. If a woman could understand the tragedy of weak- ness and meet its awful needs, Constance could. Yet, hemmed in by a world of convention, bound down by a tradition that accounted justice the high- est law of life, even Constance would fail of the 349 The Sinister Revel courage to follow her vision, that pointed the way to a beautiful forgiveness. Only in the boy was there hope. In his interest might their love find expression; in his life might they work out the solution of their own lives. To see her no matter how infrequently, to meet if only in formal consultation, to look again into the dear blue eyes ! Yes, then could he find content, then But the years were passing; the little Henry was no longer a baby. With mute resistance to time, Craig had still thought of him as he appeared a tiny creature in his first grotesque little trousers. Then recently he had come across a picture in a maga- zine Craig recovered from his fever gradually, a little more miserable, perhaps, for that larger vision of Constance's leniency that had come to him in his weeks of illness. A little more miserable, yet still with a faint gleam of hope that forced the resolve, as the little Henry's birthday approached, to make one last great plea. He could lose nothing by it; he might gain much. He would write Constance; he would write immediately. Still there was Lady Asburton; he had forgotten her for the moment. Then with a sharp wonder at the way of things, he had learned that Constance was on her way to the States. A break with the Asburtons! So So- ciety read it; so the world interpreted it. But his lordship's debts? Her ladyship's town 350 The Sinister Revel house? And with both the Van Dams in town at once, what then ? Craig had written his letter and waited. With Constance so close to him, the little Henry in easy reach, there had come, strangely enough, the old despair of readjustment. In a world all wrong it couldn't be, that was all; it just couldn't be. So he waited and brooded. But as he waited, the realization came that, be- fore the thing he wanted could be his, he must prove the sincerity of his want by redeeming a little the waste of the years. He saw quite clearly that, as he was, Constance would be justified in refusing his claim. Time only could work out its validity. But she might offer him hope, and incentive. The letter came. "No," she had written, "you cannot see him. When he comes to you, there must be no longer a shadow between us. When that will be I do not know, I cannot say. In a year, perhaps, after events have justified you Craig's brain seemed suddenly to be cleared of its mists of gloom, and again, as on the moonlit yacht so many years before, he could only close his eyes to the great throb of his happiness. 351 Chapter XXVIII " A year perhaps after events have justified you " Craig had gone at once to West Riding, but the old place, instead of intensifying his ecstasy, as he had expected, with mellow memories and quiet con- tent, seemed rather a mute reminder of the wasted past. It was in excellent condition, to be sure, but there was that in the great silence of it all, in the vistas of unused rooms that constituted a terrible reproach. The servants were new. Poor old Horton had died; the others had changed with the years. The stables were empty. " It's as lonely as Hell out here," Craig had ex- claimed irritably to Simpson, and Simpson could but agree with a retrospective moisture in his dim old eyes. " Lonely as Hell," the lonelier for that vision of something beautiful and luminous and bright that stretched just ahead. Happiness, complete happi- ness, was there within grasp, there for him to make his own at last. In the vague contemplation of the peace and wonder of that he had rested content at first, but dim, unformed joys cannot suffice for long. Facts must be faced, the future brought down to 352 The Sinister Revel definite understanding. He must think clearly; he must plan. Some vague idea of taking up his busi- ness career again hovered in the background of his mind. But with his usual aversion to detail he put off his calculation from day to day till gradually the zest of his joy was sapped. His exultation dropped. There seemed a lack of conviction in everything, in his happiness, in his love, even in the hope Constance had extended to him. Hope? Or was it rather a test to prove his powers, to gauge his weakness? Had she expected that he would qualify? Or was it, after all, but the exertion of an authority his plea had pointed as hers, an authority unjustly used in imposing conditions she judged im- possible to be met? Resentment grew as he brooded. Doubt and uneasiness crept in, with an ever increas- ing sense of his will as a weak amorphous thing, destined now as always to play him false. He be- came sullen and moody. The knowledge that Constance was aware of his every move, waiting, watching, in no way lessened the bitterness of his vacillation. Six weeks passed. He began to go to town, showed himself drunk once or twice at popular restaurants. Then, feeling himself again in the grip of the old restlessness, he had decided to go to his camp in the Adirondacks. Perhaps there, in the coolness of the mountain air, he could think more clearly, force some decision to prove his good intent. And always Constance's words tormented him " In a 353 The Sinister Revel year when events have justified you " There seemed a certain mockery in it now; two months of the year had already slipped by. He met Cecil Brenchley in the Grand Central Station. " I'm off to Rio next week," Cecil cried. Craig's refusal to join him in his South American debaucheries was hurried. " I'm done with all that," he said, but the state- ment brought him no assurance. " Yes, I'm done with all that," he repeated, this time almost passionately, and Cecil let him go, at a loss to understand the look in his strange, restless eyes. The stir of old desires, haunting solicitudes, quick- ening memories ! Craig shut his eyes to the turbu- lence of his thoughts. A danger escaped ! Thank God for that! and his relief was heartfelt. But the little things of life could still control his moods. The train trip to the Adirondacks was a dirty one; the Lodge gave evidence of neglect. He felt a quick sweep of the old loneliness, that deadly shake of his nerves. It began to storm, a deluge of mountain rain, a fury of wind. And then, Craig was to read in a paper, that he picked up quite dispassionately, of the death of Mimi. A week later, drunk, in a frenzy of unreasoning grief, he had sailed with Cecil for Rio de Janeiro. 354 The Sinister Revel She had offered him the hope of forgiveness and he had wilfully cast it aside. But Constance's suf- fering had its root in an even deeper bitterness than this. She knew with relentless intuition that grief for Mimi had been the determinative factor in this greatest crisis of Craig's existence. Poor Con- stance! It had been the shadow of Mimi that had lain most heavily on her heart during all the wretched years of her doubt and struggle. After the first year had forced home to her with sharp poignancy the mistake of her divorce, she seemed suddenly possessed of a new strange insight that enabled her to follow Craig's every step with passionate understanding. For she knew, how intensely she knew the workings of his weak- ness! It was, after all, because of that weakness she loved him and had married him. So she could find no condemnation for him in her heart, only an overwhelming pity, the outcome of a great despair at the hopeless waste of it all. For Constance in those first years had no thought of possible read- justment. She took divorce as irrevocably the end as death itself, accepted the dread finality of it as inevitable. It was the terrible tragedy of Flora's death that aroused in her at last the struggle of a great doubt. The thing that left the world horror- stricken only served to quicken in her the pain of the maternal, that yearned to protect the man she loved in face of world-wide opposition. The greater his sin, the greater his need of her, and she struggled 355 The Sinister Revel blindly to see her way clear through the miasma of accepted tradition. Then she had been taken ill, very ill, and when she recovered Rumour placed Craig and Mimi as living together in Cairo. The years that followed were perhaps the bitterest of Constance's years of trial. For the old jealousy flared anew, and always she tormented herself with images of their happiness. Mimi with her glow- ing eyes, her turbulence of mood; Craig, reckless, insatiate, eager. Their separation had brought at first only a dull wonder, then a slowly quickening problem that worked out eventually in the break with the Asburtons and the return to America. Craig's letter with its desperate note of loneli- ness, its plea for the little Henry, had opened to .Constance the opportunity she had wanted so in- tensely. She told herself that her vision had cleared, that she was obeying purely and simply the dictates of a great love in holding out the hope of forgiveness. But, in reality, the little triumph of one woman over another had had its share in moulding her decision, with its inevitable assertion of a pride that could find justification only in imposing conditions. Her vision had cleared, but cleared only to the point of making terms with her forgiveness. " After events have justified you " She had written it with no feeling of qualification, with no sense of a concession to her pride. Again, as in the matter of her divorce, she was accounting justice 356 The Sinister Revel a higher law than love. For had he earned for- giveness, what virtue in forgiving? Two months of doubt and hope and waiting! Then, again, it was to be the shadow of Mimi, the more potent influence now through the very in- tangibility of memory. From that time on Constance read in every excess of Craig's a defiance of herself, which she inter- preted as the natural reaction of his grief for Mimi. But, in reality, although news of Mimi's death had precipitated his departure, there was something quite different that moved him in his defiance. The thought that had distilled itself out of the turbulence of his moods, during those months of debauchery spent in South America, was that Constance had been acting entirely on the hypothesis of his fail- ure. She was putting his weakness to definite proof that she might cast him off utterly. She came to stand to him as the embodiment of Law that seeks to destroy everything it cannot conform to its de- testable order; and the part of his nature that had always risen against force rose now in a senseless antagonism to her impositions. The image he evoked of her was close-lipped, hard " After events have justified you " He had come back to New York in a fit of drunken bravado to force home the truth of his disintegration. He had gone to pieces utterly this time. Evil, real evil, had got him in its grip at last. He was done for; so he told himself and forced new excesses to 357 The Sinister Revel forget the old. To outrage all decency, to outrage the world, to outrage the woman he loved And, as in the Deauville days, he kept himself drunk to dull the ache of reason. Society was righteously scandalized. "II y a des limites aux limites," so Andre said and Mrs. Pres- cott agreed. So did Mrs. Tim A neat ostracism was organized. The year passed; Craig made no attempt to com- municate with Constance. Two years And Constance's pride could but harden itself with time to a harsh acceptance of her lot and the bitter- ness of failure. For she still saw the shadow that lay between them as the shadow of Mimi, and it was that she could not forgive. Then had happened by one of those strange freaks of chance an incident out of all calculation. Craig had encountered Jack Harding at the house of some notorious South American woman, whom Cecil Brenchley had brought from Rio. Both had spent the night there, the next day. It was as Jack was staggering off about seven o'clock to meet a dinner engagement at the Treadwells' that Craig was seized with the malignant idea of going with him. Craig was on the point of leaving America for good, go- ing back to Cannes; to force entrance into a well- ordered gathering struck him in his befuddlement as a last defiant coup with which to terminate his New York stay. Jack was too drunk to see the folly of 358 The Sinister Revel the venture, took it in fact as an excellent joke on their host. The thing was brilliantly staged with all So- ciety foregathered to get the dramatic thrill of it. The appearance of Craig, drunk, aggressive, wild- eyed, brought a second's startled hush. He stood there, unsteady, dazzled by the many lights. Then, with a dawning consciousness of the abject dismay written on Mrs. Jimmy's stupid face, the grotesque truth of the situation flashed upon him. He did not need the closing-in of a group at the end of the room to point the fact that Constance was there. But Jimmy Treadwell had come forward, snatch- ing the easiest solution. So had John Schuyler and put his hand on Craig's arm. Mrs. Jimmy had twisted her face into a semblance of a smile, and then conversation boomed like the quick rush of air into a vacuum. A second later dinner was an- nounced. Fortunately the affair was a big one. The initial babble was not without its element of hysteria. Then came a shortage of topics, disconcerting lulls. Spars were sporadic. There was an alarming tend- ency displayed to lose the thread of things. For all were waiting, intensely waiting, fearful that something might happen, fearful that something might not happen. Craig had sat perfectly still for a while, of a 359 The Sinister Revel strange sullenness and black brooding. His senses were all of a blur in the beginning. He was only vaguely conscious of a long line of faces, of the noiseless pantomimic service of the footmen, the heavy scent of flowers. But he was aware, intensely aware of Constance's presence in the distance. He had not looked at her, but his mind construed her attitude as that of all the others about him, one of smug superiority. There was Andre directly across, unmistakable evil in his little eyes; there was George Winters, heavy, insolent; and Sidgewick next They became suddenly, to his clouded vision, all a part of the sinister crowd, that had terrorized him from childhood, the crowd that hovered always in the background of his mind, threatening, antago- nistic, destructive. It seemed, as always, that he must make some struggle against it, cry out, defy it to assert his own identity. He felt his thoughts seething to a fever heat. He kept quiet, but they tried to draw him out, with mockery in their eyes. By God, how they were tormenting him, baiting him ! South America! Somebody, some man, was arguing with him; he replied hotly, loudly. " Cecil Brenchley ! " He swung around with a snarl. "Cecil! Who said Cecil was done for? Damn it, he was as good as another " The woman next him pulled his arm; the terror in her eyes but drove him on. Mrs. Tim was whis- pering in Andre's ear. Then he caught George 360 The Sinister Revel Winters' laugh. Quick as a flash he jumped to his feet. The table was in an uproar on the in- stant, with Craig threshing about like a wild animal at bay. There was the crash of china and glass. Two men seized him. Then he remembered noth- ing except that he was looking across the table into Constance's eyes. She had half risen with a little protesting cry, that shivered away to nothing as his eyes met hers. He had turned to her in a last de- fiance. After all, it was to outrage her Then his violence had broken, but it was not the terrible pain in her eyes that stayed him, but a great light that seemed there in the blue depths to struggle with the pain. With the swift vision of that same light in her eyes as she had turned to him so long ago in her first girlish forgiveness, he recognized all too surely the mistaken folly of his defiance. He had given a strange little sob; then, covering his face with his hands, he had suffered John Schuyler to lead him from the room. The next day Constance had gone to him. Her vision had cleared at last. In that one desperate second when Craig had stood at bay, wild-eyed and haggard, all of Constance's anger and bitterness had gone down before the sharp perception of the tragedy of his plight. The very futility and child- ishness of the scene lent to it the greater poignancy of appeal. She saw him, in his weakness, arrayed unfairly against a world all too eager to hunt out 361 The Sinister Revel and make sport of weakness. She saw him, in his failure, the victim of a battered idealism that had been unable to make compromise with circumstance. And she saw herself as of those who had joined to work his ruin through the very impositions she had put upon him to satisfy her pride. " When events have justified you " She knew now a forgiveness that must make terms is no forgiveness at all. She knew now that the shadow between them was not that of Mimi but the shadow of her own hard will. The maternal in her, with its crying need to care for and protect, asserted itself at last, triumphant, and pointed the way to a forgiveness, unqualified, that is of itself the pure and perfect love. So, because he was weak, Constance could forgive him. Had he been strong enough to do the big things he wanted to do, had he possessed the moral stamina to fight out his redemption without her, her pride might have been satisfied, but the woman in her would never have been quickened. Failure had proved his utter dependence on her and in that lay the humanity of his appeal. So she had gone to him in all protecting love with a great pity shining through the translucent quiet of her eyes. Only once did her calm desert her. That was as Craig had cried out wildly the evil that was in him, protested she must not, could not take him back. 362 The Sinister Revel " You do not know. You cannot understand " he kept repeating bitterly. Then as he raised his face, haggard and drawn in the morning light, she recognized for the first time the ravage of the years. She caught her breath with a little sob. " My dear one I " was all she could murmur. " My dear one! " and the infinite tenderness of her voice showed that her love had given her insight and that beyond all doubt she did understand. Then as on that day so many years before, she drew him gently down beside her on the couch and soothed him as one does a little child. 363 EPILOGUE " After all, the Van Dams are too tedious," quoth Andre. " Well, if Craig's behaving himself, it is because he is done for " proclaimed Mrs. Tim. " Poor Connie! " Mrs. Hamilton Raleigh gave forth a sigh of placid content. " She's aged so frightfully since the little Henry's death " But Mrs. Anderson Prescott was looking for a fourth at bridge. " By the way, is any one going down to Sheeps- head for the races? " " And, oh, have you heard the latest version of the Schuyler Scandal?" THE END 364 llllflllllllllllljll A 000038048 5