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 " MR. FAWCETT mas the man of whom Longfcllo^u expected more 
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 and a novelist." AMERICAN QUEEN. 
 
 " There is nn untranslatable charm about the writings of Edgar 
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 Poems. Each in 1 vol. Hand-made paper, rough edges, gilt tops. 
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 " A poet of rare gift, rich fancy, imagination, and intellect." Theatre. 
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " One of the most picturesque and exciting novels of which New York 
 has been the scene. The plot is strong, the action is spirited, the char 
 acters are striking, and the interest never flags. Ne^u-York Tribune. 
 
 THE HOUSE AT HIGH BRIDGE. 
 
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 mend it heartily to all those who enjoy Trollope s stories of English 
 home-life; and we are delighted to see an American who is treading in 
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 Boston Transcript. 
 
 SOCIAL SILHOUETTES. 
 
 A brilliant and piquant record of Mr. Mark Manhattan s New- York 
 sights and experiences, showing up all the follies and oddities of metro 
 politan society with a pen of light. 
 
 TINKLING CYMBALS. 
 
 A brilliant novel of New York and Newport in the nineteenth century. 
 ADVENTURES OF A WIDOW. 
 
 ** For sale by booksellers, or will be sent, post-paid, on receipt of 
 price by the Publishers, 
 
 TICKNOR & CO., Boston.
 
 THE 
 
 CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD 
 
 ROMANCE 
 
 EDGAR FAWCETT 
 
 AUTHOR OF "AN AMBITIOUS WOMAN," "TINKLING CYMBALS," "A GENTLEMAN 
 
 OF LEISURE," " SOCIAL SILHOUETTES," " THE HOUSE 
 
 AT HIGH BRIDGE," ETC. 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 TICKNOR AND COMPANY 
 1887
 
 Copyright, 1886, by EDGAR FAWCETT; and 1887, by 
 TICKNOR & COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 L1CTROTTPD AHD PRINTSD 
 
 BY RAND AVBRY COMPANY. 
 B03TOIC.
 
 TO MY FRIEND, 
 
 JULIAN HAWTHORNE, 
 
 IN THE HOPE THAT ONE WHO HAS ALREADY GIVEN TO 
 THE WORLD SO MUCH OP BRILLIANT IMAGINATION 
 
 AND UNIQUE FANCY, 
 MAY FIND AMID THE GLOOM AND TRAGEDY OF 
 
 THIS TALE 
 
 A SLENDER PARDON FOR ITS EXISTENCE 
 
 AND A FAINT EXCUSE FOR ITS 
 
 DEDICATION. 
 
 2061732
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I. 
 
 MORE than thirty years ago, in a part of New- 
 York which was then open field and is now 
 densely-populated city, I, Otho Claud, first saw 
 the light. My home was a square, prim cottage, 
 guiltless of a single ornament. From its rear 
 doorway, across rolling acres clad in the short 
 verdure which is a sure token of barren or neg 
 lected soil, you could see the waters of the Hud 
 son, sparkling and spacious. Our house stood in 
 a solitude ; hundreds of yards lay between our 
 selves and the nearest neighbor. To the north 
 ward rose masses of that abundant native rock 
 whose bulky and rigid recurrences form so con 
 tinual a feature of Manhattan Island, and whose 
 stolid challenge against the expanding metropolis 
 has met tardy but certain defiance. 
 
 Often on winter nights I have watched that 
 rocky mass from the window of my little bed 
 chamber, looming black and jagged against the 
 
 7
 
 8 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 brilliant stars. Child as I was, I soon realized 
 it to be overhung with the doom of destruction. 
 Slowly, like a devouring monster, I knew that 
 the city crept every year closer to where we 
 dwelt. So many of us look for romance only 
 in the age of a great town in its hoary cathe 
 drals, its scholastic universities, its feudal towers. 
 But the youth of a city, stretching its big, strong 
 limbs like an awakening giant, carelessly and even 
 lazily levelling a forest, quenching a stream or 
 crushing a hill, has in this gradual birth of might 
 and prowess a sombre romance quite its own. 
 
 I think that my early childhood must have 
 shaped some thought like this. Each new year 
 brought the sure advance closer. And it was the 
 steadfast, pitiless march of a foe. Dull booms 
 from blasting-works began to reach us through 
 the more temperate seasons. Every spring we 
 heard them a little more clearly. I knew what 
 they meant ; I had learned ; I was now eight 
 years old. We held our home by no legal right : 
 we were mere squatters upon an unguarded terri 
 tory, valueless when first found, but now gaining 
 with speed in worth and note. Soon we must 
 fare to other quarters. The fiat of dismissal 
 might reach us to-morrow; it might be delayed 
 for many morrows yet. 
 
 In my childish way I had grown to hate the 
 enlarging city. It seemed to me like a dark and 
 monstrous threat. I traced the shadow of it in
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 9 
 
 my parents faces. It made me fear my father 
 more, as it made me love my mother more. He 
 was a German, she a Frenchwoman. Their mar 
 riage had been a hasty and stolen one, and their 
 voyage to America almost a flight. My mother 
 had been the petted daughter of a wealthy Breton 
 bourgeois. Leopold Clauss had come to his farm 
 in the capacity of a serving-man. He milked the 
 cows, stalled the sheep, tossed the hay. My 
 mother, naturally delicate, had been most gently 
 reared. Of keen intelligence, she had richly 
 profited by the tutorship of an old erudite priest, 
 whom her father held in devout esteem. She was 
 good, beautiful, obedient ; there had been some 
 talk of giving her to the church. For her to look 
 with tenderness upon a farm-servant like Leopold 
 Clauss would have been deemed something abomi 
 nable. But one night she fled with him. She 
 loved him, and she fled with him. 
 
 In a foreign land, beset with ills of want and 
 toil, facing a wholly new and often bitter mode 
 of existence, she remained his clinging, uncom 
 plaining wife. Nothing could alienate her affec 
 tion. I have seen many good women since I first 
 recognized her goodness, but no feminine nature 
 has ever touched mine with just the same chaste 
 and sweet force. 
 
 Memory yields to me her image now, with tints 
 that seem to live, with lines that hold a vital 
 grace. She had great, dark, shining eyes, that
 
 10 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 appeared equally to express a controlled melan 
 choly and a profound patience. Her black hair, 
 of a charming wave and gloss, was so plenteous 
 that it seemed to overburden the slim support 
 of her frail white throat. Especially when she 
 drooped under fatigue I would observe this effect ; 
 it was then that the fragility of her body made 
 her resemble some plant whose crest of bloom too 
 heavily weights the stem. Her brow had a sort 
 of holy arch, and the curving lashes cast a faint 
 little shade upon her pale cheek. She was devot 
 edly fond of me. And I, if I had been more like 
 her, should probably have cared for her less. As 
 it was, she inspired in me something like wonder. 
 She seemed as secure above all the baser gusts of 
 passion as the white top of an alp is above ordi 
 nary tempest. I used to ask myself, after I grew 
 older, what she had given me, if she had given me 
 any thing. It is true that she had dropped some 
 sort of leaven into my nature. I will not only 
 grant this ; I will assert more. By heredity I had 
 received from her a distinct set of good impulses, 
 and by education she had nurtured these into firm 
 if not hardy growth. The heritage from my father 
 had been of darker and sterner stuff. I was not 
 to know in full, until a still later day, of the evil 
 flaws which he had transmitted to me. 
 
 He was a man of great physical beauty. From 
 my earliest recollection he had cultivated a vege 
 table-garden lying near our plain abode, and I
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 11 
 
 had often admiringly watched the supple move 
 ments of his commanding frame, the fine play of 
 his massive yet just limbs, the careless gold curls 
 gleaming from the rough hat which surmounted a 
 face of chiselled symmetry. It was this beauty 
 that had won my mother s headstrong and im 
 politic passion ; perhaps it was this beauty that 
 now kept her unfailingly constant. He had a 
 light-blue eye, as cold as steel, as expressionless as 
 ice. I always shrank from that eye of his ; I had 
 seen it glitter cruelly, and I had soon in a vague 
 yet secure way determined that a coarse brain lay 
 behind it, a hard heart below. He ignored me for 
 six good days in the week, and would accept me 
 as a fact, so to speak, on the seventh. But it was 
 not as a pleasant fact ; it was, on the contrary, as 
 a mouth to feed, a form to clothe. I was always 
 in dread lest he should strike me ; I had seen our 
 neighbors strike their children and send them 
 screaming or limping into the squalid huts that 
 were their dreary homes. But though sometimes 
 harsh of order and epithet, my father always re 
 frained from dealing me a blow. He did not hate 
 me ; he did not in any sense cherish me. He was 
 simply indifferent to my needs, aims, hopes, joys 
 or ills. He completely lacked the paternal in 
 stinct ; he had begotten me, and there was an end. 
 Most Germans tenderly love their children. I do 
 not know that I should call him brutal for not 
 loving me, since there are many brutes that will
 
 12 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 face death for their offspring. And moreover, 
 there was a distinct reason that such a strange 
 man as he should regard me precisely as he did. 
 That reason was the lavish affection of my mother. 
 I think that if I had been anyone except her 
 son and her son by his own fatherhood he 
 would never have forgiven her for the enduring 
 worship she paid me. It would have seemed to 
 him intolerable that another than himself could so 
 engross her thought, her life. He was often rude 
 in speech to her ; he would show her by act and 
 phrase the fret and hurt of his struggles against 
 need ; lie would upbraid and reproach and satirize 
 her ; but beneath all his curt or even savage de 
 portment slept for her an immense and fervent 
 fondness. I have seen his cold eye melt as it met 
 hers ; I have seen his big, shapely frame tremble 
 as he took her own slight one in his embrace. 
 Here he was indeed brutal, for he loved as a brute 
 may love, and he compassed the object of his idol 
 atry with a rampart of suspicious hates. This in 
 cessant and alert jealousy was an experience that 
 had for me no real beginning ; its stormy horizon 
 dipped into the haze of infancy ; I could never 
 remember any time when my father had not had a 
 grudge against somebody or something because of 
 too much regard for his wife. The bounds of mad 
 ness are hard to draw; human nature forever 
 stalks abroad with greeds and prejudices that if 
 colored a trifle more vividly would tempt the cell
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 13 
 
 and the chain. I believe that my father, in this 
 one headlong and insensate trait of his, was irre 
 sponsibly mad ; and the pages which I now mean 
 to write shall most pitiably have missed their pur 
 port if I do not win some few converts to my 
 sombre theory. I have known him to kill a poor 
 outcast dog because my mother had not only given 
 it shelter and succor but an occasional caress as 
 well. I have known him to fling a pot of mignon 
 ette from the sill of her bedroom window because 
 she watered and tended it too zealously. He sent 
 adrift more than one serving-girl because the scant 
 wages they got from his own light earnings left 
 them still eager and active to fulfil their loved 
 mistress s least command. It was like grudging a 
 lily the odor she gave to air, and yet he bore 
 grudges just as wild and vain as this. Moods of 
 rage, it is true, roused them, but their betrayal 
 was volcanic only because the soil itself held 
 malign heat. For days and weeks he would be 
 tractable enough in his demeanor toward his wife. 
 Then the flame would leap, the bolt would fall. 
 For all men who looked on her with a gaze of 
 more than careless heed (and it was so hard for 
 anyone to look on that pale, lovable, starry-eyed 
 face indifferently !) he would hoard severe rancor. 
 My mother had no friends of either sex. Our 
 lonely dwelling-place forbade intercourse and com 
 panionship among her equals, and the men and 
 women whom she sometimes met were of a low and
 
 14 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 common type. But she was forced, in my father s 
 presence, to regard no man except with studied 
 coldness. The insult of his vigilance must have 
 pierced her. I marvel, now, that it did not alien 
 ate her love. But that seemed imperishable. As 
 I flash a new light upon her acceptance of this 
 outrageous treatment, I find myself seeing it only 
 in the hues of martyrdom. It was nothing less 
 violent, and yet she endured it with ideal meek 
 ness. 
 
 If any excuse of a sane sort can be accredited 
 to my father s action, it might deserve the name 
 of morbid irritation, exasperation, disappointment. 
 He had expected full forgiveness, in time, from 
 his rich French father-in-law. He had written 
 more than once to the Breton farm-house after 
 reaching America with his stolen bride; he had 
 made my mother write as well. Their letters had 
 been repentant, respectful, self-accusing, even sup 
 plicatory. But the result had all been one. No 
 answer had ever reached them. The French 
 father-in-law remained obdurately silent. Perhaps 
 this silence preyed upon my father s mind. In 
 sanity, like every other mortal ailment, has its 
 chief goading spur. We say of a man : " This or 
 that caused his illness; " or of a madman : " Such 
 an event unseated his reason." I am sure that 
 my father took grievously to heart his kinsman s 
 persistent disdain. It ate into his self-love, which 
 was large, and stung his pride, which was over-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 15 
 
 weening. He saw his place in the new world, 
 whither he had immigrated, to be a small and 
 mean place. His vegetable-gardening brought him 
 little profit ; his lack of funds for use in that sort 
 of investment which first plants, then waits and 
 then reaps, was one long ban against financial ex 
 ploit. His austere nature precluded with him all 
 gainful intimacies and friendships. He could never 
 have smoked a pipe with a man in his parlor and 
 strike a compact for mutual advancement through 
 the social tobacco-fumes. He would always have 
 been thinking of my mother in the next chamber, 
 and wondering if any aid proffered him were not 
 the fruit of a seed which her fair face had sown. 
 
 I know that I describe the self-torment of an 
 exceptionally gloomy soul. But such chronicling 
 will have its dark autobiographical uses hereafter, 
 and for this reason I must not and shall not spare 
 a single black line. He who has set himself to 
 paint with shadow should not shrink through fear 
 of too grim a picture. The pathos of our situa 
 tion, just as my ninth year crept toward a tenth, 
 was indeed woful. A winter of unwonted rigor 
 had yielded to a spring of chill rains. Warning 
 had reached us that in a month we must go. 
 Already I had seen, more than once, groups of 
 men on the huge mass of rock near our home. 
 One of these would point here and there ; he 
 seemed to tell the others of plans and schemes for 
 future action. I used to watch him in dumb fear.
 
 16 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I was like the dweller in some conquered town, 
 marking the movement of the foe. Once he 
 pointed straight at the panes of my own little 
 casement. It was almost as if I had seen him aim 
 an arrow there ; I sprang back and hid my face. 
 Once again the same man pointed to my father in 
 his garden. Work had been quite futile that day. 
 The rain had fallen in sheets for hours, and now 
 under a blurred sun the ground lay sodden and 
 viscous. My father s head was drooped ; he stared 
 at the limp green lines of some vernal growth 
 that the rain had spoiled if not killed. I could 
 see a scowl on his face. He was at war with all 
 the world, which cared no more about his being at 
 war with it than a cyclone cares for a wherry. 
 He had not moral strength enough to put his own 
 weakness in some sort of defensive state. The 
 blood of Teuton peasants ran in his veins ; he 
 came of a race which had been led instead of 
 leading, been driven instead of driving. I think 
 an old inherited torpor bound him, in his present 
 straits, and put sullen passivity in the place of 
 brisk self-help. But the pity of his position was 
 the same. They were going to blast the great 
 rock, and to crush and raze his fireside under the 
 tumbling fragments. 
 
 I saw that my mother was suffering much. But 
 a restless flicker in her dark eyes, or a furtive 
 tremor of her delicate lips, alone told me what 
 pain she really felt. She had never let me work
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 17 
 
 at my father s side out of doors. I was never 
 very strong in my boyhood, and she had used 
 every care to make me robust. She gave me such 
 continual care, indeed, that if I had been a rose 
 bush instead of an only son, my father would long 
 ago have flung me out of the window. And now 
 I plainly perceived that she dreaded absolute pri 
 vation chiefly on my account. There lay her 
 worst grief and fear. I put my arms about her 
 neck one morning. I searched her pale face, so 
 beautiful and yet so- sad. There are some faces 
 that seem to be touched by the shadow of vague 
 future calamity. My mother had such a face. 
 When this tragic hint is blent with beauty the 
 bearer of both has a perilous gift, like that of 
 Mary Stuart, who wrecked souls with a smile. 
 
 " You are breaking your heart," I said to her in 
 French. We always spoke together in French. 
 
 " Do not say that, Otho ! " she protested, sur 
 prised and trembling. 
 
 "But it is true," I went on. "And it is be 
 cause of me oh, you need not hide ; I can guess 
 if I do not see !" 
 
 " What do you see, my son ? " 
 
 " That you are very unhappy." 
 
 She pressed her lips to mine. " Why do you 
 say that it is because of you, Otho ? " she asked. 
 
 " You think that I am weak," I said. " You 
 think that if sharp poverty comes on us I will not 
 have enough to eat. You do not fear for yourself.
 
 18 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 You do not fear for papa. You are always tor 
 menting yourself about me." 
 
 She clasped me closer before I had ended, and 
 for a moment her head fell upon my shoulder. I 
 believed that she wept ; but presently she lifted 
 her head, and the composure of her voice almost 
 startled me. 
 
 " No, Otho. I tell you no ! I do not think 
 you weak. You have grown to be a great boy ; 
 you are strong. If anything happens "... 
 
 " If anything happens," I broke in, " you may 
 trust me to work ! " 
 
 She kissed me and put me away from her. That 
 night my father came in later than usual. It was 
 never his custom to drink. But as I lay in my 
 bed and failed to sleep, I heard his voice sound 
 thick and unfamiliar while he addressed my mother. 
 
 " So you are still up ? " I heard him say. 
 
 " Yes, Leopold." 
 
 " Why did you stay up ? " 
 
 " I waited for you." 
 
 There came a low, bitter laugh. " Has the boy 
 gone nicely to sleep ? eh ? " 
 
 " Yes, Leopold. Why do you ask ? " 
 
 " Oh, you pet him so ! " My father spoke in 
 German, which I understood perfectly. "You 
 should not have hugged him so close. What will 
 become of him now? He cannot do anything 
 but starve. We have all three got to starve. It 
 is coming to that."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 19 
 
 I heard a long, soft sigh. I knew that ray 
 mother gave it. That was the end of my pardon 
 able eavesdropping. But I lay awake for a long 
 time, thinking how she lay awake also. I hated 
 my own boyish weakness while I let the thick 
 dark of the room meet and weigh upon my open 
 lids. I wanted so much to be strong, and fight 
 the vast city that was thrusting us toward ruin. 
 We must go. But where ? Would men come 
 and thrust us out of doors ? Must we be beg 
 gars, like those I had seen often ? Must we stake 
 our daily chance of life on a stray bit of bread ? 
 Shame thrilled me as I thought of my feeble 
 thews and childish limbs. I yearned to help my 
 mother, yet even while I so yearned a desire came 
 upon me to steal toward her and be comforted. 
 
 The next day it rained again through half the 
 morning. My father went away. My mother set 
 me my lesson, just as usual, but I could not study 
 it; my thoughts were elsewhere. Twice, thrice, 
 she chid me and even spoke of punishment if I 
 should leave my task unlearned. I shut myself 
 in my room a little later, and strove to fix atten 
 tion on the two or three books which meant work. 
 But presently I heard voices, and went downstairs 
 into our little parlor. 
 
 My mother did not notice me as I softly pushed 
 the door aside. A man was sitting quite near 
 her, but she stood. There was a pink flush in her 
 cheeks, and I knew quickly that she was not her
 
 20 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 accustomed gentle self. The man was he whom I 
 had once seen point to the window of my little 
 bedchamber. He wore clothes that were neat 
 and smart ; his face was feminine of outline, and 
 he had a pair of cloudy auburn whiskers. He 
 was smiling, and in an eager, vivid way. " You 
 know that I don t want to do what I must do, 
 Mrs. Clauss," I heard him say. "But the thing 
 cannot be helped." 
 
 " My husband is not at home," my mother re 
 plied. She seemed to speak as if she forced each 
 word. " When he comes I will tell him just what 
 you have said. But I must ask you to go now, 
 for he may return at any minute, and "... 
 
 The man rose. He drew near my mother. He 
 put forth a hand, and his smile had a gleam of 
 bold familiarity. " I ve heard hard things of your 
 husband," he said, " but I think very nice things 
 of you. No one could see you and not do so. 
 I m a plain and rather blunt fellow. I hope you ll 
 look on me, whatever happens, as your friend." 
 
 He did not speak at all like a plain or blunt 
 fellow. If I had been older I must have caught 
 from his mien and accent the undertone of flat 
 tery in both. My mother did not take his hand. 
 She glanced nervously toward the doorway, dis 
 covered that I had entered, and beckoned me to 
 her side. She put her arms about my neck, a 
 little later, and held me thus while she answered 
 her visitor.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 21 
 
 "I cannot accept your friendship, Monsieur, 
 though I do not doubt it to be kindly meant. 
 There are certain reasons which I I will not 
 explain. It is best. And I must now beg of you 
 to go, yet not in the least spirit of rudeness or ill- 
 feeling "... 
 
 Her voice faltered here ; she seemed wretchedly 
 embarrassed and perplexed. The stranger gave 
 a light, saucy laugh. " You re in mortal fear of 
 that husband of yours," he exclaimed. "I have 
 heard about him. He is a jealous tyrant. He 
 frowns and scolds if you look at a man besides 
 himself. It s abominable for such a lovely crea 
 ture as you are to be bound to such a master. 
 They say that he is half crazy. That handsome 
 boy should have a start in the world when he gets 
 a little older. His face is like a picture and so is 
 your own. You shouldn t throw by a real chance 
 of help. I could see that you and the boy were 
 safely cared for, and not dragged down into the 
 slums and gutters. Your husband hasn t a friend ; 
 nobody will give him a bit of help ; he s turned 
 everybody against him by his bad, surly nature. 
 If you don t listen to me now you will be sorry 
 afterward. The house must go, and you with it. 
 I can put you both, for a little while, where he 
 can t find you, and perhaps get you decent means 
 of support. As I said, you had better listen to 
 me, and " 
 
 " I shall not listen to you ! " broke in my
 
 22 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 mother. She drew me away with her as she 
 spoke. When we had reached the threshold of 
 the door, she added, in a voice full of frightened 
 pleading : 
 
 " Oh, I pray of you to go ! I will stay with my 
 husband always ! I wish never to leave him. No 
 matter how he treats me no matter what people 
 say of him. I shall accept no help that he does 
 not give me. And it shall be the same with my 
 little boy here. Go, now, Monsieur, if you have 
 any pity in your heart ! " 
 
 She had receded into the hall, still closely clasp 
 ing me. He followed, a moment later, and stood 
 watching us, with one hand on the knob of the 
 outer door, as though it were his intent very soon 
 to depart. I thought his face had altered to a 
 much graver look ; and his tones were quite seri 
 ous as he said : 
 
 " I have a great deal of pity in my heart, and 
 I think it a shame that you and the child should 
 suffer as you will. But, of course, you make it 
 impossible for me to give you aid. The house 
 must be vacated in two days. The owners of 
 this property have sent me their positive orders. 
 . . . Good morning." 
 
 He passed out of the house, and I was glad for 
 my mother s sake that he had gone. I dare say 
 that she had inspired a distinct sentiment in him ; 
 but very possibly he had meant to give this only 
 an honorable expression. Still, though it is easy
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 23 
 
 enough to feel compassion for one we love, unself 
 ish compassion is another affair. So many of us 
 stop short at that. 
 
 My father re-appeared about an hour afterward. 
 The instant I saw his face I knew that something 
 had happened. He threw himself into a chair, 
 without a glance toward my mother. She quietly 
 drew near him, however. " Leopold," she said, in 
 her smooth, sedate voice, " it will be best, will it 
 not, for us to begin packing together all the things 
 we wish to take? Everything here is our own, 
 you know, and when we leave " 
 
 " Who told you we were to leave so soon ? " he 
 interrupted, turning upon her most suddenly. 
 The sharpness of his voice made me start and 
 tingle, as though I had felt the prick of a knife. 
 His light-blue eyes gave a sort of livid flash as 
 they met her own dark ones. But he still held 
 his wrath in, whatever its cause. 
 
 "Who . . who told me?" she repeated, stam- 
 meringly. 
 
 " Yes," he pursued. " / did not say that we 
 were to leave just yet. Someone else has told you. 
 Who was it? Was it the man they sent here 
 days ago to prowl about and give directions? You 
 know the man I mean. Has he been here to-day?" 
 
 " Yes," responded my mother, " he has been 
 here to-day." 
 
 My father rose. I saw his nostril quiver. 
 "And many times before," he said, under his
 
 24 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 breath. " Many times when I did not suspect. 
 Answer me, Gilberte, is this not true ? " 
 
 "It is not true," said my mother. Her mild 
 eyes never flinched as she fixed them upon his. 
 
 My father snatched one of her hands and held it 
 by the wrist, scanning her face in its pure, spiritual 
 candor uplifted to his own. I felt my heart stand 
 still with terror, then. It was almost certain to 
 me that he hurt her by his tense, ruffianly grasp, 
 although she made not the least sign of pain. 
 
 " You deny that he has been here many times? " 
 he cried. " And yet, but a few minutes ago, an 
 impish young child of those people on the rocks 
 below us, danced before me as I came homeward, 
 and yelled jibes about . . about my being jealous, 
 and . . and about the gentleman with the yellow 
 whiskers visiting my wife." 
 
 He still held her hand as he thus spoke, but he 
 had put the free hand toward his throat, pressing 
 down his collar as though he breathed ill and this 
 made him hoarse of speech. My mother still 
 looked him straight in the eyes. " That is no 
 fault of mine, Leopold," she said. " You have 
 forced people into jesting at your continual jeal 
 ousy." She addressed him in German, as she 
 nearly always did, and the less dulcet language, 
 never quite glib upon her lips, gave to her words 
 an unwonted dignity. " I cannot help it if your 
 strange distrust of me has made us both the sport 
 of our neighbors."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 25 
 
 He released her hand. He threw back his fine 
 head, and laughed with shrill force. Then he 
 fumbled for a moment almost wildly at an inner 
 pocket, soon drawing forth a paper, which he 
 thrust toward her. 
 
 " You say truly," he shouted, " that we are the 
 sport of our neighbors. But who has made us 
 so ? Is it I or is it you ? Read that ! Read what 
 I found stuck among my garden-tools here at this 
 very door ! Oh, I will grant you that the writing 
 is very rude that some clod has done it that 
 it bears no name. Yes, I will grant you this. 
 But why should it throw blame upon you for 
 letting that man into this house in all kinds of 
 secret ways, if you have been quite without the 
 fault it lays to your door ? " 
 
 My mother took the paper and read it while he 
 peered at her drooped visage. Then, after a little 
 while, she crushed it in one hand and threw it 
 away. She was looking at him as if each dark, 
 liquid eye held a separate soul by itself, as she 
 said : " Leopold, it is a lie. I swear to you on my 
 honor as your wife that it is a lie ! Some mali 
 cious trick has been played upon you by those 
 whom you have made your enemies. My husband, 
 you do believe me you must believe me ! " 
 
 " And if I say that I do not believe you ! " 
 he cried, threateningly, while he drew nearer to 
 her. 
 
 She closed her eyes for a second or two. Then,
 
 26 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 as she unclosed them, her slender figure seemed to 
 rise and dilate with a womanly grandeur. 
 
 "If you do not believe me," she murmured, 
 "then all must end between us. I have borne 
 much from you I have loved you I have clung 
 to you but I will not endure this ! " 
 
 It was her first absolute defiance. It seemed to 
 appall and rout him at first. Then his face grew 
 black in its reckless rage, and he lifted one 
 clinched hand. 
 
 " I do not believe you ! " came his husky answer. 
 The next instant he called her a terrible name a 
 name whose meaning I did not then know and 
 struck her. It w*as a blow of the same vile 
 strength as the gross charge that shot from his 
 lips. She fell beneath it. There was a cry, but 
 the cry was mine as I sprang toward her. . . . 
 
 Everything seemed to dance and whirl about 
 me for many seconds. Then I knew that I was 
 kneeling beside her, and that her still, white face 
 gave no sign of life, with the heavy glossy hair 
 framing it. We were alone. He had gone. I 
 cried passionately, in my childish French : 
 
 "Maman! maman! es tu morte? C est moi, 
 cest ton Otho! Dis-moi, maman, es tu morte? II 
 est parti, ce cruel papa, I Re"veilles-toi et rSponds ! " 
 
 Bat she did not speak or move while my arms 
 clasped her in frantic affright and grief.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 27 
 
 II. 
 
 THE blow had stunned her, and no more. I 
 rained kisses upon her face as I saw consciousness 
 return to it. I forgot the outrage from which she 
 had suffered, in my delight that she was still alive. 
 She was at first very weak and shaken. Even 
 after she had gained a lounge and sunk upon it, 
 speech was for quite a while nearly impossible. 
 Then by degrees both calm and strength returned 
 to her. She made me kneel at her side and hold 
 her hand while she said: "Otho, my son, you 
 must never speak a word of what you saw pass. 
 Mamma and you must go away together, now. 
 We must go without . . papa. He must not 
 know when we leave, and we shall leave him 
 forever." 
 
 " I am glad," I said. " I want never to see him 
 again. He struck you. It was a great sin, be 
 cause you are so good. I shall never forget it." 
 
 She leaned her lips to mine and kissed them. 
 " Be sure that you never do forget it," she mur 
 mured, with an emphasis that I did not then 
 dream of understanding. (How I was fated to 
 understand hereafter ! )
 
 28 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 "Shall we go soon, mamma?" I questioned. 
 
 She did not answer for a little time ; she seemed 
 to reflect. " We will go, my dear," she presently 
 told me, "as soon as there is any chance of our 
 going un watched. Otho, you are a clever boy 
 clever beyond your age. You are still not ten 
 years old and yet you can quite grasp my mean 
 ing, I am sure. Your father will come back ; he 
 will come back to repent, to beg my pardon, to 
 kneel before me and call himself all kinds of 
 bitter names. But that must not be, Otho. It is 
 not because my heart is hardened against him ; 
 it is not because I do not already forgive him 
 what he has done. It is because I fear, for his 
 own sake, what he may do hereafter. That is why 
 we must go together, and very secretly. I have 
 a little money saved ; it is but a few dollars, and 
 yet it can help us till we find Martha." 
 
 "Martha!" I exclaimed, not without a sudden 
 joy. " Martha, who lived with us when I was a 
 very little boy, mamma, and who was always so 
 good to me, and . . and "whom papa sent away, 
 one day, because ? " 
 
 "Yes, Martha," my mother interrupted. "It 
 is the same Martha, my dear. She has married 
 since. She wrote to me not long ago, and asked 
 me to come and see her in her present home. 
 The address was in her letter, but I have lost it. 
 Still, I remember the address or nearly. It is 
 in the lower part of the Bowery."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 29 
 
 " The Bowery ? " I repeated. " That is very far 
 away, is it not ? " 
 
 " No : we will find it. It is eastward from here. 
 I I have seen so little of the city that I have 
 lived so near for many years ! But we will find 
 it, as I tell you. . . And now, Otho, you must aid 
 me to . . to avoid papa." My mother rose from 
 the lounge at this point. She seemed wholly her 
 composed self again. " Listen, my child," she 
 went on, standing over me and fixing upon my 
 upturned face those lovely dark eyes whose least 
 change I knew so well. " When we go it must be 
 night. If it were not night he . . he might trace 
 us. Others might see us or follow us and tell 
 which course we had taken. What we wish to do 
 is to escape, and night is always best for that. 
 There are many rugged spots in the country here 
 abouts. If we could once get free of this house 
 and hide somewhere, Otho no matter where, so 
 that we hide unseen till night has come ! You 
 have rambled in these parts far more than I. Do 
 you remember any place ? Try to think, my son." 
 
 I needed to think only a moment. " The great 
 rock," I said. I pointed northward to it as I 
 spoke. Its rough density, seen clear under a sky 
 that drifted clouds of the storm had left blue and 
 limpid as amethyst, gleamed opaque yet keen to 
 us through a near uncurtained window. I knew 
 that rock so well ! Why should I not know if 
 any lair or fastness of the sort now needed were
 
 30 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 quarried by chance in its crude flanks? I did 
 know of such a covert, and I told my knowledge 
 promptly, with a florid childish pride. 
 
 My mother listened. She gave a slow nod as 
 she heard. She bade me steal to the outer door 
 and watch with caution for any sign of my 
 father s approach. While I thus kept vigil she 
 was to make all swift use of time in preparing 
 our flight. 
 
 How strange and novel a flight it was ! This 
 woman still loved the man who had so foully 
 soiled her love. And yet she would have put an 
 ocean, a continent, between herself and him, be 
 cause fearful lest her presence in his life might 
 urge him toward crime. Other women fly from 
 men they hate : she fled from one whom all the 
 powers of darkness, dismally allied, could neither 
 estrange nor repel. It was for his sake alone 
 that she left him ; she would have borne tenfold 
 worse blows than that he had dealt her; she 
 would have hungered with him, starved with him, 
 begged for him ; no smile in all the world would 
 have been so dear to her as his harshest frown ; 
 to serve him and be spurned by him was pleasure 
 compared with never to find him at her side. 
 And yet, in horror of what harm he might wreak 
 upon himself through the madness with which 
 she saw him cursed, she had resolved to divide 
 her life from his perpetually. Child as I was 
 then, I felt the sublimity of her abandonment.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 31 
 
 Man that I afterward grew, I confirmed and re 
 vered it. 
 
 While crouched half in ambush on the small 
 porch of our dwelling, I soon became sure that 
 the intended exit would pass unespied. The hour 
 was now verging toward late afternoon. East 
 ward the spent storm lay in one long, low bank of 
 spongy drab. Across the glittering river spring 
 had touched a tract of woodland with vapory 
 green, so ethereal of tint that it seemed like only 
 the airy soul of a color. Cumbrous wharves and 
 gaunt warehouses had not yet made Jersey City 
 their undisputed prey ; being still a village, or 
 very like one, she had a few sylvan chances with 
 the turning year. Our side of the river held a 
 more suburban rank, for piles of lumber and bales 
 of merchandise lay frequent along its uncouth 
 landing-places, in that commercial scorn of all 
 riparian grace and charm which has dwelt with 
 New- York at every stage of her growth. But the 
 stretches of moist and twinkling green farther in 
 land were as yet a choice spoil that waited seizure. 
 With the prongs of rock to pierce their turfy sward 
 and make intervals of tender undulation, they 
 were rich in pastoral effect ; and one or two nib 
 bling goats (those placid prowlers about so many 
 of our city environs) lent their shaggy shapes to 
 deepen the forlorn sort of picturesqueness. Below 
 a fall in the land rose rocks on which many 
 wretched paupers had reared pitiful huts. Our
 
 32 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 home was almost of palatial comfort beside these. 
 Some of them were shapeless blendings of ancient 
 boards, as if nailed together in random desperation 
 of refuge by their outcast tenants. Others had a 
 more decent contour, with a space of creditable 
 courtyard. But all were huddled and massed in 
 woful disarray. Perched on successive acclivities, 
 they stared at the passer beneath them as though 
 they were the last miserable haunts of those whom 
 the near city had denied all honest shelter. Later, 
 when foreign immigration flooded the island, they 
 became still more numerous ; but even then their 
 squalid and grizzly fellowships were hard to miss. 
 The scum and riffraff of humanity clung there. 
 The stone that underlay their zigzag walls and 
 precarious roofs could brace both against over 
 throw when blasts drove. Their inmates were 
 used to the nip of frost and the chill of ruin. 
 Like new Noahs they had fled hither to these bare 
 heights from the deluge of civilization beyond. 
 And alas, each Noah had borne with him his 
 family, as in the tale of old ! You saw mothers 
 there, suckling young infants in the sun on clear 
 days. You saw frowzy unkempt children descend 
 the wooden stairs that led below. Some of these 
 poor waifs had spoken to me and sought my com 
 pany during past rambles. But I always gave 
 them cold response ; it was my parents charge, and 
 I was glad enough to heed it, for often I had heard 
 drunken yells from those grimy dens aloft, and
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 33 
 
 once the news had reached us of a sickening mur 
 der done at night there by a man wild with drink. 
 From these bad and drear quarters had come, I 
 am certain, all our present ill. The boy who had 
 shrieked his false, evil message to my father was 
 one of their lawless tribe. They had set him to 
 deal that sting, as they had set some one else in 
 their sorry group who could wield a pen to write 
 that malignant letter which my father had found. 
 They hated us because we shrank from them ; 
 they hated my father because he was almost one 
 of them and yet scorned their rabble. On Sun 
 days they would meet us in a certain grimy 
 wooden church, where the service was droned by 
 an old asthmatic priest, the attendance was meagre, 
 and the benches ascetically hard. Here their 
 scrutiny would be torture to my father, and they 
 soon got to understand why. His jealousy became 
 a source of great secret glee to them. Perhaps 
 their amusement might have transpired more 
 openly if it had not been for my father s big 
 frame and bold, cool eye. As it was, they giggled, 
 whispered, and slanted meaning looks. They no 
 doubt regarded us as a grotesque threefold joke. 
 They knew we were " squatters," like themselves, 
 on territory for which we never paid a dime. Our 
 reserve would possibly have hurt them more if 
 they had not found in its armor what they deemed 
 so comic a crevice. I marvel now that their 
 mockery took no other form than it did the
 
 34 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 child s elfin jibe and the ribaldry of that nameless 
 letter. Perhaps a residue of respectful dread 
 vetoed all such treatment until they learned that 
 we were to be driven away while their own exalted 
 colony remained for a little longer unmolested. 
 But then our last shred of superiority had been 
 torn from us ; misfortune, that most merciless of 
 levellers, had made our cottage in the vale quite 
 mentionable beside their shanties on the steep. 
 
 For some reason the great rock close to our 
 dwelling had not yet known the invader s foot or 
 heard his hammer ring. As I now looked about 
 me, in wary quest of an observer, all was lonely 
 and silent. If you listened closely you could hear 
 a vague hum, which always came by day from the 
 adjacent city, and which was its way of living and 
 breathing. Nearly all gigantic things breathe 
 audibly. 
 
 My mother soon called to me from the inner 
 hall. I went to her at once. She looked relieved 
 when I bade her be certain that the coast was 
 clear. She was clad in shawl and bonnet ; she 
 had a little bundle, which held a few trinkets and 
 souvenirs of her past life in France, but apart from 
 this she bore nothing that could prove a clog or 
 burden. Her hand shook a little as she clasped 
 mine with it and went out of the house at my side. 
 We were about to face so vast a change ; no won 
 der that she felt distrustful of what might befall 
 us both. And yet the impulse that drove her on
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 35 
 
 was like the goad of fate itself. She dared not 
 pause. Her conscience spoke to her with the 
 voice of her love. " You must go," it said, and 
 she obeyed. 
 
 A few steps brought us to our proposed hiding- 
 place. It was a damp, dark, grewsome cavity 
 under one corner of the great rock. It was just 
 the spot for a roaming child like myself to chance 
 upon and prize. Its hollow gloom was touched 
 with the mystery that all children love. I had 
 stolen into it timidly ; I had rushed from it in 
 dire fear ; I had returned to it with morbid entice 
 ment, and I had finally accepted its existence 
 with a sad critical disdain, since its prosaic inte 
 rior had at last convinced me that it was incapable 
 of producing a bear, a ghost, or even a mere bat. 
 I had long ago become familiarly and contempt 
 uously intimate with it. The other children of 
 the neighborhood, being mostly of Irish parentage, 
 and hence packed with superstition, would enter 
 it rarely and then but for brief and scared so 
 journs. I knew that the risk of my mother and 
 myself being now disturbed was in every way 
 slight. We passed inside for perhaps twenty 
 yards, and then paused. The dusk was at first 
 very obscure, but in a little while it seemed to 
 lessen, and we saw the dark, jagged walls and the 
 tawny soil with tolerable clearness. All this time 
 my mother had held my hand. We had crouched 
 down together. Suddenly I felt her clasp tight-
 
 36 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 en. Where daylight gleamed at the mouth of 
 the cavern, I saw a human shape. It had just 
 appeared there, and it moved with a staggering 
 pace and a drooped head. The next minute, how 
 ever, its head was raised. I plainly discerned my 
 father s face. 
 
 But then all fear of immediate detection fled 
 from me. The face, bathed in that outer light, 
 was full of a lurid and fierce pain, which had 
 evidently no concern with our discovery. While 
 I gazed from the shadowy ambush my mother 
 and I had reached, I saw him knot both hands 
 together and stare down at the ground. The 
 gesture, the attitude, was one of mental misery. 
 
 Abruptly, a second time, he raised his head. 
 Turning full toward the cavern, he gave every 
 sign of entering it. His look was directed straight 
 toward our hold of refuge. The pressure of my 
 mother s hand grew still more tense. My own 
 heart stood still. I believed that he had indeed 
 seen us, and was about to confront us. 
 
 But I was wrong. He had doubtless been some 
 where near us as we slipped into the retreat. 
 But he had not seen us glide past its threshold, 
 and as his eyes swept the obscurity in which we 
 hid, they gave no trace of detective intent. But 
 they gave trace of a desperate, remorseful tur 
 moil. The thought of having injured her whom 
 he loved with such an ill-ordered and tyrannic 
 passion, was stinging him into keenest repentance.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 37 
 
 He was telling himself that, after all, she might 
 have been wholly guiltless. The force of his 
 dreadful jealousy was yielding to that of reason, 
 of rational reflection. His lucid interval had 
 come, as it comes with nearly all madmen. 
 
 He moved away. I breathed again. I heard 
 my mother give a low, quivering gasp. I turned 
 and kissed her in the dark. Her cheek, as I did 
 so, was cold as ice. 
 
 But my father had gone. He had known noth 
 ing of our partial escape. Would it be a- com 
 plete one ? I felt new fears of this as I waited 
 and whispered with her, longing for twilight to 
 come, for evening to deepen, for night to lend us 
 its black aid. 
 
 And night at length did so, although its advent, 
 in all my brief life, had never yet seemed as 
 loitering as now. We finally emerged from the 
 cavern, still hand in hand. We must descend the 
 hill and pass the rocks where the huts clustered. 
 There was no other course. Westward lay dim 
 slopes which might trip our feet into the very 
 Hudson itself. Eastward were the raw, inchoate 
 plans of streets and avenues that are now paved 
 and populous, but were then treacherous with 
 untold pitfalls. We must pass cityward by a 
 single road, and that skirted the hovel-crowned 
 heights which we were fain to shun. 
 
 But with hand still grasping hand, we took this 
 compulsory route. As we left the cavern we seemed
 
 38 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 to gain air that was almost bright. No breeze 
 moved, and a } ellow mist alone told of the sunken 
 sun. Stars had begun to beam in the cloudless 
 heaven ; the prongs of rock rose spectral on every 
 side ; we saw the home that we had deserted ; 
 a light shone from several of its lower windows. 
 
 " He must be there," my mother whispered. 
 A stifled sob was in her voice. 
 
 " If he is there," I said, " it is better. Then 
 he will not see us and cannot follow us." 
 
 She did not answer me, but I heard her sigh. 
 I think her love was tugging at her heart in that 
 moment. She wanted to go back to him. She 
 wanted to give him another chance to get his 
 kisses of penitence, and return her own of pardon. 
 But her step did not once falter. She was flying 
 from him because she loved him. And her love 
 nerved and steadied her as she hurried onward 
 at my side. No one met us while we descended 
 the hill. The rocks soon loomed on either hand. 
 Lights glowed from their flat summits. We heard 
 a loud laugh or two, and again we heard a harsh, 
 ireful oath. Life there was at its usual nocturnal 
 ferment. A few of the men were jovially drunk, 
 a few of them savagely so. And now a thin 
 scream told us that some child had been struck 
 and hurt. As a boiling liquid will throw scum to 
 its top, so the rush and strife of this augmenting 
 city had cast these poor lawless and mutinous 
 folk toward its barren outskirts.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 39 
 
 We hastened along. In a little while we had 
 gained a region where flag-stones met our tread, 
 though somewhat brokenly, and street-lamps, with 
 wide interspaces, began to gleam upon our sight. 
 We had reached the town itself, and were pres 
 ently well past its limits. To strike westward 
 into the Bowery was now an easy feat. I should 
 say that we came upon it by the approach of Bond 
 or Great Jones Street. It was then much as it is 
 now in point of ugliness, but its shops were fewer 
 and its private dwellings more numerous. We 
 had arrived at Canal Street before my mother, 
 always keeping note of the numbers over the door 
 ways, told me that she was nearly sure Martha 
 lived close at hand. The precise number had 
 escaped her, but it was certainly not far off. She 
 stopped before a gigantic black-bearded Jew, who 
 stood at the entrance of a little tobacco-shop, and 
 asked him if Mrs. O Hara dwelt near by. We 
 were evidently in luck. The Jew took a pipe 
 from his hirsute lips and pointed next door. 
 
 "O Hara, "he said, with an urbane smile that 
 put little creases in his cheeks. "I s pose you 
 meen de untertaker s, ride dare." 
 
 " Ride dare," was a little two-storied abode. In 
 its large lower window loomed a huge, solemn 
 coffin. 
 
 " Martha can t live here ! " I said, as we paused 
 at the narrow glass-door quite close to the rigid, 
 angular box which no child of my then age can
 
 40 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 see without a thrill of sombre association. I re 
 called the brawny, buxom, merry Martha of earlier 
 days. She always had a laugh and a jest on her 
 ample, ruddy mouth. It seemed impossible to 
 connect her vigorous, mirthful life with any 
 custody of death and the dead. 
 
 " Yes," my mother answered. " I remember, 
 now, that Martha wrote me she had married an 
 undertaker. This must be the place, Otho. At 
 least we had best inquire here. It would be al 
 most strange if we had not found her now, though 
 I shall feel thankful indeed if we have had the 
 good fortune to find her so soon." 
 
 We had found her. Martha herself responded 
 to our summons. She threw up both her hands 
 as she recognized us, in jovial amazement. She 
 was not a bit changed. Her sepulchral sur 
 roundings had not left her touched by a trace of 
 their shadow. She drew us into a back room, and 
 made us welcome with a splendid cordiality. She 
 possessed the sunny Irish nature in its fullest exu 
 berance. She was more genially alive than any 
 man or woman I have since met. She hugged me 
 in her stout arms and made me sit on her strong 
 knee while my mother told her all that had passed. 
 She had hated my father honestly and frankly 
 even before he had turned her simple devotion to 
 his wife into a reason for driving her from his 
 house, and she blamed him now with all the ardor 
 of which her explosive brogue was capable.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 41 
 
 "Shure, ma am," she cried, "I knew it wud 
 come to this afore you d finished wid im. Shure, 
 the loikes o you an the loikes o him is as diff rent 
 as a rose frum a cabbage. If I d been there 
 when he sthruck yer, ma am, he d a felt the weight 
 o this hand, bad luck to im ! An the dear little 
 Otho s come along wid ye ! Well, God bless ye 
 both ! Ye 11 have bed and board here wid me fur 
 manny a day, so ye will. Th ould man, as I call 
 im, 11 be back soon. * He ll be glad when he finds 
 ye here, fur he knows well, ma am, how I ve been 
 pinin to see ye both, so I have ! An the bishness 
 is payin furst rate jusht at present. We washn t 
 doin very much till about a month ago, but now 
 there s a shtroke o fortune come to us, so there is, 
 an the vicinity s got koind o unhealthy, so s we 
 can live an save a little as well. It s three good 
 funerals, ma am, that s fallen from Heaven upon 
 us this very week, an we re promished another 
 to-morrer, fur the pawnbroker s eldest gurl, across 
 the block, ain t expected this very minnit ! " . . . 
 
 Martha s husband soon appeared. He was a 
 gaunt, bony man, with a great, drooping black 
 mustache, and a glassy yet benevolent eye. Martha 
 rarely permitted him to finish a sentence. She 
 browbeat him at every turn, mocked him, criticised 
 him, bewailed him, objected to him. And yet he 
 bore all her effrontery not merely with resignation, 
 but seeming pleasure. He accepted her sarcasms, 
 her sudden assaults, her biting personalities, with-
 
 42 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 out a disapproving murmur. But I soon saw that 
 Martha s eye alwaj s had a sly twinkle in it, and I 
 soon grew sure that he saw the twinkle too, and 
 loved her for it, as he loved her for every other 
 trait or mood, whatever she was and whatever any 
 chance might make her become. 
 
 I got to be very fond of him. During the next 
 few days he was always trying to tell my mother 
 how glad he felt at welcoming his wife s old 
 mistress. He would begin somewhat in this 
 fashion, with his haggard, sallow face drawn into 
 painful lines of premeditated suavity : 
 
 " Well, ma am, it s loike seein the face of an old 
 frind, beggin your pardon, ma am, to meet the lady 
 that Martha s tole me about so often, an praished 
 as wan o the shweetist ladies that ever " 
 
 " Be off wid ye, now ! " Martha would roughly 
 break in, at perhaps this point in the poor fellow s 
 gingerly gallantry of phrase. " Shure, d ye think 
 Mrs. Clorz 11 put up wid yer blarney as I did 
 when I married the loikes o yer? It s her that ll 
 see through ye, sur, as if it was glass an not brass 
 that ye re made of. S posin I shud tell ye, 
 ma am " (and here Martha would set a hand on 
 each hip and face my mother, after frowning with 
 an awful momentary gloom sideways upon her 
 lord) " s posin I shud tell ye some o the foine 
 compleements of another koind, ma am, that he s 
 been payin ye behoind yer back, an w at a double- 
 faced rashcal he can be when he chooses ! "
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 43 
 
 O Hara would shake his head meekly at such 
 dark innuendoes as these, and it was not long be 
 fore my mother would chide Martha with a reprov 
 ing smile when she let her coltish wit kick up its 
 heels after this mettlesome manner. My mother 
 and I were not slow to recognize into what good 
 hands we had fallen. They were four hands in 
 all, and two were plump and soft, two big and 
 horny. I think I got to love O Hara s big and 
 horny ones a little the best, as time elapsed, though 
 I still preserved my old allegiance to Martha. 
 The great, grim, sweet-natured Irishman loved me 
 in return, I am sure. He would often stroke my 
 hair and whisper in my ear, " Plaise God to send 
 me, some day, as purty a boy as you, mee little 
 man ! " And I might have been some rare bit of 
 porcelain for the way in which he treasured and 
 guarded me. I have spoken of his hard, large 
 hands, and of my love for them. This is literal 
 truth, for I would often nestle my own within one 
 of their coarse palms and follow at O Hara s side 
 while he led me into the loud, plebeian street near 
 by, and thence into calmer but more wretched 
 haunts. We saw many strange sights together. 
 He seemed convinced of my untarnishable purity ; 
 I was like a pearl to him that one could drop in 
 mud but lift again and unsoil by a careless brush. 
 Like many of his race, he drank, but unlike most 
 he never drank to rash excess. I have stood at 
 his side in dingy liquor-stores while he called for his
 
 44 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " mixt ale " or his " drop o hot Irish," but though 
 glowering faces might be near me and bloodshot 
 eyes peering at me, I never felt a qualm of dread. 
 A tough biceps was not far from those solid fingers 
 that my own frail ones could seize at an instant s 
 notice. 
 
 Spring had meanwhile slipped into summer ; 
 summer had ripened to autumn ; winter had come 
 again. I had seen with pleasure that we were no 
 longer dependent for bread upon the O Haras. 
 My mother, by nature as well as early training, 
 was a deft needlewoman. Martha, with ringers 
 all thumbs, revered her skill, and told tales of it 
 among the neighbors, in which eulogy not seldom 
 borrowed the wings of fancy. Most fame owes its 
 loudness to one special trumpet; my mother was 
 soon approached with offers in the way of dress 
 making, which Martha, sedate as any grand 
 chamberlain, at first haughtily rejected, then 
 promised to consider. The end of it all was that 
 she threw just a fabulous enough atmosphere about 
 her favorite s powers to raise prospective profits 
 a good many dollars. Heaven knows what arts of 
 lying were needed to accomplish this result. But 
 Martha knew. My mother made gowns, finally, 
 for the resident customers who sought her, and 
 made them so well that they spread her praise 
 abroad. This brought us an income ; shaping 
 apparel for all sorts of feminine figures at a lower 
 price than could elsewhere be secured, soon be-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 45 
 
 came her frequent task. But other work claimed 
 her diligence. She sewed shrouds for the dead as 
 well as frocks for the living. 
 
 Shrouds in those days were used far more com 
 monly than now. I shrank, at first, from seeing 
 her ply this uncanny office. There was, to my 
 young thought, a kind of daring in it a rash alli 
 ance with that cold enemy who waits for us all. 
 Besides, it seemed to deepen the melancholy of her 
 mien, as if she were always wearing a thin film 
 of black over her sad face. I knew that her life 
 now held but a sole spark of cheer or hope. That 
 was myself. Without me to guard and prize, it is 
 doubtful if she would have cared about life at all. 
 I was sure that she always thought a great deal 
 of my father. But she never even mentioned his 
 name to me. She wanted me to forget him if I 
 could. She wanted to forget him herself, but 
 could not. She had wrapped the past in silence, 
 but she failed to clothe it with oblivion likewise. 
 She yearned to hear from him or of him, and yet 
 she equally desired neither event. For his sake 
 she would have been terrified if she had learned 
 that he had searched the city in quest of her, 
 though for her own sake she would have secretly 
 rejoiced at such knowledge. It was a strange 
 blending of resignation and discontent. Perhaps 
 the two feelings did not blend, after all, and there 
 was a gulf between them which I somehow 
 spanned. She might have sought him and found
 
 46 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 him again, spurred by her undying love, if it had 
 not been for me. But to do this would have been 
 to place me under his influence, apart from giving 
 him fresh incentive for his frightful jealousies. 
 She had looked her fate calmly in the eyes, and 
 had decided. She plied her needle, smiled often, 
 never went out of doors, and tried to make me 
 believe she was happy. One day I put my arm 
 about her neck and kissed her, watching what she 
 sewed. It was a yielding white stuff, and she was 
 fixing broad plaits in it. It was another shroud. 
 Mike O Hara and his Martha had been thriving of 
 late, and we throve with them. 
 
 " Mamma," I said, " why do you never go out ? 
 Sometimes the days are very pleasant. And after 
 I have done with my lessons in the mornings you 
 let me go out. Why do you never go yourself? " 
 
 She looked at me intently for a moment. I put 
 my arms still closer about her neck. I kissed her 
 again. " Mamma," I whispered, " tell me. Are 
 you afraid of him ? " 
 
 She drooped her gaze. She made a feint of 
 continuing to stitch at the white plaits. "You 
 know, Otho," she faltered, soon. " You must 
 know." 
 
 I did. But almost cruelly I persisted, strength 
 ening my caress. " You are afraid he will find us, 
 mamma. That is why you never go out. But 
 you let me go for long walks with Michael." 
 
 She slowly nodded. " Yes. I let you go with
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 47 
 
 Michael. He is very strong. He will take care 
 of you. And you need the air every day, and the 
 exercise. Michael understands." 
 
 I put my lips close to her ear. "Michael is 
 strong," I whispered, "but he is stronger. If he 
 should see me what could Michael or anyone do 
 against him ? He would tear me away ; he would 
 make me tell him where you are ; he " 
 
 But I paused here, for she had dropped her 
 work and had clasped me round the body with 
 eager arms. 
 
 It was like a revelation. She was in a sudden 
 tremor of excitement. " Oh, my son, my Otho," 
 she exclaimed, " I let you go, but I suffer when 
 you are away from me ! " She had drawn my 
 head down to her bosom ; she was kissing my 
 cheeks, and patting my hair with little rapid mo 
 tions of one hand. "If if he should find you 
 and take you from me, I I should go mad or die 
 I do not know which." 
 
 And then she fell to sobbing excitedly on my 
 shoulder. I was silent for quite a little while. 
 At length I said, very solemnly and meaningly : 
 
 " I shall never go out again, mamma, unless we 
 go together. If he meets us he must meet us 
 both. Remember what I tell you. Michael and 
 Martha may know why, or not, just as you please. 
 But I will never go out again unless I go with you. 
 If anything should happen we must be together. 
 If he is waiting and watching for us, let him find
 
 48 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 us side by side. Do you understand me, mam 
 ma?" 
 
 Still clasping me, she lifted her dark eyes to 
 mine. They swam in tears. She could scarcely 
 utter the words that now brokenly left her lips. 
 
 " Yes, Otho. It shall be as you will. I do 
 understand. When we go, we will go to 
 gether ! " 
 
 How fateful those words of hers sound to me, 
 echoing through the departed years ! And for 
 what a mournful reason have they found a lodg 
 ing-place in my memory, ignorant as I then was 
 of the disaster they foreshadowed !
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 III. 
 
 THROUGH weeks I firmly kept my resolve. It 
 was sometimes hard to keep, for I loved my walks 
 with Michael, and had grown used to entering 
 houses with him where the black sign of death 
 met us at thresholds, and where loss would not 
 seldom wear as much snivelling hypocrisy as real 
 regret. Michael, too, was very keen-witted, in his 
 way ; he had a swift knowledge of his clients ; he 
 was born for his dreary calling. There was noth 
 ing unctuous or mock-sober about his approaches. 
 He saw through shams and dealt with them by a 
 shrewd and summary diplomacy. I remember 
 that we once entered together a narrow little room 
 in a German tenement-house not far away from 
 the Bowery. We were received by a woman 
 nearly as tall as Michael himself, who wore not a 
 vestige of mourning, and carried an ornate gold 
 ear-ring in either prominent ear. Her gray hair 
 was drawn tightly backward from each temple ; 
 she was the most Dutch-looking old woman, with 
 her big, tallowy visage, and her hirsute wart, and 
 her small rheumy eyes, that I ever recollected hav 
 ing seen. She received us in a frayed wrapper
 
 50 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 and a pair of carpet slippers. She put her head a 
 little on one side as she said : 
 
 " Veil, Mr. O Wara, he s gone." (" He " was 
 the late Mr. Schmitt, a grocer with whom Martha 
 had formerly dealt.) " He pass avay chuss lige a 
 shild. I guess bout an hour ago. I vas vaitin 
 fur you ever since. I thord you mide be arount." 
 
 Mike nodded, and scratched one bluish cheek. 
 He had on his best professional expression some 
 thing between a leer and a scowl. I had become 
 perfectly familiar with it, and knew its wholly 
 commercial nature ; he put it on and off at a 
 moment s notice, like the white cotton gloves then 
 in his pocket. " Yes, ma am," he now said with 
 great sobriety. " I haird lash night as Mr. Smith 
 was putty low, an well, well, I m sorry, ma am, 
 an I guess there s rnanny another that ll even be 
 sorrier nor me ! " 
 
 " He vas a goot man," said Mrs. Schmitt. She 
 did not appear to be sorry. " He alvays gif your 
 vife goot measure, ain t it, Mr. O Wara?" she 
 suddenly asked. 
 
 " Oh, shure, ma am, yes, indeed ! " declared Mike, 
 thoroughly thrown off his guard. 
 
 Mrs. Schmitt put her head a good deal more on 
 one side, and a sickly smile crept out at the cor 
 ners of her lips. " I thord you say so, Mr. O Wara. 
 . . Mr. Rosenbaum vas in shuss before you come, 
 an ve vas a talkin boud cle casked." 
 
 To talk about the casket with Mr. Rosenbaum
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 51 
 
 was, of course, a serious matter for Michael. 
 Rosenbaimi was a rival undertaker, an oily little 
 Jew with a sliding scale of prices ; he could be 
 " beaten down " unmercifully, as he usually was 
 and expected to be. Michael, on the other hand, 
 had a set of inflexible prices for all his dismal 
 wares and services, and held the haggling Rosen- 
 baum in grand contempt. Still, business was 
 business, and Rosenbaum was a German and must 
 not be roughly spoken of here, if the present 
 "job" was to be secured. So Michael scratched 
 his cheek again, and cleared his throat, and said : 
 
 " Well, ma am, an did ye come to anny turrums 
 wid . . the other gintleman ? " He disliked to 
 pronounce the odious name, but it must have cost 
 him a pang to call Rosenbaum a gentleman. 
 
 " Veil," said Mrs. Schmitt, with a cough as dry 
 as the rustle of a dead maize-stalk. " I guess I 
 ord to teal vit Rosenbaum, Mr. O Wara. I ord 
 do cause he s a coundryman o mine if fur no 
 odder reason. . . Still, sphsosin you d lemme haf 
 de casked sheaper . . say a toller or so sheaper, 
 vy, I rnide go to you. I do vand no ice nor nod- 
 din , you unnershtand, akcep de casked. It s cole 
 vedder, an I god bode de vinders up, an a liddle 
 salpeeder alvays on his face, an he ll keep firsd rate 
 till de funerrel. So now, how mush you sharge 
 fur shuss de casked an vat has to be done de day 
 of de funerrel, ari vun carridch besites de hairss ? 
 I do efryting elss myself. Vat you sharge ? "
 
 52 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Michael promptly told her, and received a little 
 falsetto scream of dismay. Rosenbaum would do it 
 nearly six dollars cheaper. It at once became evi 
 dent to Michael that Mrs. Schmitt had beaten Ros 
 enbaum down just as far as she could possibly 
 make him go, and was now using the last desperate 
 offer of the Jew as a means of forcing his rival 
 into a still lower offer. Young as I was, I felt this 
 raw greed, shown at such a time, flush my cheek. 
 Michael drew me out of the room very soon after 
 ward. There was a look on his face wholly un 
 professional and sincere. And just before he left 
 her he told Mrs. Schmitt that if she had been a 
 very poor woman she might have had some excuse 
 to stand there and barter about her husband s 
 burial-fee, but that being a woman of thrift and 
 means, it was disgraceful in her. I forget his pre 
 cise words, but they were very trenchant. He 
 left the house at once after speaking them, and in 
 the sort of low rumble that his lips made during 
 the next few minutes I am afraid that I detected 
 a good deal of hard profanity. 
 
 Still, his disgust was quite pardonable. It 
 would have made a good many men, worlds more 
 lettered than he, swear just as roundly. " Shure 
 if he hadn t left her the shtore an the bizness," 
 he presently said, becoming coherent and per 
 haps a trifle apologetic to myself as well, " I 
 I wudn t moind a bit. But it s a heap o 
 money he s left her, so he has, bad luck to her
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 53 
 
 fur as stingy and misserruble a wan as ever 
 walked ! " 
 
 The sadness of such glimpses as this into human 
 life would often stay with me and haunt me. I 
 was just at the age when we begin to think and 
 muse, if we are dowered with fair intelligence, 
 what sort of a planet fate has cast us upon. But 
 Michael was not always so obdurate and unyield 
 ing to his customers. I remember going with 
 him up several stairs to an attic in Hester street. 
 The room which we entered contained the corpse 
 which we had come to bury. It was sheeted, and 
 the inevitable Romanist candles burned at its 
 head and feet. A Mr. Lynch had died, and his 
 relict, Mrs. Lynch, greeted us amid a family 
 group of no less than seven children. The eldest 
 of them were girls, who stared upon us blankly, 
 and all of them had bare feet, gear torn and dirty, 
 and tangled hair. There was a print of Our Lady 
 of Seven Sorrows over the mantel. I could not 
 help thinking, as I counted the frowzy children 
 scattered about the room, that Mrs. Lynch was 
 a lady with seven sorrows, too. The little girls 
 were plaintively noisy and the little boys harshly 
 so. One was a baby, and it had been left quite 
 naked on the floor near a basin of water which it 
 wished to paddle in and could not, having fallen 
 over on its back. I recollect going to it amid the 
 clatter, and pitifully raising it up. While I did so 
 I heard Michael s deep voice say :
 
 54 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Well, Mrs. Lynch, I ll do the besht I can fur 
 ye, an no man can do more, d ye undershtand, 
 nur that, ma am." 
 
 Mrs. Lynch was very stout. Her bosom was 
 simply exorbitant, and over the insecure cotton 
 stuff which clothed it towered a very coarse, red- 
 cheeked moon of a face. She listened while Mike 
 explained his charges. 
 
 "An it s you, Mike O Hara, that talks to me 
 loike this ! " she cried, in withering reproach and 
 anger. " It s you, is it, that knew mee family in 
 Duudalk ! Shure, w at was your father compared 
 to mee own annyhow ? He was a farmer, so he 
 was, an not loike yours, begorra, that moight a 
 wurked under im, so ye moight ! An I sent fur 
 ye to bury my Jerry daicent, so I did, an not to 
 come here wid your big prices ! " 
 
 "I ain t haird about no big prices yet," said 
 Michael, in very docile tones, scratching his cheek. 
 
 " Oh, ye ain t ! " cried Mrs. Lynch, in hot satire. 
 " Very well ! Ye may lave mee apartments, Mr. 
 O Hara. I knew ye well in th ould country, an 
 ye can t impose upon me here. So that s all there 
 is about it. If Jerry s to be buried in Calvary 
 he ll be buried there daicent, ye moind, but he d 
 rise an shtand roight up here among the seven 
 child en he s left me, so he wud, if he haird w at 
 ye re after ashkin to put im reshpectable in his 
 grave I " . . 
 
 " Why did you let her have a coffin at such a
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 55 
 
 low price, Mike ? " I said to my companion, after 
 we had regained the street and heard no more 
 either of Mrs. Lynch s yells or those of her chil 
 dren. "Is it because she s Irish, like yourself?" 
 
 No, it was not because Mrs. Lynch was Irish. 
 It was because Mike, who knew the pinch and 
 stab of poverty so well, had pitied the loud, aggres 
 sive widow as she did not deserve to be pitied. 
 That was all. . . . And these episodes happened 
 every day with us. I have narrated two salient 
 ones, but we witnessed others, just as comic, just 
 as pathetic. 
 
 Mike was so fond of having me for a companion 
 that I could not understand why he now accepted 
 so resignedly the change of my indoor life. But 
 he did accept it without a word of objection, and 
 I naturally supposed that my mother had talked 
 with him in private. 
 
 I began to fail in health, however, and chiefly, 
 no doubt, from my sudden cessation of all exer 
 cise. Languid fits overcame me, and sometimes 
 my food for days would be almost that of a bird. 
 Afterward strong, I as yet gave no sign of my 
 father s vigor ; the physical part of me seemed 
 mostly of maternal origin ; I had my mother s 
 large dark eyes, her sensitive outline of face, her 
 slenderness of shape, though I promised to be tall, 
 which she was not. I had not my mother s hair, 
 however, for my own locks were sunny, and in 
 deed almost as if threaded with gold. In those
 
 56 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 days I never thought of my being handsome or 
 not. No one told me that I possessed beauty, 
 except possibly Martha, in her most beaming 
 moods, and even if I had become wholly assured 
 of this fact I do not think that it would have con 
 cerned me in any serious way. 
 
 And yet I am compelled here to record (with 
 out the least impulse of vanity, but simply as a 
 chronicler who sets down the black and white 
 of what he states) that I was then, at the age of 
 eleven years, a notably beautiful boy. This herit 
 age never left me ; it was my birthright, and as 
 that it remained. In after years it became a great 
 aid to me, as the succeeding pages of my story 
 will show. But I think the endowment was at its 
 best in my childhood, and perhaps because my 
 complete ignorance of it lent it the element of 
 unconsciousness. More than once, during my 
 rambles beside Michael, I remembered saying to 
 him with a touch of puzzlement in my tones: 
 " Michael, why do people look at me so hard ? It 
 seems, sometimes, as if they knew who I am, or 
 had known me before, and wanted to speak to 
 me." 
 
 Michael would laugh in a low, chuckling style 
 that did not at all disarray the sombre repose of 
 his haggard face. But I never understood. My 
 beauty came to me as my disposition came, from 
 wholly explainable sources. My parents, in their 
 different types, had been of striking personal gifts.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 57 
 
 I had inherited a combination of these. Until 
 later there was no one to tell me the worth or 
 even the meaning of such a legacy. 
 
 I still kept the vow made to my mother about 
 not leaving the house unless she went with me. 
 I often saw her eyes dwell worriedly upon my 
 face ; doubtless my loss of health made me very 
 pale. But she did not ask me to break my re 
 solve. She comprehended that no amount of ask 
 ing would make me do so. She saw that my 
 determination sprang a great deal more from love 
 than from fear. But at last she yielded. I did 
 not want her to yield, but the concession came, 
 nevertheless. I was contented enough to bide 
 indoors. Since our talk together about my father, 
 there had grown within me something like a ter 
 ror of going out at all. If he were really waiting 
 to confront us, why not remain in retreat and 
 obscurity until the lapse of time brought with it 
 safety of emergence ? 
 
 One day my mother said to me : " Otho, you 
 are not well, my son. You need the air. Will 
 you not go with Michael, as you used to do ? " 
 
 I looked at her. I shook my head as I did so. 
 " No," I replied. She understood me, and for the 
 time held her peace. Two days later she said to 
 me : " Otho, the weather is very fine this morn 
 ing. You have studied hard, of late. You have 
 got so far in your lessons that, as you see, I am 
 unable to follow you, or to teach you more.
 
 58 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 There is a public school only a little distance 
 from here. I want you to go there with Michael 
 and present yourself as a scholar." 
 
 " No, mamma," I answered, calmly and stolidly. 
 
 She put her hand on my arm. " Otho," she 
 said, "will you go with me?" 
 
 " Yes," I at once answered. " But you must 
 promise to walk to and from the school with me, 
 every morning and afternoon." 
 
 " No . . I cannot." 
 
 " Then I will not go to the school," I said. 
 
 " Otho, you are wilful and disobedient." 
 
 " I can t help it, mamma." 
 
 " But your health is not what it was." 
 
 " Yes I know. You want me to walk abroad. 
 I will do so, with you." 
 
 My mother heaved a low sigh. I was not wil 
 ful or disobedient in other ways, and I am sure 
 that she gave me full credit for being neither. 
 
 "Very well," she presently said, rising, "we 
 will take a little stroll together this morning." 
 
 I sprang toward her and threw my arms about 
 her neck. " Mamma ! " I exclaimed. " You hate 
 to go ! " 
 
 " Yes, Otho." 
 
 I drew backward. I was very stubborn in my 
 intent ; nothing could shake me. " Then you 
 need not go," I said. 
 
 " But you force me," she responded gently. 
 
 I bit my lip. The tears had rushed to my eyes.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 59 
 
 "Oh, mamma," I cried, "you know why I will 
 not go without you ! " . . . 
 
 A little later we left the house, side by side. 
 We did not go to the school. It was pleasant to 
 be abroad once more. The sun was shining ; 
 there had been a winter thaw ; great drops came 
 from the awnings of stores ; enough melted snow 
 remained in the streets to let a few sleighs pass 
 with their merry jingles. I grew gay and garru 
 lous before we had taken a hundred paces. It 
 felt so pleasant to breathe the free, open air ! 
 
 That afternoon I returned home with at least 
 the semblance of an appetite. Martha watched 
 me at supper and rapturously praised me for my re 
 newed powers of consumption. Michael watched 
 me, too, but he said nothing. I had my long 
 talks with both husband and wife, just as of old, 
 but they never presumed a word regarding my self- 
 immurement. Of course they both had learned 
 its cause from my mother. The next day she 
 went out with me again. I soon grew better. 
 My strength returned; I ate; I ceased to take 
 tired naps at midday ; my laugh rang louder and 
 blither through the house this little house in 
 the Bowery, dedicated to the sale of coffins, the 
 making of shrouds, the appurtenance and concom 
 itance of death. 
 
 My mother was still sad. Our walks did not 
 gladden her, though they gave new life and 
 strength to me. For this reason she made them
 
 60 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 a daily occurrence. We always kept within the 
 close neighborhood of the Bowery; it somehow 
 seemed to be safer there, though the Bowery was 
 then almost the chief New- York thoroughfare. 
 
 One evening, in my twelfth year, a most memo 
 rable event took place. We were about to seat 
 ourselves at supper. Michael, as usual, brought 
 in the evening paper. He always handed it to 
 my mother. She would sometimes spend a half- 
 hour with its contents while Martha busied her 
 self preparing our meal. 
 
 But on the especial evening to which I refer 
 my mother suddenly dropped the paper, three or 
 four minutes after it had been handed to her, and 
 uttered a sharp, bitter cry as she did so. 
 
 We all hurried to her side. For some time she 
 was quite speechless. She could tell us nothing ; 
 she could only stare at us with glazed eyes. But 
 at length she pointed downward at the journal 
 which she had been reading. I ran my gaze 
 along its columns. On a sudden a very familiar 
 name arrested it. That was the name of my 
 father, Leopold Clauss. 
 
 Yes, there it was, in large type, glaring at me. 
 And what words accompanied it ? Heavens ! had 
 I lost my senses? Had my mother s agitation 
 alarmed me out of my reason? No, the printed 
 lines were too clear for that. It must be true. 
 I looked up at my mother. Her face was very 
 white, but no whiter, I fancy, than my own. If
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 61 
 
 ever two human creatures exchanged a glance of 
 silent terror we did so then. But it was not a 
 selfish terror. I knew that her heart could not 
 feel a selfish thrill if it had tried ; and with me 
 the thought of her dire peril had leaped horrify 
 ingly uppermost. Martha, seeing the pallor and 
 distress of our faces, broke into a frightened wail. 
 The next minute Michael had taken me in his 
 strong arms, with a tenderness exquisite for so 
 rough a creature. 
 
 " Whist, Mashter Otho," he said. " Luk at me 
 an tell me w at it is ye seen in the paper . . 
 Mashter Otho ! " (for I could not heed him, I 
 could not keep my eyes off my mother s hueless 
 face), "Mashter Otho, I say! It s Mike that s 
 ashkin ye, dear little wan ! Luk at me an tell 
 me!" 
 
 But here my mother found a voice, though it 
 was quite weak and husky. " There there is 
 something in the paper about my husband," she 
 said. " He has attempted a murder." 
 
 " A murthur ! " echoed Martha, with a little 
 scream. Poor Martha dropped into a chair and 
 covered her face. Then, in her misery at my 
 mother s misery, the ruling passion asserted it 
 self, and she began to assail her husband with 
 reproaches. 
 
 " Wy didn t ye have more common sense, man, 
 than to let Missus Clorz see the paper at all until 
 you d skhimined it over yerself? That s jusht
 
 62 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 you, Mike O Hara, through the wurld ! Anny 
 other man wud "... 
 
 But ray mother stopped this absurd torrent of 
 rebuke by a wave of the hand. She was fast 
 growing herself again. She pointed once more 
 to the paper. " Read, Michael," she said. " And 
 be silent, Martha. How can you blame your 
 good husband? What will you not blame him 
 for, soon ? . . Read, Michael I cannot, yet." 
 
 Michael presently did read. He made a gro 
 tesque herald of the sinister tidings which my 
 mother and I now waited to hear in full. Some 
 of his pronunciations might have hinted striking 
 novelties to an eccentric verbalist. He floun 
 dered, he stumbled, he treated certain words as 
 if they were hurdles, and indeed a few of them 
 wholly upset him. But the terrible truth stealing 
 upon us through this medium of the quaint and 
 the ludicrous, perhaps took a new irony and sting. 
 What he read, put into other language, was this : 
 
 My father, on the previous evening, just at 
 dusk, had suddenly attacked a lady named Dorian, 
 as she was leaving the stoop of her residence in 
 Lafayette Place, and about to enter a carriage. 
 His appearance at the time was excited and di 
 shevelled ; he looked like a man under mental 
 aberration, though he bore no signs of being intox 
 icated. Mrs. Dorian well-known as the widow 
 of a wealthy New- York merchant was of course 
 quite unprepared for the attack, and uttered a cry
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 63 
 
 as Clauss drew a small, sharp knife upon her. In 
 another minute he would have inflicted a wound, 
 had not a passer-by of powerful frame and quick 
 courage (his name was of course given, but it has 
 long ago escaped my memory) dashed up to the 
 would-be murderer and seized his wrist with both 
 hands. Instead, however, of a struggle ensuing 
 between the two men, Clauss had abruptty dropped 
 his knife and showed great docility. For, as the 
 lady rushed back toward her dwelling, he had 
 seen her face in a new light, and discovered that 
 she was not the person whom he had at first be 
 lieved her. He attempted no flight, and police- 
 aid being near at hand, he was at once taken into 
 custody. On arrest, he refused to give his name, 
 but merely muttered, in a gloomy way and with a 
 strong foreign accent, that he had mistaken the 
 lady for his wife, who had deserted him, and that 
 he was sorry for having been misled by a strange 
 resemblance. He also declared that it had been 
 for several months his intention to kill his wife if 
 he ever met her, and that he had constantly gone 
 armed for this purpose. He had been committed 
 promptly for breach of peace, and had afterward 
 still refused to give his name. His person having 
 been searched, however, several letters were found 
 upon it addressed to Leopold Clauss. He had 
 subsequently admitted this name to be his own. 
 The prisoner s general appearance and his great 
 physical vigor were here described. Several by-
 
 64 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 standers, at the time of this singular occurrence, 
 had expressed the opinion that he was insane. 
 But although in a state of severe mental turmoil, 
 his sanity was hardly to be doubted. In any case 
 he was certainly an individual to be placed under 
 restraint. The address on his letters had been 
 that of an inferior boarding-house in a street near 
 the lower portion of the Bowery. Inquiries con 
 cerning him had been made here, and although his 
 sober habits were admitted by his landlady, she 
 stated that he was much in her debt and that his 
 morose and odd behavior had for some time made 
 her anxious to be rid of him. She knew, how 
 ever, nothing of his antecedents. A report had 
 become current that Mrs. Dorian, the lady whom 
 he had so curiously attacked und^er the conviction 
 that she was another person, had recently changed 
 affright for interest, and was very desirous of in 
 vestigating the whole remarkable case. Mrs. 
 Dorian was confident of never having seen Clauss 
 before. She was a French lady, who had lived in 
 New- York since her marriage, about twelve years 
 ago, to the late Mr. Charles A. Dorian, formerly a 
 prosperous importer of foreign silks. It was 
 rumored that Mrs. Dorian, both through curiosity 
 and a certain misplaced pity, had resolved to visit 
 Clauss in his confinement and hold an interview 
 with him. And there the newspaper article 
 ended. 
 
 I shall never forget that night. My room ad-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 65 
 
 joined my mother s, and I sat beside her bed till 
 dawn, holding her hand. I knew well enough 
 that neither Michael nor Martha slept in any but 
 the most fitful way, for I could constantly hear 
 their voices across the hall. Still, they did not 
 disturb us. They left us alone with our grief and 
 our fear. 
 
 If I had not been so sure that my mother still 
 loved this wretched man I should perhaps have 
 suffered less than I did. But I was certain that 
 such indestructible love all the time gave a fresh 
 pang to her agony. My counsel, as we remained 
 there, side by side, was of one sort. We must fly 
 from the city. Never mind if they sent my father 
 to prison for weeks or for months. Let us leave 
 New- York. Let us go where he could never find 
 us. Some day they would set him free again, and 
 then he would watch and wait, just as he must 
 have done before. 
 
 But my mother shook her head. She did not at 
 first explain to me her reason for doing so. Per 
 haps she could not yet explain. Her brain was 
 still throbbing and whirling ; her nerves were still 
 tingling. Late that night, however, she said to 
 me, lying there at my side in the stillness and 
 shadow of the room : 
 
 " No, Otho. It cannot be. I will not take 
 help from Michael and Martha, and that is what 
 we should have to do if we went elsewhere. They 
 are themselves poor enough, as you know. I have
 
 66 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 gained a little place for myself here ; it lets you 
 and me live ; it is not much, perhaps, but it does 
 that. We have a home, Otho a coin du feu. 
 Michael and Martha are far more like servants to 
 us both than I wish them to be. I should like 
 to live with them always ; I love them, and so do 
 you. And then it is so pleasant for me to remem 
 ber, Otho, that if anything should befall me, they 
 would be near you, almost ready to die for you. 
 I never saw anything like the love you have in 
 spired in them. I wonder if it will always be thus 
 with you if you will always win hearts as easily 
 as that. If you do you will be one of God s most 
 rarely gifted creatures, since there is nothing so 
 precious as to have the power of making ourselves 
 beloved at will though, alas ! there is deadly 
 danger in the gift, too ! . . But we will speak of 
 that hereafter, man clieri ; we will speak now of 
 going away. It would be folly. The more that I 
 think of it the more I feel it. It would be to 
 change welfare for poverty, solvency for debt, 
 peace for struggle. Besides, in a large city there 
 is, after all, the least risk of his finding us. Here 
 one escapes in the crowd, as it might be said. 
 And then, Otho . . there is always my trust in 
 the ban Dieu. I am not a good Catholic, as you 
 know ; there was never anything of the devote 
 about me ; but I have faith in God s goodness, and 
 I do not believe He thinks me sinful enough to 
 let your father . . Well, my son, you understand
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 67 
 
 what I would say. It is almost terrible. It will 
 haunt me for weeks. I feel as if some part of me 
 had been dipped in blood, and I could not rub off 
 the stain. But he is your father never forget 
 that, Otho ! " 
 
 " And you love him still, mamma," I said to her, 
 under my breath. " Even though he has tried to 
 kill another woman, thinking she was you, you 
 still love him ! " 
 
 I saw her breast quiver and her lips tighten as 
 she lay there at my side. " Otho," she said, " it 
 has been dreadful for you to remain up like this. 
 To-morrow you will be ill. Go at once to bed, 
 my son. Do as mamma bids." 
 
 "You love him still," I persisted, with no 
 questioning in my tones, but rather a sad accusa 
 tion there. 
 
 She did not answer me. It was true. A sud 
 den passionate feeling swept through me. I had 
 never known it before, and I did not recognize it 
 then. But it was jealousy, pure and simple. It 
 was jealousy of this love which no outrage could 
 weaken, no villany lessen. I clenched my hands 
 as I slipped out of the room. A little later I lay 
 in my own bed, beset by a lurid mood which I 
 strove to control without avail. There seemed to 
 me a cause for burning resentment in my mother s 
 unalterable affection. I felt as if the fresh insight 
 I had gained into that ideal wifely constancy were 
 a wrong, a jeer and a slur to my own filial love.
 
 68 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 But the mood at length died away in a troubled 
 sleep, and the sleep was followed by a dolorous 
 awakening of headache and fever. A severe ill 
 ness ensued, and I lay for a fortnight prostrated 
 by one of those fits of nervous exhaustion which 
 to a boy of my frail health might easily have 
 meant death. Need I tell, at this stage of these 
 confessions, whose care and devotion helped me 
 to live ? But she was not my only nurse. Four 
 other eyes watched me besides her two dark, 
 patient ones. I remember waking from a sleep 
 full of delirious dreams, on a certain afternoon (I 
 have a fancy that it somehow must have been 
 afternoon), and crying out wild words in French 
 words like these : " C est papa ! Prends garde, 
 mamanf 11 veut te tuer ! II a un couteau un 
 grand couteau ! Depeches-toi ! " 
 
 And then an arm of iron, except that it was 
 gentle as any girl s, slid under my hot form, and 
 I was drawn so closely to a broad, hard breast 
 that one or two of the bristles of Mike s beard 
 grazed my cheek. And I was not startled, though 
 I expected my mother ; she had always been near 
 me hitherto when I had had these unhappy seiz 
 ures. But Michael did just as well, that day. 
 The tears rush to my eyes now as I think of how 
 that man had grown to worship me. I never gave 
 him half nor a third of the love he gave to me. I 
 never gave it to Martha, who would (I verily be 
 lieve so !) have laid down her life to preserve mine.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 69 
 
 I never gave it yes, let me write the plain words 
 where I wish all to be plain and unsparing I 
 never gave it to the mother whose passion for me 
 was an absolute sanctity. I have never really 
 known what it is to love except once. I have 
 been capable of a great fondness in more than a 
 single case. But it seems to have been my fate, 
 my doom, that others should care for me better 
 than I cared for them. I did not realize all this 
 till long afterward. I thought that I loved my 
 mother just as well as she loved me, but I now see, 
 looking back through the solemn vista of experi 
 ence, just how wrong I was ! . . What has it 
 always been? Has it been my beauty, which 
 grew as I grew and stared me in the face like a 
 challenge to vanity? Has it been a trick of 
 smile, an unconscious mode of speech, an inherent 
 mannerism of charm? I cannot say. I only 
 know that I could win without choosing or caring 
 to win, when the years made me older, and that 
 then, in my boyhood, a sense of this power had 
 begun to dawn upon me. God knows that there 
 is no vainglory in these words I now write ! 
 Sooner or later they must have been written in 
 the pages whose record means the laying bare of 
 a life, the exposition of a soul ! . . . 
 
 My illness lasted a fortnight, as I have stated. 
 But with all these grim facilities at its hand, as 
 one might say, death did not claim me, there in 
 Michael s abode of undertaking. If I had died I
 
 70 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 suppose they would have called it cerebral con 
 gestion. I wonder how poor Mike and Martha, 
 in that event, would have told their friends with 
 what malady I had passed away. Ah, no ! they 
 would neither of them, good souls, have been 
 able to pronounce the big Latinity of the words. 
 Their tears would have choked them even more 
 than their ignorance ! 
 
 My convalescence was rapid, considering my 
 dire peril. But it is thus in nearly all functional 
 disturbances of the brain. Less than another 
 fortnight left me comparatively well, though still 
 weak and nervous. 
 
 I soon questioned my mother about the event 
 which had so sharply preceded my ailment. 
 Where was my father now? What had happened 
 since I last heard of him ? What tidings had the 
 newspapers given us ? 
 
 My father had been sent to prison. It was not 
 to be a long incarceration. His assault might 
 have been a crime, but the law judged from re 
 sults, not intentions. An effort had been made to 
 find the w r ife, because of whom he had planned 
 his vile deed, but without success. 
 
 I shuddered as I heard this last meaning detail.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 71 
 
 IV. 
 
 WHEN I was strong enough to leave the house I 
 went out hand in hand with Michael, as formerly. 
 I had forgotten or I chose to forget the vow 
 made to my mother in former days. But my 
 walks with dear old Mike were much briefer now 
 than they had once been. Sometimes I would 
 have to return with my arm hanging wearily on 
 his, though each day made me stronger. 
 
 My mother had meanwhile greatly altered. 
 She had not, like myself, fallen prostrate under 
 the shock of that hideous news, but it had laid 
 upon her, none the less, a few signal traces. She 
 had grown thinner, and the liquid darkness of her 
 beautiful eyes held a more wistful gleam. At 
 times it seemed as if the terror had never quite 
 left her face as if through the rest of her life 
 she would always be expecting, dreading some 
 new calamitous thing. A slight sound would 
 make her start; a sudden current of air would 
 cause her to shiver, or to bend like a blown reed. 
 He whom she still so stubbornly loved was now 
 an image clad in fear, almost in the red garb of 
 crime. And I am sure that this shape never
 
 72 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 quitted her mental vision that it was stamped 
 there as indelibly as if it had been a scar on her 
 flesh. She saw my father in all phases of inward 
 agony. She realized what he suffered and why he 
 suffered it. She pitied him and longed to help 
 him. Meanwhile, she could do nothing. Nothing 
 but hide from him ! It is not a pleasure to love 
 in that way. I think one might truly call it an 
 anguish. 
 
 I had noticed for several days certain signs in 
 my mother s demeanor toward me which seemed 
 to indicate either that she was hiding something 
 from me which it hurt her conscience to hide, or 
 that she was dubious about telling me something 
 which she was by no means convinced that I 
 ought to hear. When we incessantly see and asso 
 ciate with only three or four people it is marvel 
 lous how swift is our note of the least change in 
 them. 
 
 " Is there something you want to tell me ? " I 
 said to my mother, at last. 
 
 She started. Then she smiled her melancholy 
 smile. " I knew you were an enchanter, .Otho," 
 she said, " and I forgot that enchanters and 
 wizards are one. Yes," she went on, hesitatingly, 
 "there is something I want to tell you. Otho, it 
 concerns . . your father." 
 
 I was not surprised to hear this. Whom else 
 could it concern ? " Well," I questioned. " What 
 is it?"
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 73 
 
 My mother put her arm about my neck and 
 drew me to her bosom. " Otho, that lady, you 
 know the one he attacked. I want so much to 
 see her to speak with her. The desire to do both 
 torments me. I might have gone to her alone. 
 But I will not go without you. Will you go with 
 me, Otho ? " 
 
 " Why do you wish to see her, mamma ? " I 
 asked. I put this question mechanically. I knew 
 why, quite well. 
 
 " It is hard to answer you," she said, hesitat 
 ingly. " My chief reason is "... 
 
 " The love you still feel for him," I broke in. 
 But I did not speak reproachfully. I was recall 
 ing her recent devotion through my illness. " It 
 is wrong," I continued softly, "you know it is 
 wrong. It is giving a clew." 
 
 "A clew?" she said. "How? He is in prison 
 now. Why should she tell him anything ? I 
 have heard about her ; she is well known ; she is 
 a lady of prominence here. She gives large sums 
 to St. Stephen s Church, not far away. There 
 could be no possible danger." 
 
 " Very well," I said, after a pause, " I will go 
 with you." 
 
 She kissed me twice or thrice, almost passion 
 ately. " We will go to-day," she said. 
 
 We went that afternoon. I disapproved the 
 plan, but my heart was so full of gratitude, just 
 then, that to refuse her what I knew her whole
 
 74 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 soul was set upon doing seemed almost sacri 
 legious. 
 
 We easily found Mrs. Dorian s house. It was 
 smart-looking, with polished window-panes and 
 fresh-painted trellises on stoop and balcony. 
 Lafayette Place was then a quarter of distinction ; 
 even now its breadth has more dignity than that 
 of most New- York streets, and then the compara 
 tively even heights of its buildings missed that 
 ugly irregularity which we notice with regret in 
 Fifth or Madison Avenues. A maid-servant, tidily 
 garbed, admitted us. We were shown without 
 delay into such a drawing-room as few of the 
 wealthy magnates now possess. Its doors were of 
 heavy, panelled mahogany that shone like glass. 
 Its furniture was of hair-cloth, and its mirrors rose 
 from the rather sombrely carpeted floor to the 
 plain white ceiling, with no frames except a slim, 
 beaded verge of gilt. It would strike me to-day, 
 no doubt, as very bare and dull ; but years had 
 to elapse before Queen Anne structures would 
 rise in the region of Central Park, modish with 
 tiled mantels and effective wainscots, and I then 
 thought it all quite elegant and imposing. My 
 mother had spoken a few words to the servant 
 which were both too low and too quick for my 
 hearing. I suppose they were simply a brief ex 
 pression of her strong desire to see Mrs. Dorian. 
 
 And very soon Mrs. Dorian appeared. The 
 instant she did so I detected her striking resem-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 75 
 
 blance to my mother. She was a trifle taller, 
 however, and carried herself with a much more 
 assertive air. And yet if you regarded her with 
 any degree of scrutiny you discovered that this 
 likeness was altogether superficial. The eyes were 
 brighter, but smaller ; the cut of the features bore 
 no real similarity ; yet the general contour of both 
 face and figure, as also the prevalent tints of 
 coloring, were oddly in accord with those which 
 had made her the object of so dire a mistake. 
 
 The moment that Mrs. Dorian began to speak 
 I found myself forgetting that any resemblance 
 whatever existed. Her voice was high, and with 
 a ring in it like that of a sweet bell. In speaking 
 she threw back her head a little, and disposed her 
 self with what is called an air. But she revealed 
 no touch of arrogance. It was not an unpleasant 
 transformation. It put a gulf of difference be 
 tween my mother and herself, but it developed the 
 sense of a fresh and new personality. 
 
 " You said that you wanted to see me about 
 some important matter," she began, using English 
 that promptly betrayed a slight foreign accent. 
 She remained standing while she thus spoke, and 
 of course addressed my mother, who had risen on 
 her entrance. She was attired in flowing silks of 
 more than one shade, that were somewhat odd in 
 make but extremely tasteful. 
 
 " I did wish very much to see you," answered 
 my mother, in tones that made clear her keen
 
 76 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 excitement. " And for this reason I must lose no 
 time in telling you just who I am. I " 
 
 But here Mrs. Dorian went quickly nearer to 
 her, giving a sharp exclamation. Her e} es had 
 widened with evident astonishment. " You you 
 are the image of myself! " she broke forth. " Good 
 Heavens ! perhaps you are she ! Perhaps : yes, 
 you must be his wife ! " 
 
 My mother smiled. There was a pained relief 
 in the smile ; she had been spared a disclosure 
 deplored though sought. " I am the wife of 
 Leopold Clauss," she said, using her own language 
 as if unconsciously. And the next instant she 
 dropped into a chair, weak and unstrung. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian at once took a seat at her side. 
 She peered with eager scrutiny into my mother s 
 face. Her next words were also in French, and 
 so fleet that they seemed to leap from her lips. 
 
 " You are she, then I I have thought of you so 
 often ! That terrible affair had, after all, such a 
 romantic touch ! And I love all things that are 
 quaint and extraordinary. Our resemblance is 
 both. I am very glad you came to me. Of course 
 you dreaded to come. . . It is wonderful how we 
 look alike. I have always doubted it until now. 
 And yet we are so different I perceive this in a 
 moment ; it is easy to perceive. . . Ah, that 
 dreadful matter was such a shock to me ! I was 
 ill for days because of it. My friends said I was 
 foolish to do what I did. My friends are always
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 77 
 
 saying that I am foolish to do what I do. By 
 friends I mean the people who carp and rail at 
 one for nothing. I have no friends. I have only 
 one friend, that is ; I mean mj-self, and she is also 
 quite often my enemy. But do you know what I 
 did ? I went to see your husband. I visited him 
 in his cell." 
 
 " You saw him ? " faltered my mother. 
 
 " Yes. I felt like someone in a novel by Bal 
 zac. It was so delightful to feel like someone in 
 a novel by Balzac. I mean the great Frenchman 
 our countryman who wrote those superb 
 tales that seem to be alive while you read them ; 
 the printed lines are to me like little veins with 
 real blood running red through each of them." 
 
 " I do not understand," my mother murmured. 
 She did not know of Balzac, or at best he was a 
 mere name to her. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian gave a light, soft laugh that had no 
 jar in it ; pity alone seemed to dwell there. " I 
 know, I know, my poor woman," she said, laying 
 a hand on my mother s arm. " You do not under 
 stand, and you want to hear of your husband, 
 who in turn wanted to kill you. You need not 
 tell me that you still care for him. I knew it 
 some minutes ago. I think, truly, that I have 
 known it for months. He is a monster of jeal 
 ousy ; he is also a madman ; but he is a wonder 
 fully fascinating monster and madman. He has 
 the shape and face of an old Norse god. He re-
 
 78 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 ceivecl me with a scowl, but it was such a mag 
 nificent scowl. There was a strong light ; it was 
 midday, you know. He saw plainly enough that 
 I was not you. I did not go into the cell alone, 
 of course. But if I had gone alone there would 
 have been no danger. He simply did not wish 
 me there, and that was all. He would tell me 
 nothing; he sat staring at the floor, and he an 
 swered all my questions in monosyllables. I could 
 get no satisfaction from him none whatever. 
 He would not speak of you ; he would not even 
 speak of himself. He grumbled a sort of apology 
 to me for having wanted to murder me. It was 
 immensely interesting ; it was what I should call 
 a thrilling experience ; and one gets so few thrill 
 ing experiences in a huge overgrown village like 
 this New- York, where I am forced to live for 
 horrid commercial reasons that concern my poor 
 dead husband s business. But in spite of his 
 surly treatment I went away from him with a 
 kind of glow. I had been brought face to face 
 with raw, naked human nature. And I insisted 
 on forming my own conclusions, though people 
 laughed at me in their superior wisdom. I in 
 sisted that his jealousy which was like some 
 thing fresh from the Middle Ages, with all the 
 coarse, bloodthirsty color of that period had for 
 its object some true, kind little woman who had 
 loved him and never wronged him. And now I 
 have only to look at you and feel certain I was
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 79 
 
 right. You see, I am constantly judging, conclud 
 ing, from impulse and instinct. Anyone who does 
 that is always held to be more or less insane. I 
 am not at all insane, and I did it in this instance, 
 and am convinced that I formed a correct opinion. 
 You do care for him still, though he has treated 
 you infamously. I can understand it ; I have only 
 to look at you well in order to understand it. I 
 have seen him, and it is all clear to me. English 
 women, American women, are often clever, but 
 they have neither the depth nor breadth of a 
 clever Frenchwoman. We do not merely see 
 through things ; we possess imagination, which is 
 an enormous help to reason." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian and my mother spoke on together 
 for a good hour. Or perhaps I should state that 
 only Mrs. Dorian spoke, for the pauses were rare 
 in her buoyant, rattling monologue. During these 
 she would listen, but my mother had, after all, 
 little to communicate. She had come but for one 
 purpose, and this had failed. She had hoped to 
 find out more concerning my father, his present 
 frame of mind, his health, even his baleful grudge 
 against herself. But Mrs. Dorian could tell her 
 nothing, except that he had looked very hand 
 some and treated her with great sullenness. Two 
 women were never more mentally unlike than my 
 mother and this lady. One was all gravity and 
 stability, the other all volatile flightiness. Mrs. 
 Dorian was a kind of intellectual Proteus, in fact
 
 80 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 as I remember years afterward calling her. 
 To meet her every day for a month was to dis 
 cover that she had received at least thirty distinct 
 sets of impressions. She afterward would often 
 make me think of her as of a person who has come 
 into our planet on an exploring expedition who 
 has been given just so much time to look about 
 and no more, and who is determined to do as 
 much observing, thinking and feeling as may be 
 possible within the allotted sojourn. But though 
 a weather-vane of change in many ways, this 
 woman had much fixity of principle, of conduct, 
 of moral ideal. She enjoyed life, on the other 
 hand, because she got a great deal out of it ; what 
 made her not enjoy it thoroughly was because she 
 could not get as much out of it as she wanted 
 to get. Her receptivity was greater than the 
 resources of her environment. She adored Paris, 
 where she had been born, and undoubtedly its 
 brilliance and its activity would at all times have 
 made her most fitting world. She had read every 
 thing, and was constantly having some new literary 
 idol, whom she would soon desert for one still 
 newer. With the exception of Balzac (whose 
 multiformity and versatility seemed in letters a 
 semblance of what she herself was in life) she was 
 always forgetting the worship of to-day for that of 
 to-morrow. The great French novelist, romancer 
 and poet held a secure niche in her memory, her 
 affection. Others came and went ; he staid.
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 81 
 
 It was natural enough that one of such a tem 
 perament as this should confuse and weary my 
 simple-minded mother. But Mrs. Dorian inter 
 ested me sharply, young as I then was, though of 
 course there was much of what she said that I 
 failed wholly to understand. Indeed, the words 
 which I have already put into her mouth must not 
 be taken as literal or authentic. They are both 
 only so far as my childish memory may be trusted, 
 and a failure to catch the sense of more than one 
 brisk sentence as it then left her, has compelled 
 its omission from among those which maturer 
 powers help me to recall. 
 
 Her notice of myself was like a sudden discov 
 ery. Her eyes lighted upon me as if by chance, 
 and a little cry followed. She hurried toward me 
 and drew me back to where she had been seated. 
 " And this is your child ! " she exclaimed to my 
 mother. " How beautiful he is ! He is you, and 
 yet he is his father as well. Those great dark 
 eyes, with the curving lashes, are yours, and cer 
 tain delicate lines of the face, too. But the blond 
 hair, and the nose, the mouth these his hand 
 some father gave him. Oh, what an enchanting 
 boy ! " Here she kissed my cheek many times ; 
 there was a perfume like lavender about the soft 
 silks of her attire that made it a pleasure to be 
 near them. " How stupid of me not to have no 
 ticed him before ! I love children, always ; they 
 are dwellers in a world that we may never enter,
 
 82 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 no matter how closely we clasp them to our hearts. 
 But when they are so lovely as this boy of yours 
 their world seems like a garden in some other 
 star. . . But I must not flatter you, mon petit. 
 Your beauty will be so much the sweeter while 
 you do not think about it." . . . And now Mrs. 
 Dorian drew out a tiny watch from her belt ; I 
 remember how it caught my eye at once ; it was 
 oddly enamelled, and quaint, like everything she 
 wore. " Bah ! " she exclaimed. " I have to meet 
 some dreadful commercial creatures in ten min 
 utes ; I fear my carriage has already arrived. 
 When shall I be freed from the necessity of talk 
 ing about what I do not at all comprehend with 
 persons who try to make me suppose that they do 
 not perceive my own stupidity and ennui ? That is 
 it I am stupid because I am so ennuySe. You 
 see, my dear Madame Clauss, my husband died 
 and left me a great responsibility. Everyone 
 knows the house of Dorian & Company, importers 
 of silks. But the Company is a mere sham. Now 
 that my husband is gone, I represent him, solely 
 and absolutely. At first I wanted to stop the 
 business. My friends shrieked at me with dis 
 gust : What ! stop a superb business like that ! 
 Choke up a channel through which precious 
 wealth flows to the nation ! It would be unpar 
 donable. Then I wanted to sell the whole 
 enormous affair, patronage, connections, name, 
 everything, as one would sell a horse or a thresh-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 83 
 
 ing-inachine. Again my friends shrieked at me, 
 after every offer which I received : What ! sell 
 so splendid a business for a mere song like that ! 
 Ma foi! I could do nothing for weeks except 
 wonder what I ought to do. Meanwhile my 
 friends shrieked : Get some man whom you can 
 trust, and place the whole affair under his control 
 at a handsome salary. But this made me weep 
 with vexation one minute and laugh with amuse 
 ment the next. Some man whom I could trust, 
 indeed ! I have always made it a point to trust 
 everybody whom I know nothing at all against. 
 It is to me so dreadful for one not to do that ! 
 And as for selecting any particular person in 
 whom to repose my faith, that seemed none the 
 less venturesome and experimental. But in a lit 
 tle while I woke to the fact that I had been trust 
 ing, ever since I was a widow, an old confidential 
 clerk of my husband s, a creature as juiceless as a 
 hickory-nut, all wrinkles and rheumatism and dis 
 cretion. His name was Gredge, and after a long 
 interview with him I resolved upon the perpetra 
 tion of a tremendous deception, a huge hypocrisy. 
 Gredge was my tempter, and I yielded. The 
 world to-day believes that I carry on, with consum 
 mate cleverness, the great business of Dorian & 
 Co. But Gredge is at once my mask of guile and 
 my staff of support. If he should die, the mask 
 would fall, and the staff would crack. I should 
 be exposed as a lamentable fraud. As it is, I
 
 84 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 have only to look wise, to glance over accounts in 
 the presence of other semi-superiors, and to cough 
 with dignity. It is astonishing with what dignity 
 I have learned how to cough. I have somehow 
 got an idea that it is this cough, and nothing else, 
 which saves me from having my reputation igno- 
 miniously shattered as a woman of great mercan 
 tile shrewdness. I think that I learned the cough 
 from Gredge ; he has one a good deal like it. He 
 alone possesses the secret of my gross incapacity. 
 But he is an accomplice not to be corrupted. I 
 glance over accounts which seem to me a chaos of 
 figures. I nod ; I cough ; I make believe that I 
 am adding them up and confirming the result. 
 En effet, I detest figures, and the multiplication- 
 table has always been to me an enigma. I have 
 a conviction that CEdipus asked the Sphinx 
 how much was nine-times-nine or eleven-times, 
 eleven, and that for this reason she cast herself 
 into the sea. . . But if Gredge should die ! 
 that thought perpetually torments me. Gredge is 
 meanwhile a hundred years old, or a hundred and 
 fifty I never can just remember which. But he 
 is not immortal. Even a Gredge must one day 
 perish. And then I shall have nobody in whom I 
 can repose the least faith as a protective accom 
 plice. ... But now I must say adieu, for my per 
 secutors are awaiting me in an august body. You 
 must come to me again you and your charming 
 boy. And if you are ever in need, be sure that
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 85 
 
 help you. That is all. I will not say 
 more on that subject. I might wound you, and 
 I see that you are easily wounded. I wish only 
 to show that I do not bear a shadow of malice for 
 well, you know what. When you go home and 
 think me over you will wonder at my having 
 received you thus. You will say to yourself that 
 nobody else in the whole world would have done 
 it. And that is what I shall like. I always like 
 to be thought different from anyone else in the 
 whole world !".... 
 
 When we left Mrs. Dorian s house and were 
 once more in the street, I began to speak of her 
 with praise, enthusiasm. But my mother did not 
 share my mood. 
 
 " She is a strange person, Otho," was her slow, 
 meditative comment. " I do not know that I like 
 her, for all that she seems so kind and good." 
 
 " Oh, I am sure that she is both ! " I answered, 
 warmly. "I am sure that she meant all she 
 said ! " 
 
 "There was a great deal that she did not mean," 
 my mother returned. " Or, at least I could not 
 help thinking so. Still, this may be because I 
 have never known persons of her class. Very 
 often she seemed to speak as if she did not expect 
 you to believe her. True, this was only when she 
 spoke of herself not when she offered us help, 
 or anything like that. I am not certain that she 
 is not good and kind. So many ladies would have
 
 86 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 shrunk from us after . . after what has happened. 
 Perhaps they would have ordered their servants to 
 make us go away at once. They would have been 
 alarmed at our very presence. . . But I know so 
 little of ladies like herself. I have never seen any 
 of them before. I may be quite wrong in my 
 judgment. I . . I went, as you must have guessed, 
 to hear something about your papa. And she could 
 tell me so little. I did not dream of any help 
 from her. I wish she had not spoken of giving 
 me any help. If I were in great want she would 
 be the last person living to whom I should appty." 
 
 " You went," I returned, with blunt frankness, 
 " because you thought she could tell you a great 
 deal about papa. And now you are disappointed. 
 I think she is very nice ; I like her. Whether 
 she meant it all or no, mamma, I was somehow 
 pleased with everything she said. There was a 
 great deal she said which I did not understand, 
 for I am not old enough. But I remember much 
 of it, and if I ever meet her again, when I grow 
 older, I shall be able to make much of it clear. I 
 shall have learned more then ; I shall have studied 
 and learned." 
 
 " You know all that I can teach you already, 
 Otho," said my mother, as we walked along. " He 
 is in prison now. He will be there for two years. 
 That is his time two years. When you are 
 stronger, will you go to school ? " 
 
 " Yes," I said. I was thinking of Mrs. Dorian.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 87 
 
 She had fascinated me ; I wanted to learn more, 
 so that I could find a path into knowledge and 
 education like hers. " Yes," I went on, " I will 
 go to school, as you wished before I was ill. But 
 this lady, mamma ? Shall we visit her again ? " 
 
 " No," said my mother, decisively. 
 
 And we did not. In a month or so I went to 
 the school formerly proposed. It was a large 
 brick building, filled with shabby and plebeian 
 scholars. These were all boys, and the teachers, 
 except in a few of the senior classes, were all 
 women. The classes were designated by letters 
 of the alphabet, A meaning the highest grade of 
 attainment for any pupil, and final entrance into 
 what was then the Free Academy and is now the 
 College of New-York. (The word " free " had to 
 perish ; it bore quite too offensive a sound for 
 certain republican ears.) I went for two years to 
 this " ward school," as they termed it, and I can 
 not say that they were happy years, or morally 
 improving ones. In the first place, the three 
 teachers under whose successive tutelage a rather 
 rapid promotion placed me, were women of much 
 inherent vulgarity and, as naturally followed, of 
 ill-governed tempers. But it would almost have 
 required an aureoled saint, on the other hand, to 
 deal unruffled with some of the imps and elves 
 who trooped every morning into those plain, dull, 
 cheerless rooms, arid sat upon their tiers of gaunt 
 wooden benches. My three teachers were all very
 
 88 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 unsaintly women indeed. But I pitied them all. 
 Their tasks were hateful to them on account of 
 the excessive badness and mischief with which 
 they were forever confronted. They had all three 
 dropped into the habit of being incessantly cross, 
 because stern measures were so often required of 
 them. They could not say the simplest thing to 
 their scholars (myself alone excepted) without 
 giving a sour frown, a biting curtness, a tang of 
 sarcasm, to the remark. If either of them had 
 once addressed us in a tone of real kindliness we 
 would have felt something very like consternation. 
 Overworked, often forced to master on the pre 
 vious nights many of the lessons which they heard 
 us recite during the day, ill-fed, compelled to 
 brave the worst weathers in garments not always 
 of the most resistant sort, it is far from strange 
 that these women were incessantly out of health. 
 One was always putting her hand to her head as 
 if a twinge of pain stabbed it ; another had a 
 hacking cough ; a third seemed at times nearly 
 choked by a catarrhal trouble. And whenever 
 their maladies were most acute the boys were 
 sure to be most contumacious. Every morning at 
 nine o clock, and every afternoon at the hour of 
 dismissal, (three o clock, I believe) we had to 
 assemble in an immense dreary room over whose 
 doorways were written mottoes from Scripture, 
 such as " Deliver us from evil," or " A wise son 
 maketh a glad father." This coming together was
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 89 
 
 like a gathering of the clans. We would march 
 in single file from our respective class-rooms to 
 the sound of a jingling piano lamely played by 
 one of the teachers. Then the Bible (which Irish 
 priestcraft has since endeavored to abolish from 
 our public schools) was read to us for about ten 
 minutes by the principal, Mr. Barlowe. Mr. Bar- 
 lowe was a handsome man, with a tall, muscular 
 figure, a metallic kind of eye, and a large glossy 
 black beard. As I look back upon him he seems 
 to me the incarnation of relentless cruelty. If 
 the public schools yet retain their Bible, they 
 have, however, sent adrift something decidedly 
 more worthy of exorcism. I mean corporal pun 
 ishment. It is terrible to recollect the torture 
 that Mr. Barlowe inflicted with his slim, biting 
 rattan. Every afternoon he would appear to us, 
 like an executioner among a throng of shivering 
 criminals. Miss Budd or Miss Jenks or Miss 
 Moriarty (those were the names of my three 
 teachers) would hand him the fatal list of his 
 victims. Unless the latter had committed some 
 special offence, these ladies would use only the one 
 significant word " disorderly." Then the con 
 demned ones were forced to rise, and then a hideous 
 castigation would begin. Mr. Barlowe would make 
 his lithe switch descend upon their hands, which 
 they were forced to put forward and to open. I 
 have a conviction that the agony of those helpless, 
 cowering urchins gave Mr. Barlowe a sharp pleas-
 
 90 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 ure. Some of the boys used to put resin on their 
 hands to prevent the pain of the blows. The 
 boys were bad enough, but Mr. Barlowe, in his 
 handsome, insolent pride of office, was worse than 
 they. No stroke of his vile rattan ever wrought 
 the least good, and yet he exerted it, day after 
 day, like the hard-grained tyrant that he was. I 
 have learned, in succeeding years, that Mr. Bar 
 lowe has gained a name and almost a fame as a 
 public school principal. But now that decency 
 has wrested from him his rattan, I cannot imagine 
 what sceptre he uses, since his former rule was so 
 thoroughly wrong and base. 
 
 I used to tell Michael, after school-hours, of 
 how he punished the refractory boys. Mike s 
 grim face would cloud as he heard my tales. 
 " Shure, an if he ever goes fur you, Otho," Mike 
 would say, "jusht tell me, an it ll be putty closhe 
 quarters betune oi an him." 
 
 But Mr. Barlowe never "went for" me. I 
 gave good recitations, as a rule, and obeyed com 
 mands. Still, I secretly despised the discipline 
 which made fear of personal hurt a reason for 
 proper conduct. I soon grew to think Mr. Bar- 
 lowe s system revolting, as so many right-minded 
 people afterward held it. 
 
 Once he wanted to strike me, and was pre 
 vented. Usually obedient and tractable, I had 
 been, on a certain day, peevish and wilful. At 
 the end of the names which the teacher gave him,
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 91 
 
 mine was clearly though rather faintly uttered. 
 I rose when I heard my name. As I did so I 
 clenched my hands behind my back till the nails 
 almost bit into the flesh. A sudden swift look 
 from my teacher warned me to reseat myself. 
 But I did not heed the look. I stood and 
 waited. 
 
 Seven or eight boys were mercilessly flogged. 
 It came my turn. I still stood. Mr. Barlowe 
 advanced toward me. He started as he saw my 
 face, and turned toward my teacher. And then 
 she too perceived that I was standing. She waved 
 both hands and hurried to Mr. Barlowe s side. 
 " No, no," she said. 
 
 I saw them whisper together. I heard them, 
 also. I caught the words " best boy I have " 
 "a little unruly to-day never mind for once" 
 as they left my teacher s lips. But I still stood 
 firm. "Why not?" I heard Mr. Barlowe say, as 
 he shot a look at me from under his fine arched 
 eyebrows. And then, with the rattan still fresh 
 from previous torture, he drew near to me. 
 
 I clenched my hands still closer. I thought of 
 what Mike had said, and of what he could do. 
 I longed to have him there then, but he was not 
 there, and I must fight alone. 
 
 I meant to fight, as Mr. Barlowe said to me 
 " Hold out your hand, sir." I did not hold out 
 my hand. And just then the teacher rushed for 
 ward and grasped Mr. Barlowe s stout arm. "No,
 
 92 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 no," she expostulated, " not that ! I did not 
 mean that for him ! " 
 
 Mr. Barlowe here motioned for me to sit. I 
 seated myself. If he had struck me that day it 
 would have been a day for him to remember. 
 
 But very soon afterward the teacher took me 
 aside and begged me to forgive having mentioned 
 my name among those doomed for punishment. 
 I heard her in silence. She was penitent, as I 
 readily saw, but I could not forgive her just yet. 
 
 Meanwhile something let it be called a spell, 
 a witchery, whatever he who now reads may 
 choose to call it had put me apart from all the 
 other pupils. My intelligence was such that I 
 could easily master every task assigned me, and 
 in each branch of study I always held the highest 
 rank. My teachers petted, humored, and would 
 have caressed me if I had permitted them. My 
 classmates, without a single exception, paid me 
 a deference which resembled homage. I often 
 treated them haughtily, and selected from them 
 my favorites at the prompting of caprice. Some 
 of them were sadly uncouth, and of unbridled 
 license in speech. But none of them ever pre 
 sumed to address me except in decently courteous 
 phrases. It was remarkable how I managed to 
 win everybody over without indeed managing at 
 all. I do not boast ; I chronicle. Boys of from 
 twelve to fifteen years, when they are boys reared 
 in homes of poverty, ignorance, and even of sin as
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 93 
 
 well, are too often the grossest animal products. 
 I saw not a few of this sort, and in nearly all 
 cases I gave them a wide berth. But my avoid 
 ance aroused no spleen, no rancor. They seemed 
 to take for granted that I not only bore myself as 
 one above them but that I was justly and right 
 fully one above them. They were all somehow 
 on my side ; they appeared to be in a manner 
 proud of me. I moved among them like a little 
 prince. Many of them would have waited on me 
 as servants on a master if I had made a sign that 
 such was my wish. I never tried to account for 
 it all; I never, in those days, gave it a thought; 
 I had not the slightest sense of triumph. It had 
 become a matter-of-course with me that every 
 body should like me. If any of them had shown 
 me the least insolence or disrespect I would have 
 resented it with heat. But none of them ever 
 did. In most boyish sports I took pleasure, and 
 acquitted myself with skill. But in these I chose 
 only certain associates, and always found my ex 
 clusive tendencies treated with respect. When 
 ever I descended during recess into the ugly 
 flagged courtyard where the boys romped and 
 shouted, I had a small throng of picked com 
 panions ready at once to gather about me. There 
 is no doubt that I inspired in these a good deal of 
 genuine affection. But I gave them very little 
 in return. They were playmates of the hour, 
 nothing more. I had the unconscious art or trick,
 
 94 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 or whatever it was, of attracting whom I chose 
 to attract. My mother had been perfectly right. 
 I was born to win people by a smile, a glance, a 
 sentence. 
 
 And in this way two years glided along. Dur 
 ing that time I never once alluded to my father 
 while at home. But I counted the months as 
 they lapsed onward. My mother often went with 
 me into the streets, now. But at length she 
 ceased to leave the house. I knew why. It was 
 then early spring. I said to her, one day : 
 
 " You remain indoors because he is out of prison. 
 Or at least you know that his term has passed." 
 
 She started, and I saw her lips tremble. " Yes, 
 Otho," she said. 
 
 " But you cannot live like this, mamma. You 
 cannot shut yourself up always. After a while it 
 may make you ill. After a while it may even 
 kill you." 
 
 She lifted her large dark eyes to mine. " If it 
 were not for you," she answered, "I should be- 
 very willing to die. If it were not for you, Otho, 
 that would be far better than "... 
 
 She paused. I understood. The air of the 
 room seemed to turn chill, as if the breath from a 
 vault had swept through it. 
 
 We had had two years of peace, and now the 
 old trouble and fear had come back to us. The 
 menace and the shadow were once again over my 
 mother s mind and heart !
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 95 
 
 V. 
 
 Ix these days I asked myself if I could do noth 
 ing to lessen her dread and uncertainty. I wanted 
 to take some secret step, and leave her unaware 
 that I had done so until it resulted in some sort 
 of assured success. With this view I consulted 
 Michael, my unswerving friend and ally. Could 
 no means be hit upon of tracing my father s 
 present whereabouts? He had undoubtedly left 
 prison. Might we not succeed in learning if he 
 were still in New York and if he still cherished 
 those murderous designs against his wife ? It was 
 possible that immurement and the recollection of 
 his horrid mistake had tamed and calmed him. 
 Perhaps no thought of seeking my mother s life 
 now fed brain and heart with its fiery poison. In 
 that case how precious would such news be to us ! 
 What a load it would lift from the meek, sorrow 
 ful woman whose girlish love had become mock 
 ery, disaster and shame ! 
 
 " You nod your head very knowingly indeed," 
 I said to Michael one day, " and you scratch it 
 with a great show of wisdom. But you have not 
 yet told me if you can possibly get this knowledge
 
 96 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 that I so crave. And yet it seems to me that 
 there must be a way ! " 
 
 Here Mike redeemed himself from my rather 
 hasty charge of dulness by recommending an 
 application to the police. The truth, he said, could 
 be got at in this way better than in any other. It 
 was not improbable that my father s movements 
 after lie left prison had been closely watched. 
 Michael had several intimate friends on the police- 
 force. He would sound one or two of them 
 regarding the best method of going to work, since 
 of course it was highly desirable that great cau 
 tion should be used. We must contrive to remain 
 hidden while we secured our knowledge of him. 
 
 " And if we learn, Mike," I said, after approv 
 ing this plan, "that my father still nurses the 
 same wicked purpose, then it will be our duty to 
 lodge some kind of public complaint against him. 
 Mamma cannot be made a captive for years. I am 
 no longer a child, and my health is so much better 
 than what it was that I am almost robust and 
 hearty. I feel that I have a duty to perform, a 
 responsibility to discharge. If any thing should 
 happen now, after the way in which we were 
 warned, it would be still more horrible for us, 
 because we should hold ourselves to blame. As it 
 is, Michael, let us learn the facts if we can, and 
 act accordingly. And do not mention even to 
 Martha what you propose doing." 
 
 Michael, devoted soul, went to work in great
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 97 
 
 secrecy. His friends on the police-force were no 
 doubt excellent aids. From day to day he told 
 me nothing, and I asked him no questions. But 
 meanwhile he was urging his stealthy work with 
 much tact and skill. He knew just what I wanted 
 him to do and how I wanted him to do it. An 
 occasional word, and no more, would apprise me 
 that he still strove and persevered. I read his 
 faithful spirit so clearly ! He had all that is best 
 and finest in his often-abused race, without its 
 marked powers of intellect which, when best and 
 finest, are so frequently erratic and wilful. His 
 was the sweet Irish nature that can love with such 
 inexhaustible warmth, and serve where it loves 
 with such steadfast devotion. Brilliancy has been 
 the peril of his people. They fail as great leaders, 
 but in all qualities of allegiance and fidelity no 
 land has eclipsed them. 
 
 Life had for many months flowed smoothly in 
 our obscure little home, whither death so con 
 stantly brought us its gloom and its plaint that we 
 had grown to regard both as commonplace, like 
 the sure shade wrought naturally by the sunbeam. 
 I could not fail to see that my mother took great 
 pride in me, that she watched my least act with 
 fond vigilance, that she rejoiced at my intellectual 
 promise, that her old instinct of protection had 
 begun to wear the hue of dependence and reliance. 
 
 u You are a dear boy, Otho," she tenderly said 
 to me on a certain evening when I bade her
 
 98 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 good-night before I went to rest in my small room 
 adjoining her own. " I hope you will always be as 
 much of a comfort to me as you are now. And I 
 hope everything will always go as smoothly with 
 you as it does now, chtri" 
 
 " As smoothly, mamma ? " I questioned. 
 
 " Yes, Otho. I would not flatter you for the 
 world, since that might give you a false estimate 
 of your own talents, and make you prone to flaunt 
 and parade them unduly. But though you possess 
 talents quite beyond the common, I think your 
 good sense is sound enough to recognize the folly 
 of idle pride in their possession. And yet these, 
 like the beauty and the charm of which I am so 
 glad to see you not boastful, render your daily 
 course thus far a rarely easy one. Where other 
 boys of your age toil and strain for eminence, you 
 win it with scarcely an effort. I have so often 
 watched you at your lessons ; there are some of 
 them that your understanding and your memory 
 seize with a strange speed. You are full of gifts! 
 The ills and hurts that beset most lads have never 
 touched you at all. I know your career at school 
 you have told me what it has been. Everybody 
 succumbs to you as I do, as poor Michael and 
 Martha do. It often seems to me as if you were 
 born to be indulged. But, Otho, you silently 
 accept too much and give too little in return. Be 
 careful, my son be careful ! You do not love 
 as you are loved. . . I hate to speak of this to
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 99 
 
 you now, because you are still so young. But 
 some day you will love. Some day you will give 
 a great love, and want it repaid in full, and ques 
 tion yourself constantly as to whether it is repaid 
 in full. And if it is not, my boy or if you 
 should think it is not, then "... 
 
 My mother s voice faltered here. I threw my 
 arms about her neck and put my lips to hers. 
 "Oh, mamma," I said, "why do you worry your 
 self with thoughts like these? It must come of 
 your making those sad, white shrouds ce metier 
 funebre ! I shall never love as you say. I shall 
 never love any one as I love you. And if I should 
 ever marry, you will see my wife and judge of 
 this, for you will live many, many years you 
 are still so young ! " 
 
 "Many, many years?" she repeated, in a 
 strangely musing tone. 
 
 " Yes surely yes. Why not ? And you must 
 not say that I give no love back, mamma ! It is 
 cruel I " 
 
 " You do not give the love that is given you, 
 Otho." 
 
 " You judge me unfairly, mamma." 
 
 " No. . . I know you so well." 
 
 "Do you think I do not care for you as you 
 care for me ? " . . I kissed her as I spoke. 
 
 With her lips close to mine she answered : "No. 
 I must say it. My heart tells me my mother s 
 heart. You accept ; you are grateful ; but though
 
 100 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 you sometimes embrace me and caress me like 
 this, there is a coldness. . . I cannot explain . . . 
 but it is there. Oh, Otho, it is there ! " 
 
 Her last word ended in a kind of sob. She 
 had not clasped me with her arms till then, but 
 then she did so, tightly and abruptly. 
 
 I forced myself from their hold, however. She 
 had angered me, and perhaps a pang of conscience 
 fed this new mood. Between compunction and 
 accusative wrath the gulf is seldom a broad one. 
 
 " I see ! " came my bitter cry. " You wish to 
 say that I have no power to love except as he, 
 my father, loved ! You wish to warn me against 
 a fault which you have no right to dread because 
 you have never yet had reason to charge me with 
 it ! Is this fair ? Is it not unmerciful ? " 
 
 " Otho ! What are you saying? " 
 
 But my words sped on. "You tell me that 
 you have loved me so well ! Admit that you have ! 
 But is your love for me now, at this moment, what 
 it is for the man my father, if you please the 
 man who wished to kill you ? " 
 
 " Otho. Do not speak like that." 
 
 I caught her unwilling hand. " Answer my 
 question ! " I demanded, with kindling eyes. 
 " Which of us do you love the better at this mo 
 ment? Of which do you think the more? Who 
 holds your heart the more? Who fills your thought 
 the more?" 
 
 My speech must now have been fierce. But
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 101 
 
 she felt the poignance of its appeal ; she perceived 
 how it clutched the bare fact, and presented this, 
 and demanded a clear response. 
 
 She withdrew her hand from mine with force, 
 and then waved both hands confusedly before her 
 drooped face. 
 
 "Answer me!" I exclaimed. "You do love 
 him more than you love me ! It is true ! Answer 
 me ! If you do not, I shall know that this man 
 from whom you are forced to hide, whose very 
 existence is a threat to you, holds more of your 
 heart than I can ever gain ! " 
 
 I stood near her, with burning look, with quiv 
 ering nostrils, with a sudden dreadful rage rack 
 ing and thrilling me. 
 
 She lifted her eyes to my face. She sprang to 
 her feet an instant afterward. Her expression was 
 one of terror, and that alone. 
 
 " Otho ! " she cried, wildly. " I see your father 
 in you now ! His curse has descended upon you ! " 
 
 Her tones were so shrill and keen that they 
 brought Martha from a neighboring room, in high 
 alarm. But before Martha entered, my mother 
 had sank back into her chair, fainting. 
 
 My rage (shall I say my spasm of hot jealousy?) 
 had died as I saw the pallor and the backward 
 stagger that told me what it had wrought. I, 
 myself, unnerved and trembling, let Martha do 
 what she could toward resuscitation. But when 
 those dark, eloquent eyes met mine once more, I
 
 102 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 felt that if I should grovel at my mother s feet for 
 pardon she would be justified in withholding it. 
 
 And yet how readily she gave it! A bitter 
 headache succeeded her partial swoon, and when 
 I left her bed-chamber it was long past midnight. 
 But for three or four hours I lay sleepless, dumbly 
 horrified at the passionate outburst of which I had 
 been guilty. 
 
 What did it mean ? Did it mean that my father 
 had indeed stamped me with the woful brand of 
 his own madness? This was the second time 
 within my experience that such a paroxysm had 
 caught me like a whirlwind. Was my will strong 
 enough to stand guard against any third assault? 
 
 My will was certainly strong, and I vowed that 
 night a most solemn and meaning vow to crush 
 down and control a passion which must need 
 stouter bonds every time that I let it slip leash. 
 A belief in the power and permanence of my reso- 
 tion brought with it a more placid mood. But 
 not alone through the next day did a dull, slug 
 gish trouble brood in my breast ; for many days 
 afterward I seemed to see the glad spring sun 
 through a dusky mist. I had realized that though 
 I fought against these surges of wild feeling never 
 so strenuously, the source whence they rose, like 
 a stagnant and noisome pool, must hide itself in 
 my nature. That source was jealousy. And 
 strangely enough, when I now sought to analyze 
 the only jealousy my life had thus far known, I
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 103 
 
 found myself justifying and excusing it. My 
 mind would hurry along in impetuous and fervid 
 argument. Was it fair, I would ask myself, that 
 I should be held in my mother s affection lower 
 than he was held who had wrecked her life? 
 Ought I not to expect, to demand, more than she 
 gave my father? Was it not injustice, insult, that 
 she should accord me an inferior place? Had I 
 not been right in resenting what was truly a goad 
 for revolt? Would not many another have felt 
 my mortification, my grief? 
 
 But the fallacy of this reasoning might easily 
 have struck me, and nothing except the bigotry 
 and egotism of my own master-fault now obscured 
 it. For if some strange current of attraction still 
 turned my mother s poor misused heart toward 
 him whom it would have been far better to loathe, 
 she had none the less restrained all active indul 
 gence of desire, bravely and firmly. True, she 
 had done so on my father s account; but it had 
 been also on my account. Her patient sacrifice 
 should have shamed my selfishness ! 
 
 It was not long before I told her of my stanch 
 determination, and besought her pardon for what 
 had passed. It was given with a close, eager 
 embrace, but I knew that henceforth a fresh dread 
 was to haunt her brain and tinge its thoughts. 
 
 " I will show you, mamma," I said, " that I am 
 not half so much like him as you fear." 
 
 " You made me fear that you were like him in
 
 104 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 that one thing at least, Otho," she answered. 
 "But even if you had inherited all that is sinful 
 in him, with strength of purpose and a little true 
 courage you can remake your own character." 
 
 This subject of heredity had just begun to 
 fascinate me. But as yet I had scarcely given a 
 thought to the marvellous phenomena of the will. 
 The perception of how we seem to be so absolutely 
 free and yet are shaped and moulded by the 
 agencies of our environment ; the recognition of 
 how an immense sequence of mental conditions, 
 from our birth to the actual present instant, pre 
 cedes, like one long law of iron necessity, our 
 existent state ; the admission that any least or 
 greatest act, from the mere lifting of a hand to 
 the slaying of a fellow-creature, inflexibly follows 
 a thousand previous acts, whether trivial or grave ; 
 all this I had yet to ponder, to investigate, to 
 accept. But just now I was not too young to feel 
 awed and startled by the thought that parentage 
 could fix traits and tendencies in its offspring as 
 inseparable as a finger or an eyebrow. It was 
 horrible for me to meditate upon the way in which 
 all disease, whether of mind or body, so often 
 comes to us like a dark, hated dower, like a debt 
 which we have not contracted yet must pay in 
 full. I recoiled before the hopeless fact of woe 
 and sin being entailed and transmitted by sire to 
 son. The misery of the world and I had not 
 seen so little of it that I was unable to estimate
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 105 
 
 its malign weight and scope was lit for me, in 
 all its ravage and solemnity, by a new and search 
 ing ray. It was like seeing a lurid sun cast dying 
 light upon some wreck where waves broke wildly 
 and shrieks rang out unheard into the deaf storm. 
 I would sleep ill because of the remembrance that 
 I had been born of a father who had perhaps 
 made the taint of his own worst vice bite into the 
 tissues of my being as a mordant will bite into 
 wool ; and when my wakeful intervals came I 
 would lie in the dark of my own chamber and 
 wonder why to each of us, brought without asking 
 upon this planet where so many of us must fight 
 to live at all, the start should not be equal, un 
 trammelled, exempt from the bonds and snares of 
 ancestry. I did not know, then, that just such 
 futile questionings as these had driven older and 
 finer brains than mine into sombre agonies of 
 doubt, and even into madness as well ! 
 
 Michael at length drew me aside, one day, with 
 a demeanor that I at once decided to be por 
 tentous. He always had for important events a 
 frown of more or less gloom. I knew all his 
 frowns ; this one was of the sort which he gave 
 on having negotiated a specially lucrative fu 
 neral. 
 
 " Shure,* he began, " it s somethin I m goin to 
 tell ye that ll be a big surprise. An furst off I 
 guess ye won t b lieve I m tellin the truth wan 
 bit, so ye won t."
 
 106 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Oh, you always tell the truth, Mike," I said, 
 with rather rosy exaggeration. " What is it?" 
 
 Michael had found my father. One of his 
 policeman-friends had used influence with a certain 
 very keen detective, who had no doubt done the 
 ferreting work gratis, and just as a bloodhound 
 might dispose of a rat or chipmunk in its pursuit 
 of larger prey. Furthermore, Michael had himself 
 seen my father, without the latter suspecting who 
 he was. This was the first time the two men had 
 ever met. I soon judged, from what Michael im 
 parted, that my father was much changed in ap 
 pearance. I now heard him described as haggard 
 of visage and rather lank of figure. The place of 
 encounter had been a liquor-saloon, whose pro 
 prietor was fortunately, as Mike expressed it, 
 " raised home in the same place wid meeself, d ye 
 mind." My father was in the habit of coming 
 into this place every night, and taking as much 
 bad brandy (he always drank brandy) as the coin 
 or two in his possession would buy. He always 
 drank alone, always seemed moody and uncom 
 municative, and never showed a sign of intoxica 
 tion. He was evidently in great poverty ; his 
 clothes, if not of the worst, were frayed and 
 shabby. He dwelt not far away in the attic of 
 a tenement-house. It was not known how he 
 secured the little money which fell to him, for 
 he had had no regular occupation since leaving 
 prison. It was supposed, however, that his great
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 107 
 
 strength of frame made him sometimes valuable 
 about the wharves. 
 
 All this interested me keenly. And it seemed 
 a vast advantage to have found out so much con 
 cerning our arch-foe. I had a sense of relief as I 
 recalled the location of that liquor-shop and its ad 
 jacent tenement-house. Both were well removed 
 from our quarter, being near Bowling Green, in the 
 breezy vicinity of the old Battery, not then as now 
 so smart with flagged walks and marine esplanade. 
 
 Strangely enough, as days followed this revela 
 tion of Michael s, a curiosity began to assail and 
 tempt me. I wanted to have Michael contrive in 
 some way that I should see my father while my 
 self unseen. I knew that if I once made the 
 request of him he would not be content till he 
 had gratified it. The danger might be great or 
 slight, according to circumstance. But it was not 
 because of the danger that I shrank from taxing 
 Michael s devotedness. It was because I doubted 
 my own right to run the least risk of this sort 
 without the knowledge of her for whom my safety 
 and happiness were all that made life other than a 
 ceaseless pain. Still, confidence in Michael re 
 duced that risk tenfold as I reflected upon it. 
 And as for personal fear, I had none whatever. 
 All the timid qualms which beset a child had fled 
 from me now. I had become a youth of not a 
 little cool courage, and enjoyed in imagination 
 things that bore a spice of venture or peril.
 
 108 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 My mother had heard nothing of Michael s re 
 cent successful search. She need never know of 
 the somewhat bold plan I was then forming. 
 There was not the slightest chance unless some 
 dire mishap should occur that she would not 
 remain in continued ignorance of the whole mat 
 ter. Why should I not confirm any doubt still 
 existent and I confess there was a lurking one 
 that no mistake had been made in the precise 
 identity of my father? Besides, I wanted to look 
 upon him once again. It was wholly a curiosity, 
 and I suppose it was clearly morbid as well. He 
 had never loved me, or shown me a shade of 
 tenderness. But I wanted to see what changes 
 remorse, passion, dissipation, perhaps defeated 
 vengeance, had wrought in him. 
 
 I finally spoke to Michael. He at first shook 
 his head with decision. Then I spoke more per 
 suasively, and he scratched it in characteristic 
 doubt. There must be a way of my seeing my 
 father, I told him, and yet of my remaining un 
 discovered. He could surely hit upon a way. 
 "You re so shrewd, Mike," I added, with a touch 
 of flattery, open and }*et adroit. " I am sure you 
 could find it, if there were any way." 
 
 " Anny way ? " murmured Mike, gutturally and 
 a little crossly. " Of coorse there ain t." 
 
 I felt that I had gained my point. Whenever 
 Michael was the least cross to me it meant that a 
 big fund of indulgence lay behind his grimness
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 109 
 
 And I was right in this case. On the follow 
 ing Saturday my holiday from school he had 
 arranged everything. I was to see my father and 
 yet be securely unseen by him. 
 
 Michael explained to me just how the affair 
 would be managed. I listened and gave my ap 
 proval after I had heard. He must have been on 
 rather intimate terms with Patrick Costello, the 
 proprietor of the liquor-saloon I have before men 
 tioned. My father was in the habit of entering 
 there at about four o clock every afternoon. An 
 ambush in this place had been provided for both 
 of us. We would be due, so to speak, at a quar 
 ter of four. And we kept our engagement punc 
 tually to the minute. 
 
 The ambush struck me at once as wonderfully 
 secure. Michael and I found ourselves placed in 
 a small apartment at one side of the general en 
 trance. It was a little chamber intended for the 
 bacchanal use of convivial parties, and judging 
 from its pasty, grimy table and its two or three 
 effete chairs, I imagined what riotous cliques must 
 have clinked glasses there. The door of this re 
 sort had a key on the inside, which Michael 
 turned. But the upper part of this door was a 
 blind, with slats easily moved, so that one drawing 
 a little backward could command an oblique but 
 fair view of the saloon itself. I knelt on a chair 
 at the side of my towering companion, and our 
 survey was complete. To-day, no doubt, such an
 
 110 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 ambuscade would scarcely be possible in any simi 
 lar haunt. JEstheticism or something comically 
 like it has made the modern liquor-seller deco 
 rate his lair with gaudy stained-glass windows, 
 doors of polished oak or walnut, and a " bar " of 
 prismatic splendor. The trick of rousing a drink 
 er s thirst by tickling his eye had not yet come 
 into vogue. Here everything was plain and even 
 scurvy, as befits dens where workmen pour out 
 into tumblers the earnings that should get their 
 wives decent gear or their children shoes. As I 
 knelt at Michael s side, I saw dark rows of bot 
 tles perched along a wall misty with cobwebs ; I 
 saw the apparatus for pumping ale from a cellar 
 below, with tarnished faucets and shabby wood 
 work ; I saw a counter whose very edges, worn 
 and sagged, looked as though it had accommodated 
 the shifting elbows of multitudinous drunkards; 
 and lastly I saw Mr. Costello himself, the genius 
 shall I say the evil genius ? of the dive, with 
 his veiny, sanguine cheeks, his dull, bloodshot eye, 
 his copious fall of dyed mustache, his flabby bulge 
 of stomach. It is possible that Mr. Costello might 
 have known better than to sit the spider of this 
 noxious web, but there is no doubt that he did 
 not look as if he knew better. 
 
 Of course it was all an old story to me. 
 Michael and I had seen it all before. But that 
 afternoon it somehow seemed new and unwontedly 
 loathsome, because I realized that the man whom
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. Ill 
 
 my mother still loved might soon enter its woful 
 domain. But four o clock came without bringing 
 him. The minutes preceding that hour brought 
 more than one customer to Mr. Patrick Costello. 
 I write of New York as I saw it years ago, but 
 the years have not changed this horrid, alcoholic 
 part of it, and what I record of past time is true 
 of to-day. 
 
 I remember that afternoon so well, while Mike 
 and I waited in our hiding-place ! A woman 
 staggered in, with a big white pitcher, and a 
 wrinkled face as white as the pitcher itself. " I ll 
 give ye no more," said Mr. Costello, wiping his 
 bar imperturbably. This was in its way moral; it 
 raised Mr. Costello in my opinion ; he was not all 
 for sordid gain. A little later two negroes en 
 tered. They were at once told to " get along out 
 o that," with a fierce vehemence, and they de 
 parted. The hate of this enslaved race was then 
 rampant with the Irish of New York. Still later 
 a little child appeared, in filthy rags and with bare 
 feet, carrying a jug. The little creature could 
 just lift the jug to the bar s edge. " Where s yer 
 money ? " said Mr. Costello, unwilling (and doubt 
 less because of past impositions) to fill the jug 
 without first getting the price of what he would 
 put into it. The frowzy child, standing on her 
 naked tip-toes, lifted a coin. Mr. Costello eyed it 
 suspiciously as soon as his blue-nailed thumb and 
 forefinger had touched it. Then, still with a dubi-
 
 112 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 ous air, he placed it under the glossy cascade of 
 his dyed mustache. A moment afterward he 
 flung it into the empty jug, returned this to the 
 child, and grumbled out " Get along wid ye. 
 It s bad. Get along, now." The child, whimper 
 ing a little, "got along," just as the proscribed 
 negroes had done. 
 
 And at last he came. I clutched Mike s brawny 
 shoulder as I saw him enter. I knew him in 
 stantly. But he was greatly altered. His face 
 had lost all its cold, stern beauty : there was only 
 the coldness and sternness left. His cheeks were 
 sunken, his hair was streaked with gray, his lim 
 pid eyes were dulled ; and new harsh lines had 
 crept about lip and nostril. You saw plainly that 
 he had suffered past the common human measure. 
 But there was an acerbity in his face that slew all 
 sympathy. I felt as I looked at him that he was 
 harder and crueller than ever before. 
 
 He poured out a tumblerful of tawny fluid from 
 the black bottle that Mr. Costello handed him. 
 It was an uncompromising tumblerful, and he 
 drank it quite raw. I remember that the thought 
 flashed through me, here : "If he drinks often 
 like this it may kill him, and then poor mamma 
 will be free." 
 
 Mr. Costello, with an evident motive of deten 
 tion, now leaned across the bar and said affably to 
 his customer: 
 
 " Have sumethin wid me, sur. Wat ll it be, sur?"
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 113 
 
 " Brandy," said my father. 
 
 Mr. Costello graciously waved a hand toward 
 the bottle which still remained on the counter. 
 
 My father drank again. Mr. Costello poured 
 something from a private bottle of his own, among 
 the many which thronged his shelves. " Well, 
 here s luck," he said, drinking. And after drink 
 ing he said : " Ye re votin wid the Dimercrats, I 
 s pose." 
 
 " No," said my father, almost gruffly. " I m 
 not in politics at all." 
 
 This was quite too much for Mr. Costello. I 
 think he temporarily forgot that Michael and I 
 were listening and observing. He leaned toward 
 my father and began a eulogy, in fervid brogue, 
 of the present Democratic nominee for mayor. 
 My father listened, or seemed to listen, with ill-hid 
 annoyance. Mr. Costello individualized one of 
 the curses of New-York political life ; his liquor- 
 den was a means of distributing bribes to those 
 who frequented it, for the purpose of making them 
 vote a certain " ticket." Agents of the nominee 
 for mayor, alderman, or whatever the municipal 
 position possibly was, would place certain money 
 in his hands to be discreetly used for electioneer 
 ing purposes. Mr. Costello had a five-dollar note 
 for my father if he would pledge himself to vote 
 in one special way, and he soon showed that he 
 had. He showed it in this fashion : 
 
 " Look here, mee man. You go wid us, d ye
 
 114 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 undershtand, an it ll be a good job annyhow. I ll 
 see ye on lection-day, so I will, an if you d want 
 to borrer five dollars or so, d ye mind, I ll " 
 
 Suddenly Mr. Costello paused. He remembered 
 himself. He became conscious of his unseen au 
 ditors. Representing as he did one of those vicious 
 elements which have cast shame upon the greatest 
 city in America for many years, he naturally re 
 coiled before an open display of his own political 
 corruption. He could hold a good many five- 
 dollar bills in that big soiled hand of his. Men 
 had given them to him who would not have pre 
 cisely rejoiced in having their names made public 
 as the donors. They used the lust for drink as 
 one of their aids to slipping within fat electoral 
 places. They turned democracy into infamy, and 
 they have been doing it for a good many years 
 since the period of which I write. 
 
 But my father was a bad subject for all such 
 bribery. He shook his head and moved toward 
 the door. I am sure that he saw the rottenness 
 of this kind of attempted government, and that 
 he shrank from it with merited disgust. I will 
 pay him this one tribute of respect. Black as 
 were his other faults, dishonesty was not among 
 them. . . 
 
 When I regained our home I had a guilty feel 
 ing as I met my mother s eye. I had seen him, 
 and she did not dream of it. How eagerly she 
 would have questioned me if she had known !
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 115 
 
 But she did not know, I told myself, and never 
 should. I had seen that in my father which made 
 me believe him capable of any desperate act. 
 What he had tried unsuccessfully to do he might 
 try to do again. His face, his mien, his blasted 
 and shattered personality, had told me this. The 
 prison had not cured him. He still suffered, in 
 his bad, wild way. And he still waited. 
 
 The next day was Sunday. It was a day of 
 days with me. The season was latter May, the 
 weather balmy, bland, exquisite. Even that ugly 
 Bowery of ours took a certain grace and glamor. 
 The house-tops, unsightly as they were, could not 
 hide the brilliant blue of the sky. It was a day that 
 tempted one out of doors. " We will go to church 
 together, this morning, if you wish," my mother 
 said to me. 
 
 " Very well," I answered. The church was not 
 far away. I recollect that I had a new suit of 
 clothes, that morning, made by my mother s deft 
 hand. I felt proud and happy as I walked at her 
 side to church. The delicious air of the May 
 weather dispelled all the gloom of yesterday s dis 
 covery. My mother spoke as we walked along 
 together. 
 
 " How pleasant everything is, Otho." 
 
 " Yes, mamma. I am so glad you were willing 
 to walk out. I thought you would always be 
 afraid . . nowadays." 
 
 She did not speak for several minutes. " The
 
 116 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 sweet weather made me come forth and breathe 
 it," she replied. There was a pink flush in her 
 cheeks as she said this ; I had never seen her 
 more beautiful. " It is hard to realize that dis 
 ease can lurk so near us when the air has so 
 much purity." 
 
 " Disease, mamma ? " I questioned. 
 
 " Did you not know, Otho ? Smallpox has 
 broken out in our neighborhood. Old Mrs. Joyce, 
 the furniture-man s wife, died of it yesterday. 
 And several other cases have also occurred quite 
 near us. Michael is to bring a doctor to-morrow, 
 and we are to be vaccinated Martha, Michael, 
 you and I, all of us. You were vaccinated when 
 a little baby, Otho, and I remember what a dread 
 ful arm you had. The doctor said then, laugh 
 ingly, that you would be safe for the rest of your 
 lifetime." 
 
 Just as my mother finished speaking I saw a 
 man coming toward us whose face and form I 
 recognized with a sudden horrible thrill. We 
 were in Chatham Square, almost at the verge of 
 East Broadway. In a moment more we would 
 place our feet upon the curb-stone. I seized my 
 mother s hand while we gained the pavement. I 
 did not dare to point. " Mamma," I said, in my 
 usual French, and with great speed, "there is 
 papa. Be careful. Come." 
 
 I wanted her to turn with me. But she halted, 
 and then stood motionless. My father advanced.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 117 
 
 " Come come I " I urged wildly. " He does 
 not see us yet. He " 
 
 But now he had seen us. And as he did so a 
 great recognizing start showed itself in both his 
 frame and face. He abruptly paused. And then, 
 very suddenly and swiftly, he darted forward, 
 straight in our direction. 
 
 " Mamma ! " I cried. " Do not stand still like 
 this ! Hurry away." I dragged at her hand, but 
 she did not move. Was it terror that made her 
 so spellbound ? Or was it something far different 
 from terror ? 
 
 My father was now rushing forward at head 
 long pace.
 
 118 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 VI. 
 
 HE reached us a little later. His eyes blazed 
 with wrath ; his face was white. He held some 
 thing in his right hand, which I could not see. 
 He caught my mother s arm with his left hand. 
 He did not speak; he stood for a few seconds 
 breathing so that I could hear him breathe. 
 
 " Leopold ! " gasped my mother. I think that 
 was all she said ; if she spoke another word I can 
 not recall it. I still clutched her hand. And 
 then, with my flesh like ice, I saw him strike at 
 her with what he held. I saw no flash of a knife. 
 He struck toward her throat, on the left side. 
 The blow meant death; it had severed a great 
 vein ; the blood gushed in torrents. My mother 
 tore her fingers from my mad hold. In an in 
 stant the sidewalk about us was one crimson pool. 
 She reeled and staggered, but as she did so he 
 kept her with one arm from falling, and then I 
 perceived that he had a slim, keen knife, for he 
 suddenly plunged it several times into his own 
 breast. My mother and he both fell an instant 
 later. ... I cannot record what I now did. The 
 street swam about me; the noises of the passing
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 119 
 
 carts grew a fierce thunder. People thronged up 
 on every side ; it seemed to me as if their number 
 was an untold legion. The tumult, the clamor, 
 had in it, to my distracted sense, an almost infi 
 nite fury. The whole experience was like some 
 ghastly dream of hell. I strive now calmly to 
 review it all, and wholly fail to pierce the lurid 
 fog of my own bewilderment. I only remember 
 that I was not unconscious. If I had really fainted, 
 the impression of uproar, of pressing faces and 
 jostling forms, of excited shrieks and garish pub 
 licity would have proved far less distinct. It 
 seems to me that I sank upon my knees. A hun 
 dred questions in a hundred different voices beset 
 me, but I could neither answer nor understand 
 one. Not that I failed to realize "what had passed. 
 I realized it, indeed, with so thrilling an acuteness 
 that all other sense was for the time blurred and 
 weak. Mine was the very paralysis of horror. 
 And yet, strangely enough, my thought, so im 
 potent in other ways, flashed backward through 
 certain previous events. This frightful thing 
 seemed the fulfilment of dire prophecy, the con 
 summation to which horrid omens had pointed. 
 My regret became one terrific enormity ; it ceased 
 merely to fill consciousness ; it was consciousness 
 itself the air I breathed, the surrounding mul 
 titude, the sunshine, the day, the busy city. I 
 fancy that words of a wild and wailing sort must 
 have left my lips. The unearthly crime might
 
 120 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 have been averted ; I had known and dreaded the 
 danger ; all four of us had known it and dreaded 
 it ; this formulated the anguish of my despair. 
 It need not have happened ! In that one sentence 
 might have been condensed the whole dark vol 
 ume of my suffering. We constantly speak of 
 pain as something wholly separable from ourselves, 
 like a scorpion or insect that clings to us but of 
 which in time we may be rid. In that supreme 
 interval I had no such feeling. Between my tor 
 ture and myself there lay no boundary. All was 
 one incarnate agony ; every pulse of my heart 
 meant a pang ; every throb of my brain dealt a 
 blow. 
 
 It is marvellous that I lived. If this tensity of 
 mental strain had lasted a few minutes longer I 
 have now no doubt that death would have ended 
 it. But torpors like these, which are a death-in- 
 life, tax and goad each nerve, fibre and organ to 
 fling them off, and it is when we fail in this that 
 we die. My own relief came in a storm of tears. 
 When I began to sob and tremble I was saved. 
 Nature had fought for me and saved me. But 
 until later I did not know at what cost ! 
 
 Someone tried to raise me, but I struggled and 
 would not stand. My mother s white face, peace 
 ful and with closed eyes, had dawned upon me. 
 I leaned toward it and touched its cheek, still 
 warm in death. Then I drew backward with a 
 horrible cry. My own hand, from contact with
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 121 
 
 my ensanguined garments, had left a blood-red 
 mark. I heard my own shriek. . . I can hear it 
 now. " Take him away ! " shouted a voice. " No, 
 no," exclaimed other voices. " Wait for the po 
 lice he knows who they all three are he ll 
 be needed," sounded next from the close-packed 
 bystanders. 
 
 Then a pell-mell of questions once more assailed 
 me. I answered some of them as best I could. I 
 had now risen. To left and right of me stretched 
 one great sea of heads. Two or three sturdy men 
 kept the crowd back from the fallen bodies. 
 Plaintive voices rang from many of the women. 
 My father s face was obscured ; he lay so that it 
 came in contact with the pavement. I don t 
 know how many times I heard it called and 
 shrieked and moaned and muttered all about me 
 that he had killed her first and then killed him 
 self. Now and again a bit of humor would lend 
 its baleful discord to the din of the mob, and 
 a kind of laughter greeted it, that was like a 
 shudder put into sound. These outbursts were 
 perhaps less barbarous than hysterical ; mirth is 
 sometimes a sort of treble note to the deeper bass 
 of sorrow and affright. I cannot believe that 
 there was a single spirit, no matter how hardened, 
 in all this motley congress of gazers, untouched 
 by pity for myself and her. 
 
 It seemed an eternity before the police came. 
 Several women had begun not only to murmur
 
 122 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 fresh queries in my ears but to caress and offer 
 me soothing words. I must have told one of 
 these my address, though I do not recall what 
 responses I made any of them. At length two 
 policemen pushed roughly through the dividing 
 crowd. The sheen of their buttons and their up 
 lifted clubs made me start and cower ; the coming 
 of these men turned a new and merciless glare 
 upon my woe. I heard gruff tones quite near me 
 say something in which I caught the word " am 
 bulance." . . But even then a singing had crept 
 into my ears that grew louder each instant, and 
 the pavement seemed to drop away from the soles 
 of my feet, while all the dense concourse of men 
 and women began to whirl giddily in vague tur 
 moil. Then came a blank. . . I had fainted. 
 
 I awoke in my chamber at home. Martha was 
 bending over me. I at once recognized her. 
 There was a light in the room as of waning after 
 noon. She spoke my name softly in her familiar 
 voice. I had no memory of what had happened 
 to my mother, but I was under a vague conviction 
 that I myself had met some sharp injury. 
 
 "Where is mamma?" I asked. "Does she 
 know that I am hurt? " 
 
 And then Martha seemed to melt away, and 
 Michael took her place at my bedside. Possibly 
 this was all real enough. But after I had watched 
 Michael a few moments, his gaunt form and dear, 
 grim face vanished, and I clearly saw my mother.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 123 
 
 She hummed an air, and appeared quite her 
 wonted self. But there was a reddish mark on 
 one of her cheeks, and I reached forth my hand to 
 brush it away. Then her shape receded, and a 
 great drowsiness came upon me. . . . 
 
 But after that I had many episodes of wakeful- 
 ness, which impressed me dimly (for everything 
 was now dim as a dream) that they extended 
 through days, weeks, even months. Some of my 
 visions were appalling; others were tranquil 
 enough and even pleasant. It was all the change 
 ful phantasmagoria of continued delirium. My 
 distempered brain was like a blank wall on whose 
 surface a magic-lantern causes image after image 
 to gleam. The mysterious master of these weird 
 revels plied his task with incessant zeal. I will 
 not describe either the sombre or cheerful phases 
 of my hallucinations ; some of them were the fit 
 kindred of frenzy, others wore the spell of calm 
 and ease. I can recollect no special period at 
 which the dawn of sanity showed its first ray. 
 When I became aware of the walls that enclosed 
 me, the bed in which I rested, the details of my 
 apartment, the hands that served me, the tangible 
 and human shapes that came and went, the very 
 taste of the draughts put between my lips, all had 
 somehow acquired an air of previous acquaintance. 
 The change from dementia to reason had doubtless 
 been one of slow and irregular progress. I was 
 afterward told that I would lie for hours with every
 
 124 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 rational sign in my look, and would not seldom 
 utter sentences that betokened lucid faculties. 
 Then the cloud would wrap me again, as a mist 
 wraps a shore. It had been at first a fiery fever 
 of the brain, but the fever had now passed, and 
 an organic mania was feared. Still, my aberra 
 tions became of less frequent recurrence, and 
 hope of my full recovery strengthened in those 
 who watched me. 
 
 "You are better, Otho, are you not? said a 
 voice at my side, very softly, one day. The voice 
 spoke in French, but this did not strike me as at 
 all strange. I had heard it many times before 
 near my bed, lower, and using the same language 
 to a tall, placid female attendant. 
 
 " Yes," I said. " Everything is much clearer 
 now. Has it been a long time ? " 
 
 " Since you were ill ? Oh, not so very long. 
 Do you know me, Otho ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes," I answered. " One day . . . was 
 it yesterday, or many days ago ? . . . you came 
 quite close to the bed and I thought you were 
 mamma or her poor ghost. But then I looked 
 at you again, and I knew. You are Mrs. Dorian." 
 
 The lady pressed her lips against my cheeks. 
 " So, then," she faltered, " you remember that 
 your poor mamma" . . . 
 
 She paused, and I said : " Yes, yes ; I remem 
 ber. I have seen it all, over and over and over 
 in my dreams. Were they dreams, madame, or
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 125 
 
 were they . . . ?" I did not know just what 
 word to choose, and a soft hand was laid upon my 
 lips, then, while another smoothed my temples. 
 
 " They were dreams ugly dreams, my son. 
 You must think no longer of them ; you will get 
 quite well if you have a little more courage, a 
 little more patience. And we have talked enough 
 to-day. To-morrow we will talk again." 
 
 Through a good many morrows, before I was 
 able to leave my bed, we did talk. These con 
 versations, at first very brief, were afterward pro 
 longed according as my renewed health would 
 permit. And finally, when I was strong enough 
 to move about the comfortable house in Lafayette 
 Place and even to accompany my protectress in 
 her carriage during long, agreeable drives, the 
 moment came for me to confront another great 
 sorrow. I had asked, for almost the twentieth 
 time, why neither Michael nor Martha ever visited 
 me, and always had been answered in some clev 
 erly deceptive way. But the truth had to trans 
 pire at last. Mrs. Dorian told it me as we sat 
 together in her own large, airy room, which over 
 looked the broad street below. It was latter 
 November, now ; it had been early May when the 
 illness fell upon me. I gazed out upon the mel 
 lowest of Indian summer days. We had taken a 
 drive into the country, that morning, and had seen 
 the dismantled trees rising round us in so golden 
 and bland an air that we almost wondered new
 
 126 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 buds did not start from their dark branches. I 
 did not feel at all tired after my drive, though 
 I leaned back in a great easy-chair near one of the 
 windows, more through an old lingering habit of 
 convalescence than because of the least fatigue. 
 The light outside had lost its sunny fervor ; this 
 autumn day, all too short, would soon reach its 
 dusky limit. Often, of late, my moods had been 
 melancholy ones; but now there was a tender lux 
 ury in the sadness I felt, like the dreamy repose 
 of the exquisite season, pride and charm of our 
 American year. A window at some little dis 
 tance off was half open ; the roll of wheels, louder 
 on this account, brought us their fitful reverbera 
 tions, full of the stir yet not the jar of life, amid 
 so much drowsy atmospheric peace. Opposite me 
 the high roofs of houses almost merged their out 
 lines in the hazy blue of the sky. No word had 
 passed between Mrs. Dorian and myself for sev 
 eral minutes. I knew that her eyes had been 
 stealing more than once to watch my face, above 
 the embroidery that busied her. But I had grown 
 well used to this covert scrutiny. Bodily weak 
 ness had before made me passively accept all her 
 care and vigilance ; but now its devotion was a 
 perpetual shield against the keener grief of lone 
 liness than my mother s loss must have dealt. 
 Then, too, the effect of a changeful, ever-recurring 
 resemblance of a sameness blent with a differ 
 ence, in attitude, movement, expression was not
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 127 
 
 without its gracious comforts, for all that it brought 
 constant living and fading souvenirs of the dead. 
 
 I broke the silence that had come between us. 
 " You . never told me where poor mamma is 
 buried," I said. 
 
 " In Woodlawn, Otho. It is a lovely cemetery, 
 not very far away. Some day we might drive out 
 there or we could go by train." 
 
 "You had her buried there ?" 
 
 " Yes. I bought a little plot of ground. Some 
 day many years from now, I hope you may 
 lie there at her side. And perhaps your wife and 
 children, if you marry, also." 
 
 " You are so good so wonderfully good," I 
 murmured. " Often, when I think of it, I ask 
 myself if there are many people in the world with 
 your kind heart. You sought for me there at 
 Michael s house in the Bowery ; you had me taken 
 here ; you have nursed and tended me ever since, 
 with all the regard that my own mother would 
 have shown except that she, poor soul, could 
 not have done half what you have done, not hav 
 ing your wealth. . . Still, it cannot last forever, 
 this goodness, madame." 
 
 " Last forever ? " she said, starting. " Why, 
 Otho, I have been on the verge of telling you, for 
 some days past, what will no doubt surprise you. 
 So, now, you force me to tell it at once. I want 
 to go abroad with you and stay for a long time 
 stay till your education is finished."
 
 128 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 She had thrown aside her work, and had drawn 
 much closer to me. I smiled, and the tears filled 
 my eyes. She bent down and kissed me on the 
 forehead. 
 
 " Oh, you have the face of an angel, mon petit, 
 do you know it ? And when you smile like that 
 you make this world-worn old heart of mine trem 
 ble. You were born to be loved ! I believe in 
 Heaven when I am near you, and I believe that 
 Heaven has sent you to me for my own sweet son 
 in my childless old age. I was forty-four my last 
 birthday. When you are grown up I shall be in 
 spectacles and a cap. No ; not a cap I detest 
 them ; they are a voluntary surrender to old age, 
 which I shall fight against, tooth and nail, till it 
 crushes me. Tiens ; we will go abroad next 
 month to Paris, and afterward to Switzerland. 
 
 " Next month ? " I said, astonished yet deeply 
 pleased. 
 
 " Yes. It will be dreadful to cross in Decem 
 ber, I know. I shall be ill the whole way. I 
 always am, unless the ocean is like a mill-pond. 
 But since you last heard me talk of my affairs I 
 have accomplished an immense change. I have 
 consigned the whole business of Dorian & Com 
 pany to a brother of my late husband Mr. 
 Steven Dorian. It is what one calls here " selling 
 out." I have received a great sum of money ; my 
 brother-in-law has raised it with the aid of other 
 capitalists, though the name of the firm, now rep-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 129 
 
 resenting his own interest and not mine, continues 
 more suitably the same as before. Well, I thank 
 my lucky stars that I am so well rid of future 
 trouble. They say I should have got six millions 
 instead of three. Bah ! it is absurd. What can 
 one not do with three millions ? One can surely 
 dwell happily abroad for years and that is what 
 I intend. You see, poor old Gredge expired one 
 fine morning, quite suddenly. Do you recollect 
 how I told your mamma about Gredge ? Well, 
 after he had gone, my reputation as a woman of 
 finance hung trembling in the balance. I was 
 very fortunate to escape when I did. And now, 
 at last, I am free. My money has been safely 
 invested by my lawyers, and I can go where I 
 please." 
 
 I reflected for a moment after my companion 
 had ceased to speak. And then I answered, 
 slowly shaking my head : "You offer to take me 
 with you, but is it right that I should desert 
 Michael and Martha, who saved mamma and me 
 from starvation, and who love me still very dearly, 
 I am sure, though I have not seen either of them 
 for so long?" 
 
 Mrs. Dorian rose with startling haste. My look 
 followed her as she moved about the room. I 
 thought at first that she was in quest of some 
 thing, and asked myself if it could be a message 
 from one or both of my still-treasured friends. 
 But a little later she again approached me. Her
 
 130 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 eyes were sparkling, and her lips quivered. She 
 sank into her former seat, and as she searched my 
 face I saw that her own was filled with agitation. 
 
 " Otho," she said brokenly, and in tones that 
 scarcely seemed hers, "I I would not have you 
 here with me now, my son, if if they were there 
 still. Yes, that is why you are here ! " 
 
 "What do you mean?" I cried anxiously. 
 " Have they gone ? " 
 
 She bowed her head before my eager glance. 
 " Yes, my dear boy, they have gone," she almost 
 whispered. 
 
 But in another instant, as though urged by the 
 impulse to employ self-control where weakness 
 would be worse than impolitic, she laid one hand 
 upon my shoulder and looked at me steadily, 
 calmly. 
 
 " Otho, I must tell you now, for you are strong 
 enough to hear it, and of course you have the sad 
 right you of all others to hear it all. You 
 will never (oh, try to bear it bravely, my dear 
 boy ! ) you will never see those kind friends of 
 yours again." 
 
 "They are dead," I murmured, as if to myself. 
 She put both arms about my neck, then, and rested 
 her head on my shoulder. I felt my heart go out 
 to her for that simple embrace ; it was so like 
 what my dead mother s would have been, if she 
 had been telling me the same sorrowful tidings. 
 
 I asked no further questions, but waited in
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 131 
 
 silence. I knew that she would presently speak. 
 The first force of the shock was over when she did 
 speak. Not a word of what she now said was lost. 
 " When I found you they were both with you. 
 I had read in the newspapers what happened. 
 Your name did not occur in the accounts, but it 
 was mentioned that you had been taken in an 
 unconscious state to your mother s residence, and 
 this was given. Recalling my own experience in 
 the past, I was made literally ill for several days 
 by what I read. But as soon as it was possible, I 
 went to seek you. Your sweet face had always 
 haunted me ever since you had come to this house, 
 a few months before, with your unhappy mother. 
 I felt as if some hidden power were pushing me 
 toward you ; I had seen you in my sleep stretch 
 ing out your arms to me for help. I did not tell 
 anyone that I went. People would have called 
 it one of my queer freaks ; to have a sentiment, 
 to go out of the beaten rut of commonplace, is 
 always to be accused of a queer freak; and my 
 list is already so large in the eyes of my American 
 friends that I do not care to increase it. Well, I 
 found you. You were burning up with fever, and 
 the two watchers at your bedside were half-crazed 
 with what had befallen your mother. I offered to 
 take you here. At first they refused to let you 
 go. Then my arguments prevailed with them. I 
 promised that you should have the best of nursing, 
 the most skilled of doctors, and that they could
 
 132 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 visit you whenever they wished. I told them, too, 
 of how you and your mother had already sought 
 me, and how I had then offered you both what 
 ever aid I could bestow in the future. Well, as 
 I said, they consented. I had you brought here 
 in my carriage. Florine, the professional nurse 
 whom I had procured, and whom you now know 
 so well, assisted me. That night you lay in my 
 house. Martha came the next day. Then for 
 several days she remained absent. Smallpox had 
 broken out here in the city, and for two months, 
 during the heat of the summer, it raged with 
 much violence. That part of the Bowery where 
 you had lived, and a few other adjacent streets, 
 were the quarters most infested by the horrid 
 scourge. I thought that I understood what 
 Martha s and Michael s absence meant. At last, 
 while you were still very ill, I began to pity them. 
 Florine had no fear of the contagion and was will 
 ing to seek them out. I sent her to them with a 
 letter. But . . she could not find them, Otho 
 she never found them. That row of houses in 
 which you lived had numbered its victims by 
 scores, and many had been taken away by the 
 health authorities, never to return. Your two 
 friends had been among the first whom the disease 
 attacked, and neither of them had recovered. 
 They were buried as those who die that way are 
 nearly always buried, obscurely, and with only an 
 official report of their deaths." . . .
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 133 
 
 I lay awake for two or three hours, that night, 
 thinking of my lost friends. There might have 
 been peril to my reason in this news of their 
 double taking-off, but for the persistent recollec 
 tion of that later friend whom fate had dropped 
 to me from the stars. I have since then asked 
 myself whether Michael and Martha would either 
 of them have consented to the departure that 
 soon followed whether their love, sharpened 
 and made more fondly clinging by their bereave 
 ment, would not have opposed a separation of 
 years. Ah ! doubtless they would have seen too 
 clearly that it was best for me to leave them, and 
 in the end have bid me farewell with aching 
 hearts ! Well, at least they have been spared 
 that one trial, peace rest them both ! I did not 
 care for them as they cared for me. I felt it 
 while I lay awake that night and thought of them. 
 It stung me with self-reproach, for intelligence 
 and imagination made the rugged and homely 
 sweetness of their love very clear to me, and 
 always afterward, equally through the press and 
 clash of events or the drift and strain of mental 
 action, it has remained with me like some bit of 
 moving pastoral verse which we lay between the 
 leaves of a portfolio rich in wiser and more pol 
 ished lines. . . . 
 
 "I feel that you are entirely mine, now," said 
 Mrs. Dorian, as we drove together, on the follow 
 ing day. She used a mingling of the arch and
 
 134 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 the tender, while she thus spoke, which was al 
 ways one of her most attractive phases. " Do 
 you know, dear Otho, that I had serious thoughts 
 of adopting a child before I ever saw you ? I had 
 hesitated between a girl and a boy, but I had 
 finally decided on the latter. Girls, if clever, 
 rarely grow up to be handsome, and if they are 
 both, then a husband steals them from us before 
 they are twenty. Besides, they are so much less 
 interesting, and they involve so much more anx 
 iety and watchfulness." 
 
 "How did you know that I was clever?" I 
 asked. 
 
 " Superb ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dorian, with a 
 laugh. " You take it for granted not only that I 
 thought so but that you are. Well, I am sure of 
 it already ; but you must keep convincing me, all 
 the same." 
 
 " Madame," I now said, very seriously, " I have 
 always heard that when a child is adopted by a 
 person like yourself, great care is taken to know 
 whether or not he comes of a race that has been 
 of good repute. Now, in the case of myself, this 
 is not true. There is a stain, a dreadful stain 
 upon my name. And yet you are willing to for 
 get this. But will others forget it? Will not 
 the shame pursue me all through my life ? Can I 
 ever wash away the mark of the blood which my 
 father shed ? It is no blame of my own, yet will 
 they not always hold it to be one ? "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 135 
 
 " Otho, what are you saying ? " 
 
 " I remember a boy in school whose father had 
 been a thief. I think he had been shot by some 
 one as a burglar. Another boy knew this, and 
 told it to the rest, and they were forever taunting 
 and teasing him." 
 
 " Otho," replied my new guardian, most ear 
 nestly and gently, " there is truth in what you 
 say. Hundreds of voices would be raised against 
 me if it were known what I have really done. 
 But the shame which you have had no share in, 
 and which indeed would pursue you through life 
 if I had not driven away the shadow of it, makes 
 you dearer and more winning. I shall not deny 
 that your beauty, your French blood, and your 
 natural sweetness of manner have had much to do 
 with my choice and decision. But there is another 
 motive . . perhaps you are too young to under 
 stand it . . and yet 3*011 seem to understand all 
 that I say. Anyone can perform an act of char 
 ity ; but to turn the tide of a human fate by such 
 an act that is different. That gives me what I 
 call one of my impressions ; and it is an impres 
 sion that will last, because while I watch your life 
 unfold, leaf by leaf, like a flower, it will divert 
 me with its constant variety." 
 
 "I do not think that I understand you now, 
 madame," I said dubiously. 
 
 She laughed, but without her usual buoyancy. 
 "Some day you will, and that day is not far off;
 
 136 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 for your mind has a rare quickness, and the mal 
 ady through which it has passed leaves no appar 
 ent trace." 
 
 "But I resemble him. You said so when mam 
 ma and I visited you together." 
 
 She turned and scanned my face closely in the 
 carriage. " He was very handsome," she answered. 
 
 "But he was a murderer." . . I almost whis 
 pered the words. 
 
 She took my hand, pressing it. " You are not 
 really like him, Otho. It is only that one can see 
 he was your father after seeing you both. And 
 since your illness you have become much more 
 like your mother strangely like." 
 
 "I am glad of that." And then I added, 
 frankly, "I am glad for two reasons. The first 
 you know. The second is because I must also 
 resemble you." 
 
 " What a delicious little turn you give to your 
 compliment ! " she softly cried. " Ah, it is easy 
 to tell that you are half a Frenchman ! " And 
 now, much more seriously, she went on : "I have 
 conceived a plan, and by means of it I shall throw 
 dust in all eyes. Your name shall henceforth be 
 Otho Claud. You see, I change Clauss to Claud ; 
 the change is slight, but it will serve admirably. 
 You are the only son of an old school-friend of 
 mine, who married in Belgium. I have chosen 
 Belgium because one meets so many different na 
 tionalities there, and in Paris I am well known.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD, 137 
 
 Just before her death, my friend wrote me, in pov 
 erty and widowhood, begging that I would render 
 you some assistance when she herself was no more. 
 I consented ; she died in Brussels, and you were 
 sent to me. I went to meet you at the steamer- 
 wharf. The voyage had been a rough one ex 
 tremely rough for April and as your health was 
 very delicate when you started, seasickness devel 
 oped in you a terrible illness. Voila ! . . you have 
 now recovered : you are quite well. Meanwhile I 
 have fallen in love with you ; I have made you my 
 adopted son. Is not that a charming falsehood? " 
 
 Her face was wreathed in smiles as I now 
 watched it. When I knew her better and com 
 prehended more fully her volatile, romantic, Bohe 
 mian nature, I could perceive just how and why 
 she exulted in the loving and daring deception 
 that she had used. But as it was, I said gravely : 
 
 " No falsehood can be charming, madame or 
 so I have been taught." 
 
 " And you have been taught rightly ! " she ex 
 claimed. " But here is the grand exception which 
 proves the rule. I evade for myself and you all 
 the scandale publique that might follow. No one 
 dreams of the truth. Stay there is that stupid, 
 honest Florine, who was your nurse. She went 
 with me when I took you from your home. But 
 she is alread}^ paid and discharged. I paid her 
 twice what was due, by the way, and preached 
 her a little parting sermon against the evil of any
 
 138 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 idle bavarderies. She is perfectly safe, is dull old 
 Florine ; it is like burying one s secret in a vault. 
 So, now, you are Otho Claud. My brother-in- 
 law, Mr. Steven Dorian, believes just what I have 
 told him. You and he may meet in a day or two. 
 He has expressed a desire to see you. It can 
 hardly be avoided, since we sail for Europe so 
 soon. He has a son, Foulke Dorian, a boy of 
 about your own age. I have always mildly abomi 
 nated Master Foulke ; I can scarcely tell why, 
 except it be that he is so like his father, who in 
 turn is so like my late husband. Some day I will 
 describe my late husband to you when you are 
 older, I mean. It would make you laugh then 
 more than it would now." Here my companion 
 heaved a great sigh. " The match was one of 
 those horrid French affairs, forced upon me by 
 my dead papa ; it was the only really unkind 
 thing papa ever did. I disagreed with monsieur 
 mon mari on every possible subject except one 
 his remarkable knowledge of silks ; and on this 
 point I was comparatively ignorant. We used to 
 average six quarrels a week ; Sunday was a day 
 of truce ; Mr. Dorian was a person of much piety. 
 Besides, we had to take breath, as it were, for the 
 coming series of skirmishes. . . . But about my 
 brother-in-law, my dear Otho Monsieur Steven, 
 as I always call him. He may ask you a few 
 questions concerning your former home. He 
 will not do it suspiciously; he suspects nothing.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 139 
 
 But you must be guarded, that is all, in your 
 answers." 
 
 "How can I answer anything?" I exclaimed. 
 "I know nothing of Brussels, except that it is 
 the capital of Belgium and situated on the River 
 Senne. That I learned at school." 
 
 " Admirable, my dear ! You don t want to 
 know anything more. I shall be near you never 
 fear. I will turn all your silences to good account. 
 And perhaps Monsieur Steven will ask you no 
 questions whatever. We shall see." 
 
 Before we reached home, that afternoon, I made 
 a direct inquiry concerning my father. It was 
 the first time I had done so ; a deep repugnance 
 had thus far sealed my lips. " Do you know 
 where they buried him, madame ? " I said. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian looked at me with a sudden strong 
 consternation. Her face crimsoned, and then grew 
 pale. "I I do not know," she presently stam 
 mered. "I I never made any attempt to find out." 
 
 Her evident disarray of manner I swiftly ex 
 plained to myself on the ground of sympathy. 
 This the sole interpretation I could give it, ap 
 peared to me a wholly proper one. " I felt sure, 1 
 was my answer, " that you had not let him lie at 
 mamma s side. There would have been something 
 horrible to me in that. I should have dreamed of 
 him as resting uneasy in his grave because the 
 other dead were so near her in that beautiful 
 cemetery you told me of."
 
 140 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Oh, Otho, what a strange idea ! " 
 
 " I cannot even think of him as dead without 
 also thinking of him as still jealous." 
 
 " No wonder, my poor boy ! " 
 
 "And it was so much better," I pursued, " that 
 he should have killed himself when he killed her. 
 There was less disgrace in that. I shall feel the 
 shame less on account of it. He was not one of 
 those murderers who wish merely to destroy 
 others and then escape themselves. Besides " . . 
 I paused, here, and no doubt I showed the shudder 
 that crept through me. 
 
 " Besides ? " Mrs. Dorian queried. 
 
 " There would have been the frightful scaffold, 
 the execution, and all that. For the law would 
 have found no excuse for him, I suppose ? " 
 
 " Oh, none," said my companion. She spoke 
 much lower than usual. A gloom had fallen upon 
 her which lasted until we had nearly reached 
 home, when she made a gay feint of wearing her 
 accustomed spirits. But I somehow saw through 
 her deception, and began to wonder at it. 
 
 The servant who admitted us, that afternoon, 
 told Mrs. Dorian that her brother-in-law and his 
 son were then in the drawing-room, waiting her 
 return. My guardian soon glanced at me. " We 
 had better go in together," she said. And in a 
 lower voice, so that the servant could not hear, 
 she added: "There will be no danger, trust me." 
 
 My heart beat a little quicker as I now went
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 141 
 
 into the drawing-room at Mrs. Dorian s side. A 
 gentleman and boy rose to meet us. Mrs. Dorian 
 presented me. 
 
 "This is Otho Claud, of whom I told you, 
 Monsieur Steven," she said to her brother-in-law. 
 Then she made me acquainted with her nephew. 
 "This is Foulke Dorian, Otho, of whom you have 
 heard me speak." 
 
 I shook hands silently with both. Mr. Steven 
 Dorian was tall, with a perfectly smooth-shaven 
 face, a nose that described an impressive arch, 
 and a pair of bluish, milky eyes. He was scrupu 
 lously neat in his dress ; his slim neck was in 
 cased in a stock and he wore a fob after the 
 fashion of still earlier days than those. Every 
 thing about him expressed precision, accuracy, 
 deliberation. His movements were slow, and 
 awkward enough to suggest a sort of defective 
 physical hingeing. He was lank and ungainly 
 enough to make you think that nature must have 
 set herself some such difficult scheme in his crea 
 tion as to produce a being without a single actual 
 deformity yet homelier than if he had possessed 
 more than one. His son, Foulke, had a better 
 build, and a touch of boyish grace in pose and 
 gesture ; but the lad s face was so freckled that 
 its effect was almost nebulous, like that of a very 
 blurred photographic negative. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian and her brother-in-law talked to 
 gether for some little time, and Foulke Dorian
 
 142 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 and I sat furtively gazing at each other in shy 
 silence, as boys will so often do. I had begun to 
 hope that Mr. Dorian would offer no comment 
 regarding myself, when he rather abruptly turned 
 his lack-lustre eyes upon my face and said : 
 
 "Like America? 
 
 " Yes, sir," I answered, coloring hotly. 
 
 " He very seldom speaks of his life in Brussels," 
 said Mrs. Dorian rapidly to her brother-in-law, 
 and in a voice just loud enough for me to catch 
 her words. " That is only natural, I suppose. 
 The poor boy has had so much trouble there." 
 
 " Guess he s pretty smart," said Mr. Dorian. 
 His tones were nasal, and as he scrutinized me 
 he had an air of sombre calculation, as if he were 
 deciding upon my suitability for a page or messen 
 ger. Nearly all his sentences were somehow ellip 
 tical, and he always ignored his personal pronouns 
 when their avoidance was feasible. " Got a good 
 head, and bright eyes. S pose you ll put him to 
 school on the other side ; eh ? " 
 
 " Oh, of course," said Mrs. Dorian. I thought 
 that I was now rid of further conversational 
 attacks from her brother-in-law, when he again 
 addressed me. 
 
 " Tlantic ocean a pretty big pond to cross, 
 sonny ; isn t that so ? " 
 
 " Yes, sir," I said, my color deepening. 
 
 "S pose you don t want to go over so soon 
 again ; eh ? "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 143 
 
 I thought the rayless eyes were fixed on me 
 with something suspicious in their gleam, un 
 founded as may have been this fear. I grew 
 so confused that I could have scarcely given a 
 rational reply, when Master Foulke struck in, 
 half-bashf ully : 
 
 " I ain t fraid of the ocean a bit. I wish I was 
 going. I like sailing." 
 
 "Do you, Foulke?" said Mrs. Dorian, quite 
 volubly. " Well, your papa ought to take you." 
 She now turned to Foulke s father. " Otho is very 
 willing to cross this time," she went on. " He is 
 in much better health than formerly, you know. 
 I hope it will do him good." 
 
 " Sail a week from Saturday ? " asked Mr. 
 Dorian, as if he had already learned when our 
 departure would occur. 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Dorian, and then she named 
 our steamer. 
 
 Her brother-in-law looked down, studying the 
 carpet. " Good ship. No better afloat nowadays." 
 He raised his head. In his measured, loitering way 
 he continued : " That German scamp, Clauss, is 
 going to be hanged next Friday. Serves the villain 
 right, too. You ought to think so. S pose you 
 do; eh?" , 
 
 I felt a great thrill creep through me. I turned 
 my look upon Mrs. Dorian. She did not respond 
 to it. 
 
 "I I would rather not speak of that," I heard
 
 144 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 her say. But her voice sounded far off. I knew 
 that I was growing pale. No one appeared to 
 notice me. 
 
 "Been quicker work than usual in New- York 
 this time," proceeded Mr. Dorian, disregarding his 
 relative s last words. " Such an aggravated case 
 of brutality, you see. Wish they d lynched the 
 ruffian. Can t somehow get over thinking, Louise, 
 that he might be going to swing, next Friday, for 
 you instead of her." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian had risen and slipped to my side 
 before the final sentence was ended. She put her 
 arms about me. " You are not well, Otho," she 
 exclaimed. " Our long drive has been too much 
 for you. Come up-stairs, my dear. . . Excuse me, 
 Monsieur Steven," she hurried on, drawing me 
 with her to the nearest doorway, and supporting 
 me under one arm. " I will return presently. I 
 have got to know my pet boy so well ; a mere 
 glance at him tells me when his faint turns are 
 coming on." 
 
 We passed together into the outer hall. My 
 steps were very feeble as I ascended the stairs, 
 still supported by my companion. At about half 
 way in our assent my lips began to move almost 
 mechanically, and I spoke in a low, terrified 
 whisper : 
 
 " He is not dead. He he lives, and they are 
 to hang him next Friday . . next Friday. They 
 are to hang him for killing her"
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 145 
 
 When we had reached one of the upper cham 
 bers I sank, trembling violently, upon a lounge. 
 Mrs. Dorian bent over me now, with a look of 
 keenest anxiety and pain.
 
 146 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 VII. 
 
 SHE presently spoke. " Otho, you must not 
 think me to blame for deceiving you! It was far 
 best that you should never know. But for this 
 unfortunate chance you might never have known. 
 I am so bitterly sorry ! You have had so much to 
 bear, pauvre petit ! It is just like that odious 
 Monsieur Steven to spoil everything. Of course 
 he did it innocently enough, but whether he makes 
 himself a nuisance innocently or no, I find that he 
 makes himself one, quite the same." 
 
 " You should have told me, madame," I said 
 drearily. 
 
 " And caused you more sorrow, my Otho ? Ah, 
 do you know that I fairly took joy in my secret ! 
 I would have given a great sum to keep the truth 
 from you ; at least . . until all was over." 
 
 " He did not die, then, after he stabbed him 
 self?" 
 
 " No. Ah, if only he had died ! His life hung 
 by a thread for several days. Then he began to 
 recover, cursing himself that he still lived, and 
 closely guarded lest he should attempt his life 
 again. His conviction soon followed his trial.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 147 
 
 But certain highly merciful people wanted to have 
 him acquitted on the ground of insanity. Your 
 evidence on this point was desired, and for several 
 weeks I knew that you were being searched for. 
 But poor Michael and Martha were no more, and 
 you had been taken away so quietly, just at twi 
 light, from your former home, that your departure 
 was scarcely noticed in the neighborhood. Still, 
 certain people had noticed it, and I think that if 
 the crime had not been so glaring and shocking a 
 one, and if popular wrath had not been so hot 
 against him, they might have postponed the trial 
 until greater effort had resulted in your discovery." 
 
 " I should never have testified to his insanity," 
 I said. " That would have been false. Or, if mad, 
 he was still mad in a punishable way." 
 
 " Your father, during the trial, was composed, 
 moody and defiant. He pleaded guilty. And 
 when, after speedy conviction, the sentence was 
 pronounced upon him and the judge allowed him to 
 speak, his declarations regarding your mother were 
 full of invective and scorn. He openly exulted 
 in the dark deed he had committed, and also ex 
 pressed himself most willing, even anxious, to die, 
 now that he had dealt proper punishment to one 
 who had foully deserted him. The judge then 
 asked him if he had no faith in a hereafter, and 
 he replied savagely that he believed this world a 
 hell in which we were made to suffer for sins done 
 elsewhere. Those who have had charge of him
 
 148 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 since his sentence, Otho, assert that he eagerly 
 awaits death. . . Oh, why should you feel pain or 
 regret for one so wretchedly hardened? Think 
 of yourself henceforward only as her son, not as 
 his." . . . 
 
 I tried to do so, but the brand of disgrace was 
 nevertheless burned into my heart the same. 
 Those ensuing days, up to the time of the execu 
 tion, and after it as well, were shadowed with a 
 fearful gloom. When the fatal day itself arrived, 
 Mrs. Dorian watched me in ill-hid perturbation, 
 and I was sure that she had misgivings lest I 
 should succumb to a relapse of my former ailment. 
 But for the stay and help of her presence I might 
 indeed have done so. When all was over she told 
 me of how Leopold Clauss had paid the dismal 
 debt which he owed to his fellow-men, but she per 
 mitted no printed account of the execution to reach 
 my hands. He had died with stolid calm, never 
 once flinching as he ascended the scaffold, nor show 
 ing a trace of weakness while he met his doom. 
 
 During this most mournful and bitter period of 
 my life I was not without a sense of consolation 
 and thanksgiving. The worse woe from which 
 my protectress had snatched me seemed like some 
 direct Heavenly intercession. My knowledge of 
 the world about me was not so limited but that I 
 could more than partially estimate the rarity of 
 my present position. The caprice of an eccentric 
 foreign lady had completely altered my future.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 149 
 
 Thus would have run the general popular com 
 ment, deciding that I was one in many thousands. 
 But this conclusion would have been unfair. Mrs. 
 Dorian had countless caprices, and yet the senti 
 ment which I had inspired deserved a graver term. 
 A more conventional woman would have repressed 
 such an emotion as hers. A woman of daintier 
 calibre would have shrunk from my possible in 
 herited faults. A woman of less bold imagination 
 and less vital sympathies would have found in my 
 sombre antecedents a reason for clothing her pity 
 impersonally, and have made it, if regarded at all, 
 a mere benevolent act of alms. But Mrs. Dorian, 
 who loved to gratify her whims, had fearlessly 
 faced the emergency of a much more serious im 
 pulse. The shadow of the scaffold bathed me ; 
 the stigma of an atrocious crime marked me ; I 
 was a human waif which might be swept into that 
 black whirlpool of degradation ever ready for such 
 helpless outcasts. It delighted her to snatch me 
 as a brand from the burning. It delighted her to 
 become my rescue, my salvation, my lucky acci 
 dent, my star of good omen, my destiny, my 
 personified fate. Her love for me was wholly 
 spontaneous and natural. I had charmed her 
 from the first hour that she had seen me, and the 
 spell of this charm deepened during my weeks of 
 bodily peril, and grew a fascination while recovery 
 slowly buoyed me through convalescence to re 
 gained health. I do not know what I did or said
 
 150 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 to make her so tenderly fond of me. In the after 
 years of our intercourse I have never known. We 
 sometimes hear of crafty adventurers winning 
 with all sorts of clever guile what I had won 
 without an effort. But I am certain that my 
 guardian would have been proof against any such 
 wily siege in one of older years. She had no 
 ready credence for the strategic and plausible, and 
 she was by no means blind to the stolid material 
 vantage which any one who sought her special 
 favor might count upon securing. Her estimate 
 of character was rapid and usually correct. I 
 have sometimes fancied that she gave freer rein 
 to her instincts because of a self-reliant certainty 
 that they could never land her in any awkward 
 swamps or fens. The foot that treads carefully 
 often does so from muscular frailty, and they who 
 walk through life with a lax gait are not always 
 the most easily tripped. 
 
 She assured me that she had no cause to fear I 
 had roused the slightest suspicion in Mr. Steven 
 Dorian. "Not that he isn t quite capable of hav 
 ing it about anyone at a moment s notice," she 
 frankly allowed. " He is the sort of person who 
 feeds on distrust of everybody, and I question 
 whether he has ever given a fellow-creature credit 
 for a single unselfish motive. He has been in the 
 silk trade all his life, just as my late husband was. 
 I suppose there is a slippery smoothness about silk 
 that makes the continual handling of it morally
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 151 
 
 hurtful, as if one were always on his guard against 
 oily rogues. He has an idea that I should adopt his 
 boy, Foulke, as my heir, which is purely absurd. 
 What horrid thing have I thus far done in my life 
 that I should be forced to gaze continually upon 
 that firmament of freckles? I should always, in a 
 morbidly nervous way, be trying to count them. 
 Besides, I have blood-relations of my own in 
 France, as far as that goes, and Foulke will prob 
 ably get a large heritage from his father." 
 
 Our steamer sailed so early that none of Mrs. 
 Dorian s friends were at the wharf to bid her fare 
 well. I was glad, for obvious reasons, that neither 
 Mr. Steven Dorian nor his son appeared. I left 
 America with a sad exultation. As her shores 
 receded from my gaze I saw them through tears 
 rather of reproach than regret. What had this 
 land brought me but sorrow and heart-breaking ? 
 There lay the dishonor, the infamy of my father 
 hood. Why should it not abide there forever, with 
 an ocean between itself and me? A new life was 
 promised me in those unseen eastern lands, of whose 
 art and poetry and precious antiquity I was not alto 
 gether ignorant. Far best I should never return ! 
 
 And these feelings were of long duration. I 
 had thus far seen only what was darkest and most 
 painful in American life ; I now saw what was 
 most brilliant and alluring in European. Before 
 placing me at school in Geneva, my friend showed 
 me nearly every country in Europe. We trav-
 
 152 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 elled almost en prince ; we had our courier, our 
 servants, our conveniences and luxuries. I drank 
 deep draughts of peace ; the baneful past lost for 
 me its raw, flaring tinge ; new association drew a 
 kindly haze across it, till the retrospective picture 
 looked as dim as some of those old faded tapestries 
 in the galleries which we visited. My altered 
 conditions of living were assumed with slight con 
 straint or awkwardness. I had no vulgarities to 
 live down, either in speech or deportment; my 
 careful and patient mother had never lost her 
 own sense of these niceties, and to myself they 
 came as an unconscious dower. It was strange 
 with what ease I filled my present place ; it was 
 like finding a costly garment, quietly putting it 
 on, and perceiving the fit to be excellent. Some 
 times the intense unreality of my fortunes would 
 confront and impress me ; the widening scope of 
 my own experiences, as I stood before some great 
 statue in Rome, or watched some masterpiece of 
 painting in Florence, would bring me a bewildered 
 thrill. What gulfs of difference lay between our 
 sumptuous Parisian apartments, whence one could 
 see that glorious Arc de Triomphe, that mighty 
 sweep of the Place de la Concorde, and the little 
 suburban dwelling near the huge black rock, or 
 the solemn Bowery undertaker s shop, with its 
 satin-lined coffin in the window and its two or 
 three tiny upstairs bedrooms !
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 153 
 
 But of all parts of Europe Switzerland became 
 my passion, and ever afterward remained so. 
 Often Mrs. Dorian would leave me for months at 
 a time while I was at school ; in nearly all the 
 great capitals she had friends artists, poets, 
 painters, men of exceptional talent in a hundred 
 ways, whom her vivacious mind and glittering 
 originalities attracted quite as much as the lib 
 eral patronage of her purse. At these times, if 
 the season permitted, I would join mountaineer 
 ing parties and ascend peaks which it horrified her 
 to hear one even speak of attempting. I shall 
 never forget the glow, the vivid delight, the sense 
 of aspiration and achievement which belonged to 
 those expeditions. Switzerland is, to my think 
 ing, the one divine poem of earth. No other land 
 mingles in just the same way sweetness and ma 
 jesty, grace and grandeur. The irresistible and 
 eternal charm of Switzerland is like that of certain 
 women in whom have lain the secrets of untold 
 allurement ; they have been wise, witty, astute, 
 winsomely saintlike or even enticingly the oppo 
 site, but they have never lost, with it all, a cer 
 tain novelty and distinction. Switzerland has 
 every phase of sublimity, but she has never once 
 forgotten to be beautiful as well, and it is this 
 that makes her perpetually interesting. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian would give little shrieks when I 
 told her of my Alpine exploits. She pretended to 
 think them desperately foolhardy, but I suspected
 
 154 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 that she took secret pride in my making them. I 
 was very well aware that she took much open 
 pride in my academic success ; this was the sort 
 of mountain-climbing which won her complete 
 sanction. My career at school was brilliant; all 
 tasks were the same to me in point of easy mas 
 tery. I would often marvel at the toil which my 
 mates would spend upon their lessons ; it was only 
 now and then that some knotty point would puz 
 zle me, and then a little stout effort usually made 
 the path clear. From my Geneva school I passed 
 easily into college at Ziirich, whence, four years 
 later on, I was graduated with the highest honors. 
 How well I remember the kiss of congratulation 
 which Mrs. Dorian gave me when I first met her 
 in Paris after this victory of scholarship had been 
 secured ! It was a delicious morning in early 
 summer. I had been travelling all night long, 
 but I felt as fresh and bright as though I had just 
 risen, after an early retirement, from the elegant 
 little bed in that enchanting suite of rooms which 
 my guardian had already prepared for me. The 
 window near which I sat commanded a view of 
 the stately, massive Madeleine ; a brisk, thrilling 
 breeze blew along the gay boulevards ; Paris, 
 bathed in merry sunshine, promenaded, laughed, 
 chatted, and aired all the captivations of her indo 
 lence. It was one of those days when you were 
 only conscious of her as indolent, forgetting the 
 thought, reflection, intellectuality which lie under
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 155 
 
 her graceful filigree, like the solid oak under the 
 delicate carvings which may adorn it. 
 
 " How wonderful and fascinating it all is here ! " 
 I exclaimed. "You don t know my delight in 
 getting back." 
 
 "And you come like a conquering hero, my 
 boy," said Mrs. Dorian blithely. " I don t know 
 how many invitations I have for you already." 
 
 " We will accept none of them," I said. "We 
 will do nothing except stroll about the streets dur 
 ing the daytime and visit the theatres at night. 
 I positively burn for the theatres once more. That 
 incomparable Frangais . . what are they playing 
 there?" 
 
 But Mrs. Dorian (herself the centre of an ad 
 miring, amused, and wholly loyal clique, which 
 consisted of nearly every known nationality and 
 included not a few men and women of positive 
 genius) was by no means satisfied with my un 
 social announcement. She had been boasting of 
 me for months past ; the theatres could wait ; one 
 
 could always see them. But Monsieur A 
 
 would soon depart with his portfolio for Scotland, 
 and Madame B would soon take her unfin 
 ished novel to Venice, that certain scenes in the 
 last pages might be written there. And so on, in 
 a tumult of protestation my guardian assured me 
 that anything like personal privacy was at present 
 not to be dreamed of. I dare say I had a much 
 better time in permitting myself to be shown
 
 156 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 about as a prodigy, since the valiant nature of ray 
 exploits existed chiefly in the imagination of Mrs. 
 Dorian, and I received a good deal of genial cour 
 tesy without the embarrassing homage that awaits 
 a real hero. 
 
 This was my first experience of social life in 
 any capital whatever. Perhaps for this reason 
 perhaps because of the specially attractive people 
 gathered for a time under my guardian s little 
 banner it has always seemed to me the most 
 agreeable of like experiences. Talent, in these 
 salons which we visited, showed on every side of 
 us. There was a great deal of wit, raillery, non 
 sense, and even gossip; but withal there was a 
 great deal of sincerity and purpose. People were 
 in earnest underneath all their lightsome, decora 
 tive trifling. In an instant many of them would 
 change their talk from mirth to extreme serious 
 ness. They were nearly all workers in the vine 
 yard, though various were the sizes and flavors of 
 their grapes. 
 
 " It is so much pleasanter than going about in 
 the humdrum fashionable sets," Mrs. Dorian would 
 say. " I can go there, if I choose, Otho ; it is 
 right that you should know this ; I am more or 
 less dans le monde here. But I detest it all. The 
 rigors of etiquette stifle me. Besides, one can be 
 Bohemian in Paris with so much more safety. In 
 that dreadful New- York you must know the 
 Amsterdams and the Manhattans or you are so-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 157 
 
 cially lost. But I am not quite sure that I am 
 doing right in letting you meet only these clever 
 yet unconventional people. You should occasion 
 ally be seen a little elsewhere. I was a De Lille, 
 you know, and they are really Faubourg St. Ger 
 main people, the De Lilies. I shall look over my 
 cards of invitation ; we must go to a few of the 
 patrician soirees, and then dip a little into the 
 American colony." 
 
 " I should like very much to dip a little into 
 the American colony," I said. 
 
 My old boyish feeling for my native land had 
 wholly vanished. That ineradicable love which 
 so few men have not felt, had put forth new buds 
 and sprays. A great deal in America viewed 
 from the distance across which I gazed struck 
 me as lamentably crude and corrupt. To me, as 
 to many European eyes, the young republic did 
 not loom oversea a shape of classic splendor ; she 
 appeared almost pitiably to shiver in the naked 
 ness wrought by hands which had seized her robe, 
 to tear it afterward in pieces amid wrangling dis 
 pute. The great civil war had ended, and the 
 assassination of Lincoln had turned to dust the 
 first precious fruits of peace. I found myself 
 following with zeal the transatlantic newspapers, 
 and forming opinions regarding the proper policy 
 to be maintained at Washington. Often I would 
 smile over my own fervor. If ever a man should 
 feel expatriated, such a man was I. So little but
 
 158 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 suffering had ever come to me from the soil of 
 that other clime ! So much of balsamic content 
 ment had soothed and healed my wounds here ; 
 such treasures of education had fallen to me ; such 
 noble resources of art and culture lay close within 
 my reach ! And yet to the land of my birth, harsh 
 and hard a foster-mother as she had been, I turned 
 again and again with irrepressible fondness. 
 
 The season was hardly favorable for viewing 
 much festal American life in Paris ; but it chanced 
 soon afterward that a certain Miss Potts gave a 
 matrimonial dower of six million francs to an 
 Italian prince of meagre purse and interminable 
 pedigree. Miss Potts was a California girl, the 
 daughter of a man who had begun in pauperism 
 and ended as the sole owner of a silver mine. She 
 was a peachy blonde, with the eyes of a fawn and 
 the voice of a peacock. Mrs. Dorian was asked 
 to this wedding, where the guests were a multi 
 tude, and she easily procured an invitation for me. 
 I talked a while with the bride after congratulat 
 ing her as she stood, a blaze of diamonds, at the 
 side of her little prince, who had tawny skin and 
 a short, black, crinkled beard, and whose features 
 were all set close together, like those of a dryad. 
 My reason for talking with Miss Potts (now the 
 Princess Orsini, by the way, since the wedding- 
 rites had been performed) was the simple one of 
 knowing scarcely another person present. She 
 quite astonished me by her civility, though I was
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 159 
 
 becoming used to attention and interest on the 
 part of women. Every now and then she would 
 present somebody to the Prince, or address a re 
 mark to him, and always in the most execrable 
 French. Meanwhile, in English not much less 
 phenomenal, I was told what could not fail to 
 amuse and surprise me. 
 
 " I guess, Mr. Claud, your ears must have tingled 
 a good deal, lately, haven t they ? I m a married 
 woman, now, and I can say things to a gepman 
 that I couldn t before. I ve seen you on the Bois, 
 driving with Mrs. Dorian, ever so many times. I 
 got so that I knew you by sight just as well ! And 
 now and then Ada Gramercey, or some other girl, 
 would drive out along with me. Well, Mr. Claud, 
 Ada paid you a perfectly elegant compliment, 
 the other day oh, it s three weeks ago, I guess, 
 by this time. And Ada Gramercey is just the 
 haughtiest piece about gepmen that you ever did 
 come across. She s a Gramercey, you know, and 
 her position in New-York is A number one 
 they move, there, in the very best s ciety." 
 
 " Does this make her haughty to gentlemen ? " 
 I asked, for want of some more important remark. 
 
 The Princess laughed, and resumed her nasal, 
 piping tones. " Oh, she s just as stuck up as ever 
 she can be to nearly everybody. She kind of took 
 a fancy to me, I guess, on the steamer ; we came 
 over together about a year ago. She says I amuse 
 her."
 
 160 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Princesses are generally amused by others," I 
 ventured. 
 
 " Oh, gracious goodness ! " cried the dazzling 
 bride. " I don t feel a bit less like Susie Potts 
 than I did an hour ago ! Susan Potts Orsini 
 how does that sound? I m going to write it out 
 in full } r es, I am ! And if he don t like it he 
 can just lump it, that s all. . Where was I ? Oh, 
 yes. . . Why, Ada Gramercey ain t a bit proud 
 that way. I don t b lieve she d a married Carlo, 
 and just because they d have said that she wanted 
 his title. Understand?" (These last few sen 
 tences were delivered behind a fan encrusted with 
 precious stones, and bore every suggestion of deep 
 confidence.) 
 
 " But you re forgetting all about the compli 
 ment which Miss Gramercey paid me," I now said. 
 
 "So I am. Well, it was just this: She told me 
 (now don t blush) that she thought you one of 
 the handsomest gepmen she d ever seen. There ! " 
 
 A little later I got Mrs. Dorian to point out 
 Miss Ada Gramercey to me* My guardian at once 
 knew the young lady to whom I alluded, and 
 assured me that not to know her was to argue 
 oneself unknown. " The Gramerceys are people 
 of considerable prominence in New- York," she 
 continued. "Ada is the only child of a very 
 agreeable widower, Colonel Gramercey. He is a 
 sort of vieux soldat. He fought in the Mexican 
 war with high honor, but he has passed a number
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 161 
 
 of years in Europe. A most delightful old gentle 
 man. By the way, he is a few yards from us, 
 talking with that lady in lavender satin." 
 
 I saw a thin, tall man with a martially graceful 
 air and a white mustache. One glance at him 
 pleased me : he appeared to combine so much 
 amiability and dignity. He was listening to some 
 thing which his companion said, and his dark eyes 
 twinkled brightly. He was not smiling then, but 
 he seemed to have such a hidden store of benig 
 nity that.it would be an easy matter to win a 
 smile from him at brief notice. 
 
 " The dear old Colonel ! " said Mrs. Dorian. " He 
 does not see me. I am sure that if he did he 
 would want to come and have a chat. We always 
 quarrel, but we quarrel so picturesquely, so divert- 
 ingly. He declares it shocking that I should 
 detest New- York as I do. But in reality I am 
 sure that he does not think it at all shocking. I 
 always tell him that it is a pity he should have 
 been an American ; he would have made such a 
 charming Frenchman." 
 
 Very soon after this Colonel Gramercey did see 
 Mrs. Dorian, and as soon as opportunity was 
 afforded him he joined her. She presented me, 
 according to her invariable custom, as "my 
 adopted son," and quite promptly she informed 
 the Colonel that I desired to meet his daughter. 
 
 The Colonel seemed flattered to hear this, 
 although I am sure that my existence had been
 
 162 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 previously unknown to him. He had that grace 
 of faultless manners which are in almost ever} r 
 case the outgrowth of a sweet and lovable nature. 
 He insisted upon taking me at once to his daugh 
 ter, promising my guardian, with a gallant smile, 
 that he would shortly rejoin her for one of those 
 rare old-time chats which no lapse of years could 
 make him forget. 
 
 Miss Gramercey was not far away. Several 
 gentlemen surrounded her as we drew near the 
 little draped alcove in which she stood. Her mien 
 brightened for a moment when we were presented ; 
 I plainly saw that she recognized me. But her 
 manner distinctly struck me as being cold and 
 proud. Still, her beauty made an instant impres 
 sion. She was above the average height of her 
 sex. Her face was delicately chiselled and full of 
 a most sensitive symmetry. The pliant waves of 
 her auburn hair, rippling above a white forehead, 
 just matched in color the rich hazel of her eyes. 
 She had a complexion like the leaf of a tea-rose, 
 and a pair of bewitching dimples that showed 
 themselves by no means readily and never at all 
 consciously. Her demeanor, as she stood with all 
 the lines of her slender and neatly moulded figure 
 in fine relief, was that of a girl who has no fear to 
 be deserted by the usual current of male attention, 
 and who is accustomed to choose her dovotees 
 with no wilful caprice, but rather a calm surety 
 of preference. We had been talking ordinary
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 163 
 
 commonplaces together for some little time before 
 I discovered that she had dismissed, by a process of 
 cool inattention to their remarks, all the other gen 
 tlemen who had been grouped in the alcove. She 
 discovered the general departure with a slight start. 
 
 " How rude of me ! " she said, in that voice of 
 hers which had for my ears a peculiar cadence, 
 and was like the fall and plash of sylvan water. 
 Her exclamation, I swiftly reasoned, might be full 
 of the flirt s best art. However, it more than half 
 convinced me that she shrank from any voluntary 
 discourtesy, and had a pride well above the exer 
 tion of petty tyrannies. Her whole face now 
 broke into the most brilliant smile, and a light 
 danced in her hazel eyes which must have been a 
 will-o -the-wisp for many a hopeful suitor. " Could 
 you have better proof," she asked, " of how I was 
 absorbed in the idea of meeting you ? " 
 
 " It is much better than I deserve," I answered, 
 " but I shall hold it none the less precious because 
 of that." 
 
 She laughed. " How prettily that would sound 
 in French ! " she said. " And you have the least 
 touch of a French accent. Are you really French, 
 or an American who has lived for years abroad ? " 
 
 " Pray, why do you ask the last question, Miss 
 Gramercey?" If possible I meant to evade an 
 answer concerning my nationality ; I always tried 
 to escape from that falsehood of my Belgian birth. 
 
 "I have seen you driving several times with Mrs.
 
 164 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Dorian," said my companion ; " and as a little 
 girl I knew her in New-York, so that I am apt 
 to forget that she is not an American. Then I 
 afterward heard from somebody that you were her 
 adopted son." 
 
 " I am. And she adopted me in America, when 
 I was a boy. That is a long time ago." 
 
 " And you would like to return ? " asked Miss 
 Gramercey. 
 
 " Frankly, I would. And you ? " 
 
 " Oh, I am a very good sort of patriot," she 
 replied. " Europe suits me admirably as a water 
 ing-place. I prefer it to Newport, though I con 
 fess that this is saying a great deal." And she 
 laughed her clear, flute-like laugh. " Papa and I 
 have been here several times since poor mamma s 
 death, about six years ago. We usually return in 
 the autumn." 
 
 " Then you do not envy the Princess Orsini ? " 
 I said. " She tells me that she never expects to 
 see her native California again." 
 
 Miss Gramercey s pure lip curled a little, though 
 I thought there was more pity than irony in her 
 tones as she responded : " I fear that Susan Potts 
 will sigh for California some day." 
 
 " Susan Potts Orsini," I said. " She gave me 
 her new name in full a little while ago. There s 
 an immense geographical sweep in that name. It 
 seems to connect two continents, like the sub 
 marine cable."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 165 
 
 So it does," she returned, laughing. " But I 
 only hope it will have equally harmonious results." 
 " You don t approve of the marriage, then ? " 
 " I approve of very few foreign marriages, Mr. 
 Claud. They are so seldom made with any but 
 the most cold-blooded motives. They are like 
 mere commercial partnerships. I am always sorry 
 to see my countrywomen accepting marriage in 
 that unsacred spirit." 
 
 " You believe that the heart should always go 
 where the hand goes ? " 
 
 "Invariably. Sometimes, of course, there are 
 worldly reasons why it should not, however. 
 These I can appreciate. Then is the time for 
 deliberation, courage, sacrifice, on both sides or 
 one, as the case may be." 
 
 "I perceive that you have thought the whole 
 matter out," I said, perhaps less lightly than I had 
 intended to speak. " But when one of these 
 obstacles at which you have hinted should really 
 arrive, are you sure that you would not feel dis 
 inclined to accept it as such ? " 
 
 She shook her head. " No," she answered, with 
 gentle firmness. " I have my little code of matri 
 monial proprieties, as one might call it. I would 
 as soon marry a man for whom I did not care 
 because he had a great name or a great fortune, 
 as "... But here she paused, and the unique 
 smile came again, kindling her mellow eyes and 
 deepening her sweet dimples. " How terribly
 
 1G6 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 serious a vein we have struck," she resumed, " and 
 on so short an acquaintance ! " 
 
 " Pray end your sentence," I said, " or let me 
 end it for you." 
 
 " Can you do so ? " she inquired, archly lifting 
 her brows. 
 
 " I think I can. You were about to add that 
 3 ou would not marry one whom you held as your 
 inferior, in spite of all the claims of sentiment. 
 Am I not right ? " 
 
 " Yes," she assented. 
 
 "Now," I proceeded, "there can be so many 
 kinds of inferiority. " Fortune, for instance " 
 
 " I should except that," she broke in. 
 
 " I hope you would also except birth." 
 
 " By no means," she asserted, with much quiet 
 positiveness. 
 
 " What ! " I exclaimed. " You, who are an 
 American, say that ? " 
 
 " Decidedly I do." 
 
 " But there is no such thing as rank in Amer 
 ica." 
 
 She laughed. " Ah, that shows how little you 
 know it ! Social grades and degrees are very 
 marked there." 
 
 " You surprise me," I said, and with unconcealed 
 sarcasm. " An American aristocrat what a 
 strange sound it has ! Quite as strange as Susan 
 Potts Orsini." 
 
 " I don t at all agree with you," she answered,
 
 T1IE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 107 
 
 flushing a little, and showing more than a shade of 
 pique. " I recognize the old tone, Mr. Claud ; I 
 have heard it a good many times in Europe. Be 
 cause we are a republic, oversea, there is a univer 
 sal feeling, from London to St. Petersburg, that 
 we should exist as an enormous social monotony 
 a civilization which allows no difference between 
 yourself and your boot-maker or milliner, and holds 
 a fairly long ancestry of gentlemen and gentle 
 women to be a matter of no moment." 
 
 " I fear that I must side with the feeling here," 
 I replied. " Ancestry, of whatever sort, should 
 mean nothing in America. In a republic the worth 
 of the individual is alone to be considered. Your 
 boot-maker or milliner may be uncompanionable 
 through a lack of congenial culture, but they should 
 be so for no other conceivable reason. The total 
 absence of hereditary caste is what Europe natu 
 rally looks for in a land which gave to all the Old 
 World one mighty and strenuous promise that she 
 would found her very being upon equal civil rights. 
 Here the fulfilment of that promise is expected. 
 How can Europeans fail to be surprised when they 
 witness the descendants of those who defended 
 democracy with their lives, now quietly supporting 
 patrician principles and ideas? More than this, 
 they will be sure to see the ludicrous side of it 
 and pelt it with deserved ridicule." 
 
 Miss Gramercey was biting her lip as I ended. 
 "If America and especially New- York were
 
 168 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 what you want it to be," she replied, "I should 
 become a most uncomplaining exile." 
 
 She might have continued to speak, if a gentle 
 man with a spasmodic walk and a flaxen head 
 which he carried peeringly forward, had not sud 
 denly joined her and begun to rattle off some 
 thing in a throaty drawl about having only crossed 
 the channel but a few hours ago, and being so 
 " encharnted " at lighting upon the young lady 
 whom he now addressed. I was about taking my 
 departure when a second gentleman, also chancing 
 to discover the inmates of the alcove, approached 
 Miss Gramercey and shook hands with her. He 
 was tall, by no means handsome, but with a 
 marked distinction in carriage and demeanor. 
 Oddly enough, as my eyes swept his face, I recog 
 nized something familiar in its expression. I had, 
 in those days, an excellent memory for faces, and 
 it annoyed me that I should be at fault in recol 
 lecting where and when I had met this one. But 
 later, on learning the actual truth, I was more 
 prone to praise than to blame my powers of remem 
 brance. . . . 
 
 "How did you like Miss Gramercey, Otho?" 
 asked my guardian, several hours later that same 
 day. 
 
 " Ice is not colder," I said. " But like ice, she 
 is beautiful." 
 
 " I have heard her called cold," said Mrs. Dorian, 
 appearing to muse. " They tell me she had a great
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 169 
 
 success this season in London, and a still greater 
 one last winter in that horrid New- York." (Mrs. 
 Dorian never spoke of New- York without some 
 prefixed epithet ; she treated it as Homer did most 
 of his gods, heroes and cities, though much less 
 flatteringly.) " The Gramerceys have always been 
 people of note over there. Ada s mother was a 
 Southern lady a Miss Carteret of Virginia, and 
 as good as she was beautiful. I don t see where 
 the daughter gets her pride from some deceased 
 grandmother, I suppose ; she has had a number of 
 them. By the way, Otho, I heard the most sur 
 prising thing to day. Foulke Dorian has been in 
 London, and is devoted to her. They say that he 
 followed her across the ocean, and that she has 
 already refused him three or four times." 
 
 " It was he, then ! " I exclaimed, giving a great 
 start. 
 
 " He ? Who ? " inquired Mrs. Dorian, surprised 
 at my seeming irrelevancy.
 
 170 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 " WHY, your nephew, Foulke Dorian," I an 
 swered. " He came up to speak with Miss 
 Gramercey just before I left her. Yes, there can 
 be no doubt of it." 
 
 " Foulke in Paris, and at the wedding to-day ? " 
 said Mrs. Dorian incredulously. 
 
 "Beyond a doubt. I felt that I had seen his 
 face before, and yet I was nearly certain that our 
 acquaintance had been of the slightest. He is 
 greatly changed, but still there is the lingering 
 look of boyhood about him." 
 
 " Ah ! I suppose he retains a few hundred 
 memorial freckles." 
 
 " I did not perceive one." 
 
 " How extraordinary ! Has the leopard changed 
 his spots?" 
 
 " Not only that, but the leopard has developed 
 into a rather distingue young man. He is tall, 
 extremely slender, and most graceful in his move 
 ments. He looks like a young English swell, as 
 they term it. I thought his complexion irre 
 proachable, though a trifle too pale. And I am 
 absolutely certain that it was he."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 171 
 
 " Foulke should be nice-looking," said Mrs. 
 Dorian. " It is quite in the proper order of things. 
 He is the only child of an enormously rich man. 
 My brother-in-law has succeeded in his business 
 marvellously, and is now the sole proprietor of the 
 house. How odd, if his son is in Paris, that he has 
 not looked me up ! I am not devotedly attached 
 to my late husband s family, as you are aware, 
 Otho ; but then our poor human nature is so 
 queerly constructed ; we are hurt even by the 
 neglect of our aversions." . . . 
 
 It was, if I recall rightly, but a few days later 
 that I said to Mrs. Dorian : 
 
 " Have you any relatives living in Paris at 
 present?" 
 
 She looked at me keenly, and a curious smile 
 flitted across her face. " Strange that you should 
 ask this question when I was about to speak on 
 precisely the point you have brought up. My two 
 married sisters are both dead, Otho you perhaps 
 remember when I wrote you of each death. But 
 one of them, Mathilde, left an orphan son, Casimir 
 Laprade. Casimir is about two years younger 
 than you. He expected a fortune, but ruinous 
 speculations on his father s part have left him with 
 a very slender income. And now he bears the 
 calamity with calm courage. He is a most charm 
 ing youth." 
 
 " Does he ever visit you ? " 
 
 " He did," said my guardian, hesitating, " but
 
 172 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 . . of late . . well, to be frank with you, Otho, 
 Casimir is proud, yet not after the pattern of Miss 
 Gramercey." 
 
 " I do not quite understand you," I said. 
 
 " No ? " As Mrs. Dorian now spoke she low 
 ered her eyes and fingered a little nervously at 
 the edge of a fan which the warmth of the day 
 had caused her to use. "I I do not wonder 
 that you fail to understand," she went on. " You 
 have heard nothing as yet." 
 
 "What is there to hear? Does any mystery 
 hang about this nephew of yours, madame ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dorian raised her eyes, meeting my look 
 of sharp inquiry. " Casimir is poor, as I said. 
 He is an artist of striking talent at least I think 
 so. He is handsome, too after a very different 
 type from yours, an almost feminine type, in fact 
 but still handsome. As yet he has obtained no 
 recognition whatever, but he will not employ the 
 least ruse de guerre to secure it. He simply offers 
 his pictures to dealers, and has them declined, and 
 eats his heart away with secret chagrin. I have 
 known him only about four months. He came 
 to me nearly four months ago, when I returned to 
 Paris from my long stay in Austria and Italy. I 
 had not talked to him more than five minutes 
 before he had fascinated me. He became one of 
 my impressions and you know that I am always 
 having impressions. He showed me some of his 
 work, and I went in raptures over it. I suspect
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 173 
 
 that he lives in attic lodgings and spends only four 
 or five francs a day. He has the most poetic face ; 
 it is quite Greek, and as if it were cut out of 
 ivory, with a cloud of blond hair, and delicate 
 blue veins in either temple, and the least little 
 gold thread of mustache. I wanted him to meet 
 some of my artist friends, and he fascinated me 
 still more by his almost girlish shyness. I used to 
 make him dine with me. He was such a discovery 
 in the way of a nephew. He wore dark velvet 
 coats, which were infinitely becoming ; dark vel 
 vet and blond hair are so delightful a combi 
 nation when one has an ivory face like a young 
 Apollo s. Poor Mathilde, his mother, had been 
 rather stout (Heaven bless her ! ), with irregular 
 features and a pronounced squint ; I never could 
 tell where she got it ; there is no record of a De 
 Lille ever having had a squint before. Of course 
 at this time you were still in Zurich." 
 
 Here the narrator paused. " You never wrote 
 me of your nephew," I said. 
 
 " No." The hesitation had now become a sort 
 of confusion. "I I would have done so if if 
 it had not been for a misunderstanding between 
 Casimir and myself. One day, when our acquaint 
 ance was still young, I told him of you of my 
 great delight in your brilliant scholarship of 
 my resolution to make you my sole heir. This- 
 would not have affected him in the least if I had 
 not also uttered a bgtise if I had not been
 
 174 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 unpardonably stupid. I assumed an apologetic 
 tone and declared to him that perhaps the bond 
 of blood between us gave him a prior claim to 
 my bounty, but that circumstances had now so 
 arranged themselves as to make such a claim 
 wholly impracticable. And then, quite suddenly, 
 Casimir interrupted me with a kind of sorrowful 
 anger. He avowed himself unwilling to be the 
 subject of even momentary thoughts like these. 
 He would not for the world have you suspect him 
 of wishing to stand in your light. He had come 
 to me because I was his dead mother s sister, and 
 his long residence in Rome had thus far prevented 
 our meeting. It was best that you should not 
 even learn of his existence. He preferred never 
 to become acquainted with you. The inheritance 
 I had promised to you must pass to you untouched. 
 He desired nothing gratuitously from anyone, 
 living or dead. He desired only what his own 
 honest toil might bring him. . I was dreadfully 
 pained. He had a knot of blue ribbon at his 
 throat, and it was so keenly becoming ; and then 
 his large, soft blue eyes took such a sad sparkle 
 while he thus spoke. Man Dieu ! how the great 
 Balzac could have described him, with his deli 
 cate nature, just like his spiritual face ! We still 
 remained friends ; we are friends to-day ; but he 
 will not accept a sou of aid from me, and . . since 
 you have arrived he . . he comes to me no 
 more."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 175 
 
 " How pathetically you say that ! " I commented, 
 rising, going toward a window, and staring out of 
 it, though I saw nothing. I knew that there was 
 satire in my tones, but I could not repress it. A 
 bitter feeling had crept about my heart. It was 
 the old jealousy at work again. These abrupt 
 tidings hurt and jarred upon me. My guardian s 
 professed admiration and liking of this Casimir 
 Laprade this unforeseen new-comer who shared 
 what I had so long held in complete entirety 
 seemed to me like the dealing of an unsolicited 
 wrong. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian had meanwhile stolen to my side. 
 But I did not know of her presence there till I 
 felt her hand upon my arm. 
 
 " I have made you angry," she said. 
 
 I turned upon her reproachfully. " Not angry," 
 I exclaimed, " for I have no right to any anger. 
 You have done so much for me without my pos 
 sessing the least claim upon your goodness ! But 
 still that is all the more reason why this sudden 
 news should wound me deeply." I paused here, 
 not wishing to trust myself with another word, 
 gnawing my lips in the effort to control what I 
 really felt. 
 
 " But I never dreamed of wounding you," she 
 faltered, astonished and regretful. " How have I 
 done so ? " 
 
 "How?" I echoed. "You tell me that this 
 new attachment has filled the place I held ! You
 
 17G THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 tell it as kindly as you are able, and yet the truth 
 is clear as day." 
 
 Her astonishment had deepened. " Oh, Otho," 
 she exclaimed, " can you possibly be jealous of 
 poor Casimir ? you ! " 
 
 " No, I am not jealous," I retorted, hating the 
 word and quivering under it as if it had been the 
 cut of a lash. " But you force me to remember 
 who he is and who I am ! Ah, yes ; you remind 
 me that he is your blood-kindred, besides having 
 won the affection that was mine for years ! " 
 
 I had receded from her, but she now spread out 
 both arms toward me. A bright smile was on her 
 lips, and her dark eyes (dimmer with age than 
 when mine had first met them) were glistening as 
 at some relished tidings. I had often seen her 
 look like this before, when pleased by one of her 
 many fanciful whims or moods ; but to encounter 
 the change then affected me as a slur, almost a 
 sneer. 
 
 " You are delightful ! " she exclaimed. " Ah, 
 my boy, what a lover you will make, some day ! 
 How shocking that I am only a poor old woman, 
 and not some lovely young girl ! Still, the 
 impression is very exhilarating. I like it ; I posi 
 tively tingle under it." 
 
 "Your pleasantry, madame, is most ill-timed," 
 I said, in freezing tones. The slumbering trait 
 in my strange nature had wakened, like a torpid 
 serpent. Her last reply only stung me as if it
 
 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 177 
 
 were the most cruel raillery. " I had better leave 
 you, I pursued, "without further delay. Let 
 this Casimir Laprade, whose very existence you 
 have concealed from me until now, reign with 
 due honors in my stead. It is not too late for 
 you to bestow on him all the love he merits. I 
 abdicate in his favor from to-day. You have given 
 me an education, and with it I am willing to fight 
 my way alone." 
 
 Every word of these rash and ungrateful sen 
 tences I firmly meant. But as I walked toward 
 the door of the chamber an alarmed cry broke 
 from Mrs. Dorian. She hurried after me ; she 
 almost dragged me toward a couch, and clung 
 about my neck with a clasp that I must have em 
 ployed roughness to shake off. It was her turn 
 to use reproaches, and she used them in a torrent 
 of tearful utterance. At the same time no impet 
 uous avowal of her fondness was absent. She 
 appealed to my long knowledge of her devotion ; 
 she challenged me to recall an act of neglect in 
 all the years we had spent together ; she reminded 
 me of how her letters had breathed unaltered ten 
 derness ; she accused me of disloyalty in suspect 
 ing that a new regard could ever displace the old ; 
 she questioned me whether my dead mother her 
 self could have watched more faithfully over my 
 life, or known a sweeter joy at my success. 
 
 She ended not merely by convincing me of my 
 folly ; I was covered with humiliation as well, and
 
 178 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 besought her pardon in tones of the most mortified 
 self-abasement. The revulsion had come with me, 
 as it had come in earlier days, bringing shame and 
 remorse. As my own mother had done long ago, 
 she forgave me all too easily. 
 
 " I must see your nephew," I at length said to 
 her. "Above all things I now long to see and 
 know him. If he shows aversion toward me I 
 will conquer it. I am determined that we shall 
 be friends." 
 
 This was not the sole determination that I had 
 already made ; there was another, though as yet 
 I could scarcely have clad it with language. 
 
 " You will find that he has no aversion, Otho," 
 declared my guardian. " It is not in his nature. 
 But shall we not go together?" 
 
 I shook my head. "No," I answered; "it seems 
 to me better that I should go alone." 
 
 She looked at me with a smile breaking over 
 her face. " I understand," she said, nodding. " It 
 is a subtle question ; I am excessively fond of all 
 subtle questions, as you know." 
 
 She had wholly regained her composure by this 
 time. I very well knew that the episode of my 
 jealousy would soon take a retired place in her 
 memory. It had been one of her " impressions," 
 in which she saw me assume a romantically fiery 
 attitude. Even what followed had not been with 
 out its attractive side. As a little bit of drama 
 its residual thrill might even be more permanent ;
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 179 
 
 and then, too, it had stirred her to the depths. 
 She was a woman who was perpetually employing 
 her nervous system as a kind of pictorial agency. 
 There was no experience from which she could 
 not extract some sort of artistic value. I have 
 often thought her prosperity a favor thrown away 
 by fate ; she would have so embellished and ideal 
 ized poverty. 
 
 I had little difficulty in finding Casimir Laprade. 
 His studio was not just in an attic, though I should 
 say it came within one stairway of being so ; per 
 haps you must have ascended if you had gone to 
 his bed-chamber, and in that case his aunt had 
 rightly surmised. It was a shabby studio, and yet 
 it bore touches of Oriental color, in a hanging 
 spangled robe or a quaint damascened weapon. 
 Sketches and paintings of many sorts were scat 
 tered about the rather grimy walls, and two small 
 windows, draped carelessly in crimson of different 
 shades, as though to hide ugly or dingy cornices, 
 looked down upon a narrow, bustling street of the 
 Quartier Latin. The young artist had not suffered 
 from Mrs. Dorian s dainty description of him. 
 The cloud of blond hair, the poetic face, the dark 
 velvet coat, struck me at a glance. His manner, 
 too, as I soon perceived, greatly partook of shy 
 ness. When I had presented my card, and he 
 had glanced at it, I saw a slight flush rise in his 
 pale cheek. He appeared abashed and a trifle 
 dismayed, but no embarrassment could make that
 
 180 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 flexible figure of his, a little below the usual 
 stature, err on the side of awkwardness, or rob his 
 gestures of a native, peculiar grace. 
 
 I had already hit, so to speak, upon my proper 
 policy of self-introduction. As I seated myself 
 in the chair politely proffered me, I assumed a 
 mien of somewhat buoyant civility, guarding at 
 the same time against the least phrase that could 
 be construed as patronage. 
 
 " Paris, Monsieur Laprade," I said, " is the 
 most distracting temptress to a foreigner, and I, 
 who have the disadvantage of not being one of 
 her citizens, who have known her only now and 
 then by delightful glimpses, must plead the excuse 
 of her many pleasures for having deferred until 
 now this most desired visit." 
 
 He looked at me almost wonderingly with his 
 large, dreamy gray eyes. They were eyes in 
 which I seemed to trace the spell of many a lovely 
 though lonely revery. 
 
 " I did not hope, Monsieur, for the honor of a 
 visit from you," he answered, with all the courtesy 
 of his race plain amid the diffidence that still 
 thralled him. " I had supposed that you would 
 have many engagements, many diversions." 
 
 " None of these," I said, " could have kept me 
 from seeking the acquaintance of one so nearly 
 akin to my beloved guardian, and so high in that 
 amiable lady s esteem." (Ah, what a tongue 
 the French is, and how you can say trippingly
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 181 
 
 in it that which would sound ponderous else 
 where !) 
 
 He brightened, at this, and drew his chair a 
 little nearer my own. " My aunt is indeed a most 
 charming woman," he said. "But as for your 
 seeking me, Monsieur, I fear that you will find 
 but little. I have only my drawings and my 
 daubs many of them crude enough, the vieux 
 galons of boyhood. I live almost wholly alone, 
 with my dreams and "... 
 
 " Your ambitions ? " I questioned, as he paused. 
 At this I rose and added : " Pray let me see some 
 of your work. I have already heard your aunt 
 praise it." 
 
 He shrugged his shoulders, rising too. " She is 
 a very lenient critic. She had made up her mind 
 beforehand to be pleased with all that I showed her. 
 You will be more severe, Monsieur, and justly so." 
 
 I looked him full in the eyes, smiling. I was 
 resolved upon winning his good will. If nothing 
 had occurred to force in me the choice of such an 
 issue, I should still have preferred it. He and 
 his accompaniments, as might be said, had both 
 captivated me. It was all like a pretty page from 
 some French romancer. My imagination seemed 
 to demand of him that his youth, his beauty, his 
 almost feminine sweetness of demeanor, his gentle 
 modesty, his refined solitude, should crown their 
 happy unison by the possession of genius. 
 
 "I have seen some good art," I replied, "in
 
 182 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 other cities besides this. But I am never severe 
 with originality, wherever found." 
 
 He started. " You have heard that what I do is 
 original ? " 
 
 " I have a presentiment that I shall discover 
 it so." 
 
 He became serious and thoughtful ; it was plain 
 that I had touched his self-belief as an artist. He 
 pointed toward a picture in oil, half finished, and 
 resting on an easel near at hand. " Tell me if you 
 care for this," he said, moving his eyes more than 
 once while he spoke from the canvas to my face. 
 "I call it The Ne\v-Born Soul. You see how shad 
 owy I have made my background ; that little 
 white point on the left is our planet, our star, 
 which the spirit of a young girl has just quitted. 
 She is journeying through space. Only a little 
 gleam of the great unknown light has broken upon 
 her ; you may mark it in the shining of the hair 
 along one temple. She has not yet realized her 
 own immortality. She is full of wonder, but she 
 is not afraid, and the loves and joys of the earth 
 have not quite left her. . I tried to show this in 
 the tremor of mouth and chin, and in that back 
 ward reach of one hand." . . 
 
 He spoke hurriedly but with such an unconscious 
 fervor that even these few words told how his art 
 was his life. I remained silent for several min 
 utes, wishing to study the picture well and get 
 lucid reasons for the praise which I was already
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 183 
 
 certain that I should have just cause to pronounce. 
 Then I slowly addressed rny companion, weighing 
 every word as I did so. 
 
 "You have put into color and the deepest, 
 the richest color a bit of exquisite poetry. You 
 have the great gift, you blend the poet with the 
 painter. Your thought is modern ; you are a true 
 enfant du siecle ; but your spirit has lived with the 
 grand dead masters, and in every stroke that your 
 brush has given I note an intolerance of pettiness 
 and finicality. Yes, you have a large, firm, ample 
 style ; I have seen little to surpass it in the salons 
 of to-day. . . There," I suddenly broke off, laugh 
 ing ; " that is the first elaborate art-criticism that I 
 ever delivered. How would it look if printed in 
 a feuilleton ? " 
 
 He caught my hand an instant later, and so 
 moist a glow filled his gray eyes that I almost 
 expected tears to drop from them. " These are 
 most stimulating words," he said, the quiver of 
 real emotion in his tones. " Ah, Monsieur, believe 
 me, it is not half so much the praise that I love as 
 the sincerity of it ! " 
 
 He showed me more of his work, after that, 
 and though its merit constantly varied, a uniform 
 sweep and lift of intention an effort to portray 
 Nature as he felt her and not merely as she was 
 an intellectual dominance, whether imaginative, 
 visionary or fantastic, had set its stamp on nearly 
 every achievement.
 
 184 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I think we were friends when we parted that 
 day. I knew I had made him anxious to meet 
 me again ; the lingering pressure of his hand as 
 he bade me farewell told me so, and the promise 
 which he gave me of an early visit was a still surer 
 sign. 
 
 On returning to our apartments, I found my 
 guardian full of eager questions. How had I liked 
 Casimir ? Was he abnormally shy ? Had he 
 received me with cordiality? Would he come to 
 us and be friendly hereafter? Did I think his 
 talents remarkable ? and so on, with an ebullition 
 of vivacious inquiry. My first responses delight 
 ed Mrs. Dorian, but her pleasure grew, as her 
 dancing eyes told me, while I said : 
 
 " He is a painter of rare gifts. He has what 
 artists sometimes call sneeringly the literary and 
 pictorial quality, but this he nearly always keeps, 
 or tries to keep, subordinate. He is rapidly mas 
 tering the important secret of what Art should 
 not do. He has still much to learn, however, as 
 would seem but natural at his age. His moods 
 are exalted, ethereal, mystic, and occasionally 
 even sybilline. He is an enemy of detail, and his 
 handling is broad, vigorous, yet secure. His eyes 
 seem peculiarly open (as I observed in his land 
 scapes) to the power of suggestive analogy between 
 Nature and our own worldly experience. While 
 we talked together he told me that in the rank 
 riots of weeds, the noisome and malarial swamp,
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 185 
 
 the blighted and incomplete vegetation, the slug 
 gish pool, the dried-up water-course and the tract 
 of barren dreariness, he could trace easy similitude 
 of the pride, arrogance, tyranny, bigotry, pursuant 
 misfortune and unexplained destiny of mankind ; 
 and that, on the other hand, purity, high purpose, 
 the wisdom of self-control, the sweet domestic 
 pleasures, the rich reward of an unsullied life, are 
 shown to him in perpetual allegory by the full- 
 flowing river, the sublime mountain, the rhythms 
 of tides on their shores, the pastoral tinklings of 
 brooks through meadows, and the splendors of 
 sunset over lengths of peaceful country. Sympa 
 thies like these are the very life-blood of all great 
 Art. They err who believe that all the best paint 
 ers have merely been poets spoiled in the making." 
 
 " You enchant me, Otho," said my guardian, 
 " in ranking Casimir s ability so high. You de 
 scribe him, too, as only a poet could ! " 
 
 " A poet ! Ah, madame, do not take my gush 
 ing little rhapsody for poetry. I shall never either 
 write or speak any, as long as I live." 
 
 " Hush ! " she exclaimed, with an irritated toss 
 of the head. " I treasure those copies of verses 
 which you sent me from Zurich." 
 
 I laughed. "It is so easy to say nothing melo 
 diously, in French verse. What I sent you was 
 only polished commonplace. Trust me, my dear 
 madame, I have measured my own capacity very 
 carefully in all directions."
 
 186 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " And in which have you found that it excels ? " 
 
 "In none. I possess simply a large academic 
 kind of mediocrity." 
 
 " Mediocrity ! Ah, Otho ! Fi done ! Every 
 body thinks you a genius. Wonderful things are 
 expected of you ! " 
 
 Again I laughed, but there was sadness in the 
 sound. " Wonderful things will never come from 
 me. I am a high table-land ; I have not a single 
 peak. My own intellect often surprises me ; it is 
 so tantalizingly capable. I am as remote from 
 any superfine accomplishment as I am from any 
 notable stupidity. I made those verses, but I can 
 solve a problem in Euclid quite as well, or con 
 strue a page of Thucydides, or even sketch Mont 
 Blanc from Chamouny in aquarelle. I stop no 
 where, but I excel nowhere. My muse is a tenth 
 one a calm, rather erudite dame, an adopted 
 sister of the other nine, and no true daughter of 
 Zeus and Mnemosyne. I can appreciate, inves 
 tigate, formulate, demonstrate, criticise; but to 
 invent, create, originate, I am wholly powerless. 
 My endowments pause at nothing and yet they 
 pause at everything. I am open to a thousand 
 thoughts, yet I shall never give the world one that 
 is new." 
 
 " What melancholy you breathe into your con 
 fession ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dorian. " You make it 
 quite majestic. Standing by that window, with 
 the late sunlight slanting across your face, you are
 
 TEE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 187 
 
 like Byron in the act of lamentation for no special 
 cause on the face of the earth. Your head, by 
 the way, and the cast of your features, often bear 
 resemblance to his ; I think I have mentioned this 
 before." 
 
 " You have mentioned many such agreeable mat 
 ters before, madame," I said " and fancied their 
 existence." 
 
 " Bah ! " she cried, smelling her vinaigrette 
 vivaciously. " And you term all this mediocrity ! 
 It is certainly something a great deal higher." 
 
 I smiled. " It is not Byron. No, and it is not 
 Casimir Laprade." 
 
 " Whom you believe possessed of genius ? " 
 
 " Undoubtedly." 
 
 "But of yourself . . have you decided on no 
 profession, occupation?" 
 
 " On none, as yet." 
 
 My guardian straightened herself in her easy- 
 chair. " Then I must find one for you. I received 
 a letter to-day from my lawyers in America. It 
 was about the property there. Someone must go 
 and look after it. You shall go. Why not ? It 
 is yours as well as mine already ; some day, when 
 I am no more, it will be wholly yours." 
 
 I stood irresolute, for a moment, there bythe win 
 dow. Then I slowly walked toward my guardian, 
 pausing near her chair. " Not wholly mine," I said. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " she asked, with surprise. 
 " My will is made."
 
 188 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " You must alter it, madame." 
 
 " Otho, what is this ? " 
 
 "You must alter it," I said, taking her hand, 
 "in favor of Casimir Laprade. Divide the prop 
 erty equally between him and me, if you please, 
 but at least make us co-heirs. This may not be 
 your duty, since, in spite of his kinship, you are 
 privileged to leave your wealth where you please. 
 But it is my duty to insist upon the division." 
 
 She tried to withdraw her hand, yet I forcibly 
 retained it. " Upon my word, you show an ex 
 traordinary change of mood," she declared stiffly. 
 " A little while ago " 
 
 " Please do not refer to a little while ago," I 
 interrupted. " That is just what I would like to 
 have you forget." 
 
 " I see. You wish to impose upon yourself a 
 penance." 
 
 " Perhaps. And yet this is far from being my 
 only motive. Casimir is your sister s son. But 
 for me you would doubtless have made him your 
 sole heir. I shall never feel mentally at rest un 
 til you have accepted my view of his deserts. I 
 throw myself now upon that indulgent goodness 
 which I have so often received from you without 
 seeking it. And if it fails me at this time of 
 request, of need, of entreaty, I shall be sorely dis 
 appointed. By acting to your nephew and myself 
 as if we were brothers, you will make the bond 
 closer between yourself and me. Believe, also,
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 189 
 
 that I speak with the most profound sincerity 
 when I add one more clause to my petition. It is 
 this : I would rather you left every franc of your 
 fortune to charitable objects than that you made 
 me its one possessor." 
 
 " I will think it over," she said, softening. 
 " There would, of course, be more than enough 
 for two. The money has been piling itself up, 
 there across the water; I cannot have spent quarter 
 of my income for years. . Yes, I will think it over." 
 
 I stooped and kissed her forehead. "You will 
 do nothing of the sort," I answered, with a little 
 stroke of calculated boldness ; " for you have 
 already consented." 
 
 " Comme tu es hardi, mon cher!" she retorted, 
 trying not to smile. "And Casimir? If he 
 should refuse to profit by this division?" 
 
 "Leave his refusal or consent to me. I will 
 break the news gradually. Trust me." 
 
 "You speak as if you and he were to live 
 henceforward in the closest intimacy." 
 
 "I should like to make him a member of our 
 little household with your permission." 
 
 She gave her wonted laugh, here, at its merri 
 est. " My permission ? Of course you have it. 
 And you will accomplish your plan. . . Ah, I 
 begin to think that is what you always will do, 
 accomplish your plan, whatever it is. Perhaps 
 that is to be your province always to make every 
 body do as you desire."
 
 190 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I detected the undercurrent of surrender in 
 these final words, and was not unprepared to have 
 her acquiesce, that very evening, a few hours later, 
 in my proposition of a meeting with her notary on 
 the morrow. Casimir Laprade came to visit us a 
 day or two afterward, but before he came a new 
 will had been drawn, just as I had wished. 
 
 The intercourse between my guardian s nephew 
 and myself now rapidly ripened into a warm 
 friendship. It was not till I had induced him to 
 dwell permanently beneath the same roof with us 
 that I ventured upon the subject of his altered 
 prospects. I waited until I was sure of the influ 
 ence I had gained over him, and then I spoke. 
 Already he had learned almost to hang upon my 
 words : the love I had inspired in him was even 
 more than fraternal. My keen appreciation of 
 his artistic worth had first roused this ardent feel 
 ing, but no egotism ultimately held sway there. 
 In my nature he recognized something comple 
 mentary to his own. Where he was retiring, 
 timid, undecided, even impolitic through a lack 
 of self-reliance, I was assertive, intrepid, equable. 
 All his strength of character seemed to lie in his 
 lovely genius, which I admired still more as I grew 
 familiar with its depths and heights, its glow and 
 shadow. But it grasped his nature and tempera 
 ment with a weakening hold ; it made him unfit 
 to deal with men, and boyishly pliable under the 
 stress of all coarse and rugged contact. So deep
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 191 
 
 and durable was the enthusiasm which it woke in 
 him that I saw with amazement his indifference to 
 womanly charms. His ideal was his mistress, and 
 he served her in devoted transport. The nearest 
 that he ever approached to a sentiment of the heart 
 was his affection for me ; that was indeed, in its 
 way, a passion, for it set me upon a pedestal and 
 paid me tender obeisance. I sometimes fancied 
 that he was a being who could love only in this 
 fashion, with the grosser senses quite at rest, and 
 the heart, the brain, the spirit at high pulsation. 
 I cannot call him feminine except in the extreme 
 sensitiveness of his mental mould ; for he possessed 
 courage (he had once fought a dangerous duel with 
 swords on receiving an insult from a fellow-student 
 in the Art School, and had severely wounded his 
 adversary) ; and again, in physical training, nerve, 
 coolness, energy, he by no means missed the full 
 manly share. But for all this, he was of feeble 
 fibre to meet exigencies, to deal with difficulties, 
 to gauge and seize opportunities, to touch and 
 pierce human fallacies. He was not made for 
 the world, though the world was made for him, 
 since he transfigured and re-created hundreds 
 of its harshest traits by the sure magic of his 
 art! 
 
 When I told him what my guardian had done 
 for his future, the tidings moved him to tears, 
 unshed though seen. I dreaded his refusal of the 
 boon, however, and while I witnessed his wonder
 
 192 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 at this intelligence, I hastened to add, before it 
 should really pass : 
 
 " The affair was of my own earnest prompting, 
 Casimir, and nothing that I have ever done has 
 given me keener satisfaction. It binds us more 
 closely together, mon ami, and instead of a few 
 thousands which I shall not need, it brings me the 
 welcome and cheering comradeship of a brother." 
 
 That last word caused him to start ; one of the 
 tears that brimmed his eyes now slipped along 
 the dark curve of its lower lash and fell upon 
 his cheek. His chin trembled, and he gnawed his 
 underlip as though to force self-control. But sud 
 denly he threw back that beautiful head of his, 
 and almost sprang toward me. In another second 
 he had seized either of my shoulders and was look 
 ing into my face with searching intentness. 
 
 " Brother ! " he exclaimed. " You do not de 
 ceive yourself? You are certain that you already 
 care for me enough to wish our lives joined so 
 closely?" 
 
 " Yes," I answered, prepared for the extremely 
 French embrace to which past experience in 
 friendships of school and college had long ago 
 inured me. As it was, I returned the embrace 
 with a fervor truly Gallic. Conscience entered, 
 beyond doubt, into my dealings with Casimir; 
 Mrs. Dorian had hit the truth ; I wanted to punish 
 myself for that dark hour of imperious jealousy. 
 But I now felt that the punishment threatened to
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 193 
 
 become a most active agency of comfort and enjoy 
 ment, since this fortunately righted nephew had 
 every endearing quality and not a single repelling 
 one. 
 
 The consent of Casimir quickly followed that 
 little outburst of sentiment. I went to Mrs. 
 Dorian, proud of my victory, and told her that 
 all was now definitely arranged. If I sailed for 
 America in the following autumn as at pres 
 ent seemed the inevitable course Casimir, who 
 thrilled with curiosity to see the New World 
 would gladly accompany me. " I believe there is 
 little that can ever separate us," I said, " swiftly 
 formed as our mutual attachment has been. The 
 relations between us are like those of an elder 
 toward a younger brother." Here I gave a mean 
 ing smile. "It is perhaps needless, madame," I 
 continued, "for me to state which part Casimir 
 plays and which part belongs to me." 
 
 " You lead, of course," said Mrs. Dorian, approv 
 ingly. " That is but proper. To think that you 
 are now talking of crossing the Atlantic together, 
 you two ! How the unexpected does happen in 
 this topsy-turvy world ! Well, if you both go to 
 America I suppose it may in a measure reconcile 
 me to going. But I assure you, Otho, I shrink 
 from putting those miles of sea between myself 
 and civilization." 
 
 "Such words would stab me to the American 
 soul if I thought them serious," was my reply.
 
 194 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " However, madame, I am glad to hear you speak 
 of going with Casimir and myself. It is all well 
 enough to say that you will give me full power of 
 attorney in dealing with your affairs ; but your 
 presence in New- York will be vastly preferable, if 
 not indispensable." 
 
 " I will reflect upon your advice," said my guard 
 ian, with a rather dramatic shudder. " This 
 means, you know, that I will lose several pounds 
 and forfeit my appetite. Ah, it is so hard to be 
 resigned to certain stern facts ! It is so hard to 
 believe that the same wise Providence which gave 
 us Paris was capable of producing America ! " . . . 
 
 Meanwhile I had gone not a little into the soci 
 ety of my countrypeople, and had made not a few 
 interesting and prized acquaintances. The Prin 
 cess Orsini had left Paris for Norway with the 
 intention of turning the midnight sun into a 
 honeymoon ; but her friend, Miss Gramercey (if 
 the title be not unfair), still remained in town. I 
 met the latter a number of times at various enter 
 tainments before she asked me to visit her. When 
 the invitation came I gladly accepted it, for in 
 spite of our differences her society both won and 
 engrossed me. We met on no unequal terms ; 
 there was not a millionnaire in the great French 
 capital who lived with more luxury and elegance 
 than myself, though I abhorred the ostentation 
 of extravagance and tempered my splendor with 
 taste. The position of Mrs. Dorian s adopted son
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 195 
 
 and probable inheritor of her wealth was one to 
 provoke much attention among the Americans 
 with whom I was constantly thrown. My guard 
 ian had been thought eccentric in New-York, but 
 she had held her select place there, nevertheless, 
 during former years. I soon found myself popular 
 and courted. Besides being a person whom no 
 ambitious mamma could afford conscientiously to 
 overlook, I liked the society of pretty women and 
 agreeable men, even while deliberative criticism 
 pronounced them vapid and unsatisfying. My 
 youth and my long association with studious pur 
 suits made the lighter mood of jest and indolence 
 at least temporarily pleasant. I possessed the art 
 of amusing my compatriots ; I had a ready though 
 at times a somewhat caustic wit ; I was as gallant, 
 modish, debonair as they desired ; and with regard 
 to my good looks I could sometimes ill repress 
 that vanity which pushes forth so facile a crop in 
 the hearts of the young when persistent flattery 
 sows her seed there. 
 
 Briefly, even at so unfavorable a Parisian sea 
 son I had become the fashion. Ada Gramercey 
 had undoubtedly seen this when I began to enrol 
 myself upon her list of permitted admirers, and I 
 was confident that the preference I showed her 
 did not prove the more irksome because of it. Her 
 pride was a continual secret torment to me. If 
 there had not been intellect behind it if I had 
 not repeatedly caught glimpses of a sweet womanly
 
 196 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 nature through occasional breaks in its chilling 
 investiture I might have held the whole mani 
 festation as trivial and paltry. As it was I did not 
 tell myself that I was falling in love with her. I 
 incessantly felt my spirit harassed by the thought : 
 If she knew my real birth, how she might shrink 
 from me ! For years no such haunting reflection 
 had troubled my mind. I had accepted my new 
 station in life with a sense that every succeeding 
 autumn cast its fresh relay of obliterating leaves 
 upon the hideous and unhappy past. All had 
 seemed so deeply buried until this young girl, 
 with her proud, soft hazel eye, her erect figure and 
 her elastic step, unconsciously swept away what 
 covered so hated a grave. 
 
 Like a death s-head amid all my mirth gleamed 
 this conjecture as to how she would treat me if 
 she were once to meet the actual truth, naked, 
 uncompromising, merciless. 
 
 And what was this truth ? Again and again I 
 silently reviewed its record. I, Otho Claud, be 
 lieved to be the child of a beloved Belgian friend 
 of my guardian, whom she had adopted as the heir 
 to her great wealth, was Otho Clauss, the son of a 
 German peasant by a bourgeoise French mother, 
 whom my father had foully murdered, afterward 
 paying for the crime in a death of ignominy on the 
 scaffold ! 
 
 It was in this dreary and pitiable way that a 
 great passion the first and only one I was ever
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 197 
 
 destined to know dawned upon my soul ! The 
 sins of the parents shall be visited on their chil 
 dren ! The inexorable meaning of that dreadful 
 announcement, put by Christians in the mouth of 
 the God they worship, was beginning to warn and 
 taunt me from a new and unforeseen source !
 
 198 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 IX. 
 
 HE who has read thus far in the pages of these 
 confessions must have understood them but ill if 
 they fail to place before him the solemn truth of 
 Heredity as their stimulus and motive. At the 
 same time I would offer the reminder that I make 
 this record of my life with no wish to employ such 
 truth either as excuse or palliative for the course 
 of action revealed here. I am aware how stern 
 would be the disclaimer of thousands against such 
 a method, and how relentlessly it would be dis 
 puted that the victim of any inherited vice or 
 weakness had not, in a case like my own, the 
 stoutest defensive armor against overthrow or 
 surrender. To appear as the champion of a blind 
 fatalism is far from my present aim. However 
 pitilessly science may speak on this point how 
 ever exact and clear may be the deductions from 
 certain undeniable data however psychological 
 proof may demonstrate that moral disease follows 
 the same rigid law as physical, and that both can 
 be transmitted from parent to child with an equal 
 readiness I am none the less willing to grant 
 the existence, after birth, of vastly potent modify-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 199 
 
 ing forces. There are medicines for the soul no 
 less than for the body. The world of philosophy 
 and ethics, as that of surgery and pathology, 
 teems with precious curative discoveries and re 
 sources. True, there are many beings who must 
 drag along unhelped the misshapen limb, as there 
 are many who must bear till death the perverse 
 and vicious brain. The aid given to myself was 
 plenteous, cogent. If the weapon is ever put into 
 a man s hand wherewith he may beat out his own 
 future as he will, then just as tough a means of 
 self-amelioration was set within my grasp. I grant 
 this. But the problem of a foreordained destiny 
 must ever remain unsolved at least with a few 
 intellects, of which mine had now become one. 
 As long, I argued, as human will continues the 
 unravelled mystery that we find it, no adequate 
 answer may be rendered those two sombre ques 
 tions : How far can we escape becoming what our 
 parents have made us ? how far may education 
 and enlightenment avert from us the doom of 
 sinful heritage ? 
 
 These reflections hardly concern the present 
 stage of my history, and I do not know why they 
 have crept into this portion of it, unless with some 
 vague relation to the distressing tremors which 
 now disturbed me. It was a period in which one 
 longs for a confidant, and again and again I felt 
 tempted to tell Casimir everything. I would 
 often spend an hour in his studio, watching him
 
 200 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 paint. Our affiliation had become complete in all 
 save this one sad, tormenting matter. Even then 
 he suspected my love for Ada Gramercey, since I 
 had frequently dwelt in conversation upon her 
 personal attractions, or referred with perhaps tell 
 tale severity to her fault of pride. But pride on 
 my own part kept my lips firmly sealed. And 
 oddly enough I had the same reason for preserv 
 ing silence toward Mrs. Dorian. She knew my 
 past, but time had gathered a mist across it which 
 was almost like absolute oblivion. To break 
 through this would be to stand before her in a 
 new, humiliating light to remind her that the 
 alienation from degrading antecedents had, after 
 all, been but partially effected to let her see 
 that the mirk and smirch from which her kind 
 hands had plucked me was not wholly washed 
 away. 
 
 In the meantime I had inevitably met her other 
 nephew, Foulke Dorian. He still abode in Paris 
 and still confirmed, by his unceasing attentions to 
 Ada Gramercey, the report that he was her undis- 
 couraged suitor. I was presented to him by Miss 
 Gramercey herself, while we both chanced to be 
 standing at that young lady s side during an even 
 ing entertainment. It occurred to me that his 
 bow was wholly without cordiality, and indeed a 
 trifle arrogant. By this time he undoubtedly 
 knew my name, and must have known as well that 
 his aunt was in Paris. Not to have sought her
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 201 
 
 out was fast taking the hues of intentional rude 
 ness. Few words were then exchanged between 
 us, and none that referred to our brief acquaint 
 ance of long ago or to my present position in Mrs. 
 Dorian s home. When we again met he gave me 
 a cold bow, which I answered as coldly. Did he 
 resent my agreeable reception by Miss Gramercey ? 
 or did he bear some sort of grudge toward his 
 aunt ? or was there any possibility of his not being 
 aware what relations I held to Mrs. Dorian ? I 
 consulted with the latter on this subject, and she 
 replied in rather vexed tones : 
 
 "If I chance to come across him, Otho, I shall 
 tell him very plainly what I think of his having 
 failed to look me up. Meanwhile, I should advise 
 you to take the first opportunity }-ou have of 
 mentioning me, besides making a pointed reference 
 to yourself." 
 
 Such an opportunity soon came. One evening I 
 dined in Miss Gramercey s charming apartments, 
 overlooking the Champs Elysdes. It was a dinner 
 of ten or twelve, and composed chiefly of my own 
 countrypeople. Colonel Gramercey, a most urbane 
 and faultless host, conducted the gentlemen into 
 a pleasant little smoking-room after dinner, for 
 coffee and cigars. The weather had been sultry 
 all day, and now a refreshing breeze blew across 
 a little balcony straight into the small chamber 
 where we had gathered. Foulke Dorian lit a cigar, 
 and then moved toward one of the long windows,
 
 202 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 presently disappearing on the balcony beyond, 
 which commanded a brilliant view of the great 
 thoroughfare glittering with a thousand merry 
 lights. I followed him as he thus disappeared. 
 He turned on hearing my footstep cross the sill 
 of the window. He looked well that evening, in 
 the sense of elegance, composure and skilful tailor 
 ing. His dark attire and white necktie became 
 him admirably. He had a pale, calm, inexpressive 
 face, with eyelids that drooped a little languidly 
 and a mouth whose rather sensuous fulness would 
 have been improved by a mustache. When you 
 pronounced him markedly gentlemanlike in ap 
 pearance you paid him all the praise that was 
 justice, for a supercilious curl nearly always lay 
 at the corners of his lips and an air of lazy im 
 portance inseparably marked his manner. 
 
 I was determined to act with extreme politeness. 
 When, on turning, he had recognized me, in the 
 soft yet sufficient light, I at once spoke, joining 
 him where he stood beside the filigreed rail of the 
 balcony. 
 
 I spoke in English. " You have probably for 
 gotten, Mr. Dorian," I said, "our first meeting 
 many years ago in America, while we were both 
 still boys." 
 
 He smiled faintly though civilly, and knocked 
 the film of ash from his cigar with the pointed 
 nail of one finger. " I do remember it," he replied, 
 in a low drawl that certainly betrayed no interest
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 203 
 
 whatever. " We met only for a few minutes, did 
 we not ? I believe you were taken suddenly ill, 
 or something of that sort, and Mrs. Dorian led you 
 from the room." 
 
 This allusion to what then occurred was not 
 pleasant, as may be imagined. But in another 
 way it gratified me, since I could now make 
 prompt use of his having so soon brought up the 
 name of his aunt. 
 
 " Quite right," I assented composedly. " My 
 health at that time was poor. But your aunt s 
 kind nursing soon restored it, and this is only one 
 of the many services which I owe her. By the way, 
 did you know that she is in Paris at present ? " 
 
 My direct question embarrassed him, as I could 
 see. But he quickly regained his collected look. 
 " I heard of it a short time ago," he said ; and he 
 convinced me that the words were false. 
 
 "She has more than once spoken of you," I 
 now struck in, "and you must allow me to add 
 that she is hurt at your not having sought her 
 out." 
 
 "I I should have done so," he said, with his 
 neutral drawl, just giving me a glimpse of his 
 chill, dull eyes under their lifted lids. " One has 
 so many engagements here. It is quite a rush, 
 nearly always. Of course I must call. Pray tell 
 my aunt that I will do so." 
 
 " I will tell her with pleasure," I replied. " She 
 will be very glad to hear of your intention."
 
 204 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 He gave me another sidelong look while he 
 puffed at his cigar. " Shall you be in Paris long?" 
 he asked. 
 
 "I am undecided. There may be reasons for 
 my going to New- York. Reasons, I mean, which 
 concern the settlement of Mrs. Dorian s prop 
 erty." 
 
 "Ah?" . . He swept his eyes over the dusky 
 yet bright expanse below us. " You are a Belgian 
 by birth, I believe." 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 I hated the lie heartily enough, but in his cool, 
 indolent way he had dragged it from me. 
 
 " You have relatives in Brussels, I suppose ? " 
 
 " A few distant ones." 
 
 " Whom you never see ? " 
 
 " Rarely." 
 
 " Ah . . yes . . and my aunt has formally 
 adopted you. You will become her heir, no doubt. 
 It would surely be most cruel if she did not make 
 you so, after being so good these many years, 
 would it not ? But I fancy all that is thoroughly 
 arranged." 
 
 The tinge of sarcasm in his voice was just ob 
 servable and no more. But it was there beyond 
 question. I felt stung to anger, and yet I 
 masked the sensation under a careless repose. 
 
 " Mrs. Dorian s inclinations are her own. It is 
 probable that I will receive a share of her fortune, 
 however, if I should outlive her."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 205 
 
 " Outlive her." He took his cigar from his 
 mouth and leaned back his head a little, laughing 
 as at some unexpected joke. " Really, that is very 
 good ! It s what they call a happy way of hitting 
 off a thing." 
 
 "I had every intention of being serious," I 
 answered, with tones dry and hard. " I am so 
 attached to Mrs. Dorian that the thought of her 
 death brings me pain." 
 
 " Of course . . yes . . naturally." 
 
 I could have struck him for the latent sneer in 
 this interruption ; but I continued, without seem 
 ing to notice it. 
 
 " And in regard to her provision for my future, 
 I had imagined, Mr. Dorian, that you were already 
 informed on that point nearly as well as myself, 
 since you must have known that from childhood 
 I have been the protege of your aunt." 
 
 He straightened himself a little at this. He 
 slightly shrugged his shoulders while doing so. 
 " You will pardon me," he replied, " but I pos 
 sess very little information on the subject." 
 
 I bit my lip. " Your father was made fully 
 aware of the facts in the case," I said. 
 
 He smiled now, and there was something in the 
 smile that sent a thrill through my nerves. It 
 was like a light cast on steel. " Ah . . yes . . 
 the facts in the case," he murmured. " They were 
 given, I recollect." 
 
 Just then two of our recent companions came
 
 206 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 out upon the balcony. Foulke Dorian at once 
 addressed them in a playfully genial manner on 
 some subject with which I had no concern. I 
 retired, soon afterward joining the ladies. Ada 
 Gramercey was unusually gracious that evening. 
 We made an appointment to ride together on the 
 following afternoon. She rode admirably, but 
 as a rule with no one except either her father or 
 a groom as escort. It was held an honor for any 
 male friend to be permitted the chance of accom 
 panying her. But my pleasure at the prospect 
 of to-morrow was diminished by hearing her soon 
 afterward say : " We shall start for Austria next 
 Wednesday. It was decided only a few hours 
 ago. Papa s health is not of the best just now 
 and he needs the change. Besides I have never 
 seen the Tyrol." I felt my heart sink. I believe 
 that I realized my love for her in that one mo 
 ment more forcibly than ever before. " And 
 shall you be gone till the end of summer?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " And then ? " I still asked. 
 
 She laughed, calling to a little pet dog, agile 
 and beribboned, that had just scampered into the 
 room. " Oh, then we shall go straight back home 
 to America." 
 
 I could not repress the words that now rose to 
 my lips. "And Mr. Dorian will probably go back 
 in the same steamer."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 207 
 
 She looked at me with haughty surprise. " He 
 is at liberty to select that one if he chooses." 
 
 But I was not rebuffed. "He will select it," I 
 said, very softly, and no doubt reproachfully. 
 " Perhaps he will follow you to the Tyrol as 
 well." 
 
 She turned to me a face that was more clement 
 than I had expected ; it seemed to pardon while 
 it disapproved my boldness. " He will not follow 
 me," she answered. 
 
 " Then may I ? " 
 
 "No." 
 
 "You do not put it very forbiddingly," I 
 pleaded. 
 
 " But it is No, all the same. I shall have papa 
 to look after. And then people are always saying 
 stupid things." 
 
 " Well, let them say what they please. They 
 already say that Foulke Dorian is devotedly fond 
 of you. I should not at all object to their making 
 the same disclosures with regard to myself. The 
 truth is not always unpleasant to hear." 
 
 She gave a slight demure nod, and touched the 
 petals of some roses which she wore at her breast, 
 and which I had sent her that afternoon. " You 
 are very kind," she said, using the conventionality 
 of phrase because it suited her coy, random 
 whim. " But papa and I have made up our minds 
 to take the Austrian trip alone." 
 
 "I wish you would answer me one plain, fair
 
 208 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 question," I said, while my heart beat a little at 
 my own audacity. 
 
 "What is it?" she asked, amiably low- voiced. 
 
 " Do you care for Foulke Dorian ? " 
 
 She set her lips together somewhat primly, but 
 in a way that was infinitely becoming. In those 
 days of brilliant success, with not a cloud on the 
 sky of her complete happiness, with admirers by 
 scores, with a worshipping father who indulged her 
 least whim, with wealth, beauty, homage, health, 
 flattery as the very air that she breathed, was it 
 strange that even she, possessing an intellect far 
 above that which one finds in the average feminine 
 recipient of ordinary compliment, should employ 
 her arts, her touches of coquetry, her. delicate 
 minauderies ? 
 
 " I care for all my fellow-creatures or try to 
 do so," she said. " Mr. Dorian is one of them." 
 
 "I congratulate you on your elastic philan 
 thropy," I returned, with bitterness. " Mine does 
 not extend so far." 
 
 Our conversation was now interrupted by one 
 or two departing guests. I took my leave soon 
 afterward, full of disquietude, perplexity, distress. 
 Foulke Dorian was not only my possible enemy 
 but my evident rival as well. Like all men in 
 love, I argued from Miss Gramercey s recent 
 evasive answer that she set his devotion above my 
 own, and that his ultimate conquest was imminent. 
 But apart from this trouble, I was assailed by
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 209 
 
 another. Dorian s ill-hid impertinence rankled 
 in my breast. What had he meant by those 
 drawled questions, those ambiguous references? 
 While I was being driven homeward I scouted as 
 absurd the idea that he could have made any 
 real search after the truth. That I had been born 
 years ago in Brussels of parents whose name was 
 Claud, could not by any possibility of search have 
 resulted in his power of denial. It surpassed 
 rational credence that he should have the shadow 
 of a fact wherewith to equip himself against me. 
 No, I convinced myself, his hatred (if hatred it 
 could be called) was due solely to his fear lest I 
 might win the woman of his choice. 
 
 Before retiring that night, I knocked as usual 
 at the door of Mrs. Dorian s sitting-room. My 
 guardian was there alone ; Casimir, who kept 
 fairly early hours, had already gone to rest. I 
 seated myself at Mrs. Dorian s side, and narrated 
 just what had passed between her nephew and 
 myself. She slowly nodded while she listened, 
 and at length, when I had finished, she said : 
 
 " His father has set him up to it. Depend upon 
 what I tell } T OU, Otho. He has inherited the old 
 grudge. Bah ! as if I would swell their millions 
 by leaving them more money ! He will probably 
 come to me, now ; if he staid away it would look 
 like open warfare, and that is what he wishes to 
 avoid. Dame, when he does come I will show 
 him what respect is due us both."
 
 210 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " I beg that you will say nothing of any slight 
 to me," I broke in. " You must indeed promise 
 me that you will keep wholly silent there. I have 
 no wish that Foulke Dorian should exult in having 
 inflicted upon me the least uneasiness. If he is 
 ever really insulting I assure you that I shall 
 resent it/ 
 
 " As }*ou please, Otho," said my guardian. " I 
 shall doubtless have my hands full, fighting my 
 own battle. If he attempts the collet mont style 
 with me, I shall very soon give him a taste of my 
 temper. It is too preposterous ! These Dorians 
 were plain weavers a few years ago. New- York 
 doesn t often draw a social line anywhere, but it 
 drew one at them, with their lack of grammar, 
 their primeval manners and their vulgar house 
 in East Broadway. How well I remember that 
 house, with shades at every window, where a swan 
 was floating on a lake at the foot of a marble 
 staircase. Ah, the great Balzac would have loved 
 those shades; he would have told you just how 
 many feathers there were in each swan. And by 
 the way, there were not any ; they were mere 
 white daubs. I sent them flying, those swans, 
 when I married Monsieur Steven s brother. All 
 the old French people welcomed me as soon as 
 I went over. There were some very charming 
 French residents in New- York at that time no 
 doubt they are there still. They knew very well 
 who the De Lilies were ; my marriage simply made
 
 TtlE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 211 
 
 the whole Dorian family ; from that time ever 
 since they have assumed airs." 
 
 " How then," I asked, " do you account for 
 Foulke having shown you the disrespect of never 
 having visited you while here ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dorian tossed upon the lamplit table at 
 her side the French novel which she had been 
 reading when I entered. " All the hard things 
 that are said about one s self manage to reach one 
 somehow," she exclaimed " by hook or by crook, 
 as the English say. I was talking with that little 
 gossip of an American, the other day, Mrs. Merri- 
 mac. You have met her you told me. Her 
 husband knows Monsieur Steven, the father of 
 Foulke. It turns out that this estimable old 
 gentleman he is now old and a confirmed invalid, 
 I believe considers that I have behaved shock 
 ingly in having adopted a boy who was no kin to 
 me. He growls about it quite eloquently among 
 a few of his intimates. He thinks it a wrong to 
 his own son, Foulke, as the money which I possess 
 originally belonged to his brother." 
 
 " This throws a new light upon Foulke s con 
 duct," I said. " But did you not tell me, 
 madame," I added, " that Mr. Steven Dorian was 
 himself very rich ? " 
 
 " He has millions. He is now one of the great 
 New- York capitalists. He was always economical, 
 to express it charitably. But of late years he has 
 become notoriously avaricious. To Foulke he
 
 212 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 allows carte blanche in everything, but to him 
 alone. He covets my fortune every sou of it 
 for his son. Ah, it is not new, this sort of disease ; 
 it is one of nature s subtle revenges. The man 
 who fails to do more than just keep body and soul 
 together is often happier than he who crowds his 
 bank-vaults with specie. All that unused gold 
 reaches out a thin yellow hand and clutches him. 
 Before he knows it he is a miser. And there is no 
 more biting kind of poverty than that. Monsieur 
 Steven, they tell me, has the malady in its most 
 raging form. If I go to America with you and 
 Casimir in September it will be something to see 
 in that dreary country. I have never met a real 
 miser ; it will be very interesting to watch Steven ; 
 it will give me one of my impressions. I think I 
 will say this to Foulke if he visits me and attempts 
 to show any of his condescending grandeur. By 
 the way, I hope he will come ; I am bristling for 
 an interview." 
 
 " That is very evident," I smiled. 
 
 On the following day Foulke Dorian did come. 
 His visit was paid in the afternoon, at the very 
 time when Ada Gramercey and I were taking our 
 ride together. I shall never forget that ride. As 
 we returned homeward through the breezy twi 
 light between the lovely bordering boughs of the 
 Bois de Boulogne, we let our horses slacken their 
 speed to a walk. A delicious turfy smell exhaled 
 from the woodland all about us, balmy residue of
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 213 
 
 a shower which had fallen in torrents that morn 
 ing and then left the sky richly blue. Seated 
 there at my side on her glossy thoroughbred, clad 
 in her dark, trim habit, with her pure, chiselled 
 face rosily tinged by recent exercise, and the abun 
 dant auburn hair peeping in one thick knot below 
 her hat rim, she made a figure irresistibly patri 
 cian. 
 
 " I should like to ride on like this forever," I 
 said. And then, because the words struck me as 
 commonplace and precisely like what every lover 
 in every novel I had read is sure to say under sim 
 ilar circumstances, I gave a most prosaic little laugh 
 and continued : " But I should like to do more, Miss 
 Gramercey something equally impossible, too." 
 
 " What more ? " she asked, stooping down to 
 pat the neck of her beautiful horse, in whose thin 
 skin, moist from his galloping, the large swollen 
 veins were visible. 
 
 " Oh, I should like to sweep Austria from the 
 face of the globe." 
 
 " How unkind to poor papa ! " 
 
 " I should dislike being unkind to your father, 
 of all people. All people but one yourself." 
 
 Her hazel eyes were full of a smiling roguery as 
 she turned them on mine. " Then you should not 
 object to my seeing those delightful mountains," 
 she said softl} r . 
 
 I leaned much closer to her; our horses necks 
 almost grazed one another ; I could have touched
 
 214 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 her hand so easily, where it lay in its drab gaunt 
 let, idly holding the reins ! 
 
 "I object to losing you that is all. I want 
 always to have you near me. I love you. You 
 are every thing on earth to me. I wish with all 
 my soul that you would let me one day call you 
 my wife." 
 
 She averted her face, but I could see the color 
 fade from it. In the peace of the sweet, damp 
 woods where we rode I heard the hoofs of the 
 horses fall solid on the yielding soil. She kept 
 silent, while my heart beat with hope and with 
 despair equally. It seemed an age until she 
 said : 
 
 " I have not thought of marriage . . yet. I 
 have often told myself that I would never marry 
 while papa lives." 
 
 " And you will not alter this resolve now ? " 
 
 She slowly shook her head. " He needs my 
 companionship more than you know." 
 
 " If you were my wife he could still possess it." 
 
 She quickened her horse s pace a little. " It is 
 growing late," she said. The words sounded 
 almost like a jeer to me. My thoughts had flown 
 to Foulke Dorian. 
 
 "Will you give me no answer but that?" I 
 appealed, in a tone more demanding and ungentle 
 than I was perhaps aware of. 
 
 Her own pride of manner came back to her in 
 an instant. " You are exacting," she said, letting
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 215 
 
 me see her full face once more, lifted rather 
 haughtily above her slender white throat. 
 
 " And you are wilfully cruel," I returned, with 
 unrepressed heat. " Either you wish to play with 
 and torment me, or you care for someone else 
 better. Which is it ? I have the right to know." 
 
 " I do not perceive your right," she said chil 
 lingly. " It exists only in your imagination, Mr. 
 Claud." 
 
 " You do care for him," I exclaimed with bitter 
 ness. " I mean Foulke Dorian. And you will 
 not tell me so I think because you are ashamed." 
 
 " Ashamed ? " she repeated, with a scornful 
 surprise. 
 
 " Yes. He is such an empty, arrogant, self-suf 
 ficient creature, totally unworthy of you in every 
 way. It is monstrous that you should love him. 
 Ah, he has gone more adroitly to work than I, 
 however ! He has deluged you with adoration for 
 months ! Flattery is what you prize, and he has 
 given you plenty of it. When I next meet him, 
 have I your permission to congratulate him ? " 
 
 She looked at me with flashing eyes and a curled 
 lip. Then she smote her horse once, sharply, and 
 made him break into a canter. I did the same 
 with mine. A few minutes later I had repented 
 of my tirade. She kept her face away from mine 
 throughout the rest of the ride, which she managed, 
 with the increasing speed of her horse, to make 
 almost as brief as possible. She reached the inner
 
 216 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 court of her own dwelling at a swift gallop. A 
 groom came forward and assisted her to alight. 
 But I wheeled my horse so that he barred her 
 progress indoors, and stooping downward I said, 
 looking her straight in the eyes : 
 
 "Forgive me do say that you forgive me! 
 My sole excuse is that I love you. Pity me and 
 be kind ! " 
 
 She stood there in the early summer twilight, 
 with her skirts gathered about her pliant figure, 
 a picture of enchanting maidenhood. 
 
 " You were very rude unwarrantably so," she 
 said. And then she made a gesture as if to pass 
 within the house. I stretched my hand down 
 ward. " But you will pardon me," I whispered. 
 She did not take my hand. A smile of irony 
 crossed her face. "Is this your mode of flat 
 tery ? " she asked. " Well, you shall see how little 
 I prize it." She at once swerved aside from me 
 and passed hurriedly into the house. 
 
 I rode away full of misery and indignation. On 
 reaching home I went up into Casimir s new 
 studio, a large, airy room, hung with some fine old 
 tapestries which we had purchased not many days 
 ago together. I found Casimir seated at his easel, 
 no longer painting but regarding his canvas by 
 the dreamy li^ht which streamed in from a broad 
 
 / o 
 
 adjacent window. He gave me the smile of wel 
 come that so few others could ever win from him, 
 and at once asked me concerning my ride, which
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 217 
 
 he knew I was to take with Ada Gramercy that 
 afternoon. 
 
 " Oh, it has made me wretched," I told him, 
 sinking into a chair at his side. Instantly his 
 hand, soft and white as a woman s, stole into mine. 
 " Otho ! " he exclaimed, "you love her I guessed 
 it a week ago. But she cannot have refused you ! " 
 
 His admiration of me was so profound and loyal 
 that such an event appeared to him incredible. 
 
 " It is almost as bad as a refusal," I said gloom 
 ily. "Perhaps it is even worse." And then I 
 told him just what had occurred, sparing myself 
 in no detail of the narration. " No doubt," I fin 
 ished, "you will assert that I am dreadfully to 
 blame." 
 
 " No," he declared, the affection that he felt for 
 me blinding him with speed to my fault. " You 
 spoke a little hastily toward the last, but you had 
 asked her to be your wife. You had paid her that 
 honor. She should have remembered it and valued 
 it. If she really cared for someone else more than 
 you " (and my friend pronounced these words as 
 though he were touching upon some remote chance) 
 " then she would have made her position plain at 
 once. To tell you that you were exacting because 
 you wanted a simple answer to so grave a question 
 peste ! it was atrocious ! To you, Otho, it was 
 insolent ! " 
 
 " Ah, Casimir," I said, " I am afraid you side 
 too warmly with your friend. You treat the case
 
 218 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 as if I had been a royal prince proposing to some 
 lady of inferior quality." 
 
 "She is a queen in her way be assured of 
 that," said Casimir, with his voice full of sym 
 pathy and disapprobation combined. "A queen 
 of coquetry and vanity, who delights in having 
 such men as you are sue to her, that she may 
 afterward boast and exult." 
 
 "No, no," I replied. "If I thought that it 
 would not be so hard to forget her. But I must 
 believe otherwise. I must believe that she has 
 treated me thus because of Foulke Dorian only. 
 He is a man of no charm, no intellect, wit, amia 
 bility. Even his adherents (and he has a few in 
 Paris whom his great reputed wealth attracts) 
 have more than once admitted this. But months 
 ago he began his suit, and has pushed it with 
 dogged perseverance ever since. It is that de 
 termined, unremitting courtship which is nearly 
 always sure of conquest in the end." 
 
 "And if she prefers such a man to you," ex 
 claimed Casimir, rising and throwing an arm 
 about my neck, " then she is not worthy of wast 
 ing another thought upon." 
 
 This truly passionate partisan made by no means 
 the best of counsellors. I do not think that just 
 then I could have had a worse than Casimir. 
 Egotism is such an easy pitfall, and when we are 
 anxious for the doleful comfort of convincing our 
 selves that we have been wronged, admiring assur-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 219 
 
 ances of it carry danger in their delivery. Already 
 Foulke Dorian had become odious to me ; his 
 reception of my overtures on the balcony had 
 certainly pushed this result, though it was fated 
 to occur after my unhappy interview with Ada 
 Gramercey. 
 
 And yet now, at this very point in my life, I 
 owe to myself the statement that I struggled 
 against nursing and brooding upon my hatred. 
 I recalled the past. How fearful is the signifi 
 cance of those words no one can here dispute. I 
 strove to set before my vision in unflinching lines 
 the fact of my proven fallibility. If the devil 
 were really in my blood, let the devil be cast out. 
 If Dorian did not accompany the Gramerceys to 
 Austria and I had been assured that he would 
 not do so why should not Casimir and I take a 
 trip to Holland or northern Germany until the 
 time came for the American voyage ? In this 
 way I could avoid all meeting with the man I 
 detested, provided he should remain in Paris 
 throughout that intervening time ; and if he 
 should depart for any other portion of Europe 
 I would thus run but slight risk of encountering 
 him. My guardian had a dinner engagement that 
 evening, and Casimir and myself dined together 
 at a favorite cafe". During our repast I made to 
 him the proposal of this plan, which had been 
 forming in my mind by a half-unconscious process. 
 He accepted it without demur.
 
 220 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 The prospect of escape gave me a dismal pleas 
 ure. It was torment to think of Ada Gramercey 
 leaving Paris with our quarrel still unhealed, but 
 I had not only the pangs of love to fight against 
 
 I must also struggle with those of a darker 
 sort. Foulke Dorian s very name had become an 
 abomination to me. I realized what that meant 
 
 or rather I trembled with a sort of dumb horror 
 at what it might mean. Leagues of social and 
 educational difference lay between me and the 
 rough, turbid-souled peasant whom I had seen 
 vilely strike my mother down and stain me with 
 her innocent blood. Still, I was his son. I had 
 already had reasons to recall it. I dared not for 
 get it. 
 
 When Mrs. Dorian returned at about eleven 
 o clock, that evening, I heard her quick step in 
 the corridor outside my own suite of apartments 
 and went to join her at once. I had previously 
 learned from one of the servants that Foulke 
 had visited her during the afternoon. 
 
 " Oh, yes, he came," she said, setting a brilliant 
 bouquet of roses that she held upon the mantel 
 and throwing off a gossamer gold-threaded shawl 
 upon the back of a chair. Then she dropped into 
 the chair and began pulling off her long, modish 
 gloves. In her festal dress of bright tints, with 
 her jewels and her corsage of flowers, and her 
 hair, that age had not yet markedly tinted, worn 
 quite elaborately, she looked like one of those
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 221 
 
 gay, fashionable, self-poised, worldly wise and 
 time-defying Frenchwomen out of the pages of 
 her own beloved Balzac. A lamp, in a rosy shade, 
 stood near her on a table draped with a rich em 
 broidered cloth. All the rest of the room was in 
 shadow save that portion where she sat. It was 
 like a picture by some deft ^retire-painter among 
 her own clever countrymen the artists whom 
 Casimir held in disgust as grossly unspiritual. 
 Mrs. Dorian did not appear at all spiritual ; she 
 was clearly the reverse, but by no means grossly. 
 And the crisp, fleet words that she now spoke, 
 broken with little scraps of low, guttural laughter, 
 did not in any degree interfere with the ensemble. 
 
 " Oh, yes, my dear Otho," she continued, tug 
 ging at her gloves, " he came, he saw, but unlike 
 Caesar, he did not conquer. Oh, I was quite pre 
 pared for him, I assure you. He was bien gante ; 
 he was bien chausse ; he was elegant-looking and 
 aristocratic in the extreme. I could scarcely real 
 ize that he was a Dorian ; I put up my glasses 
 and began searching for some vague sign of those 
 multitudinous freckles ; it seemed impossible that 
 they had all vanished. But like the swans from 
 the windows of his uncle s hideous house in East 
 Broadway, they had positively flown. It is mar- 
 vello is what one generation will do. Foulke is 
 really a gentleman. I believe that I presently 
 told him so or something rather like it." 
 
 "A somewhat belligerent way of opening the
 
 222 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 conversation," I said. " You must have received 
 him with a rattle of musketry." 
 
 " He stood fire very well. I began by asking 
 after several branches of the family which I was 
 sure he felt ashamed of. His father and uncle 
 felt ashamed of them years ago, so what might 
 not one expect from him ? I inquired concerning 
 the health of Mrs. Judkins and Mr. Bigsbee and 
 Mrs. Crump. Very unaristocratic names, are they 
 not? By no means so graceful and smooth as 
 Dorian. But they belonged to people who are 
 or were the near kindred of Foulke. He knew 
 nothing about them, however. At this I took 
 occasion to be vastly astonished. Mon Dieuf not 
 to know one s own relations ! It was horrible ! 
 Ah, his papa had doubtless brought him up in this 
 way. And poor Mrs. Crump ! To forget her 
 the sister of Monsieur Steven s own mother ! She 
 had kept a millinery-shop in Division Street ; I 
 had bought one or two bonnets there m} T self, out 
 of sheer good nature. . . And from this sort, of 
 prickly reminiscence, my dear Otho, it was an 
 easy digression to the reports which I had heard 
 concerning his papa s extraordinary avarice." 
 
 " No doubt you found it so, madame," I said, 
 smiling. " How Mr. Dorian must have enjoyed 
 his visit ! Pray, did he leave in a fury ? " 
 
 "No. It was a kind of white heat. I don t 
 believe he will ever come again, and I am sure I 
 don t care. lie deserves all that I gave him, for
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 223 
 
 ignoring my presence in Paris. And then to think 
 of their showing any resentment, he and his father, 
 as to how I may leave my own money ! " 
 
 " You referred to this ! " I exclaimed. 
 
 " Assurgment. Why not ? I had heard it. If 
 it was false he could refute it. But he did not. 
 He saw very well that I knew how true it was." 
 
 " There was nothing said regarding myself?" I 
 inquired. 
 
 "I mentioned your name once or twice, quite 
 carelessly. And I noticed that each time I did so 
 his lips tightened and his eyes sent me a slant, 
 odd look from under their drooped lids. He has 
 such extraordinary eyelids, by the way. They 
 gave me quite an impression ; they remind me of 
 window shades that have become loose on their 
 rollers. And do you not think his smile remark 
 ably acid and his eyes remarkably dull and cold, 
 Otho?" 
 
 " Remarkably," I said.
 
 224 TlIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 X. 
 
 PARIS had now grown exceedingly hot. There 
 had been a faint rumor of cholera, too, that } r ear, 
 which combined with the heat in sending droves 
 of people out of town. I had hoped against hope 
 for some message from Ada Gramercey before she 
 left with her father. None came, and I at length 
 learned that they had taken their departure. 
 Soon afterward I began my preparations for start 
 ing with Casimir. Mrs. Dorian did not at all 
 object to remaining behind. She declared that 
 even when deserted Paris was agreeable to her 
 and that she needed repose in order to collect her 
 energies for the unpalatable American journey. 
 
 Once or twice in the club of which I had become 
 a member I saw Foulke Dorian. We exchanged, 
 on these occasions, a cool and distant nod. His 
 presence there brought me some comfort, at least. 
 He had not followed the Gramerceys to Austria, and 
 very possibly he had been forbidden from doing so. 
 
 But I was fated soon to meet him in a very 
 different way. It had never occurred to me that 
 Casimir s existence and change of fortune might 
 both have reached his knowledge. I had given
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 225 
 
 no thought to the question of whether these facts, 
 once disclosed, would interest him or not. Mrs. 
 Dorian had openly told her friends that Casimir 
 and I were now her co-heirs ; perhaps she may 
 even have mentioned the subject to Foulke when 
 he had visited her. The studio of my friend, 
 although translated to the same house in which 
 we all three dwelt, was frequently the resort of a 
 few fellow-artists, and in a manner separated from 
 our lower apartments. The concierge had indeed 
 grown to regard it as a special abode by itself, and 
 those whom its young proprietor received there 
 or those whom he did not had become a matter of 
 entirely his own concern. He was still by no 
 means above selling his pictures, and the altered 
 conditions of his life had attracted purchasers who 
 had never before paid heed to his work, but who 
 now regarded it with new eyes, as gilded by the 
 halo of an assured prosperity. The moment we 
 rid genius of the necessity to strive, it is surpris 
 ing how swift a turn takes place in the tide of 
 appreciation. 
 
 One afternoon, having returned from a ride, I 
 went up into the studio, expecting to find Casimir 
 busy there. But he was absent. I had dismounted 
 hastily in the court below ; I still held my riding- 
 whip, and stood carelessly striking it against one 
 limb and gazing out of the great north window, 
 which commanded a fine view of certain buildings 
 and localities, for a longer time than I was per-
 
 226 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 haps aware. Any coup d ceil of Paris always fas 
 cinated me ; it reminded me of a sleeping tigress ; 
 you never know at what moment she may not 
 wake and stretch out a murderous claw. 
 
 Suddenly a knock at the door roused me. I 
 quickly crossed the room, opened the door, and 
 found myself face to face with Foulke Dorian. 
 
 My surprise was intense. I saw him start, and 
 then control himself. He advanced across the 
 threshold ; he held in his hand something that 
 looked like a letter, and which I afterward per 
 ceived to be unsealed. His embarrassment was at 
 once evident as he began to address me in con 
 fused, almost haphazard words. 
 
 "I I beg pardon. I wished to see I had 
 been told I have a note of introduction to 
 yes, to Monsieur Casimir Laprade." 
 
 " This is his studio," I said. " But he is not 
 here at present." 
 
 " Ah . . yes . . thanks," was the reply. For 
 a moment he seemed about to retire from the 
 chamber. Then he put up an eye-glass and 
 glanced about him at the quaint, decorative sur 
 roundings. 
 
 " A very pretty room," he soon proceeded, his 
 customary drawl returning to him with renewed 
 self-possession. He now directed his gaze upon 
 myself, letting the glass drop on its thin silken 
 cord. " Do you think that Monsieur Laprade will 
 be away all the afternoon ? "
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 227 
 
 " Most probably not," I answered. " Do you 
 care to wait until his return ? " I wheeled a soft- 
 rolling cushioned chair two or three paces toward 
 him as I spoke. It cost me something to show 
 this courtesy, but I performed it with steeled 
 nerves. 
 
 " You re very good," he said. He looked 
 down into the velvety recess of the chair, but he 
 did not seat himself. "I could call again, of 
 course. What are the gentleman s usual hours?" 
 
 " He is generally here during the morning," I 
 said. "But he often paints until evening as 
 well." 
 
 "Ah . . yes." He had begun to stare about 
 the room again, repeating the operation with the 
 eye-glass and letting it drop when he re-addressed 
 me. " The young man is a decided genius, I hear. 
 Riviere gave me my note of introduction. Do you 
 know Riviere ? " 
 
 "Not well. He is a friend of Casimir s, I 
 believe." I purposely called my own friend by 
 his first name. 
 
 "He speaks with enthusiasm of Monsiur La- 
 prade," said Foulke Dorian. The tone was now 
 just tinged, and no more, with a sarcastic incre 
 dulity. " It gave me a curiosity I mean a . . er 
 . . wish to see some of his work. It is for sale, 
 I hear?" 
 
 The rising inflection on that last word was con 
 descension itself. I bowed quietly. " Monsieur
 
 228 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Laprade sells his pictures now and then," I said, 
 " when the mood pleases him." 
 
 Those dull eyes fixed themselves upon my own, 
 now, with a sleepy steadiness. " Ah . . quite so. 
 He is not compelled, then, to paint for . . er . . 
 subsistence ? " 
 
 " By no means," I replied. " His aunt (who is 
 also yours, Mr. Dorian) has the warmest admira 
 tion for his talents." 
 
 " Indeed ! You mean that she supports him ? " 
 
 " I mean that she has adopted him as her son," 
 I said, biting my lip. 
 
 "Yes? Truly? She is a very benevolent per 
 son, that aunt of mine, is she not? " 
 
 " She is one of the best and noblest women in 
 the world," I said, with a decision and force of 
 speech that widely differed from the loitering 
 drawl I had just heard. 
 
 He walked toward a canvas that hung not far 
 from where he had stood and peered closely at it, 
 as a near-sighted observer will do. After a little 
 pause he said, still scanning the picture : " You 
 speak from experience, of course." 
 
 " I do. From a longer and deeper experience in 
 Mrs. Dorian s goodness than Monsieur Laprade s." 
 
 He slowly turned and faced me again. There 
 was an indescribable chill, a stealthy, insidious hos 
 tility, about this simple movement. It somehow 
 prepared me for some bit of sly, masked assault. 
 
 " I am sure it is very good of you not to feel
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 229 
 
 jealous, Mr. Claud," he said, "at the arrival of 
 this new claimant for my aunt s favor." 
 
 He was busying himself with a button of his 
 neat-fitting gloves as I responded : " Casimir La- 
 prade and I are devoted friends, and I could not 
 have more affection for him if he were my own 
 brother." 
 
 "Really? That is very fortunate." 
 
 "I do not see that it is especially fortunate," 
 I returned, with curt speed, "except in the sense 
 that disinterested friendship is always a precious 
 thing." 
 
 He gave a low laugh. " I . . er . . I was 
 not taking so elevated a view. The affection, it 
 occurred to me, might be fortunate in other ways. 
 If Mrs. Dorian were to die, for instance. There 
 would, if I may so term it, be a peaceful division 
 of the spoils." 
 
 I felt myself flush as I replied : " Your allusion 
 cannot be misunderstood ; it is too uncivilly mani 
 fest." 
 
 He made a dainty, deprecating gesture. " Un 
 civilly, Mr. Claud ? " he murmured. 
 
 " Precisely that." 
 
 "But I am never willingly uncivil." He said 
 this with an air of offended hauteur, but with a 
 touch of satirical compassion as well. 
 
 "If the rudeness were unintentional," I re 
 turned, "I find it none the less unpleasant. We 
 usually do so, in these cases."
 
 230 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 He lifted both hands, smiling. " Ah, you are 
 not to be appeased." Then he gave his silver- 
 tipped walking-stick a jaunty little ruminative 
 twirl, watching it as he did so. " Frankly, I 
 don t think I will wait for Monsieur Laprade, as 
 I see that you are bent upon being quarrelsome. 
 Are you not a little disposed in that direction? 
 It seems to me that I have heard so." His smile 
 was very bright and keen as he spoke these words ; 
 it made his eyes look duller. 
 
 "I don t know what you have heard," I said, 
 involuntarily taking a step nearer to him. "I 
 must request you to explain your meaning." 
 
 "Ah . . you bring me to account, eh? You 
 are so fond of bringing people to account." The 
 sneer was now perfectly undisguised. 
 
 I spoke very calmly. "Innuendoes are objec 
 tionable to me," I said. "That is all. And if 
 you choose to call it bringing you to account, I 
 do so." 
 
 He moved in his easy, well-bred way toward the 
 door. "I really have no more to say. I must 
 wish you good-day, Mr. Claud." 
 
 "Pardon me," I broke in, still tranquil. "But 
 you have referred to reports concerning myself, 
 and you have done this with a contemptuous 
 accent and bearing which I cannot permit to 
 pass unnoticed." 
 
 He turned short, facing me again, and throw 
 ing back his head a little. His anger was now
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 231 
 
 evident, though I had as yet shown none what 
 ever. 
 
 "Oh, if you want facts," he retorted, with a 
 harsh note in his decorous, modulated drawl, " I 
 can remind you of your having been rude to Miss 
 Gramercey." 
 
 You mention Miss Gramercey s name. Did 
 she tell you that I was rude to her?" 
 
 He twirled his stick again. " Her manner in 
 referring to you told me so." 
 
 I went straight up to his side till we stood 
 scarcely three inches apart. No doubt I had 
 grown pale, and I think my next words were 
 somewhat hoarsely spoken. " I demand to know," 
 I said, "whether Miss Gramercey told you what 
 took place during our last meeting. " 
 
 He receded from me. "And I refuse to re 
 ply," he said, with fastidious disgust and a good 
 deal of smothered wrath as well. " However, 
 even if she told me nothing I could draw my 
 inferences." 
 
 " What inferences ? " 
 
 " That you quarrelled with her. You and she 
 have not met since you rode out together on 
 Monday last. You made no adieus to her. The 
 whole matter is quite apparent. She has been 
 very commode and nice to you. Of course you 
 would have gone there if the former terms ex 
 isted. I have no more to say. Good-afternoon." 
 
 He bowed slightly and slipped past me. As
 
 232 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 his hand touched the knob of the closed door I 
 said, with louder voice than I had yet used : 
 
 " Since you are so quick to read the moods and 
 feelings of this lady, it is too bad that you were 
 forbidden from accompanying her. Your services 
 as an interpreter would have been invaluable." 
 
 I threw into this speech a scathing irony. Self- 
 control for the moment left me. But instantly 
 afterward I regretted what I had said, so fixed 
 was my purpose not to give anger the least head 
 way. 
 
 His hand trembled a little as it grasped the door 
 knob. Something like a speck of flame seemed 
 to prick through the dulness of each eye. He 
 appeared irresolute whether to hide his rage by an 
 immediate exit or to remain and give some open 
 proof of it. At length, with a flutter of the lips 
 that betrayed agitation more than his high-pitched, 
 querulous voice did, he chose the latter course. - 
 
 "You are so like my aunt. I am constantly 
 seeing new points of resemblance between your 
 self and her." 
 
 Not the least hint of his true meaning had yet 
 entered my mind. " It is an honor to resemble 
 her," I replied. "You compliment me, Mr. Do 
 rian, against your will." 
 
 " An honor ! " he exclaimed. He lifted one 
 hand to his mouth as though to repress an ex 
 plosion of mocking laughter which I could not 
 but hear and see. " Excuse me, but the honor
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 233 
 
 of such a resemblance might be held somewhat 
 questionable." 
 
 I still did not dream of his true meaning. I 
 thought that he was merely casting a slur upon 
 Mrs. Dorian, whom it was supposable that he 
 should dislike after the reproofs which she had 
 lately administered. 
 
 " You may hold your aunt in fine scorn," I said, 
 " but to me she is very dear. I love her devot 
 edly, and I will not permit her to be lightly 
 spoken of." 
 
 " Yes . . ah . . yes . . I understand. You 
 regard her as a son. A son . . yes. It is very 
 clear to me, naturally." 
 
 For the first time a suspicion of what he meant 
 flashed upon me. And yet even as it did so I 
 sought to drive it back. The thing could not be. 
 His nature was perhaps a mean one, and we were 
 both in love with the same woman. He did not 
 like me perhaps he detested me. But a jibe that 
 would tip itself with such acrid venom! No, 
 impossible! I was wretchedly in error; I had 
 misinterpreted misjudged imagined. 
 
 " Mrs. Dorian has been a second mother to me," 
 I said, measuring each word. I do not think there 
 was any threat in my tones, or any sign of what 
 thought had just swept through my brain. 
 
 "A second mother?" he repeated. "You for 
 get how much }*ou and she look alike. Is it quite 
 certain, my very lofty and assuming friend, that
 
 234 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 we are not blood relations? No doubt you were 
 born in Belgium, after all, and were kept there 
 discreetly until that eccentric French lady, my 
 aunt, thought it safe to have you appear in New- 
 York. Eccentric French ladies sometimes commit 
 imprudences, you know, before marriage as well 
 as after. I don t believe my late uncle could ever 
 have been induced to acknowledge you as his son, 
 and after his death Mrs. Dorian would of course 
 have found it awkward to account for you except 
 as she did. I should say, for my part, that the 
 whole affair had been most cleverly managed and 
 that" . . . 
 
 Until now I think he had preserved the current 
 of this atrocious insult because my pallor and my 
 look of horror may have seemed like the conster 
 nation of discovery and affright. The effect of 
 these stabbing sentences had been to make me 
 for a brief while speechless, even nerveless. But 
 suddenly a great rush of passion dispelled all that. 
 I sprang toward him, and in an instant our sepa 
 rate strengths were pitted against each other to 
 the full. And mine, trained and nurtured by 
 years of healthful exercise, far exceeded his. I 
 whirled him about, and forced him into the chair 
 lately proffered him. My hand, in a tense clutch, 
 was fixed upon his collar. I cannot be sure just 
 how long my own fury seemed to mj self uncon 
 trollable. His first gasp for breath calmed it, 
 placing it within the bounds of that resentment
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 235 
 
 which seeks to chastise rather than destroy. I 
 released him, but as he feebly tottered to his feet 
 my eye fell upon the riding- whip which I had cast 
 only a brief time since on a near table. I seized 
 it, and darting toward him as he stood dazed and 
 disarrayed before me, I rained upon his head and 
 face a series of merciless cutting blows. He tried 
 to grapple with me while I did this, but I held 
 him at arm s length with my disengaged hand. 
 Then, the ignominy of my punishment complete, I 
 flung him from me with violent force. He fell in a 
 half supine posture against the tufted chair, but as I 
 threw away the whip he again struggled to his feet. 
 His face was livid, and the lash-strokes already 
 showed their marks upon it in reddish welts. 
 
 I folded my arms and looked at him. " Take 
 your hat and cane and go," I commanded. "Go 
 at once. You have my answer to your base lie. 
 If you speak a word I will do worse than I have 
 done already." 
 
 He obeyed me. It did not then seem strange 
 that he should offer no further resistance. After 
 ward I wondered at it as a show of singular cow 
 ardice. But not then. A sense of power used in 
 a supremely just cause made his submission the 
 one necessary sequence. It must have been the 
 worst kind of physical fear that impelled him. 
 He looked a most pitiable and abject figure as he 
 staggered off, crestfallen and certainly tingling 
 with pain.
 
 236 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I dropped into a chair when he was gone, breath 
 ing heavily and feeling the blood still surge 
 through every vein. Composure gradually came 
 to me, and with it that reflective change which is 
 like the blue of sky after the dwindled tempest. 
 But I could not accuse myself. I had punished 
 no personal wrong. The outrage uttered against 
 Mrs. Dorian s good name might have fired many 
 a more sluggish defender. Owing her the inesti 
 mable debt which I did owe, could I tamely have 
 borne this monstrous aspersion. 
 
 The light had grown dim in the studio when 
 Casimir, with his buoyant step, entered it. I rose 
 and stretched forth both hands toward him as he 
 advanced. He gave an alarmed start. The late, 
 scant sunshine of the chamber revealed to him 
 how pale and perturbed was my face. 
 
 " Otho," he said, anxiously, taking my hand, 
 " what has happened ? " 
 
 "Don t ask me," I exclaimed. ... It was a 
 mere form of speech. There was inexpressible 
 relief in having him question me, and in the 
 thought that I could unburden to him my swell 
 ing heart. I dropped his hands and flung both 
 arms about his neck. And then, leaning my head 
 upon his shoulder, I sobbed like a child. 
 
 A little later I dashed away my tears, in shame 
 of them, as men will nearly always do. But Casi 
 mir, thrilled and pierced by sympathy no less than 
 astonishment, now clung to one of my hands with
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 237 
 
 both his own, imploring that I would tell him the 
 cause of my grief. His love came forth in those 
 moments with a new beauty and pathos. I doubt 
 if I can call it by its rightful name without declar 
 ing it a love as deep as any that man has ever felt 
 for man. 
 
 The studio was filled with dusk before our talk 
 ended. I told Casimir everything which concerned 
 Foulke Dorian s conduct and my reception of it. 
 He shuddered and clinched his hands when I came 
 to the deadly insult paid my aunt. 
 
 " The viper ! " he cried. " If you had killed 
 him, Otho, I would not have blamed you ! " 
 
 "Hush," I said. The word kill hurt me; I 
 recalled the first blind, mad sensation when I made 
 my attack. " There is more to tell you, Casimir," 
 I slowly went on. " It concerns this resemblance 
 between Mrs. Dorian and myself, which you have 
 no doubt observed." 
 
 Casimir s eyes widened. "You are really re 
 lated ? " he asked. 
 
 " No." . . I was glad that the studio had become 
 so dim. I did not want him to see my face as I 
 went through the full history of my own life. . . 
 He listened without a word for a long time, while 
 I spoke what it now seemed best that I should no 
 longer hide. The warmth and vigor of his friend 
 ship, disclosed anew at so trying an hour, had filled 
 me with confidential longing and robbed my nar 
 ration of all reluctant shame. I omitted no detail.
 
 238 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Before I had ended he knew my past life in its 
 entirety. And my final words were these : 
 
 "Now, Casimir, I have told you all. But it 
 seems to me that this should be only the begin 
 ning." 
 
 " The beginning, Otho ? " he said, in a voice rich 
 with tenderness and feeling. "I do not under 
 stand." 
 
 " I mean, Casimir, that others should know the 
 truth. Yes, the whole world. Am I wrong? 
 After what I have done, will Foulke Dorian scru 
 ple to publish his suspicions, tainting with their 
 foul falsehood the honor of her who has been 
 my priceless friend? And if his slander gains 
 belief, as slander so often does, how can I curse 
 myself enough for not having forestalled its 
 malice?" 
 
 I felt the pressure of my companion s hand in 
 the deepened dusk. "Accept my advice, Otho, 
 if you always reject it hereafter. That your 
 father died upon the scaffold is no real disgrace to 
 you God knows it is not ! But society, which is 
 always cruel enough to hold it as one, must not 
 be given this easy means of hurling at you an 
 unmerited contempt. And as for Foulke Dorian s 
 future course, trust me when I assure you that 
 self-interest, if not cowardice, will prompt him to 
 shield his aunt s name. He has no shadow of proof 
 that what he said was true. He does not really 
 hold it true. He tried to sting you with it because
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 239 
 
 he hates you, and he hates you because he is jealous 
 of you." 
 
 " Jealous ? " I murmured. My thoughts flew to 
 my father, as they always did when I heard that 
 word. And what wonder ? 
 
 " Yes," pursued Casimir. " How often we say 
 of men s quarrels: ^ 11 y a une femme Id-dessous" 1 ! 
 And we are nearly always right. He will say 
 nothing; he will do nothing at least, not for the 
 present. He may take some mean revenge in the 
 future. You have, in that case, only to be on 
 your guard. A snake coils and glides, but he dies 
 easily ; one stout stroke will kill him." 
 
 "This is the land of duels," I said. "I expect 
 a challenge. If I receive one " 
 
 " From him ? " broke in Casimir, with a scornful 
 laugh. "From a whipped dog like that? No, 
 indeed ! " 
 
 " But if a challenge comes," I said, " I will meet 
 him. And you, Casimir "... 
 
 " Will stand handsomely by you. Never fear. 
 But you are wrong. He will cure the marks of 
 your horsewhip with something safer than new 
 blood letting rest sure of that." 
 
 Casimir was right. We waited several days in 
 Paris, delaying our intended journey, to give 
 Foulke Dorian the opportunity of communicating 
 with me if so disposed. But he made no sign. 
 For my own part, I loathed duelling, and held it 
 as one of the darkest social ills. But I could not
 
 240 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 help, in the present case, a desire to afford redress 
 where I had dealt such deep humiliation, however 
 wantonly incited it had been. 
 
 In the next week Casimir and I left Paris. Mrs. 
 Dorian knew nothing of what had passed. I ac 
 cepted my friend s counsel; I preserved absolute 
 silence in all ways. Our trip was a delightful one. 
 We spent nearly a month in the old Dutch and 
 Flemish towns, besides catching a farewell glimpse 
 of my beloved Switzerland. In early September 
 we returned and found Mrs. Dorian resigned yet 
 melancholy over the projected American journey. 
 
 I made inquiries concerning the Gramerceys in 
 Paris, but could learn nothing. By the middle of 
 September we all three took passage for New- York.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 241 
 
 XL 
 
 A QUARTER, of a century or so has made striking 
 changes in New-York. Dwellers in the city itself 
 do not recognize how radical these are. It is not 
 only that bold avenues have pushed their way up 
 along the island, lined on either hand with solid 
 and stately buildings, and easily prophesying how 
 Central Park will one day cease to be a suburban 
 contradiction of its name, and lie, like Hyde Park 
 in London, midway of a huge, busy, compact me 
 tropolis. The mere growth of the city is evident 
 enough, as also its partial gain in architectural 
 grace after the long undisputed rule of severe 
 ugliness. Houses are frequently reared, at pres 
 ent, without violating every known law of beauty, 
 or sometimes they gleam like happy incidents of 
 true art amid surroundings that accentuate the 
 hard prose of brick-laying and stone-cutting. In 
 this way we all know that New- York has at last 
 waked from her slothful indifference. It has al 
 ready become commonplace to give her the credit 
 of such reformation. We drive upon her broad 
 boulevards, sweeping miles out into the country, 
 and though they are now lonely enough, fancy
 
 242 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 easily borders them with noble structures. We 
 think what palaces may one day loom above the 
 glittering Hudson, on that imperial thoroughfare 
 which is now the Riverside. We mark here and 
 there in the really grand park a statue exquisite 
 and perfect as that of Shakespeare at the southern 
 end of the Mall, and people the whole forest-like 
 expanse with busts and statues yet unhewn from 
 their marble or uncast from their bronze. The 
 sense of promise in all this is overpowering. The 
 city has grown so mightily in less than three short 
 decades! since the days when I watched the 
 black mass of rock from my bedroom window, 
 and seemed to hear not far away the hum of that 
 slowly creeping civilization which would soon 
 shatter and crush it ! We feel on the threshold 
 of an immense creation, as our eyes roam over the 
 vast area on which a magnificent city shall one 
 day stand. But a strange depression waits upon 
 this contemplation. We shall long ago have been 
 dust when all is finished and splendid. The wea 
 riest of us have a thrill that we cannot at first 
 explain. Then it resolves itself into this : We 
 should like to come back and see it in all its 
 grandeur when it has had a past, a history, a 
 record of far-reaching traditions. The field for 
 speculation is immeasurable ; the optimist may 
 dream of civic ideals made tangible, the pessimist 
 may see luxury throned on ruined republican 
 ism. But there is mortification, almost pain, in
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 243 
 
 the thought that we shall have moved only among 
 crude and feeble beginnings. Perhaps our de 
 scendants will wonder that we ever cared for 
 Rome, Paris, Vienna, when this superb Manhattan 
 Island shall contain its lordly repositories of paint 
 ing and sculpture, its treasure-stored museums, its 
 countless monuments of majesty and dignity ! 
 
 But the changes now most appreciable to one 
 who looks below the surface of our metropolitan 
 progression are those that possess a purely social 
 import. The modes of living have been altered in 
 more ways than we at first realize. Foreign cus 
 toms have crept into New York at a stealthy but 
 sure pace. Twenty-five years ago a good many 
 people dined at two o clock and supped simply at 
 half-past six, who have to-day quite forgotten the 
 indulgence of any such primitive habits. The 
 dining-room was not seldom in the basement por 
 tion of the abode, and food was cooked and served 
 with homely skill and in few courses. The upper 
 dining-room, adjacent to the drawing-rooms (then 
 so commonly called " parlors ") had only begun to 
 assert its claim, like the butler and footman who 
 superseded the widely accepted " waitress." Late 
 balls, with a profusion of viands, were rare. Very 
 few people, even of the wealthiest class, kept more 
 than one private carriage, and many kept none at 
 all. Extravagant and sumptuous costumes among 
 women were by no means usual. Neither old nor 
 young gentlemen of any class whatever habitually
 
 244 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 donned evening attire, and "the dress-coat and 
 white cravat " were as often seen at a morning 
 wedding as at an entertainment prolonged until 
 midnight. The fashions of England and France 
 were already aped by a certain throng, but its 
 number was not large and its influence was little 
 felt. To-day it would be hard to find a boarding- 
 house in the extreme East or West portions of 
 town where a six-o clock dinner is not held de 
 rigeur ; and tea, when not drank daintily at five 
 o clock, is nearly sure to be an accompaniment 
 of breakfast. As for costly equipages, these, like 
 butlers and footmen, are now a legion among us, 
 and too frequently the funds that secure them are 
 squeezed out of meagre incomes, or robbed from 
 the over-trustful grocer and butcher in adjoining 
 streets. The clerk in a Sixth Avenue dry-goods 
 store who anoints his locks and takes his sweet 
 heart to a dance where the tickets of admission 
 are not more than a dollar each, will hire the con 
 ventional swallow-tail coat for one night if he be 
 not already fortunate enough to own this gar 
 ment ; and the lady whom he thus escorts will 
 spend her last savings to air a costume of becom 
 ing richness. New York has not a vestige left 
 of her old provincial moderation. She has gone 
 the way of all great cities, though there was 
 incentive for trust in a wiser and calmer growth. 
 It has been of little avail that the vast Atlantic 
 rolls between her and monarchical cities. From
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 245 
 
 the pretence and vainglory witnessed throughout 
 every various grade of her society to the grossness 
 of her political corruptions, she offers hardly a 
 point of divergence. Not even her worst vices 
 have a touch of originality ; they are all imported 
 smuggled through, as one might say, free of 
 duty, to cheat that revenue of decency which the 
 thrift and honor of her patriots and founders once 
 firmly established. 
 
 When Mrs. Dorian, Casimir and myself reached 
 New- York, the transition period had more than 
 passed its primary decisive stage. Of course I 
 now saw the social side of the great city for the 
 first time. Even if I had been brought into con 
 tact with it in my childhood I would have been 
 too young for any basis of comparison to aid my 
 present survey. And now it all struck me as very 
 interesting, novel and extraordinary. 
 
 " One must be terribly respectable, here, or one 
 is nobody," declared Mrs. Dorian, soon after our 
 arrival. We were then at an elegant and com 
 modious hotel, and were looking about for more 
 permanent and domestic quarters. " My poor old 
 house in Lafayette Place will no longer serve, I 
 fear. It is too far down town, as they say here. 
 How the city grows ! It is strange that anything 
 should grow so much and improve so little." 
 
 " I think it has improved greatly," I said. "It 
 is not the same city at all." And now I turned 
 to Casimir, who was present. "But Casimir is by
 
 246 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 far the best judge. He sees it for the first time, 
 with unprejudiced yet artistic eyes." 
 
 " You wish to have my frank opinion ? " asked 
 Casimir, with a twinkle in the gray eyes to which 
 I had just alluded. Thus far he had been rather 
 oddly reticent concerning his new place of abode. 
 He heaved a great comic sigh, and shrugged his 
 shoulders. "It is ugly . . so ugly!" he mur 
 mured. " I have no words to tell how ugly I 
 think it. I see rows and rows of houses without 
 one least little beautifying touch. It is to me like 
 a city built by people whose religion is to worship 
 grimness and awkwardness, and who must ignore 
 all beauty on pain of death." 
 
 " Delightful ! " cried Mrs. Dorian, clapping her 
 hands. " Casimir, like a true poet, has said just 
 what was waiting to be said. I never walk out 
 into the streets here but I wonder at the folly of 
 people for paying the rents they do pay. It is 
 like putting a premium upon hideousness." 
 
 My guardian owned a number of the houses 
 to which she so disdainfully referred, and she at 
 length resolved to take up her residence in one of 
 these. It was situated on Fifth Avenue, and after 
 a speedy but thorough renovation it made for us a 
 most agreeable home. Her other property I soon 
 found in a deplorable state. Her American agents 
 had done their duty in a slovenly way, and with 
 regard to neglect of the offices assigned and 
 accepted by them, her lawyers had shown clear
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 247 
 
 curability. I was inexperienced in all the dis- 
 entanglements which were destined to follow, and 
 yet as neither my nerve nor my judgment was 
 lacking, several weeks of close application gave 
 me the clew of the labyrinth. The task set for 
 me by the faulty stewardship of others presented 
 sharp difficulty. More than once my investiga 
 tions verged upon a discovery of something worse 
 than indolent management. Hours of daily labor 
 were not alone necessary, but the employment of 
 capable assistance as well. I set tip my office, 
 like any ordinary man of business, and immersed 
 myself in documents like the busiest of lawyers. 
 The responsibility of re-arranging affairs which 
 had become wretchedly confused was by no means 
 a light one. Mrs. Dorian s perfect trust in my 
 capacity for the work, however, acted with stim 
 ulating effect; it put me on my mettle, and 
 doubled my self-reliance. Rapid insight and the 
 habit of precise thought proved an invaluable help. 
 What it was requisite to learn I acquired with 
 speed and surety, although months elapsed before 
 I had attained any thing like complete mastery 
 over the details connected with this large and 
 actually imperilled estate. 
 
 But the absorption needful for my new occupa 
 tion was of solid mental value. It kept my mind 
 from brooding over a love which I now reflected 
 on with despair. This love was still deeply rooted 
 in my heart, inalienable from life itself. I would
 
 248 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 have given worlds for the old freedom, but I knew 
 that it lay forever beyond reach. My guardian 
 easily obtained for me an entre& into what were 
 held as the best circles. I saw many refined, 
 beautiful and attractive women ; but I had also 
 seen many while in Paris and elsewhere. None 
 were like her ; her gesture, her glance, her voice, 
 her serenity, her delicate wit no, not even her 
 peculiar alluring coldness. Just as she had been 
 when I last beheld her, she reigned now as my 
 realized and incarnate ideal. I felt only a melan 
 choly pleasure in talking with other women, since 
 those who reminded me of her did so at their own 
 cost, and those who greatly differed from her 
 wasted upon me their brightest smiles. 
 
 Still, society here amused me. My old uncon 
 scious art of pleasing people made them seek me 
 on all sides, and shower invitations upon me with 
 lavish hands. I sometimes marvelled to myself 
 that I should be so popular. It seemed strange 
 enough that the shallow trick of saying the right 
 thing at the proper moment, of wearing a gay 
 smile or giving a tender look, should achieve such 
 easy conquest. I took no pride in my success, 
 and won it without an effort. All tin s has so 
 boastful a ring that I hate to record it. And 
 yet what is there to plume one s self upon in the 
 possession of a talent resultant from no virtue or 
 excellence? I was young, strikingly handsome, 
 highly educated, and credited with the heirship
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 249 
 
 to great wealth. But everything was not said 
 in that. My ability to attract and charm was 
 spontaneous, unsought, and as much born in me 
 as the curve of an eyebrow or the tint of a com 
 plexion. And its careless exercise often hid a 
 dreary heartache. 
 
 " New-York society agreeably disappoints me," 
 I said to Mrs. Dorian one day. "These fashion 
 able persons among whom you have introduced 
 me are very much like those I met abroad. It is 
 true that they are imitative and unoriginal, and 
 that their assumptions have no place in a country 
 like America. Still, I find little vulgarity or 
 rather much less than the conditions of their 
 existing at all would have prepared one to expect. 
 What in Europe is transmitted hereditary usage 
 here becomes unwarrantably snobbery ; and yet 
 it is all manifested with a surprising tact and 
 cleverness. There is a good deal for the philoso 
 pher to lament over, but there is also a good deal 
 for the unthinking participant to enjoy." 
 
 " You echo my own opinions," exclaimed Mrs. 
 Dorian, who had chosen a new mood, a new re 
 ceptivity of impressions, and who had long ago, 
 of course, ceased to surprise me by the slightest 
 novelty of enthusiasm. "My clear Otho, I am 
 in sackcloth and ashes. New- York has altered 
 beyond my most sanguine fancy. Of course she 
 has become imitative ; but when I last knew her 
 she had not the faintest faculty even of imitation.
 
 250 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Her beau monde was a doleful stupidity in every 
 sense. A few of her Dutch families were banded 
 together in a ridiculous little self-admiring clique. 
 Her entertainments were the soul of dulness and 
 insipidity, without the least air, grace, style. Now 
 I find her quite changed. Her Assemblies at Del- 
 monico s are really brilliant and enjoyable, with 
 their cotillon, their bevies of fresh young damsels, 
 their floral adornments, their tables of banquet. 
 And such a multitude of new faces ! So many 
 names that one never heard before ! What an 
 amazing place it is, when people can absolutely 
 make a solid, distinguished position here in a few 
 short years ! My old friend, Mrs. Stuy vesant 
 Trinitysteeple, laughingly confided to me, the 
 other day, that a certain Mrs. Johnston Smithson, 
 was in great doubt concerning myself. She wanted 
 to know whether I had ever really been anybody 
 in New- York; she had met me somewhere, and 
 liked me, and wished to send me a card for her 
 reception, but she was not sure whether it was 
 just safe or no. Mrs. Trinitysteeple, who is very 
 free of speech, declares that she made bold to 
 reply : My dear Mrs. Johnston Smithson, about 
 six years ago a great many similar questions were 
 asked concerning yourself. Yet a much longer 
 time ago than that, Mrs. Dorian was not only my 
 intimate friend but received in the most exclusive 
 set ; so you need not feel at all anxious on the sub 
 ject of her right to drink tea with you. What a
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 251 
 
 crushing reply, was it not? And how the dear 
 dead Balzac would have exulted in describing 
 such nouveaux riches as the Sraithsons ! But I 
 enjoy this modern element of change excessively. 
 Formerly there were so few pushers and strug- 
 glers ; it was all one prim monotony ; scarcely a 
 single person was trying, as now, to buy his or 
 her way past the select limits. Now there is color, 
 vivacity, a rivalry of extravagance, a contest of 
 castes. Presently we shall have a New-York nov 
 elist ; he will discover something to write about, 
 and consequently he will exist. They tell me that 
 Newport in the summer has become very delight 
 ful ; the aspirants, with their ambitions and their 
 dollars, are building beautiful villas there and 
 making it a second theatre for their efforts to be 
 received among the old cottagers. It is a charm 
 ing little city by the sea ; I was there years ago, I 
 remember, and liked its delicious air. Shall we 
 go there next summer? Casimir would delight 
 in it, I fancy. He could be as abhorrent of the 
 fashionables as he is now, and yet fit up a studio 
 looking straight out upon the broad ocean." 
 
 " I think I should prefer a quieter place, ma- 
 dame," was my answer. "All this whirl and glitter 
 is well enough here in town, but it often fatigues 
 me . . and then a little time for rest and read 
 ing and sensible repose would not be amiss in the 
 warmer months. . . Still, let Casimir and you 
 decide."
 
 252 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Not a vestige of news concerning the Gramer- 
 ceys had yet reached me, and it was now nearly 
 the beginning of March. I had met many to 
 whom Ada Gramercey ill her merry-makings of 
 the previous year had been admiringly known. 
 But none of these, as it chanced, could give me 
 tidings of her present whereabouts. She was still 
 abroad with her father ; I learned this, and I 
 learned no more. By some unhappy accident none 
 of the friends of her own sex with whom she would 
 have been likely to correspond entered within my 
 own radius of acquaintanceship. This one was in 
 mourning ; that one had gone to Washington for 
 the winter ; or still another had herself crossed to 
 Europe. But I was certain of a single disturbing 
 and bitter fact: Foulke Dorian also remained 
 abroad. To associate his absence with that of 
 the Gramerceys had of course become inevitable. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian had meanwhile paid a visit upon 
 her brother-in-law, which she described to me with 
 repelling realism. 
 
 "I am sure, my dear Otho, that I must have 
 audibly shuddered when I saw him. He still lives 
 in the old Washington Square house where his 
 wife died. I was conducted up-stairs to a large 
 front room, quite bare and grim in its appoint 
 ments. There he lay, on a lounge in one corner. 
 He was wrapped in a faded dressing-gown. His 
 body had apparently shrunk to nothing ; his face 
 was bloodless and withered, and the hand which
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 253 
 
 he extended to me was like the yellow claw of a 
 bird. The balls of his eyes appeared to float about 
 in their murky spaces ; they were like the eyes of 
 a blind man, they were so filmed and glassy, and 
 yet you somehow knew that they saw. He asked 
 me to sit near him, and with a voice that was 
 precisely in his old nasal key. 
 
 " Guess you think I look pretty bad, he said 
 to me. Most people do. They don t tell me so, 
 but I can see it in their faces. See it in yours, 
 Louise. 
 
 " * You certainly do not look well, Steven, I 
 answered. 
 
 " No more do you look young. S pose you 
 think you ain t aged, but you have. Never you 
 mind me. Good for twenty dead men yet. No 
 mistake. Lucky you came when you did. Super 
 intend all my business. Mornings usually en 
 gaged. Plenty o life in me. Mean to make a 
 few more dollars before I go. Here he laughed 
 a husky laugh that ended in a spasm of coughing, 
 while he rubbed his skinny hands together as 
 though they were numb and he wanted to put heat 
 in them by the friction. It seemed like mockery, 
 Otho, but I expressed a hope that he would soon 
 recover, and asked who were his plrysicians. 
 
 " Doctors? he cried, with another wheezy 
 cough. Gave em up long ago. All humbugs. 
 Besides, too expensive. Can t afford any. Doctor 
 myself.
 
 254 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " We talked on for some time, and I found that 
 nearly everything he said dealt with either one of 
 two questions avarice or personality. He has 
 always secretly disliked me, and he now made his 
 illness and feebleness an excuse for all sorts of 
 venomous allusions. On the other hand, I per 
 ceived that he was living in the most pinched 
 state of economy. Coal was so dear that he would 
 not pay the price of it, and used coke as a sleepy, 
 crumbled fire, not far off, assured me. The 
 charges for gas had become extortionate, and he 
 burned candles altogether. He talked of the 
 whole outside world as though it were in a huge 
 conspiracy to defraud him. And finally, after 
 having referred to my increased figure, my sallow 
 complexion and my generally deteriorated looks 
 with enough brazen impudence to have convulsed 
 me with anger if anger at so pitiable a mummy 
 had not been quite ridiculous, he suddenly re 
 membered you, Otho, and inquired sneeringly 
 about your health. I told him you were very 
 well, had grown wonderfully handsome, had taken 
 high collegiate honors in Ziirich, and were now 
 both a comfort and a pride to your second mother. 
 But I have never seen such malevolence as he then 
 exhibited. It was like the prolonged snarl of a 
 sick animal. He threw aside all the double mean 
 ings of sarcasm ; he became snappishly insolent, 
 and with a kind of grisly candor. His avarice 
 and his personality had now blended their forces.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 255 
 
 I had no business to leave my money off among 
 Tom, Dick and Harry. I ought to be ashamed of 
 myself, and I very well knew it. Foulke had 
 written him from Paris that I had made you one 
 of my heirs,- and a French ragamuffin of an artist 
 the other. It was scandalous that my husband s 
 fortune should not be left in the family or at 
 least a good half of it. Foulke would know how 
 to save it, invest it, put it to good uses. Foulke 
 was not only a Dorian, but a splendid fellow be 
 sides. I was doing an outrageous thing, and he 
 felt it to be a shame that the law could not reach 
 me. And while he said all this, Otho, he lifted his 
 shrivelled shape from the lounge and shook at 
 me one of those yellow hands that had already 
 amassed millions." 
 
 " Such behavior," I said to Mrs. Dorian, as she 
 paused, " has a flavor of insanity. It can only be 
 condoned on that ground, truly ! " 
 
 " Ah," exclaimed my guardian, " it was horrible, 
 and yet it was superb. That lean, cadaverous, 
 repulsive old man, in his faded dressing-gown and 
 with one foot in the grave, produced upon me an 
 impression which I positively treasure. He is no 
 longer a man ; he is a passion, an appetite, a 
 greed." 
 
 " He is still a father," I said. 
 
 " Only because his son is a part of him. It is 
 the egotism of paternity ; it is in itself a kind of 
 avarice. He believes that Foulke will continue
 
 256 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 the clutch upon those millions when his own yellow 
 hand is unnerved by death ; that is all. He is 
 farouche, effrayant, but he is keenly interesting. 
 He should be painted or written about. I should 
 like Casimir to see him. Casimir, I am sure, could 
 make something grand and terrible out of him." . . 
 
 The winter had nearly come to a close when 
 I asked Mrs. Dorian if it would be possible for 
 her to obtain some definite tidings regarding the 
 Gramerceys. She looked at me with a surprise 
 that soon gave place to sympathetic pity. She 
 understood me, and promised so readily to use 
 every means in her power that I regretted not 
 having sooner engaged her kindly services. " But, 
 Otho," she presently asked, "have you seen no 
 face while here that could make you forget Col 
 onel Gramercey s daughter? Are you hopelessly 
 committed to that one memory, mon cher ? " 
 
 " Hopelessly," I answered. There was a break 
 in my voice as I spoke the single word. And 
 then I told her as much as a man cares to tell 
 on so delicate a subject, though strangely enough 
 it was one which I now often discussed with Cas 
 imir. But in many ways Casimir had become 
 almost my second self. Not even the devoted 
 friend to whom I then appealed could rank her 
 influence and intimacy beside his. I had grown 
 to lean upon his love like a staff, and to expect 
 his loyalty and allegiance as if they were the very 
 warmth and light of the sunshine.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 257 
 
 In another fortnight Mrs. Dorian brought me 
 news that was like a sudden grievous blow. She 
 had sought out a relative of Colonel Gramercey s 
 and learned that the recent calamitous failure of 
 an old and widely trusted New- York banking-house 
 had wrought serious disaster to his fortune. It 
 might be absolute ruin ; there was no telling as yet. 
 
 The affairs of D & Co. were still in a state 
 
 of utter turmoil. Their name had stood among 
 the very highest and their credit was deemed 
 unassailable. Others besides Colonel Gramercey 
 were known to have suffered by their unforeseen 
 collapse, but it was believed that he, of all who 
 trusted them, had sustained the severest losses. 
 
 " No doubt they will now soon return," I said 
 to Mrs. Dorian. And then I added, with a touch 
 of bitterness hard to restrain : " Perhaps this 
 event will force her marriage with your nephew ; 
 we may hear, in a little while, that she is coming 
 back as Mrs. Foulke Dorian." 
 
 " Otho," answered my guardian, looking at me 
 very intently, " will such an event break your 
 heart, mon ami?" 
 
 I laughed. " Hearts do not break so easily/ 
 I replied. " What Frenchman was it who said 
 that the heart is a muscle, and consequently 
 tough ? " 
 
 By the middle of March I learned that they 
 were home again. And then, but a few days 
 afterward, tidings reached me that the Colonel
 
 258 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 had been stricken down with paralysis, and that 
 his life was despaired of. The story ran that 
 
 being in unsound health when the failure of D 
 
 & Co. occurred, the effects of this intelligence had 
 finally prostrated him. 
 
 I at once found out his dwelling and presented 
 myself there in person. It was a little after eight 
 in the evening. The servant to whom I gave 
 my card civilly assured me that Miss Gramercey 
 could see no one whatever. Her father was pro 
 nounced better, but still she rarely quitted his 
 chamber. I left my card and departed. 
 
 Another fortnight passed. Early May had now 
 set in, and with some of those raw, rainy gusts 
 which make her praises for mildness most ill- 
 suited to the American calendar. The buds broke 
 forth in Union or Madison Squares below skies of 
 tender color and in breezes of elastic freshness. 
 Spring, that gives its deeper thrill to so many old 
 sorrows, brought to my longing a stronger throb. 
 It was fortunate that no imperative task now 
 claimed me, for the constant recollection that she 
 was near and in sad trouble scarcely ever passed 
 from my thoughts. I had written her a score of 
 letters and destroj ed them all without sending. 
 My moods of humility were fitful, and rapidly 
 followed by those of accusation and reproach. I 
 think Casimir s incessant reminders that I had 
 been unfairly dealt with vitalized the latter. Even 
 amid her distress, he argued, she might have seized
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 259 
 
 a moment to acknowledge my visit, if only by a 
 single line. Still, I have no doubt that these coun- 
 sellings from one who held homage as my rightful 
 due on every side would not have prevailed with 
 me but for the unceasing goad and hurt of what 
 I believed to be Foulke Dorian s continued suit. 
 Not more than a week after the arrival of the 
 French steamer which had brought Colonel Gram- 
 ercey and his daughter to these shores, I had seen 
 Dorian s name announced in a newspaper as among 
 the passengers of an English steamer just landed. 
 One evening we unexpectedly and most awkwardly 
 met. I went to a certain reception, given at what 
 would here be called the fag end of the season, and 
 reached the house somewhat late. As I entered 
 the dressing-room for gentlemen (with its lounge, 
 bedstead, chairs and floor thickly overspread by 
 bundled coats) I perceived that a male figure stood 
 before one of the mirrors. His full-length view 
 was reflected before me as I crossed the threshold ; 
 he was languidly pulling on his gloves ; he looked 
 thoroughly the man of fashion, the elegant idler, 
 and it occurred to me while I drew closer that he 
 might be an acquaintance whom I had met during 
 the winter gayeties. Then, in a few seconds after, 
 I discerned his face ; the mirror showed it me ; it 
 was that of Foulke Dorian. 
 
 I had time to repress all signs of discomfort 
 before he turned. He presently did turn, and at 
 this I met his eye with cool apparent indifference,
 
 260 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 while removing my wraps. I saw him start, stand 
 as if dismayed for an instant, and then walk away. 
 Soon afterward he passed out into the hall. 
 
 Later I saw him again in the thronged drawing- 
 rooms below stairs. How he must loathe me, I 
 thought as I detected his dull gaze more than once 
 slipping covertly from my face. 4 It must be the 
 sort of hate that only cowards like him can feel. 
 If she had seen me lay that lash over his smooth, 
 decorous face, I wonder whether she would have 
 no scorn for him to-day. 
 
 Of course a man reared as he had been, with 
 the custom of command among servants, so-called 
 inferiors, with the indulgence and precedence 
 easily secured by liberal wealth, must have writhed 
 in spirit under the disgrace of stripes like those I 
 had given him. It could not be otherwise; and 
 yet did not his non-resistance of the crushing dis 
 grace affirm a temperament unmanly, despicable, 
 with blood that was ichor, and a craven, dastard 
 heart? I might be prepared for some mean re 
 venge from him a blow in the dark, a stab in 
 the back. Not only the way he had taken my 
 punishment but the insult by which he had called 
 it forth should both forewarn me. 
 
 "You spoke of living quietly this summer, 
 Otho," said Mrs. Dorian to me, a few da} r s later. 
 "Shall the affairs of the estate be sufficiently 
 settled for you to leave New- York all through the 
 coming season ? "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 261 
 
 " I fear not," was ray reply. " I shall have to 
 visit town at least once or twice each week." 
 
 My guardian appeared to muse. Her face be 
 trayed no sign of the subtle little plan that she 
 was hiding from me, nor did the faintest suspicion 
 of it for a long time afterward enter my brain. 
 
 " You said something the other day," she con 
 tinued, "about having. put Rockside in the hands 
 of an agent for rent this summer." 
 
 " Yes," I returned, absently. 
 
 " My late husband and I spent many months 
 there. It is a charmingly situated place ; its lawn 
 slopes directly down to the waters of the Sound ; 
 and then it is only an hour by train from town." 
 
 " Yes . . . Rockside," I murmured, recollect 
 ing. I had had so many matters of rent to 
 concern myself with, latterly, that it required an 
 effort of memory to recall just what were the 
 conditions dependent upon the purchase or lease 
 of this special property. " Ah, true," I went on, 
 brightening. " It is about six miles from New 
 Rochelle ; it is fifteen acres in extent ; the house is 
 large and roomy, with a splendid water view." 
 
 " Admirable ! " declared Mrs. Dorian, laughing. 
 "You describe it like a house-agent. Well, go 
 on. How many bedrooms are there, and what is 
 the state of the drainage ? " 
 
 " I can t say," was my answer, " but I am sure 
 of one thing: Rockside is terribly out of repair. 
 A succession of yearly tenants has not improved
 
 262 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 it. Money must be spent if we expect to rent it 
 again." 
 
 " I ve a caprice to go and see it, Otho. If we 
 are pleased, why not spend the money for our own 
 comfort there? From now until June there will 
 almost be time to build another house. I ve an 
 idea that we could render it thoroughly charming. 
 Let us make the journey and decide." 
 
 I acquiesced, and we made the journey. Casi- 
 mir went with us. We found an old-fashioned 
 mansion, standing on a slight eminence and over 
 looking a magnificent sweep of water. Some 
 stately elm trees grew near the huge white Cor 
 inthian pillars of the front piazza. Lower down 
 were cedars and hickories in profusion, and then 
 a strand of rugged, jagged rocks, which the reces 
 sion of the tide showed to be densely hung at their 
 bases with clusters of tawny sea-weed. Nothing 
 could be lovelier than the whole romantic and- 
 delightful situation. All this New- York and Con 
 necticut shore of the great Sound is indeed incom 
 parable for beauty. Nature here meets the vast 
 inland sea with a pastoral tenderness of union. 
 For miles and miles the lichened rocks are fringed 
 with foliage, and the waves, sobbing among un 
 counted coves, reaches and crannies, often glass 
 the foliage that bends above them. On a summer 
 day the immense sweep of waters will gleam blue 
 as turquoise, and hundreds of white sails float by 
 in the dreamy marine distance. Dimly aloof can
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 263 
 
 be sighted the low sand-hills of the Long Island 
 coast, far less fair on a nearer view, but delicate 
 and visionary when the pale, drowsy clouds hang 
 brooding above it. 
 
 Casimir was in ecstasies over the place. "Here 
 I shall be inspired to paint as never before ! " he 
 exclaimed. " Ah, let us come here by all means. 
 It will be a divine relief after the horrors of that 
 shocking city ! " 
 
 I shook my head ruefully and pointed toward 
 the house, through whose dingy and uninviting 
 chambers we had lately wandered. " Marvels of 
 alteration and beautifying might be made yonder," 
 I said. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian laughed. " We will accomplish the 
 marvels, then," she announced, and with an air of 
 determination which struck me as sudden, but 
 which I afterward too clearly explained. " Alad 
 din s palace was built in a night, but we have a 
 number of days in which to decorate and adorn 
 ours. Casimir, being an artist, shall choose all 
 the designs and colors. You, Otho, shall attend 
 to the practical improvements. We shall be as 
 extravagant as you please, my friends, so long as 
 we transform with the wands of real enchanters." 
 
 Wealth like hers could of course produce nearly 
 everything but the impossible, and May had not 
 ended before Rockside had been converted into a 
 most beautiful home. Mrs. Dorian remained in 
 town until all had been finished, insisting that
 
 264 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 neither Casimir nor myself should tell her any 
 thing of what our repeated absences and consul 
 tations had brought about until all was in perfect 
 readiness for her reception. Then, at last, one 
 pleasant day in early summer, she left the city and 
 took up her abode in the newly appointed dwell 
 ing. She expressed glowing satisfaction as we led 
 her from room to room. She declared that she 
 had not for months received so exhilarating a 
 series of impressions. Casimir had been in his 
 element with the wall-paperings and tapestries 
 and general upholstery of the prim, grave old 
 house, and I had spared no detail of purely com 
 fortable renovation. Gardeners had been put to 
 work with telling effect upon the lawns, drives 
 and paths ; the remodelled stables were stocked 
 with horses and carriages ; servants and grooms 
 had been engaged in adequate number, and past 
 doubt the whole result of labor so amply aided by 
 capital was one full of dignity, ease and elegance. 
 
 " Do you know," I said to Mrs. Dorian, as we 
 stood in the soft twilight of the piazza on the first 
 evening after her arrival, " that more than once I 
 have been a little perplexed by your willingness 
 to come here at all ? " 
 
 She slightly lifted her brows. " And pray why, 
 Otho ? " she asked. 
 
 " Well," I replied, lowering my voice, " if you 
 will permit me to say so, madame, I should not 
 suppose your association with Rockside had been
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 265 
 
 precisely of the pleasantest, since, as you have 
 often told me, your married life was by no means 
 a contented one." 
 
 " Ah, very true," she returned, with that curi 
 ous sadness of hers which was always promising 
 to flash out into some bizarre drollery. "Those 
 rocks down there by the water could tell you how 
 I languished. The late Mr. Dorian made the 
 place a perfect prison. He was so economical 
 that he would not let me have a saddle-horse, and 
 so prosaic that he thought my wanting to have a 
 little summer-house built on the shore and covered 
 over with vines a piece of insane sentimentalism. 
 I was bored to such an unspeakable degree in 
 those days that I used to wonder if fate were not 
 arranging that I should become the heroine of 
 some picturesque infidelity. I seemed to be living 
 through the prologue of an excessively improper 
 novel a French one of course. But it all ended 
 there. It always did end there." 
 
 " I am sure that it always did." 
 
 " Yes." She gave one of her low, odd laughs. 
 " My tempter always continued to be imaginary. 
 If he had not, I might have entered upon my 
 widowhood with a .surprisingly bad conscience." 
 
 41 You could never encanailler yourself except 
 in fancy," I said. " But I hope we have driven 
 away all dreary memories, Casimir and I. I 
 agree with you that the place is now really very 
 pretty."
 
 266 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLA UD. 
 
 "Surpassingly so." She laid one hand on my 
 shoulder and looked at me searchingly in the 
 mellow dusk. "I hope, Otho, that you will be 
 happy here." 
 
 " I shall certainly try to be." 
 
 "That is a very unsatisfactory answer. We 
 are never happy when we try to be ; the trying 
 usually makes us only more miserable." 
 
 " I am not miserable," I said. 
 
 She walked away from me and paused at the 
 edge of the piazza, looking to right and left across 
 the vague expanses of lawn, where the boughs of 
 dark trees had begun to vibrate with the salty, 
 fluting night-wind. "It was always -a rather 
 lonely spot," she said, as though following out 
 some new and silent train of meditation. " We 
 had no neighbors in the old days ; have we any 
 now?" 
 
 I joined her, and pointed toward a somewha t 
 thick grove of trees perhaps a hundred yards 
 away. " Our domain ends there, as you probably 
 know. One day as Casimir and I were walking 
 along the rocks at low tide we found ourselves 
 in front of a good-sized cottage, built with a 
 broad veranda and having the air of being occu 
 pied by refined people. It is no doubt of com 
 paratively recent date." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian s face was turned from mine, if I 
 mistake not, as she carelessly said : " Yes, the shore 
 on either side of us used to be quite uninhabited
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 267 
 
 for a mile or more." Then after a slight pause 
 she added : " Did you find out who lived in the 
 cottage ? " 
 
 "No. I asked one of the men that day. He 
 knew the real owner s name, but said that some 
 tenants had rented it of him for the summer." 
 
 The following morning was brilliant and breezy, 
 and we all three felt the effects of its glow and 
 freshness. The tide would not be risen till mid 
 day, and Mrs. Dorian, several hours before that 
 time, went with Casimir and myself for a stroll along 
 the rocks. Casimir was in high spirits ; he spoke 
 of the sea, the air, the varying tints everywhere. 
 
 "I shall paint your portrait here better than 
 I could ever have done it in that disagreeable 
 city," he said to me, with an arm about my neck. 
 "Here is an opportunity, dear Otho. I want it 
 to be a masterpiece, you know, and with so much 
 lovely nature looking over my shoulder while I 
 work, I am nearly sure not to go wrong." 
 
 We presently came to that part of the shore 
 directly opposite the neighboring cottage, which 
 was a sort of Queen Anne structure, with one or 
 two marble urns gleaming about its doorway and 
 a general surrounding of culture and nicety. The 
 trees grew so thickly near the shore that we had 
 to look upward through vistas of leafage for a 
 full view of the house and its environment. 
 
 "There is a lady walking on the lawn," said 
 Casimir.
 
 268 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Yes," said Mrs. Dorian. " And she appears 
 young and graceful." 
 
 In another instant I had seized Mrs. Dorian s 
 hand. " Good Heavens," I murmured, " she is 
 Ada Gramercey." 
 
 My guardian turned her face to mine. Her 
 cheeks were flushed and her eyes were twinkling. 
 " My dear boy," she exclaimed, " 3-011 know now 
 why I wanted to come to Rockside. She is there 
 with her father. Don t stare at me so stupidly. 
 You are as pale as a ghost, and look as if you 
 were going to faint." 
 
 I drew a long, tremulous breath. "I never 
 felt more like fainting in my life," I answered, 
 stammeringly. " You you should not have done 
 this, madame. You you should have told me 
 before." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian pressed my hand. "Forgive me," 
 she said. " It was my secret my surprise. I 
 hope you will not be angry." 
 
 "I am not angry," I answered slowly. . . "But 
 how strange it all seems ! It is like a dream. 
 But still a very happy dream." . . I could say 
 no more. The tears blinded and choked me.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 269 
 
 XII. 
 
 WE went back to our own home a little later. 
 As we did so Mrs. Dorian spoke. " Otho," she 
 said, "I learned several weeks ago that they 
 were there that they had rented the Lamberts 
 cottage. Old Mr. Lambert told me one day at 
 an afternoon reception. He knew that my own 
 property adjoined his, and made certain inquiries 
 about Rockside. And then my plan was formed. 
 I was a little afraid that if I let you know the 
 truth your pride or your sense of correct usage 
 would forbid the whole affair. So I waited until 
 you should make the discovery for yourself, which 
 you have just done." 
 
 "I fear that it will prove a discovery full of 
 torment," I said. " We are near each other and 
 yet still very far apart." 
 
 "Perhaps you are wrong, Otho. I mean to 
 pay Ada a visit very soon no doubt to-morrow. 
 I owe her such a civility, surely ; I knew her 
 mother quite well. It may be that she has heard 
 we are here. If so she will be prepared for me, 
 as it were. If not I shall be such a surprise to 
 her that she will probably reveal some pleasant 
 truth which I caii impart to you afterward."
 
 270 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I sighed and shook my head. " You speak as 
 if you were certain that she cares for me." 
 
 " Certain ? " echoed my guardian. " I haven t 
 a shadow of doubt ! You can t mean that you 
 really believe she prefers that supercilious, arti 
 ficial Foulke Dorian to my brilliant Otho ? " 
 
 Mrs. Dorian paid her intended visit on the mor 
 row. It is needless to state with what anxiety 
 I awaited her return. I met her carriage (she had 
 chosen to drive) at one of the lawn-gates, and on 
 seeing me she alighted from it, walking toward 
 the house at my side. 
 
 "Well," she at once began, "I must confess to 
 you that I have had a most unsatisfactory time. 
 Ada received me with a very gracious and amiable 
 manner. She is a little paler and thinner than 
 she used to be. The Colonel was taking his after 
 noon nap ; he is still feeble and requires much 
 rest, but she has strong hopes of his one day be 
 coming almost well. She spoke of him a great 
 deal and described some of the details of his 
 illness; she is certainly a paragon of daughters. 
 She had heard, about a fortnight ago, that we 
 would occupy Rockside this summer." 
 
 " We ? " I said interrogatively. 
 
 "I suppose she must have taken the we for 
 granted. But she did not put it that way, Otho ; 
 I am bound to be truthful. Her you was com 
 prehensive, inclusive at least I so construed it. 
 I behaved with a splendid hypocrisy. I unblush-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 271 
 
 ingly told her that we had heard only yesterday 
 who our neighbors were. She never changed color 
 by a shade during all our interview ; her self-pos 
 session was admirable, but too admirable. When 
 I said : Otho .and I caught a glimpse of you on 
 the lawn the first morning after our arrival, she 
 preserved a composure that was delicious ; she 
 has not been a belle in the fashionable world for 
 nothing. But I admit she disarmed me. My 
 usual audacity did not stand me in good stead at 
 all ; the only pointed remark that I had the cour 
 age to risk was an expression of your very kindly 
 wishes and of your intention to offer them in 
 person at some future time." 
 
 " That was indeed a stroke of boldness," I said, 
 with melancholy consternation in my tones. "And 
 how did she receive it?" 
 
 " With a little non-committal smile and an in 
 clination of the head that was serenity itself. . . . 
 But don t see everything en moir, dear Otho, 
 merely because she was so equable and placid. 
 For my part I would simply go there and have it 
 out with her as the Americans say. Her fault 
 hitherto has been coldness, but the danger to her 
 father has softened her; one could perceive this 
 while she spoke of him. Of course I did not 
 mention their loss of fortune, so I have no proof 
 of how she bears that trouble. With philosophy, I 
 should imagine, however. She has the look, the 
 mien, of one who would bear it that way. . . .
 
 272 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 And now let me give you a bit of counsel, mon 
 ami. Be calm, persistent and brave. Such a 
 woman as she is requires more than lukewarm 
 wooing. Let her see that your love has mastered 
 your spirit all women like to see that; but never 
 let your tenderness take the tint of weakness ; I 
 am sure that would never please her. Don t be 
 afraid to tell her that you think her an angel or a 
 goddess ; the darker she frowns the more she will 
 secretty enjoy it. What she will not enjoy will be 
 professions a demi-mot an unwillingness to show 
 her just how hard she can make your heart beat 
 and just how much happiness it is in her power to 
 bestow upon you." . . 
 
 I recoiled from the possible pain which an open 
 visit might bring me, but for several mornings I 
 left Casimir painting in his studio and stole forth, 
 with a half guilty feeling of trespass, to the rocks 
 whence I had recently gained sight of her. But 
 disappointment repeatedly followed these anxious 
 little excursions. Sometimes an hour of watching 
 through the boughs of the mingled cedars and 
 hickories would not even bring me the meagre 
 comfort of a fleeting face at one of the windows. 
 Again, I would have some such transient view, 
 but it might have been that of a servant s face, 
 so quickly the vision passed. One morning, how 
 ever, fate was suddenly kinder. Dressed in white 
 and holding a book in her hand, Ada appeared on 
 the veranda, pausing there for a moment and then
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 273 
 
 slowly descending to the lawn. In a little while 
 I saw that she was advancing straight toward the 
 water. I felt my heart leap in my breast ; then I 
 became quite tranquil again. She came nearer, 
 and I retired into the shade of some branches, 
 where I could observe and yet miss immediate 
 observation. Five or six rough-hewn steps led to 
 the flat surface of a large rock, and just as her foot 
 had cleared the last of these, I moved from my 
 ambush. 
 
 She gave a great start on seeing me. I at once 
 raised my hat and came close to her side. I put 
 out my hand then, saying as quietly as I could 
 manage, " Good morning." 
 
 She extended her hand in return, repeating my 
 own words. It seemed to me that she had never 
 looked so beautiful as now, with a wave of rosy 
 color flying across her face under the cool white 
 muslin of her sun-hat. 
 
 I knew that she would hold any attempted sub 
 terfuge as trivial, and I had not the least desire to 
 offer one. " I saw you coming across the lawn," 
 I said, retaining her hand until she gently with 
 drew it, " and so I waited, in the hope that you 
 might care to meet me." 
 
 Her ordinary repose had nearly if not quite come 
 back to her. " It is many months since we have 
 met," she said, somehow avoiding my direct look, 
 though not with actual evidence that she was doing 
 so. " Did you come from the village ? "
 
 274 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " From the village ? " I asked, grateful for the 
 chance of a temporary topic far away from that 
 tumult of feeling which her "voice and presence 
 roused. " Can one reach the village by this 
 route ? " 
 
 " Oh, yes." She pointed in a direction just 
 opposite to that which I had taken. " The shore 
 curves inward a few yards farther on. There is 
 a little path leading through the trees, by which 
 one can take a short cut to the village. It is very 
 convenient in pleasant weather ; it is such a pretty 
 walk." 
 
 " Were you going by that way ? " 
 
 "I? Oh, no. I rarely leave papa for any 
 length of time. And during the past day or two 
 he has not been as well as formerly." 
 
 "I see. You merely came down to the rocks 
 for a breath of this delightful air. I am very 
 sorry to hear your father has had a relapse. Mrs. 
 Dorian brought good news of him." 
 
 " It is not a relapse," she said, quickly, as 
 though the word jarred upon her. " I am thankful 
 that it need not be called by so serious a name. 
 He has fits of severe weakness ; his strength comes 
 and goes that is all." 
 
 " And you have nursed him so devotedly ! " I 
 said. My voice betrayed me for an instant, and 
 I saw her glance soften and then droop. But I 
 had no wish to stir any depths to-day ; what 
 I longed for was the old familiarity of intercourse,
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 275 
 
 that normal pulse-beat of talk which has no dis 
 concerting pause or flutter. I wanted to push the 
 past out of sight and keep it thus. I should have 
 liked to make a new past a sweet idyllic back 
 ground for the interchange of future vows 
 through the summer days that were still unborn ! 
 And yet all this desire was so futile I That which 
 we had both been and done and suffered could 
 not be thrust away. It lived in the very light of 
 her eyes, in the sound of her speech. More, it 
 had become part of the rustling leaves and break 
 ing waves ; the lips of the wind whispered it to 
 me and the blue of the heaven confirmed it. 
 
 " Your father was always so dear to you," I 
 went on. " There are few daughters who would 
 have shown your unfailing tenderness." 
 
 " They do not deserve to be called daughters 
 who would not show it," she answered, with a 
 shocked surprise. " Poor papa had not only ill 
 ness to contend with ; there was that other trouble. 
 It came so hard to him. You know what I mean, 
 of course." 
 
 " Yes. His reverses of fortune. . . And did you 
 mind them much less ? " 
 
 " I ? " She made a sad little gesture with one 
 uplifted hand. " No doubt I would have cared 
 a great deal more but for his dreadful seizure. 
 When the news first came, it was a blow to me. 
 Why not? One feels at such times as if the 
 ground were failing under one s feet. I had never
 
 276 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 thought about money at all ; it was like the air I 
 breathed our income was thousands more than 
 we needed." She smiled now as she looked at me. 
 "I used to give away in careless charities each 
 year more than I now live upon. But it is a great 
 mercy that something has been saved. They tell 
 us we shall never positively want; there is conso 
 lation in that thought." 
 
 We spoke together for some time about the 
 failure which had been so disastrous to others 
 besides her father and herself. I found that she 
 had been penetrated by the liveliest sympathy for 
 these others. " Some, I hear," she told me, " have 
 been made quite penniless people who had but 
 little, and had placed it all with those trusted 
 bankers. I turn bitter when I reflect upon the 
 wrong they must endure." 
 
 " And you are not bitter about your own loss ? " 
 I asked. 
 
 " No ; there is always a feeling of gratitude that 
 the very worst did not happen. While papa con 
 stantly required me, I should have been called 
 upon to work, as it were, with bound hands. And 
 even if I had been free, this necessity would have 
 distressed me terribly. I can t account for the 
 distaste I have to earn my own living. No doubt 
 I could have got a place as governess in some 
 family; my knowledge of languages and music 
 might not have rendered it difficult. But the 
 demand would have stung, almost crushed me.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 277 
 
 I know this repulsion is wrong, wicked. But I 
 can t control it. I begin to think it some deep 
 hereditary fault. Am I not right?" 
 
 " Pride does not die easily," I said. 
 
 " It is pride," she answered, plucking a bit of 
 green fringe from a cedar at her side, and slowly 
 nodding her head. " I would give so much to 
 conquer it, but I cannot. I have often heard that 
 sorrow humbles ; but it has not humbled me. I 
 think it has brought me nearer to the big, strug 
 gling world of humanity, and that is all. Nearer, 
 I mean, in spirit but not in real equality of fellow 
 ship. I still hold myself aloof, as one not to be 
 counted with the general herd. I m not afraid 
 to call it by its proper name arrogance, if you 
 please. But it is there, and it will not perish." 
 
 " Do not regard it as arrogance," I said softly. 
 " Learn to look upon it as a wholesome self-esteem, 
 and then it will cease to disturb you." 
 
 She smiled, but her eyes were melancholy. " No, 
 I can t deceive myself in that way. I have out 
 grown the love of flattery which I once had if 
 I ever really had it, as you told me." 
 
 " Oh, forget and forgive those foolish words of 
 mine," I suddenly pleaded. " You don t know 
 how I have repented them since they were 
 spoken." 
 
 She met my look unhesitatingly, then. "I have 
 forgiven them long ago," she said, in her sweetest 
 tones. Her face saddened instantly as she con-
 
 278 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 tinued : "All that sort of pride has quite departed 
 from me." 
 
 "And and you admit then," I stammered, 
 "that I I had some cause for for losing con 
 trol there in Paris that afternoon ? " 
 
 " There is always a cause for everything," she 
 replied, turning as if to re-ascend the stone steps. 
 " But so many of us will not make allowances ; 
 we simply hug our wounds and feel cruel toward 
 those who have given them." 
 
 " And were you really wounded ? " 
 
 " I was not . . flattered." 
 
 " And you felt cruel toward me ? " 
 
 " I did at first . . but afterward I " 
 
 " Ah," I broke in with fervor, " afterward your 
 troubles came, and they softened you ! But I 
 have been fearing otherwise for months. I feared 
 so more than ever when you refused to see me in 
 New-York." 
 
 " Papa was very ill then. I could see no one." 
 As she thus spoke she had begun to ascend the 
 steps. I had followed her several paces uncon 
 sciously, and she was looking at me now across 
 one shoulder. 
 
 " You are going ? " I faltered. 
 
 " Yes. I must go." Her voice was very kindly, 
 but it was nothing more. She put out her hand, 
 which I took. " Good morning. . Mrs. Dorian 
 said, I think, that you meant to come and see 
 papa."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 279 
 
 " Yes," I answered. " What time will be the 
 best?" 
 
 " At about four in the afternoon he is usually 
 able to go down stairs for a little while. But you 
 must expect to find him greatly changed." 
 
 " May I come this afternoon ? " 
 
 "No. I fear he will not be well enough to 
 receive you." 
 
 " To-morrow, then ? " 
 
 " Yes, to-morrow." 
 
 She went lightly up the steps without another 
 word. 
 
 I wondered, through the rest of that day, 
 whether Mrs. Dorian or Casimir noticed the joy 
 which filled my heart and seemed, so far as 1 
 could tell, to dance in my gaze and ripple through 
 my talk. But if either had made a discovery of 
 it I received from them no sign that this was 
 true. From then till to-morrow at four spread 
 outward like a small tract of eternity itself. 
 
 When this appointed hour came I took the path 
 along the rocks and went up to the Gramerceys 
 lawn by the same steps which she whom I loved 
 had ascended on leaving me. Ada met me on the 
 veranda before I had time to ring the bell. 
 
 "Papa is quite bright this afternoon," she said, 
 "and is waiting to see you in the sitting-room." 
 Then, lowering her voice, she proceeded : " Try 
 not to show any surprise. You will hardly recog 
 nize him at first."
 
 280 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I needed her warning. The Colonel was seated 
 in an arm-chair as I entered the small, tastefully 
 appointed chamber. He did not attempt to rise 
 when I advanced toward him. His smile, full of 
 a rich, dignified cordiality, was the same as of old ; 
 all else had changed with him. His form had 
 shrunken ; his face was almost deadly pale ; his 
 eyes, ringed with gloom, were dim and faded ; 
 all his martial stateliness of the past had vanished, 
 and there was infinite pathos in the tremor of the 
 waxen, transparent hand which he gave me. I 
 was deeply touched ; I scarcely knew what to say ; 
 and when he himself spoke, his hollow, hesitating 
 tones were the last pitiful proof of his complete 
 physical ruin. And yet his mind seemed clear 
 enough, and with the evidence of its soundness 
 I could also trace the well-remembered courtesy, 
 the infallible signs of gentlemanly high breeding. 
 He made no reference to his own ills ; he appeared 
 to prefer that these should not be touched upon. 
 In his wreck and downfall he was still able to 
 perform the part of host, and caused me to feel 
 this by a sort of impalpable emphasis. The grand 
 manner was still preserved in him ; you realized 
 that only death could destroy it, and death could 
 surely not be far distant. Now and then his 
 daughter would help him in the shaping or ending 
 of a phrase, but always with that consummate tact 
 which had doubtless been lovingly studied in 
 hours of vigil and ministration. She had taught
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 281 
 
 him to accept the aid of her brisker speech with 
 out letting it remind him of his own need ; she had 
 become to him like the staff whose handle so 
 perfectly fits our grasp that we lean there forgetful 
 of how much we owe its support. She had in a 
 way placed her youth and her fresh young vigor 
 between himself and too keen a recognition of his 
 shattered state. It was very charming to note this 
 half-conscious dependence and this capable, alert 
 response. She grew if possible dearer to me as I 
 watched how duteously, promptly, unerringly she 
 performed her more than filial part. 
 
 " She gets her pride from him," I said to myself. 
 " It is the pride of race, the honor of self because 
 one s ancestry has been held honorable. There is 
 the old noblesse oblige about it, telling of all that 
 was best in those motives and claims which brought 
 forth the patrician spirit. They are both true 
 aristocrats, and their pride is not their foible but 
 their right." 
 
 Stanch republican as I was, I believed this of 
 both father and daughter, though my creed was 
 doubtless rooted in my ardent love. Ah, how 
 would such pride as hers counsel her if she knew 
 my own origin ? Would not repugnance be in 
 stinctive, and could I dare to blame her for its 
 betrayal ? 
 
 My interview with the Colonel was not a long 
 one. Ada soon insisted upon conducting him up 
 stairs, though she made it graciously clear to me
 
 282 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 that his exit need be no signal for my departure. 
 She presently returned, and we went out upon 
 the veranda, sitting where a breadth of loose- 
 matted vine gave us glimpses of the intensely blue 
 afternoon sea, like the vignettes you sometimes 
 meet in books. It was such delight to be her sole 
 guest, having her unshared heed, marking the flex 
 ile lines of her shape, the rich tints of her auburn 
 tresses, the manifold shades of expression that 
 came and went on her clear-cut face. She had 
 brought a piece of sewing with her that represented 
 no dainty bit of fancy work such as the most 
 indolent lady will use her hands upon in pretty 
 semblance of toil. It was a genuine seam, binding 
 together two portions of a sleeve, and she plied 
 her needle-strokes with sincere energy, quietly 
 remarking as she began them : 
 
 " I hope you will not mind my industry. It 
 has become more or less necessary nowadays, you 
 know." 
 
 " I can mind it only to applaud it," I said. " The 
 new attitude fits you astonishingly well much bet 
 ter than the embroidering of those birds and roses 
 which with many women are an affectation of toil." 
 
 She gave a little sigh. "My birds are flown 
 and my roses withered, I fear." 
 
 " Some day they will sing and bloom again I 
 hope." 
 
 " Hope is not realization." She bent her head 
 a trifle lower while thus speaking.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 283 
 
 " Perhaps it is not, with me," I answered. 
 
 She lifted her eyes for a moment. "You have 
 all the world before you. Hope should be your 
 most natural impulse." 
 
 "It is. But all the world has nothing to do 
 with it at present. Its object is more limited if 
 not less ambitious." 
 
 She chose to leave this reply unnoticed. " You 
 have thought of no career as yet?" she ques 
 tioned. 
 
 " I have thought of only one politics. I have 
 no aptitude for any other. The law repels me, 
 since I possess just enough imagination to resent 
 its dryness. Trade of all sorts I should dislike, 
 though if my dear guardian had not made it so 
 needless for me to think of a commercial future 
 I should probably now be buying and selling 
 something somewhere. In letters I should make 
 the most pronounced kind of failure, for I should 
 never actually fail. I should always be producing 
 some work full of reflections from others. I know 
 that the majority of books are made in this way. 
 A few real geniuses lead the mob of gentlemen 
 who write with ease. And I don t like the mob 
 in literature. I am an aristocrat there, if nowhere 
 else. Perhaps I have the maladie de perfection . . 
 who knows? But it results in apathy, neverthe 
 less." 
 
 " And so you prefer politics ? " 
 
 " I did, but I have lived long enough in this
 
 284 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 country to shrink from touching them. A man 
 who would reach to-day the highest offices under 
 our government must wade through slums and 
 cess-pools. I don t see how he can escape the 
 grossest soilure. I maintain that he scarcely ever 
 does escape it. It is horrible to think of the things 
 our most trusted statesmen must have heard and 
 seen ! And to hear and see them makes a share 
 in their scurrility almost unavoidable. I came to 
 America with such fine expectations in that way, 
 but now they are all dreary disappointments. . 
 Casimir Laprade is an enviable fellow. He truly 
 has all the world before him. He has the gifts 
 of a great painter, and no wayward inclination to 
 misuse them. I sometimes think that he has all 
 the imagination in painting that Poe had as a 
 writer. But he is a Poe with a morale, a whole 
 some and unerratic method a splendid though 
 mystical sanity, in short. You have heard me 
 speak of Casimir before. We are devoted friends. 
 He is with us now at Rockside ; perhaps Mrs. 
 Dorian told you." 
 
 " Yes. She mentioned that he had come with 
 you. I should like to see some of his painting." 
 
 "It would give us all great pleasure if you 
 would visit his studio." 
 
 " Thanks," she said. 
 
 "You will leave your father for an hour or 
 two, some day, will you not?" I continued. 
 " Rockside is so near."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 285 
 
 She did not answer, though I waited several 
 moments for her to do so. And then I again said, 
 breaking the silence : 
 
 " I shall not feel that you want really to be 
 friends with me unless you consent. That will 
 put the final valued touch upon our reconcilia 
 tion." 
 
 She stopped her needle and looked at me with a 
 faint, arch smile. " You told me that you repented, 
 yesterday." 
 
 " I told you the truth." 
 
 She shook her head, still smiling. " You for 
 get. Repentance does not exact conditions ; it 
 receives them." 
 
 " Frankly," I said, changing my tone, " do you 
 not think I had some cause for grievance that 
 afternoon on the Bois? Remember that I con 
 stantly witnessed Foulke Dorian s attentions to 
 you. He had followed you from England to 
 France, and " 
 
 " He was privileged to cross the Channel when 
 he chose," she broke in, her color altering. " I 
 did not encourage him to make the voyage." 
 
 " People said that you did." 
 
 u What will people not say? " 
 
 " But he returned to America a little while after 
 you returned." 
 
 She gave her head a slight impatient toss. 
 " You must recollect that the Atlantic is a com 
 mon thoroughfare."
 
 286 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 I saw that she was annoyed ; the sarcasm had 
 left her lips with no mildness of accent. But I 
 had fanned the spark that was so ready to turn a 
 flame ; my reticence had slipped its fetter ; in an 
 instant more I felt myself urged to say : 
 
 " Of course you cannot prevent him caring 
 about you. But do you let him visit you now? 
 Have you given him to understand that you will 
 not become his wife ? " 
 
 I leaned forward as I spoke. She must have 
 seen that my eagerness was not only passionate, 
 but that I was trying to keep it within bounds. 
 If the stronger gleam in her eyes came from dis 
 pleasure, it quickly faded. 
 
 "I have given him to understand that," she 
 said, very slowly and meaningly. "And more 
 than once. He does not visit me. There are 
 reasons apart from the refusal I just mentioned." 
 
 " Reasons ? " 
 
 " Papa does not like him has never liked him. 
 He has not told me why, but I gained some 
 knowledge of the truth from other sources. He 
 thinks that Mr. Dorian behaved in an ungentle- 
 manlike way to a friend of his. Papa is very punc 
 tilious ; the affair concerned a debt of honor, I 
 believe a bet made at the Chantilly races. He 
 learned the facts just before we went to Austria. 
 He has requested me not to receive Mr. Dorian 
 hereafter. I do not mean that he has forbidden 
 it but with me requesting and forbidding are
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 287 
 
 the same. There, that is all. . . Now let us talk 
 of something pleasanter, if you will. Describe 
 to me some of Monsieur Laprade s wonderful pic 
 tures. That will be the next best thing to seeing 
 them for myself." . . . 
 
 I left her that day in a state of buoyancy and 
 exaltation. And for many days afterward I talked 
 with her father and herself inside the cottage, sat 
 with her on the veranda, strolled with her on the 
 lawn or watched with her the restless water as 
 it lapped and plashed on the jagged rocks. In a 
 hundred ways I must have let her plainly guess 
 my unchanged love, but by degrees I had grown 
 to await her bidding for its full avowal and to 
 find the thrall less irksome because it was so coyly 
 and charmingly imposed. The Colonel s health 
 continued feeble, and he would sometimes pass 
 the whole day in his own apartment. On this 
 account Ada delayed her little expedition to 
 Rockside, short as was the distance between our 
 two homes. At last, however, she came to us. 
 Casimir not only showed her his pictures, but 
 made it plain that her beauty and intelligence had 
 won him as an admirer. She, on her own side, 
 expressed delight in his painting, though now and 
 then she would venture upon a criticism delivered 
 with modesty but firmness. 
 
 " Mademoiselle has evidently studied art," he 
 said, as we stood, a group of four, in front of what 
 was perhaps his most ambitious canvas. He spoke
 
 288 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 with his accustomed suavity, but I could detect 
 behind it that respectful attention which no mere 
 politeness could imply. 
 
 "I have studied much less than I have observed," 
 was her answer. " But it seems to me that I am 
 unwarrantably bold in passing any judgment what 
 ever upon your work, Monsieur Laprade. It all 
 strikes me as astonishingly brilliant and novel. 
 Mr. Claud has been preparing me for a disappoint 
 ment," she added, with a glance in my direction. 
 
 " For Heaven s sake let us know the worst ! " 
 exclaimed Mrs. Dorian, in her most rattling vein. 
 " Till this moment I had believed that Otho and 
 I were both pledged to an unalterable approval of 
 whatever Casimlr did. If Otho has presumed to 
 desert unqualified praise for any kind of criticism, 
 I beg that you will expose his horrible treachery." 
 
 " I mean only that he praised Monsieur Laprade 
 without the least reserve," said Ada, laughing, 
 " and in that way he made me tremble for the 
 fulfilment of my own expectations." 
 
 "Ah," declared my guardian, "then he has been 
 loyal, after all, and I apologize to him for my base 
 suspicions." 
 
 "Do you dread critics?" asked our visitor of 
 Casimir. 
 
 He appeared to muse for a moment, and his 
 luminous eyes took that thoughtful look which 
 always gave so magical a charm to his fair, poetic, 
 picturesque face.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 289 
 
 " I often think there is only one just critic," he 
 said gravely and slowly. " I mean . . . Death. 
 He is apt to write of us in very black ink on very 
 white paper; but he tells the truth about us in 
 the end." 
 
 " How dreadful of you, Casimir ! " cried Mrs. 
 Dorian. " And yet how charming ! You have 
 given me one of my impressions. Tiens. . It will 
 do for a future picture by yourself. I imagine a 
 skeleton, with a notebook in its bony hand, going 
 through the galleries of the Louvre and alternately 
 grinning or scowling." 
 
 " Ah, madame," I said, " it is we who represent 
 the skeleton of which you speak. We are poster 
 ity and we are forever passing judgments upon the 
 works of the dead. I think that in the main Casi 
 mir is right. Every genius or every pretender 
 finally gets his due in just that fashion." . . . 
 
 " Do you find my friend s embodied dreams too 
 sombre ? " I asked of Ada, as we walked toward 
 the cottage together, about an hour later. " Do 
 you think that like the painter of whom Shelley 
 sang he dips his pencil too deeply in the hues of 
 earthquake and eclipse ? " 
 
 " He is gloomy, beyond a doubt," she answered, 
 " but it is the gloom of life itself and not a mere 
 morbid craving after what is sinister and repellent. 
 That picture, for example, which he calls simply 
 The Choice, and in which we see the dark angel, 
 with poppies on his brow, repulsing an old grief-
 
 290 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 stricken woman while he has flung a strong arm 
 about the unwilling shape of a delicate, beautiful 
 young girl how true that is, and how exempt 
 from the least cynicism ! It is a sort of universal 
 allegory." She paused here, and I thought she 
 had finished speaking, when her voice presently 
 resumed : " Still, for such a man as he I should 
 fancy that there might be peril hereafter." 
 
 " Peril ? " I said, surprisedly. 
 
 " In the artistic sense yes. He loves shadows 
 so much. You likened him to Poe, and with good 
 cause, I think. But he is a sort of Poe touched 
 with sunshine. And yet, if some great grief or 
 disaster came to him, would not the sunshine die 
 out of all that he did ? Might not his work turn 
 grim and even malign ? I may be wrong, yet this 
 thought struck me as I stood there in his studio, 
 and watched not only his paintings, but his fine, 
 sensitive, mobile face." 
 
 " I should not wonder at the result which you 
 half prophesy," I returned ; " and yet Casimir will 
 no doubt escape it. The great grief will be 
 spared him, I should say. He loves his art pas 
 sionately, and will never fall in love with any less 
 ethereal mistress. There lies his safeguard." 
 
 " Sorrow has other modes of reaching us." 
 
 " I used to think so. Just now I feel as if she 
 had only one." 
 
 " You don t mean what you say," she reproved, 
 with a very serious glance up into my face. Still,
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 291 
 
 I somehow did not believe that my words offended 
 her. After a little silence she said : " He is a 
 Parisian by birth, is he not, this Cashuir Laprade?" 
 
 " Yes. He is the only child of Mrs. Dorian s 
 sister." 
 
 "And you. . . You are a Belgian? You were 
 born in Brussels ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 "It is a charming city, Brussels; it is a little 
 clean, white, brilliant Paris. I spent such a happy 
 autumn there when I was a mere girl. I was 
 never tired of attending service in that stately, 
 drowsy old Sainte Gudule, with its magnificent 
 stained glass windows, and its buried kings and 
 queens in their solemn tombs. I wonder it did 
 not turn me into a Catholic. Poor mamma, I 
 remember, grew frightened lest it would. . . . Ah, 
 you had a most beautiful birthplace ! You were 
 left an orphan there, were you not, at quite an 
 early age ? " 
 
 " Yes." 
 
 " I recollect hearing it. Someone in Paris told 
 me, I think. And your mother was a friend of 
 Mrs. Dorian, though not related to her ? " 
 
 " Not related . . . no." 
 
 "It must have been very sad." She spoke ten 
 derly ; she had used her gentlest tones throughout 
 all these latter sentences, with not a suggestion of 
 idle inquisitiveness and with much compassionate 
 delicacy.
 
 292 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Sad ? " I questioned. 
 
 " I mean having to leave your native land and 
 come all alone across that huge waste of ocean." 
 
 " It .was very kind of Mrs. Dorian to let me 
 come." I could think of nothing else to say. My 
 own words sounded harsh and curt to me. All 
 this was pure torment. I had dreaded it so long. 
 The lies rang so despicably in my ears as I uttered 
 them ! And yet how could I avoid them ? Only 
 in one way. Only by telling her that I was the 
 son of a loathed criminal. 
 
 But my torture had not ended. " Will you 
 think it strange," she pursued, "if I ask you 
 something about your family ? I am fond of old 
 family records, and especially foreign ones. Now, 
 I suppose you came of a long-descended race, 
 which"- 
 
 " You forget," I broke in, with a laugh that 
 made her start, it was so chill and hard, " how 
 republican a distaste I have acquired for all pre 
 rogatives and mementos of that patrician sort. 
 I believe my family were very honest folk, edu 
 cated, refined, but not noble in the least degree. 
 That is all I know or care to know." 
 
 " I have displeased you," she said, raising her 
 brows in surprise. 
 
 " Not at all," I hurried, forcing from myself a 
 much more natural laugh. We had by this time 
 reached her gateway. " I must leave you here," 
 I continued, putting out my hand as we both
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 293 
 
 paused. " I promised to give Casimir a sitting 
 for my portrait this afternoon. He complains 
 that it will not be begun till the summer is 
 ended." . . . 
 
 But I gave Casimir no sitting that day. I 
 roamed off into country roads and by-paths for 
 hours, and did not return to Rockside until a short 
 time before dinner. 
 
 Hypocrisy had always been one of my hatreds. 
 I meant to marry this woman if it were possible, 
 and I had now a secure belief that she would soon 
 plight with me a lasting troth. If I married her 
 under my present name, would not the deception 
 be wholly unjustified ? From all points of purely 
 honorable feeling, yes. And yet to the world I 
 was Otho Claud, not Otho Clauss, and had been 
 so for years. I had reason to expect, moreover, 
 that if my true origin were revealed she would 
 turn from me. She might love me, but she would 
 turn from me. Her pride had cast her in that 
 mould ; it was a pride that might even alter her 
 love. But for this agonizing consideration I would 
 willingly tell her all ; no sense of personal shame 
 would now restrain me. But to tell her and 
 witness the estranging, sundering result ! That 
 made a coward of me, and that alone. I dared 
 not risk the hazard of losing her. It would be 
 easier to cut off my right hand^ or to hold it in a 
 destroying flame. The worst conceivable suffer 
 ing or calamity would be preferable. And after
 
 294 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 all, was the deception in any tangible manner a 
 wrong to her? Would not Casimir counsel it? 
 Would not Mrs. Dorian insist upon and implore 
 its continuance ? Thousands of men placed as I 
 was then placed would have regarded what now 
 rose before me in the stern lines of a duty as the 
 mere shadow of one and no more. There was 
 hardly a possibility of my real name ever trans 
 piring. My guardian only waited my word to 
 transfer a large amount of property before her 
 death into my keeping. I would be independent, 
 and in all eyes the possessor of an unblemished 
 name when I stood at the altar with Ada Grarn- 
 ercey. And through the rest of my life discovery 
 was equally certain not to overtake me. 
 
 Before re-entering the grounds of Rockside I 
 had made my resolve. I would keep silent. The 
 struggle and there had been a bitter struggle 
 was now past. I conceded the imposture to my 
 own conscience, but its commission I had likewise 
 declared to be incited by copious excuse, defended 
 by ample palliative and extenuation. 
 
 The lawns of Rockside, trim and velvety, sloped 
 shoreward in sweet, fresh curves as the slant light 
 of early evening struck them. I was not yet 
 wholly calm, and perhaps on this account I sought 
 the rocks before passing into the house. Once 
 among their ledges and crevices, now so familiar 
 both to sight and tread, I moved on for some dis 
 tance in the direction of the Gramerceys cottage.
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 295 
 
 Suddenly I stood quite still. It seemed to me 
 that I was turning to stone like the rocks them 
 selves. Through an opening in some trees that 
 drooped lower than the rest, I had gained a view 
 of that part of the shore where Ada and I had 
 first met after so many months of separation. 
 
 She was there now. A man was at her side. 
 They were speaking together. I saw him take 
 her hand, bend over it and kiss it. She drew her 
 hand away, but with no sign of anger. Then she 
 went on speaking, though I could not hear what 
 she said ; I was too far away for that. 
 
 I had clearly recognized the man He was 
 Foulke Dorian. 
 
 My heart began to beat with great throbs. My 
 limbs grew so weak that I sank down, and at the 
 same moment my head whirled dizzily. But I 
 soon rose again, peering at once through the 
 branches. 
 
 Neither he nor she was there. Both had van 
 ished. Had it been a horrid illusion? Had my 
 senses tricked me? Could it all have been 
 actual ?
 
 296 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 XIII. 
 
 THIS doubt was only a proof of my mental 
 turmoil. To think soberly would have been to 
 scoff it. But I could not think soberly. If the 
 ghost of someone whom I knew to be dead had 
 appeared before me and then melted away, my 
 belief that hallucination had victimized me might 
 have been much less positive than now. 
 
 But of course the intense unexpectedness of what 
 I had seen explained this dubious mood, necessarily 
 transient. Opposite conviction ensued, and with 
 but too sharp a haste. I did not need, a little 
 later, to pick from that very spot where I had 
 witnessed Ada Gramercey in converse with Dorian 
 a long white thread glove such as she had worn 
 that very day, for my certainty of the whole pro 
 ceeding to be verified. As I crushed the soft sub 
 stance of the glove between my fingers and palm, 
 there must have been a fierceness in that slighter 
 act akin to the force that might go with one dark 
 and violent. I lifted my hand to my forehead and 
 found it beaded with cold drops of sweat. The 
 thought distinctly flashed through my brain that if 
 the man whom I had just seen were then within
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 297 
 
 my reach I would kill him. Murder was in each 
 breath I drew, and I think it made my face white 
 and dilated my eyes. I even sprang up the stone 
 steps, in another moment, and swept with a rapid 
 gaze the tract of lawn about the cottage. It was 
 quite empty, as I stood there among the trees, 
 gasping and clutching the glove. I was mad, as 
 men are nearly always when they slay. The spells 
 and curses that witches were said to cast in old 
 times may have sprung, like so much that is 
 laughed at as fable to-day, from a germ of solid 
 fact. Long ago my mother, with either a strange 
 prescience of what would befall me, or with only 
 the dreading foresight engendered by deep love, 
 had named this frenzy a curse. It was now like a 
 sudden vital change of my whole nature. Every 
 high and sane faculty became a turgid blur. Rea 
 son was blotted out, and prudence, humanity, pity, 
 self-esteem, were whirled away as the wind whirls 
 a ring of dust. Manhood sank and faded ; the 
 mere gross animal rage that sets a fang in flesh 
 took its place. To live was to thirst for redress of 
 wrong, and burn with a sense of unparalleled out 
 rage. So must my father have felt on that horrible 
 morning. If his frantic spirit had driven mine 
 from its body and entered there instead, I could 
 not have more fatally resembled him than during 
 that distracted interval. 
 
 Some dim conception of this likeness must have 
 forced itself into my brain, and with abrupt saving
 
 298 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 effect. For the revulsion suddenly came, and 
 it afterward seemed that no other influence had 
 wrought it. I remembered that I was his son, and 
 without one wild detail missing, the whole picture 
 of his crime, lit as from infernal fires, loomed 
 ghastly upon my recollection. In an instant the 
 murderous mood ended. I was rational, self-con 
 trolled, a being of judgment, intellect, temperance. 
 I shuddered as I descended the steps leading to 
 the shore. A frightful question was thrilling 
 me : What might have happened if that tyranny 
 of blind, headlong trance had lasted instead of 
 ceasing? . . . 
 
 It was night when I passed indoors. Dinner 
 had been served several hours ago. Mrs. Dorian 
 met me in the hall with an anxious face. " My 
 dear Otho," she said, " we did not know what had 
 become of you. But of course you dined with the 
 Gramerceys. I really can t think what made me 
 worried about you. It was absurd, of course. 
 Casimir, who would rise with the lark if there 
 were such things as larks in Westchester County, 
 has gone to bed. I have been all alone in the 
 sitting-room for quite an age, and this stupid 
 novel, the last of my lot from town, would not let 
 me read it, so I became nervous, hearing little 
 sounds everywhere. It is wonderful how dull a 
 French novel gets when it is written to exploiter 
 the beauties of virtue. I think it must have been 
 the flapping of that great moth in the lamp that
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 299 
 
 made me nervous. What a beautiful moth, by the 
 way ! It gives me an impression ; it has such an 
 evil, funeste look, with its big spotted wings ; it 
 might be a bad spirit in disguise. And it has 
 nearly put out the lamp, poor horrid creature. I 
 can scarcely see you in this dimness." 
 
 I was glad of that. " I will go up stairs, madame, 
 if you will permit," I said. " I am a little unwell." 
 " Unwell, Otho ? You don t mean that Ada " 
 "I mean nothing about Ada," I broke in, with 
 a laugh of so much neatly counterfeited mirth 
 that it half re-assured my hearer. " There is noth 
 ing wrong. ... I am somewhat tired. Pray 
 excuse me. Shall I ring for the servants to close 
 the house?" 
 
 " No," she said. " But Otho . . you are sure ? " 
 " Quite sure," I said, repeating my laugh, and 
 with more skill than before. 
 
 I passed that night sleeplessly, alone with my 
 sorrow. I did not doubt that Ada Gramercey had 
 been faithless and treacherous to me. Had not her 
 own words proved it ? Every sentence that she 
 had spoken with reference to Foulke Dorian was 
 revived keenly in my memory. What had all 
 this been but calculated double-dealing ? As for 
 the motive, I could ascribe it to nothing except 
 relentless coquetry. Other women had played 
 pitilessly like this with men before now. That I 
 had ranked her incapable of such hypocrisy was 
 no argument against her having practised it. Other
 
 300 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 men had been similarly deceived. Besides, she 
 had never accepted my love. It had been urged 
 upon her in Paris, and she had virtually refused it. 
 Here she had permitted and smiled upon my devo 
 tions, but no more. If she had spoken untruly 
 with regard to Foulke Dorian it was her own 
 affair. I had received no right to upbraid her for 
 broken faith. There had never been any question 
 of faith or unfaith between us ; there had been 
 sentiment, congeniality, intimacy, social relaxation, 
 and nothing more. I had hoped for much, but the 
 span of hope has many airy cubits. In this case 
 had it not towered vastly above fulfilment ? 
 
 " You do not look yourself," said Casimir to me 
 the next morning, as he and I met. " I hope, 
 dear Otho, that you are not going to be ill. What 
 is this American disease that they call malaria ? 
 Owen, the head gardener, tells me that it rages, 
 hereabouts, aad that his poor wife is in an ague 
 with it at least twice every week." 
 
 " I suppose Owen is entitled to credence," I 
 replied, " and I have heard that malaria is as wide 
 an evil in this remarkable country as legislative 
 bribery or municipal theft. But I don t think it 
 has yet claimed me, Casimir. . I slept rather ill 
 and awoke with a slight headache . . that is all. 
 I will try a walk in the morning air. I have no 
 doubt that you were abroad hours ago, so I will 
 not ask you to go with me." 
 
 I should indeed have been nonplussed if he had
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 801 
 
 proposed to go. For I did not mean that my 
 walk should be a long one. It would terminate 
 at the Gramerceys cottage. The glove which I 
 had found yesterday was on my person. I in 
 tended to return it to its owner. Not in silence, 
 yet not in stormy accusation. I was prepared to 
 be thoroughly calm. My turbulence was all laid 
 at rest, and only a dull, steadfast, persistent heart 
 ache held its place. 
 
 I took the inland course to the cottage ; it may 
 have been that I had some lurking dread lest I 
 should see, if I went by the shore, a repetition of 
 last evening s occurrence. The very quiet and 
 serenity of the little simple domain mocked me 
 with my own wretchedness as I passed round to 
 the seaward-fronting veranda. A few short hours 
 ago I had been so happy here, and now I had come 
 for a farewell meeting with her whom to distrust 
 and despise was, alas, not to cease from loving! 
 I had already thought of a speedy departure for 
 Europe, whither in the course of a little time my 
 guardian and my sole dear friend might both join 
 me. 
 
 A minute or two after I had rung the bell at 
 the open entrance I saw her emerge from the little 
 sitting-room that adjoined the hall. She slowly 
 advanced to where I waited. She was clad in her 
 customary white dress, and she had a few garden- 
 flowers in her bosom. Her beauty pierced me 
 with pain. I took her hand because she offered it
 
 302 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 to me, but I did so with a strange thrill of despair, 
 as though realizing it was for the last time on this 
 side of the grave ! 
 
 She appeared to notice nothing unusual in my 
 face or bearing. She spoke of the fine weather, 
 going forward almost to the edge of the veranda, 
 and then returning in my direction with a smile 
 and a slight shiver. 
 
 "It is a little cool here, is it not?" she said. 
 " Shall we go into the sitting-room ? " 
 
 As we passed thither I asked about her father, 
 tranquilly enough. She told me that he was 
 sleeping when she had last left him. " He spends 
 so much time in sleep," she continued, with a faint 
 sigh, while sinking into a chair, "that if one 
 judges of how much better or worse he is only 
 by his wakeful hours, one is often in doubt. I 
 hope your portrait has progressed favorably, since 
 yesterday ? " 
 
 I had seated myself before I answered : " How 
 did it strike you yesterday ? " 
 
 " Oh, as a mere sketch." 
 
 " But a true one ? " 
 
 "A little ideal, if you will pardon me. Not 
 that I do not like a portrait which shows us at 
 our very best. That is the prerogative of portrait- 
 painting. It is charming to have a friend trans 
 mit our image to canvas, as Monsieur Laprade is 
 doing in your case." 
 
 "Why?"
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 303 
 
 " Because the friend becomes a gentle eulogist, 
 and if he be gifted, and faithful to the require 
 ments of his art, he may surprise those who know 
 us well by showing them how careless has been 
 their everyday estimate." 
 
 " Then you think that people who like us are 
 apt to deal in these unjust opinions ? " 
 
 " Yes," she returned thoughtfully. " Monsieur 
 Laprade said that death was a critic. Is he not 
 also in a certain way a portrait-painter? We die, 
 and we are at once recollected in a new light, as 
 it were. Traits and qualities are remembered and 
 appreciated that were forgotten or neglected in us 
 before." 
 
 I saw my opportunity then, and quietly took it. 
 " But while we live we are so apt to afford sad 
 proofs of mastering and fruitful faults." 
 
 She looked at me with some surprise for a 
 moment. " You say that very dejectedly. Are 
 you distrait this morning ? " 
 
 " I am unhappy." 
 
 Her face grew serious. " Something has hap 
 pened at home ? " she murmured. 
 
 " No ; not at home." 
 
 " You have had bad news from abroad ? " 
 
 " Not from so far away." I drew out the glove 
 as I spoke. " You dropped this on the rocks yes 
 terday in the afternoon, I think. It is yours, is 
 it not?" 
 
 She took the glove. " Yes ; it is mine. Thanks."
 
 304 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 There was not a sign of embarrassment in her 
 reply. 
 
 " Very possibly you lost it while you were there 
 with Foulke Dorian," I went on. 
 
 She gave a start then, and looked at me fixedly. 
 But her color did not alter in the least. "You 
 saw me ? " 
 
 "Yes. I saw you and him." My voice must 
 have trembled now. " I saw him take your hand 
 and kiss it. I I was not spying upon you 
 please be sure of that." 
 
 " I did not imagine that you were," she an 
 swered, with immediate haughtiness. " You are 
 surely above any such action." 
 
 " Ah, don t take that for granted ! " I said, with 
 a rush of bitterness, as I rose. " To anyone who 
 had deceived me as you had done I might have 
 paid guile for guile." 
 
 Her brow clouded, and she bit her lip. I felt 
 her anger to be unwarrantable, shameless ; I could 
 have born the most artful feigning of innocence 
 better. 
 
 "You were never once deceived by me!" she 
 exclaimed, with indignation. And then, abruptly, 
 while her eyes dwelt upon my face, an entire 
 change swept over her. She rose and regarded 
 me with a sorrowful amazement. "If you saw 
 that man kiss my hand," she said, " you must also 
 have seen that I gave him no incentive to do so. 
 His coming to this place has been a source of dis-
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 305 
 
 tress to me. He had learned of that path leading 
 from the village to the rocks ; probably the boy 
 who had brought me his urgent note but a short 
 time before, begging that I should meet him, had 
 told him of it. He has possessed himself of several 
 large mortgages once owned by my father ; he 
 wished to return these for a merely nominal sum ; 
 he wanted me to arrange a deception by means of 
 which my father would believe himself almost re- 
 enriched through a stroke of pure good fortune. 
 Papa was to be made greatly his debtor, yet never 
 to know this. The proposal was one which he 
 begged me earnestly to accept, and which I could 
 not but heed with gracious consideration, although 
 I promptly refused it. I meant to keep the whole 
 affair a secret, and not even to tell my father of 
 its occurrence. If this be guile, then I have 
 employed it." 
 
 Perhaps she would have spoken further ; I can 
 not say. My own contrition broke all bounds, 
 here, and I hurried to her side, in a passion of joy 
 and self-reproach. 
 
 " Can you ever forgive me ? " I cried. " I have 
 been the maddest of fools ! You are truth and 
 honor itself, and yet I seized the first little chance 
 to wrong, to distrust you ! But it is the fault of 
 my love that only! Oh, Ada, if you had let 
 me really believe in your love, all might have 
 been different! But you have kept me forever 
 at a distance. You see, I leap over that distance
 
 306 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 now I can t help it. I must never look on your 
 face again if you do not love me enough to be my 
 wife ! " 
 
 Her eyes were shining in tears as she said : " I 
 do love you." . . . 
 
 Late that same afternoon I told both Casimir and 
 Mrs. Dorian that Ada Gramercey had promised to 
 marry me. Both faces brightened as they heard 
 the tidings. My guardian kissed me ; Casimir 
 warmly grasped and pressed my hand. It was 
 several hours afterward, and while we were alone 
 together, that Mrs. Dorian said : 
 
 u There is no reason that this should be a long 
 engagement, Otho." 
 
 " Naturally," I answered, " she wishes to pro 
 tract it on her father s account." 
 
 " But he may linger like this for years." 
 
 "Not years, I think. He will either partially 
 recover or die. All the physicians have told her 
 that." 
 
 " Did you speak of . . pardon me . . anything 
 so terrestrial as la question d argent ? " 
 
 " My dear madame," I cried, with a laugh and 
 a blush, "we have spoken of nothing but our 
 mutual love." 
 
 "Delightful," she approved, with a droll nod 
 of mock grimness. "Just as I imagined. The 
 rest will come soon enough ; it always does. And 
 when it does I want you to feel that you can talk 
 with perfect security of giving her all that she
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 307 
 
 once had. On the day before your marriage, mon 
 fils, I want to make over to you a comfortable 
 sum." She then named the sum, and its size 
 caused me to utter a surprised exclamation. 
 
 " That is too large," I protested. " It will dig 
 a decided hole in your own fortune." 
 
 " And leave a solid wall to surround the hole," 
 she said gayly. "No, Otho, I insist. I can t 
 marry you off more than once, I suppose, and if 
 done it shall be done handsomely." 
 
 The poor invalid Colonel gave me his congratu 
 lations on the next day. Ada had rendered my 
 own course an easy one ; it seemed to me that I 
 had no role except that of profuse smiling and 
 cordial hand-shaking. Her father was plainly 
 pleased at our engagement ; from the first he had 
 liked me, and knowing as he did of my heirship 
 to Mrs. Dorian s wealth it would be idle to imagine 
 that satisfaction of a worldly sort did not concern 
 his present feelings. In the days of his health and 
 prosperity he might have welcomed a son-in-law 
 with slight concern for mercenary endowments ; but 
 now, with the shadow of the end creeping slowly 
 across his few residual days, there was little won 
 der that his enfeebled mind, conscious of its own 
 half-shattered state, should rejoice in the thought 
 of leaving the child whom he loved re-installed 
 among her old soft surroundings. 
 
 I said something of this sort not long afterward 
 to Ada herself, and then added (since the occasion
 
 308 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 had an aptness which it might hereafter lack) the 
 precise words of Mrs. Dorian s generous proposi 
 tion. 
 
 " How devoted that woman has been to you ! " 
 she answered. "She must have had the most 
 tender regard for your mother, in the first place." 
 
 " She had," I replied, believing that I spoke the 
 truth. 
 
 The next three or four weeks were loaded with 
 happiness for me. Our lives are like those of cer 
 tain trees ; they have their periods of bleak, nude 
 dearth when the wind and sleet strike them ; their 
 rich-clad hours of summer ; their terms of autum 
 nal blight and omen ; but they have also their 
 spring of dewy blossoms and silvery song. It was 
 the springtime of the soul with me. No future 
 period, however benign fate might prove, would 
 be just like this. I told Ada so, in our many walks 
 and talks. " I feel like a miser," I said, " whose 
 precious gold is slipping through his fingers. In 
 all the years of love that I hope God keeps for us 
 we shall never be quite as we are now. Our sun 
 shine will never be just of the same quality. It 
 may turn mellower, and even in a way warmer; 
 but now it has a fine airy excellence that we shall 
 somehow miss hereafter. Let us make merry in it 
 while we may." 
 
 She looked at me with a rueful little smile. 
 " How can I make merry," she asked, " in the face 
 of such a chilling prophecy ? "
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 309 
 
 " I did not mean it to be chilling," I declared, 
 sorry for my bit of sentimentalizing. 
 
 " But to enjoy perfectly is not to deal in such 
 reflection." 
 
 "True enough. And yet it seems to be the 
 doom of all perfect joy that it casts this shadow. 
 Don t you remember reading of the two lovers 
 who came to the edge of the great cliff at Sor 
 rento? One of them proposed that they should 
 both leap over it, hand in hand, since the future 
 could hold nothing more charming than the pres 
 ent was, and the chances of a regretted change 
 were almost certain." 
 
 " But they did not take the leap," said Ada, 
 with a smile. 
 
 "Oh, no. They preferred to accept the other 
 chances. We all do." 
 
 Her smile deepened to one of mischievous mean 
 ing. I am glad I did not let you go with papa 
 and me to the Tyrol," she said. " You might have 
 proved a dangerous companion in a mountainous 
 country." 
 
 " Oh, if I had suggested the leap, it would have 
 been the merest poetic posing. You d have seen 
 through it in half a minute. I could never con 
 sent to lose you in that way." 
 
 "But if we had both leaped together?" 
 
 " My plight would have been a pretty one ! 
 Angels go straight to Heaven, and so I should 
 have been left without you." . .
 
 310 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 Once a real gloom crossed the brightness of 
 those blissful weeks, and a darker gloom than she 
 guessed. We had been speaking of old acquaint 
 ances in Paris, of their weaknesses, foibles, follies 
 and general characteristics. 
 
 " Mademoiselle X made a wholly heartless 
 
 match," I said. " She married the Count s name 
 only." 
 
 " It was a very distinguished name." 
 
 " Ah, I remember . . you believe in all that." 
 
 "I believe in an unsullied name yes." 
 
 "Unsullied?" . . The word pricked me. "His 
 was hardly that." 
 
 " I know ; it was historic." 
 
 I laughed a little drearily. " He traced back 
 among mediaeval ruffians." 
 
 "But a good many of his ancestors had been 
 gentlemen." 
 
 " Tell me," I said, looking at her intently and 
 feeling the growth of a restless annoyance ; " if 
 I had a name like his, would you prefer it or 
 are you indifferent on such a subject?" 
 
 She answered my look, and I saw a shade of 
 pique cross her face. " Why ask me this ques 
 tion, Otho?" she returned. 
 
 Her voice had a faintly harsh ring. 
 
 " You need not answer it," I said. " You have 
 already done so." 
 
 She grew nettled at this. . " Really, you take a 
 great deal for granted ! "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 311 
 
 " Certain signs are conclusive." . . I kept silent 
 for some time while she watched me. Then I 
 slowly continued : " You know that I am right. 
 If I were a duke, an earl, a prince, you would 
 love me more than you do now." 
 
 She threw back her head and regarded me with 
 angry astonishment. " How can you speak like 
 this, Otho ! " she exclaimed. " It is trivial ! " 
 
 I took both her hands in mine, an instant later, 
 and gazed steadily into her face. "Yes, Ada," I 
 said, "it was trivial boyish absurd. I admit 
 that it was ! " Then, as suddenly, I dropped her 
 hands. " But . . something made me speak as I 
 did . . I scarcely know what." 
 
 "Your own want of reason," she replied, her 
 resentment by no means cooled. 
 
 " No," I affirmed, with a touch of excitement ; 
 "it was not that. It was something else. . . 
 Stay : if I were still Otho Claud, just as you know 
 me now, and yet, if" 
 
 I abruptly paused. A sense of whither my own 
 thoughts were carrying me had produced this 
 hesitation. 
 
 " If," she repeated, echoing my last word. " If 
 what, pray ? " 
 
 I gave a brief, curt laugh, and finished my 
 sentence. "If I bore some stigma, through . . 
 through the misdeeds of my parents if I were 
 branded, not by my own shame but theirs would 
 you still care for me, hold me dear, be willing to 
 join your fate with mine ? "
 
 312 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " Stigma ? . . shame ? " she again repeated. Her 
 face grew full of pain. " Oh, Otho," she burst 
 forth, "why do you even think of any thing so 
 . . so unwelcome and distressing ? " 
 
 She may not have noticed how much paler I 
 had grown ; but I am sure that my color had 
 faded. " You abhor the idea," I said, accusingly. 
 "But if such a stigma, such a shame, rested upon 
 you, I should hold it as less than nothing ! " 
 
 " Ah, you say that ! " 
 
 "I am certain of it. Your father he might 
 be a thief, a murderer " 
 
 " Otho ! " 
 
 " It is true ! " I hurried on eagerly. " No mat 
 ter for the source you had sprung from ; provided 
 you still remained who and what you are, I should 
 count all former circumstances as paltry. You 
 would be yourself your origin would not in the 
 least concern me." 
 
 She made a dissatisfied, rebuking gesture. 
 " Why have you brought up this question ? " she 
 appealed. " I am sure that I said nothing to pro 
 voke it." 
 
 "I have brought it up that I might confirm 
 my belief. You know what that belief is; I have 
 told you." 
 
 " If you possess it, you should not inform me of 
 it. To do so, Otho, is the merest idle borrowing 
 of trouble." 
 
 I shook my head stubbornly. " You do not
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 313 
 
 deny the charge. You do not assure me that it 
 is baseless." 
 
 " But no such conditions as these exist. You 
 imagine them." 
 
 "Without doubt. . . . Yet they might have 
 existed." 
 
 I thought she was about to give me an indignant 
 answer. But in another instant her eyes filled 
 with tears and her lip trembled. " Obstinate, 
 fanciful Otho ! " she murmured. " Well, then, 
 it would make no difference none whatever. I 
 should deplore, regret, even sorrow that such a 
 thing were true, but the love I bear you could not 
 alter because of it. . . There ! are you satisfied ? 
 or will you still cruelly persist in tormenting me?" 
 
 " No ! " I answered eagerly, taking her in my 
 arms. " Oh, Ada, I am foolish and cruel ! For 
 give me ! I will never annoy you with these aim 
 less suppositions again ! " 
 
 Still, for a long time afterward, the remem 
 brance of her perplexity and hesitation staid with 
 me. I hated to recall these, just as I hated my 
 own rashness in having touched upon so perilous 
 and suggestive a point. Hereafter, I concluded, 
 greater self-control and discretion must assuredly 
 be used. I must school myself into guarding 
 against any outburst of this futile, profitless kind. 
 
 September had now begun, bringing us days 
 of hazy mildness, with long, cool nights full of 
 sweet, augmenting moonlight. Possibly by con-
 
 314 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 trast with the dark events that were soon fated to 
 follow it, this mellow autumnal interval holds a 
 sweeter worth. I seem to hear the crickets and 
 katydids now, calling plaintively and multitudi- 
 nously through the still, breezeless air of those 
 lovely nights. But their strange song, which car 
 ries for so many ears a dirge over the fading year 
 and the falling leaf, bore to me no such mournful 
 note. All my life was in one flush of promise and 
 expectancy. I might easily have thought dreary 
 thoughts, if love had not laid her tender veto upon 
 their indulgence. I might have shuddered at the 
 knowledge now so vivid and indisputable that 
 I had been marked among all humanity as they 
 are marked to whom a dread disease has come as 
 a bitter birthright. I might have reproached my 
 self for the commission of a deceit which argument 
 and analysis, however acute and searching, could 
 not wholly justify, and which they who were aware 
 of it authorized and approved simply because of 
 their fondly blind affection. But I had become 
 exempt from dismal visitations. The perennial 
 sorcery of the world had me well in its golden 
 meshes. Painful introspection and solemn self- 
 reproach were both under the ban of exile. They 
 stood like proscribed guests beyond my lintel. My 
 chamber, merry with lights and garlands, was no 
 place for their grave shapes and hollow footfalls. 
 At some future hour, when the feast glowed less 
 gayly, they might steal in unwelcome and un-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 315 
 
 bidden. But now they must remain without, 
 where the sound of my viols could float to them 
 but in festal echoes. 
 
 A certain morning at last came when I happened 
 to enter the hall of the cottage and discover Ada 
 at some distance away in the act of reading a 
 letter. On perceiving me in the doorway she 
 made a hasty movement as if to conceal this letter. 
 Then, seeming to think the better of such an 
 action, she quietly folded it and was placing it in 
 the envelope as I advanced toward her. We met, 
 but I did not kiss her as usual. Instantly the old 
 unrest had me in its keeping ; an irrepressible sus 
 picion had broken forth. Still, I strove to give 
 no direct sign of my discomfort, but talked on 
 with assumed carelessness. She answered me in 
 the same vein, and meanwhile held the letter 
 in one hand, tapping it unconsciously against the 
 back of the other. Then, suddenly, she receded 
 several steps and looked at me with a smile full of 
 melancholy amusement. 
 
 " Oh, Otho," she exclaimed, " how easy it is to 
 read your moods ! " 
 
 " What do you mean ? " I asked, biting my lip. 
 
 " Mean ? " she echoed. " Why, that you are 
 secretly in a fume of displeasure. And why ? 
 Because, when you appeared yonder a few minutes 
 ago, you imagined that I wished to conceal from 
 you this letter." 
 
 " Did I merely imagine it, Ada ? " I said.
 
 316 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders impatiently and 
 lifted both hands. " And if you did not ! " she 
 replied. "What then? Grant that I did wish 
 to conceal the letter." She shook her head very 
 sadly, and half turned away from me. " Ah, jeal 
 ousy like this, so ready to spring up at a moment s 
 warning what name shall I give to it ? What 
 name but one can I give to it, Otho ? insult ! " 
 
 " Insult ! " I repeated, with a pang of conscience 
 as I spoke the word. 
 
 " Yes. You see me impelled to hide from you 
 a piece of writing. That is enough. You forth 
 with give full rein to injustice. You accuse me 
 without a moment of hesitation." She faced me 
 again and held out the letter. "There read if 
 you desire. Satisfy yourself whether I am wrong 
 ing you by any deceitful correspondence with some 
 unknown lover for that is the shape which I am 
 sure your fancies have taken. There is the letter, 
 I say ; read it ! " 
 
 "No," I answered; " I will not read it." These 
 words I pronounced in a low, resolute tone, but 
 at once I hurried on, with remorse in my eager 
 sentences. " You are right, Ada. To doubt you 
 is to insult you ! I shall not even ask you what 
 the letter contains. Keep it. Keep it and pardon 
 me." I was trembling with excitement as I put 
 my arm about her waist and drew her to my 
 breast, kissing the pure breadth of her uplifted 
 forehead.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 317 
 
 " The letter is from Foulke Dorian," she pres 
 ently said. " You must let me tell you about it, 
 Otho, even if you will not read it. My sole 
 motive in not wanting you to know of the letter 
 at all was a wish to spare you pain." 
 
 " I am certain of it ! " I murmured, from the 
 depths of my new contrition. " And he has writ 
 ten you again, Ada ? " 
 
 " Yes. He wishes me to hold another meeting 
 with him, as before. He has some new proposition 
 to make ; he wishes my consent to a new plan of 
 making papa accept his assistance. At least that 
 is what I have gathered from his writing, though 
 here and there its exact meaning struck me as 
 vague. . . . You will not see the letter, Otho? 
 You are sure ? " 
 
 " Sure," I said, meeting her look with a smile 
 of penitence. " Let it all pass. Tell me no more. 
 As for meeting him " 
 
 " I can do so if I choose?" she broke in, with a 
 soft laugh, finishing my response. " Ah, that is 
 the way with you fiercely jealous people ; you go 
 from one extreme to another ; you blow hot and 
 cold. . . He does not mention that he knows of 
 our engagement. His ignorance of it may be 
 counted as a sort of excuse for his writing at all. 
 But I shall not meet him again. He has no right 
 to ask me not a vestige of right. I shall not 
 even notice his letter. There ; are you satis 
 fied?"
 
 318 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 "No, I am dissatisfied," I returned. "With 
 myself. Bitterly so." 
 
 This reply held a deeper significance than she 
 guessed. But she spoke almost blithely now as 
 she said : 
 
 "Such storms as yours only leave the sky 
 clearer. At least they claim so who are skilled 
 in the psychology of lovers quarrels. We are 
 not so skilled; are we, Otho? We have had too 
 little experience in them as yet. . . . But you are 
 quite certain you will not see the letter now? " 
 
 " Quite certain," I said. 
 
 " Assez, as your dear guardian would put it. 
 Then I shall burn the letter. There is a fire in 
 the sitting-room ; it was made to take the chill 
 off the air if poor papa found any when he came 
 down-stairs. I think that it must also have been 
 made," she added, with one of her smiles, " for the 
 destruction of this horrid letter. I will go and 
 drop it, envelope and all, among the hottest em 
 bers. So perish all causes of disturbance between 
 you and me. . . Wait a moment, and then I will 
 join you for a little walk about the grounds. We 
 will find that vine on which you saw the red ber 
 ries ; I want to gather some for the sitting-room 
 mantel." . . . 
 
 I had never known her more exquisitely kind 
 and winsome than on that special morning. It 
 stands out clearly in my memory, like the frost- 
 touched sprays of leafage which we met, sanguine-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 319 
 
 tinted against the brilliant September air. I made 
 a passionate inward vow, as we walked together 
 then, that I would never let the faintest shade of 
 disbelief mar my love hereafter. She had been 
 merciful to call my doubt merely insult; it had 
 been blasphemy, sacrilege ! 
 
 Three or four days of perfect serenity went by. 
 Mrs. Dorian read her French novels, exchanged 
 visits with her neighbors, declared herself the most 
 contented woman in the world, but now and then 
 yawned a furtive yawn at being what she called 
 depayse. Casimir painted industriously, made a 
 few airy jokes at my lovesick expense, and com 
 plained more than once that I could not find for 
 him a spare hour or two in which he might finish 
 my portrait. "If it were Rome during the car 
 nival season, my dear Otho," he lamented one 
 evening while we sat at dessert, "you could not 
 be more perpetually engaged." 
 
 " It is Rockside during the carnival season," I 
 told him, smiling. 
 
 " That is very pretty," declared Mrs. Dorian, 
 with an applausive tinkle of her coffee spoon. " It 
 must be imparted to Ada." 
 
 " She will not thank you for it," said Casimir, 
 with a sly look at me. " She has already a surfeit 
 of that kind of sweets." 
 
 " A really picturesque compliment is always a 
 variety," said Mrs. Dorian. " Nothing gives one 
 a keener impression. The man who invents one is
 
 320 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 almost as great as he who invents a new omelette 
 or sauce ; the acquired reputation should differ 
 only in degree." 
 
 It was on this same evening, an hour or so later, 
 that I strolled along the rocks toward the cottage. 
 The tide was at its full, but I could see my way 
 with perfect clearness, for the moon was also at 
 her full, making the Sound one sheet of quiet splen 
 dor and bringing forth in dark, intense outline 
 against a cloudless heaven the masses of shoreland 
 foliage. The air, like the trees and the water, slept 
 in complete calm. The majesty and tranquillity of 
 the night had an ideal meaning. I remember that 
 as I moved onward beside the still, rich flood of 
 those autumn waters, and let my gaze sweep the 
 scant-starred, glorious, lucid sky, this thought 
 passed through my mind : 
 
 " It would be better for us all if night were 
 always as fair and serene as this. Such grandeur 
 would exalt us; such composure would restrain 
 and pacify us; such purity and sanctity would 
 cleanse and ennoble us. Yet these nights are like 
 our better selves ; they beam out in the entirety 
 of their beauty but rarely, and between their 
 episodes of radiance lie intervals of gloom, cloud 
 and even tempest." 
 
 I had nearly reached the stone steps leading up 
 to the lawn of the cottage. I have known early 
 twilights that were less bright ; it was almost as 
 if I walked in full day, except that no day would
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 321 
 
 have been so dreamy and ethereal. The very lich 
 ens on the rocks were discernible, in their crum 
 pled, lace-like delicacy. The least object in my 
 path or beside it could promptly have been noted. 
 It was not strange, then, that as a man s figure 
 suddenly came round past the clump of trees con 
 cealing the path by which you could reach or quit 
 the village, I immediately perceived his presence 
 and faced him in surprise. 
 
 On both our parts recognition was instantaneous. 
 I saw him very plainly, as he likewise must have 
 seen me. He was Foulke Dorian. 
 
 I stood quite still, regarding him. He, too, had 
 paused. Perhaps the moonlight made him look 
 paler than he had really turned. I waited for 
 several minutes, thinking that he would break the 
 silence. He remained speechless, however, looking 
 at me with the old languid droop wholly gone from 
 his eyelids. At length, with no thought of wrong 
 toward Ada, and indeed confidently believing in her 
 innocence while I remembered the letter she had 
 recently received from this man, I spoke myself. 
 
 "You have no right to be here," I said, with my 
 voice not raised above its ordinary tones. 
 
 As a God may be my judge while I now write 
 these words, I had no anger against him at this 
 moment. I had no feeling except a contemptuous 
 pity. 
 
 I had waited for him to speak ; I now waited 
 for him to reply.
 
 322 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 XIV. 
 
 HE presently did reply, and with a sullen un 
 willingness, as though the words were literally 
 dragged from his lips. 
 
 " My right to be here or not to be does not come 
 from you." 
 
 "Nevertheless," I said, "since Miss Gramercey 
 is my promised wife I shall hold myself bound to 
 respect her known prejudices." 
 
 I saw his hands, as they hung at his sides, clinch 
 themselves. " I had intended never to hold the 
 slightest intercourse with you, sir," he said huskily. 
 " I think you must know why." 
 
 " By all means persevere in your resolve," I 
 retorted. " It is not yet too late to reconsider it." 
 
 A certain effect of moonlight brought to his 
 dull eyes a greenish flicker as he now scanned my 
 face. His lip was half curled, not in scorn, but 
 as if from the prompting of deep spite and malice. 
 
 " You put upon me in Paris," he said, with the 
 same dogged mutter he had at first used, " a vile 
 outrage. It was the action of a coward ; your 
 superior strength made it so. Perhaps you wish 
 to repeat the act."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 323 
 
 " Only," I answered, " in case you wish to re 
 peat the unparalleled insult that called it forth. 
 And I think that I can afford, Mr. Dorian, to be 
 called a coward by you, who have proven yourself 
 a conspicuous one. I waited a whole week in 
 Paris to hear from you, and I realized with aston 
 ishment, at last, that you meant to pass unnoticed 
 what you now term a vile outrage." 
 
 The vicious sneer on his face deepened. He 
 slowly nodded his head once or twice. A touch 
 of the old drawling, insolent tone had come back 
 to him the tone I had heard him employ with 
 such villanous result in Casimir s Parisian studio. 
 
 " Yes. Quite so. You thought, no doubt, that 
 I would drag the name of a lady whom I cared 
 for as I did for Ada Gramercey into a public 
 duel." 
 
 " I thought nothing of this kind," I protested, 
 inwardly tingling under the meanness of his impli 
 cation, though many another than I would have 
 tossed it aside in spirit as wholly despicable. " Miss 
 Gramercey s name would never have entered into 
 the affair, and by no means concerned it. Much 
 as I disapprove and detest duelling, I would still 
 have allowed you the chance of satisfaction for 
 the pitiful beating I gave you. No, do not try to 
 lie out of your own poltroonery. And quit this 
 spot at once, or I may repeat the warning that I 
 administered in Paris." 
 
 I pointed as I spoke toward the little grove
 
 324 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 of trees whence he had lately emerged ; but he did 
 not stir. 
 
 " Go," I commanded, moving quickly nearer to 
 him. As I did so a tremor passed through his 
 frame, whether of fear or hate. But still he did 
 not stir. 
 
 " The law may make you sorry for this," he said, 
 meeting my look. 
 
 " Use it against me if you wish," I responded, 
 "But first you must prove that you are not an 
 intruder." 
 
 " It is not for you to say that I am one." 
 
 " I happen to have heard Miss Gramercey state 
 that your visits here were disagreeable to her." 
 
 He almost closed his eyes for a moment, and a 
 sort of spasm passed over his face. I suddenly felt 
 all hardness leave me ; it was like the dropping 
 away of some coarse, bristly garment ; my feeling 
 of repulsion, of irritation, became a compassionate 
 one only. I do not aver that any respect had part 
 in it, or that I should not still have shrunk from 
 taking his hand. But in a voice full of mild and 
 even conciliatory change I now said : 
 
 "Believe me, it will be quite useless for you 
 either to remain here or to appear at the cottage. 
 If you have any thought of meeting Miss Gra 
 mercey on these rocks you will be disappointed ; 
 nor will the young lady consent to hold further 
 conversation with you, anywhere or at any time, 
 regarding a certain monetary question. Let me
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 325 
 
 beg you therefore to depart peaceably at once." 
 Here I took out my watch; the face was clear 
 enough, in that wonderful moonlight, for one to 
 tell the time upon it without an effort. "It is 
 now slightly after nine o clock," I continued. 
 " You can still catch a train to town \ r ery easily, 
 but I advise you not to delay." He had dropped 
 his head a little while I thus addressed him. As 
 I ended he raised it, and the sneer on his lips had 
 deepened. I recoiled from him. " You refuse to 
 go ? " I said involuntarily. 
 
 He did not answer me, but he was looking at 
 me with an expression malignant, almost satanic. 
 I thought that he was about to speak, and repelled 
 as I was, I awaited his answer. But for several 
 seconds he did not make it ; his lips quivered, and 
 seemed to be so dry from some agitation that he 
 more than once noticeably moistened them with his 
 tongue. And then, at last, as if with difficulty, 
 he spoke two words. They were these : 
 
 "Otho Clauss" 
 
 I stepped backward many paces. If a knife had 
 been plunged into me I could not have been more 
 stricken in all nervous power. I must have grown 
 ghastly in the moonlight. Doubtless no least de 
 tail of my dismay escaped him, for he now sprang 
 unhesitatingly toward me. 
 
 " Otho Clauss," he said again. 
 
 I tried to be calm. I knotted my hands ; I shut 
 my teeth together ; I felt as if waves of fire were
 
 326 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 given me instead of the wonted pulsations of my 
 blood. He was close at my side, but I had not 
 strength enough either to motion or to push him 
 away. 
 
 I could only do one thing. I could simply 
 ask him, with gasps between the few words I 
 spoke 
 
 " What do you know? " 
 
 " What do I know ? " he echoed, with a laugh 
 whose jeer seemed to take the whole mute, sweet 
 night under its spell and render it a wild, dancing 
 chaos. " What do I know, Otho Clauss ? " he con 
 tinued. His voice was close to my ear. I wanted 
 to beat it off, as I would the vans of a bat, but 
 I could not. " I know that you are not Claud 
 but Clauss. I know that you are sprung from the 
 very lowest the scum the rabble ! Your father 
 died on the scaffold for murdering his wife." 
 
 I could not speak ; I listened ; I could only 
 listen. It was somehow as if I listened with a 
 thousand ears. A flash went through my mind, in 
 which I saw, keen as if it had been but yesterday, 
 my father kill my mother in that populous street, 
 on that far-gone Sunday morning. What this 
 man now said to me was an actuality, and yet it 
 seemed to have been led up to before by an im 
 mense anticipation. Here was I, who heard it; 
 here was another who hurled it at me. It had 
 been fated to come like this ; it had been ordained ; 
 I was to hear it again ; I had waited for it ; my
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 327 
 
 dreams had told me it would some day sound in 
 my ears just as it sounded now. 
 
 He had put his hand on my shoulder. I did 
 not shake the hand off. I cannot tell in what 
 tone I questioned of him : 
 
 " How have you heard ? " 
 
 " How ? " he said. He laughed, and his hand, 
 which had rested on my shoulder, seized it. His 
 face was close to mine. I had a sense of his 
 patrician gear ; an odor beset me from the violets 
 bunched in his coat. (How terrible these trifles 
 were at this moment ! How they assaulted me 
 and caught my attention, from no earthly cause !) 
 He realized that he had flung me down, so to 
 speak that he could say what he chose to me. 
 And he said this : 
 
 " Do you deny ? No, you do not ; you cannot. 
 I have found it all out. How, you ask me? 
 Well, I will tell you how. You thought every 
 thing secure, did you not ? But one suspected you 
 always. My father suspected you years before 
 that day when I, like yourself, was a boy, and you 
 almost fainted on hearing that Leopold Clauss, 
 your father, still lived. He was your father. You 
 are the son of that wretch. I don t care if I tell 
 you that my father, Steven Dorian, set me to tra 
 cing it all out. He knew that there had been a 
 nurse for you when you were so ill in his sister- 
 in-law s house, after you first appeared there. He 
 had been told so by one of his own servants a
 
 328 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 shrewd woman, who had known Florine. Florine 
 that was her name. Mrs. Dorian, your friend 
 and protectress, had given her a large sum of money 
 not to speak. My father told me his suspicions 
 only lately, when I returned from abroad. At 
 first I scoffed at them ; then I reflected ; then I 
 wondered if I could find Florine. I did find her 
 at last. She was a miserable old hag of a woman, 
 but her memory was far from feeble do you 
 understand? She had had a son, a scamp, who 
 had dissipated all her savings. She was a devout 
 Catholic, was Florine; I soothed her last hours; 
 I got her to confess to me ; I was better than a 
 priest. A priest, if he helps us in our last hours, 
 is not above taking pay ; but I gave pay. I gave 
 enough pay to make Florine tell me it all. She 
 had gone with Mrs. Dorian to that hovel in the 
 Bowery ; they took you away together in a car 
 riage ; the whole neighborhood had been infested 
 with small-pox ; some people with whom you lived 
 let you go, though they were loath to give you up 
 at first till convinced that it was for your good. 
 My aunt was doing one of her absurdly eccentric 
 things ; she succeeded in keeping the matter a 
 profound secret. Afterward you lay ill for days. 
 You raved in your fever ; Florine, who had guessed 
 much, guessed more. Besides, my aunt made her 
 aware, from time to time, of the complete truth. 
 . . . This is what I bought of Florine, your old 
 nurse, Otho Clauss. . . And now I am armed with
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 329 
 
 what I know. . . You will not let me cross over 
 to the cottage, eh ? You will persist in having me 
 go back to town. . . Are you quite sensible ? . . 
 Ada Gramercey used to be proud a mondaine of 
 pride when I last knew her. Perhaps she is 
 changed. But I doubt it. Would she marry a 
 man descended as you are from the basest of 
 canaille ? Florine is still alive ; she can be 
 brought into a court to testify ; she is not too old 
 for that!" 
 
 He paused. I felt no longer weak, then. I 
 shook his hand from my shoulder. 
 
 " You will tell her this? " I said. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " What will it profit you ? " 
 
 " I love her. You know that." 
 
 " She does not love you." I spoke with effort. 
 He saw this, and counted upon my woful dis 
 array. 
 
 " You are rich," he said, with his face close to 
 mine, " and her father has lost nearly everything. 
 But I am still richer than you and can make her 
 marry me if you withdraw. I love her, and I am 
 determined to have her. After to-night after 
 what I have said to you, Otho Clauss, you will, 
 you must, break with her. You will find some 
 excuse. If you do not "... 
 
 " Well," I said, straightening my form and 
 meeting his look full, " what will you do ? " 
 
 " I will tell her," he said.
 
 330 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 There must have been some startling change in 
 my face, now, as I confronted him. 
 
 "You will tell her?" I repeated. 
 
 " Yes," he answered. 
 
 It seemed to me then as if I were not a man, 
 but a demon. And yet I believe that I spoke 
 with something like repose the repose of slum 
 bering tempest. " Tell me," I continued, " what 
 you will do after you have told her ? " 
 
 " I will " (he laughed for an instant harshly) 
 "marry her." 
 
 " Fool," I said, still calmly ; " she despises you." 
 
 He laughed again. " Before she met you she 
 liked nre. When you sink back into the place 
 where you belong she will turn again to me. She 
 always hated low descent and bad blood. . . You 
 need not look at me with that haughty air, Otho 
 Clauss ! not Claud but Clauss ! You sent me 
 away cowed from that room in Paris. But I know 
 what is behind your bravery now; nothing but 
 bravado is behind it. You think to " 
 
 I caught him by the throat then. The motive 
 that swayed me was one of absolute jealousy. I 
 believed for the moment that he could win Ada 
 if I withdrew my suit. I cared for no previous 
 taunt ; I was conscious solely of one fact that if 
 the woman I loved should know the truth about 
 me she might though even years hence prefer 
 him to me. 
 
 That had become my one swaying and dominant
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 331 
 
 impulse. He reeled as I set my grasp where I 
 knew it might kill. I wanted it to kill. All sense 
 of mercy had left me. 
 
 A low, desperate sound of struggle came from 
 him. He twisted wildly to and fro. A thirst for 
 his life possessed me. His hands struck at me 
 while I pushed him down ; his strength was noth 
 ing to mine ; he tottered and fell ; my grip was 
 still at his throat ; as his head reached earth it 
 struck with a dull noise ; I remember that this 
 noise gave me a frightful gladness. I clinched my 
 fingers closer in his throat ; I wanted him to die ; I 
 withdrew for an instant, watching him, and then 
 I seized a stone, a loose bit of rock, and dashed it 
 once, twice, with awful force downward . . . 
 
 It was with me as though I had ceased to be 
 myself and had become my father ! The man who 
 had done that hideous thing years ago seemed to 
 do it now again in my body, my spirit. It was 
 the curse of heredity. I wrought the horror, as 
 he had wrought it years ago. I repeated his act. 
 With my brain mad, with my blood fire, I did 
 what Leopold Clauss, who begot me, had done 
 that day in the far past. 
 
 1 had killed him. I knew it before I looked 
 down upon him and saw that this was true past 
 all mistake. 
 
 They who live sleek lives and count their small 
 daily spites, greeds, revenges, as matter of import, 
 can have no concern with what I thought and felt
 
 332 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 at this time. Scarcely was the act perpetrated 
 than I became once more myself. 
 
 Can you fathom the infinite meaning of that 
 anguish ? 
 
 No. The voices of all the damned, if damned 
 they be and if human sin expiates itself as poem, 
 picture and story describe, could not phrase the 
 horror of my remorse. 
 
 I had killed him. I bent over him with dilated 
 gaze and saw that I had killed him. It was I who 
 was liis murderer. My years of culture, thought, 
 refinement, self-exaltation, had come to this terri 
 fying end. All the knowledge that I had gained 
 in past years all the emotions that I had sounded 
 all the philosophy that I had probed and pon 
 dered, rushed upon me now in one jeering swirl 
 and tumult. The exquisite, opaline night flouted 
 me and poured dreadful sarcasms upon me. I, 
 Otho Claud, with high hopes, with fine aims, with 
 culture, with a mind of telling force, with theories 
 of what mankind would become in some nobler 
 epoch, with my poetry, my ideals, my love for art, 
 for letters, for the disenslaving of humanity from 
 false or foolish creeds I, Otho Claud, so called, 
 was a mere gross, brutish murderer. 
 
 A murderer I? It must be some nightmare. 
 I staggered backward, as Cain might have done, 
 with both hands before my eyes to shut out the 
 intruding moonlight. A murderer? I? Impos 
 sible ! The delusion must end soon. It could not
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 333 
 
 last. My imagination swept back to domestic 
 scenes, to trivial incidents of bowing before ladies 
 in ball-rooms, to genial moments when I had kissed 
 a hand, buttoned a glove, been suave, amorous, 
 human, inside this bloody and ghastly limit which 
 now set me so inexorably, for all future time, 
 beyond my fellows. I thought of men and women 
 whom I had not remembered for years ; their very 
 features were accurately limned in my memory ; 
 old echoes of favorite music floated through my 
 brain. . . . No, no ! I must be in a dream ; I 
 was still a part of humanity ; I could not thus 
 have leapt its bounds. I would presently wake. 
 . . . Why did I not wake ? Not to wake would 
 be madness. That body lay there. But I had 
 not killed it. I ? The thought was folly. I heard 
 Mrs. Dorian laugh her gruff French laugh, and I 
 felt her tap me on the shoulder. " Otho, mon 
 cher" she seemed to say, "you are dreaming." 
 Was I dreaming? Was that the smile of Casimir, 
 with his paint-brush in hand and his tossed blond 
 locks, and his desire that I should sit to him for 
 my portrait? Surely, yes. No such horrible gulf 
 as this yawned between me and the bright, 
 gracious truth of actual living ! 
 
 I drooped my eyes. I looked upon the man I 
 had killed. Shakespeare famed as the master 
 in telling us what human agony can do with the 
 visible universe that engirds it has made his 
 men and women speak of the sky being drowned
 
 334 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 in tears, the whole earth being draped in liveries 
 of woe. It was thus with me at this crucial and 
 piercing moment. 
 
 " What had I done ? " cried my conscience. The 
 blurred and reeling moonlight seemed to answer. 
 I had murdered a fellow-creature I, Otho Claud ! 
 
 There he lay, bleeding and dead. It had come 
 to this. 
 
 As my brain cleared I thought of the one thing 
 that a being jeopardized as I was must perforce 
 think of. A sinking sensation came upon me then. 
 I must hide the body that I had slain. I fell into 
 the ranks of the uncounted murderers who had 
 existed since the world began. It was just as if 
 some strong, dark, superhuman emissary of earthly 
 justice had drawn close to me, let me feel the awe 
 that clung about his presence, regarded me with 
 shut lips and implacable eyes, and then coldly set 
 upon my brow the stamp of a frightful fate. 
 
 There he lay. I looked down upon him. . . 
 Soon afterward I drew quickly backward. In the 
 lovely night a boat, rowed no doubt by careless 
 villagers, was passing somewhere near the rocks 
 on which I stood. They were singing. What 
 was their song? Something that meant life, se 
 renity, nature, freedom from sin. The boat stole 
 nearer and then glided on. The song it gave me 
 had been happy, and its recession was a new tor 
 ture. So everything henceforth that had in it the 
 worth, peace and hope of my kind would pass
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 335 
 
 me by. Hereafter I must be isolated among my 
 fellow-beings. Horror would hedge me in ; loath 
 ing would stand as my sentinel. 
 
 What should I do ? Could I escape the charge 
 of this crime? Would it be discovered soon? 
 When would it be discovered? Ought I to stand 
 here and wait for those who would come to 
 account me guilty of it? 
 
 Regaining a certain nerve, I felt the after- 
 impulse of all assassins rise within me. I grew 
 calm as I grew sensible of my peril. I bethought 
 me of Casimir. He must be told he must aid me. 
 
 I passed from the scene of my guilt. A sudden 
 yearning for Casimir thrilled and ruled me. I 
 must find him. . . I brought forth my watch and 
 tried to see the hour ; the white disk that I looked 
 at seemed to spin about. My steps, as I went 
 homeward, must have been random, zigzag. I do 
 not recall how I ascended the piazza of Rockside ; 
 I only remember that having gained it I stood 
 before one of the low French windows and saw 
 Casimir poring over a book, seated near a lamp. 
 The window was closed, and I rapped on it. 
 
 Casimir started. I rapped again. He rose. Once 
 more I rapped. He perceived whence the sound 
 came, and approached the window near which I 
 stood. 
 
 Soon, with his face against the pane, he recog 
 nized me. 
 
 " Casimir," I said, in a whisper. The house
 
 336 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 had been closed for the night. He could open the 
 window only by making an undue noise. His 
 rapid gesture indicated this. " I will join you on 
 the piazza," it seemed to say. 
 
 I waited. Presently I saw the doors of the 
 front window unclose. Casimir, in his velvet 
 artist s-coat, with his pure, fine face, with his 
 lightsome, jaunty, foreign manner now appeared. 
 
 "Casimir," I said, grasping both his hands as 
 we met. Then I suddenly dropped his hands. It 
 seemed an infamy that I should touch them. 
 
 u I was waiting for you, Otho," he said, scanning 
 my face in the dim light, dimmer to him, no doubt, 
 because of the illumination he had just left. 
 " Madame has gone to bed," he continued, " and " 
 . . . There he paused. He had seen. A shaft of 
 lamplight from the broad window must have made 
 him see. 
 
 He grasped my arm. " You are white as a 
 ghost, Otho," he exclaimed. "What has hap 
 pened?" 
 
 I did not answer him. As his hand presently 
 touched my own, he shot at me a glance full of 
 alarm. 
 
 "You are cold as ice, Otho!" he exclaimed. 
 " What does it mean ? " 
 
 I made him no answer. By this time he could 
 see me plainly enough. He stared at me, in that 
 quick, searching way which makes the brow of 
 the observer incline itself. And now he spoke
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 337 
 
 swiftly in his own language, putting a hand 
 against either of my temples. 
 
 " Otho, I am certain that something horrible 
 has happened. Tell me what it is." 
 
 I suddenly drew back from him. This move 
 ment was instinctive. How would he regard me 
 when he knew the truth? And until he knew 
 the truth I was a monster of uncleanness beside 
 his unsoiled manhood. His pity might come 
 afterward; but I had no right even to hope for 
 that. 
 
 " Casimir," I faltered, " there is something hor 
 rible. I I must tell it you." 
 
 He caught me again in his arms. " What is it, 
 Otho ? " he demanded. There was love in his 
 embrace. I leaned my head on his shoulder, and 
 spoke.
 
 338 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 XV. 
 
 CASIMIR listened. I felt his form tremble while 
 I told him what I had to tell. 
 
 I had bowed my head. His face was colorless 
 when I raised my eyes to it. But still it was 
 doubtful, perplexed. "You . . you have killed 
 Foulke Dorian ? " he gasped, at length. 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " You are not mad, Otho ? You seem mad." 
 
 " I have killed Foulke Dorian." 
 
 "Hush!" 
 
 With that word, delivered in a wholly new tone, 
 I perceived all distrust of my sanity vanish from 
 his face. 
 
 "Where, . . where is he, Otho? Tell me." 
 
 " On the shore opposite the cottage." 
 
 " Come." 
 
 He took my arm. We left the house together. 
 He did not speak until we had almost reached the 
 spot. Then he paused. 
 
 " Where ? " he said. 
 
 I made a gesture. He went forward, leaving 
 me alone. Suddenly the same boat to whose 
 voices I had hearkened before, was heard with its
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 339 
 
 high, sweet choric song. I listened, standing 
 alone. It seemed like the song of angels to a soul 
 eternally lost ! 
 
 A little later Casimir returned. His face, plain 
 in the moonlight, had the hues of death. 
 
 " You did this, Otho, you ! " he murmured. 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 The look that he gave me was an agony. He 
 suddenly flung his arms about me. What he did 
 was like what a woman might do, but it had none 
 of a woman s weakness. 
 
 "You, Otho! You, so high and noble! Tell 
 me that it was not your act ! Tell me ! . . . 
 Ah, I see! Otho, you did do it. My God! You!" 
 
 " Casimir," I said, disengaging myself from his 
 embrace, " the crime has been committed. . 
 What is to follow?" 
 
 He swept his look over my face in a way 
 impetuously questioning. " Can you ask that ? " 
 he moaned. . . " Otho, we we must act ! " 
 
 "Act?" I said. 
 
 "Yes you and I for God s sake don t lose 
 your strength now now, of all times ! " 
 
 "Is it not best to give myself up?" I asked. 
 " Perhaps it is best. I will do as you say." 
 
 " Give yourself up ? " He laughed as he spoke. 
 It was a laugh made of fearful falsettos. " Otho, 
 you must save yourself. You cannot mean that 
 you will attempt anything else ? . . Ah, what 
 would I not do to save you ? It is horrible ; it is
 
 340 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 a calamity I never dreamed of. But you must be 
 saved. This man came here to-night ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Do you know by what train he came?" 
 
 " No . . I know nothing." 
 
 " Wait," he said, and left me. I sank down on 
 the rocks, with my head on my breast. I do not 
 know how long it was before he returned, but 
 he may have been absent a full hour. As his 
 touch at last fell on my shoulder I started to my 
 feet. 
 
 "Well?" I questioned. 
 
 " Come," he said, drawing my arm within his. 
 We were presently standing near a sort of chasm 
 in the rocks a fissure filled with gloom, and some 
 what narrowed at its opening. This whole por 
 tion of the shore was unusually wild and rugged. 
 It lay several yards beyond the curve where the 
 cluster of trees grew, and at the base of the little 
 promontory thus formed. A path the continu 
 ation of that leading from the village wound in 
 among the trees a short distance farther inland. 
 That was the path which Foulke Dorian had taken. 
 
 Casimir pointed to the long, dark crevice. " I 
 have thrown the body there," he whispered. " It 
 has fallen six or seven feet at the very least. You 
 see the tides do not reach to here. And even 
 if they ever should, they could not dislodge the 
 body, for I have fastened to it a great piece of 
 stone. I have made no mistake. Unless there is
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 341 
 
 a very close search, he can never be found. That 
 blood on the rocks I have had to wash it away 
 as best I could. I think there will be no trace of 
 it in the morning, but I must return early and see. 
 . . As soon as we can, Otho, we must leave this 
 place. I will invent some excuse ; we must go to 
 morrow, if possible to New- York first, and then 
 elsewhere. We will be gone two or three weeks ; 
 remaining here would put too fearful a strain on 
 both of us. We can come back afterward." 
 
 "Afterward" ... I murmured. "What does 
 that word mean for me? Oh, if I could die to 
 night ! My father tried to kill himself after 
 ward. I should make the same attempt and 
 without failure. It is the only thing left me." 
 
 Casimir, who still held my arm, tightened his 
 grasp upon it. "Let us go back to Rockside 
 now," he said. " There is danger in our continu 
 ing here too long. We may already have been 
 observed. . . Come." 
 
 He led me away. We re-entered the house as 
 softly as we could. Till dawn we sat together, 
 talking. I had never dreamed till now of the 
 magnitude of this man s love for me. Of course 
 his suffering differed from mine, yet in its way it 
 was just as keen. He had wholly ceased to re 
 proach me. It was broad daylight and the birds 
 had begun their chirping outside in the chill 
 autumn air, when he said to me : 
 
 "If you could get a little sleep now only a
 
 342 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 few hours of it, Otho you might gain strength 
 and composure." 
 
 " Sleep," I repeated, with a low groan. " I won 
 der if I shall ever sleep again." 
 
 Not long after this Casimir quitted the cham 
 ber. I knew, without asking, whither he had gone. 
 To the shore, that he might search for some tell 
 tale signs of the murder. He had already destroyed 
 those garments belonging to each of us which bore 
 a single blood-stain ; he had cut them into strips 
 first and then burned them to ashes, afterward 
 scattering these forth to the night-wind. No pre 
 caution had been forgotten by him ; the very water 
 with which we cleansed our hands he had feared 
 to place in the ordinary utensils. 
 
 " Will all his alertness profit any thing ? " I 
 remember asking myself. " Will it keep me from 
 the scaffold where my father perished ? And what 
 if it does not? Such an end will make so slight 
 a difference now ! I shall die a thousand deaths 
 from remorse, even if I do not die that one death 
 by justice." 
 
 A sort of devil-may-care torpor was over me. 
 If Casimir had re-appeared to tell me that my crime 
 had been discovered and that my arrest was immi 
 nent, I should have scarcely made an attempt to 
 fly. While we had talked together my speech had 
 been but a series of despairing replies, and now I 
 sat stunned and apathetic during the absence of 
 my friend.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 343 
 
 I had the sense of lying maimed at the bottom 
 of some huge abyss, and of gazing upward to see 
 the light of heaven far and dim, a mere speck of 
 hopeless blue. It was not strange that imagi 
 nation wrought this graphic allegory within my 
 brain, for the feeling of having fallen or been 
 hurled downward from a lofty height was perpet 
 ually active. So many other men pass by slow 
 degrees toward the mental degradation which 
 makes them murderers. I had slipped into mine 
 with hardly an instant s warning. There had 
 been, with me, no previous alienation from moral 
 standards, no crumbling away of principle, no 
 subtle erosion of manhood and honor. My life 
 had suddenly crashed about me, so to speak, in 
 appalling ruin ; but the fragments were still fair 
 and sound ; they told of the shattering lightning- 
 bolt rather than the slow decay. If my sin had 
 been that of some known monster I could not have 
 regarded it with greater antipathy. And my capa 
 city to do this to reach a plain, frigid estimate 
 of just how deep and black was the sin itself to 
 witness it with eyes that were not those of any 
 common criminal but of a being educated and en 
 lightened beyond thousands of his kind in such 
 capacity could be found all the pathos of my ter 
 rible situation. And yet now I despised self-pity 
 as much as I did self-excuse. In those other mo 
 ments of frenzy it had been easy to shift the blame 
 of my guilt upon fate, circumstance, heredity.
 
 344 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 But I did so no longer. The very extent of my 
 repentance had become the measure and index of 
 my responsibility. I had been burdened from 
 childhood with a curse, but no palliative was in 
 cluded in this fact. Untold advantages had been 
 given me as weapons wherewith to fight against 
 and conquer it. That I had struggled was no plea 
 in my favor ; I should have struggled with victory. 
 Once previously on that same shore a solemn mo 
 nition had come to me. If I had seen an ulcer 
 bedded in my flesh I would have sought drugs 
 to lessen and cure it. It was idle to assert that I 
 could not have been the physician of my own soul. 
 The means were within my reach; no vigilance, 
 no fast, no scourge should have been spared. The 
 facile power with which I made others yield to me, 
 love me, grant me precedence and leadership, 
 should have been like a sword of warning waved 
 above that subtle egotism hardening and spread 
 ing through all my nature. Humility would have 
 proved my safeguard, as egotism had proved my 
 defeat; for on the latter quality a jealousy like 
 mine feeds, like a ghastly offspring on poisonous 
 diet. In my father it had been barbaric ; in me 
 it should have been civilized. No ; either my 
 offence was rank and smelled to Heaven, or else 
 all progress and reform, all evolution from beast 
 to man, all rise from savage to humanitarian, 
 all the mighty lesson taught by science, all the 
 imperishable wisdom dug out of ignorance by
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 345 
 
 dead and living thinkers all was futility, sham, 
 shadow ! 
 
 Provocation ? Yes, I had had it. So much the 
 greater reason for sobriety. Temptation ? True, 
 I might have felt it. So much the greater reason 
 for tolerance. Whatever I may elsewhere have 
 recorded in these pages regarding my belief that 
 some limit is set to our human means of escaping 
 a foreordained destiny, I seemed now to behold 
 the denial of this theory seared as with letters of 
 fire on my own conscience. The amplest means 
 of escape had been placed within my control. I 
 could have shaped my destiny as I chose. Ah ! 
 may these words, that teem with a conviction 
 bought at so fatal a price, be read hereafter with 
 precious profit by some fellow-creature in peril of 
 a downfall like mine ! Not to all are given the 
 shield and spear when the foe threatens. But to 
 me they were given, and how ill had I used them ! 
 Over so gigantic a failure as that which I had 
 made of my life the tears of angels might well 
 have flowed and the laughter of devils have 
 sounded ! 
 
 As I heard the step of Casimir recross the 
 threshold I raised my head and looked at him. 
 Just then I became conscious of a gusty, beating 
 noise against the window-panes, and a moment 
 afterward he said : 
 
 " A severe storm has set in. It is the equinox, 
 no doubt. The rain is rushing down in torrents.
 
 340 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 No one will visit that spot to-day. The storm 
 began a little while after I had reached it." He 
 was removing his drenched coat as he spoke. 
 " There were a few faint traces on the rocks," he 
 continued, " where I had dashed water, brimming 
 my hat with it again and again last night. But 
 now this drenching rain will wash away every 
 thing." 
 
 " Satan takes care of his own, perhaps," I said, 
 with a shudder. 
 
 He came nearer to me. " Oh, for God s sake, 
 Otho," he appealed, " do not look and speak like 
 that ! If you are reckless about discovery, think 
 of us ! You have called me your brother more 
 than once. You have often referred to my aunt 
 as your mother." 
 
 " Yes," I said, gazing up at him from where I 
 crouched, and slowly shaking my head. 
 
 u Then there is she whom you love Ada ! 
 Think of her." 
 
 "Do not speak of her, Casimir," I faltered, 
 covering my face. 
 
 He came still nearer to me. Presently he had 
 put his arm about my neck and drawn my head 
 forward till it rested on his breast. " Otho," he 
 murmured, " everything is not lost. You did it 
 in a mad moment. No one need ever know the 
 truth save yourself and me. Of course you will 
 suffer. But we will bear the suffering together. 
 Lean upon me as if you were hurt and I were help-
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 347 
 
 ing you to walk somewhere toward shelter and 
 relief. Think of me as strong whenever you think 
 of yourself as weak. Cling to me, trust me. By 
 and by a change will come. I love you better 
 than I ever loved you before. Oh, brother, more 
 than brother, listen and be comforted. A little 
 comfort will come to you not much as yet, 
 perhaps, but at least a little if only you will let 
 it come. You told me to-night that you wanted 
 them to find you and charge you with the deed. 
 Oh, Otho, is love like mine, like your second 
 mother s, like Ada s, to be flung carelessly away? 
 You see I put myself first ; I must do that, for I 
 cannot yield to anyone. And you have us all 
 all three. I alone shall know. The two others 
 will still love you just as before. We will guard 
 our secret so well, unless Ah ! you guess what 
 I mean ! But it has not been discovered yet. 
 There is a great chance that it never will be dis 
 covered. True, he may have been seen to leave 
 the train at the station. And yet the hour was 
 after dark, and no doubt he went straight from 
 the station to the by-road, which is but a step. 
 Once among the trees it is more than probable 
 that he was not observed. . . And Otho, think ! 
 Think, and clearly, with that large, strong brain 
 of yours. It was not such a dreadful thing to 
 have done after all. I might have done it my 
 self" 
 
 " You, Casimir ! " I broke in, lifting my head
 
 348 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 and looking at him. His gray eyes those beau 
 tiful, dreamy gray eyes were glistening in tears. 
 Ah, how he loved me ! Surely he was right. To 
 this man, so delicate and yet so gallant and virile 
 of nature, I was indeed * more than brother ! 
 " You, Casimir ! " I repeated. " Never ! " 
 
 " Do not be so sure of that," he went on, for 
 cing my head caressingly downward upon his 
 breast as he spoke. I knew that he was deceiving 
 me, and yet his words, infinitely tender and 
 spurred by a friendship richly unselfish, were not 
 without their faint, gentle encouragement. " Yes, 
 Otho, I might have done it. . . But whether I 
 might or no, remember how he provoked you. 
 What he said to you there in my studio in Paris 
 was infamous. It made me hate and despise him. 
 If you had not punished him then I would have 
 done so, and with as much right as you, for she is 
 of my blood, and the aspersion was vile. Then, 
 there on the shore, he threatened to tell Ada 
 Gramercey the whole truth about your birth. 
 That was the basest kind of meanness. He 
 taunted you as cruelly as one man ever taunted 
 another." 
 
 My hand had stolen into Casimir s. I looked 
 up. My eyes directly met his for the first time 
 since I had confessed my guilt to him. He had 
 pierced something sluggish and paralyzed in my 
 spirit ; he had given me a sort of reason to believe 
 that I still bore the right of calling myself a man.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 349 
 
 I do not claim that I was justified in thus believ 
 ing. These confessions of mine are never to be 
 taken as an extenuation of crime ; they are im 
 measurably the opposite ; they are, if anything, a 
 self-abasement, a humiliation, an effort to express 
 the possibility of human regeneration, human 
 excellence, in spite of all hurtful and destructive 
 hereditary conditions. That I failed momentously 
 is no reason why others, far less finely equipped 
 for success, should not conquer and triumph. 
 
 Still, a new set of emotions now assailed me. 
 I bgan to breathe, as it were, with a freer breath. 
 Perhaps Casimir was right. It shot through my 
 mind that in the life of this atom which we call 
 our world, men had existed who were held honor 
 able yet had slain a fellow-man for far less than 
 what had goaded and inflamed me. 
 
 " He did taunt me horribly, Casimir," I said. 
 " Ah, be careful," I went on, with a touch of 
 wildness in my tones and the struggle of a sob in 
 my throat. " You may make me hold this crime 
 more lightly than I hold it now. And I know its 
 abomination ! I know I shall always know, 
 even if I one day gain the courage of wanting 
 to live of wishing to evade the doom that I 
 deserve." 
 
 "It is that feeling, Otho," he hurriedly an 
 swered, "which I desire you to have. Let me 
 dissolve your torpor, and I shall be content. You 
 called yourself to-night a vulgar murderer you
 
 350 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 called yourself your own father, whose deed I 
 know you execrate again and again. You are 
 not like him. You have been outraged, spit upon, 
 trampled upon, by a coward. Suppose you had 
 fought a duel with him and killed him. It would 
 have been fair; we French think that fair. But 
 he was beneath fighting you ; he did not dare 
 meet you. You recall how we waited in Paris for 
 him to give us a sign "... 
 
 And so he continued, this Casimir, this peerless 
 friend, who reminded me with a frightful sarcasm 
 of the love I had been able to awaken in my own 
 kind, and of what untold benefit a man endowed 
 with this power might have wrought on earth ! 
 
 But he gained his point. I rose, a little later, 
 with kindling hopes, with a sense that I should 
 strive against discovery, arrest and death, with a 
 longing to have my guilt buried as was the body 
 of him whom I had slain yes, almost with an 
 impulse to place my act outside the inevitable 
 murderous pale. 
 
 Casimir quickly saw the change. He grasped 
 both my hands. The rain was beating furiously 
 against the window panes. Its sound was a sort 
 of doleful encouragement. 
 
 " You will act with me ! " said Casimir. A 
 sombre joy lit his eyes. " You will riot let your 
 despair crush you, Otho ! . . Thank God ! " 
 
 He burst into passionate tears a moment after 
 ward. But the paroxysm did not last long. I saw
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD, 351 
 
 him make a great effort to master it, and he soon 
 did so. ... 
 
 At breakfast time we met Mrs. Dorian. "We 
 were both thoroughly composed. Casimir played 
 his part, and played it well. He declared the rain 
 to be something intolerable. It was undoubtedly 
 the equinox, and Rockside during the equinox 
 would be genant beyond endurance. Besides, he 
 was quite out of two very important colors. He 
 could not paint without them. He had been so 
 stupid not to send to town for them ; they were 
 vitally necessary for the picture he was now paint 
 ing. What should he do ? He must go to town, 
 and he doubted whether he would return till this 
 horrid storm was over. As for myself, Otho, I 
 should have gone days ago. Why did I not ac 
 company him ? I knew very well that there were 
 a hundred new matters concerning the estate 
 which I had not yet looked into. Perhaps when 
 I got to town I should find that I would be kept 
 so fearfully busy for a week that I could not think 
 of returning to Rockside till all the melange of 
 business had been settled. 
 
 "My dear Casimir," exclaimed Mrs. Dorian 
 petulantly, " I never saw you really selfish till now. 
 You wish to leave me alone in this great house, 
 with this deluge of rain for society. It is merci 
 less in you." 
 
 " Ah, ma tante" said Casimir gayly, " you will 
 not think it so merciless when Otho telegraphs
 
 352 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 you that you were in clanger of losing thousands 
 by his neglect of your affairs. As for society, we 
 will send you all the new novels we can find, 
 French, German or English." 
 
 " Casimir is right, madame," I now said. " It 
 is really imperative that I should look in at the 
 office. Perhaps I can return in a day or two ; 
 perhaps even to-night." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian yielded reluctantly enough. Casimir 
 and I made some hasty preparations, and by noon 
 announced that our departure would take place 
 at one o clock. 
 
 " In an hour ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dorian. " Otho," 
 she went on, "you look pale, worried, dSsolt. . 
 You are like a man who nerves himself to be cheer 
 ful. I hope no bad news has reached you in those 
 letters you got this morning. If I guess rightly, 
 mon cher, pray do not continue to deceive your 
 best of friends." 
 
 " I ? " was my uneasy murmur. " If any bad 
 news had come you should be the first to learn it. 
 . . I fear that the storm depresses me, as it does 
 Casimir." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian glanced toward one of the jarred 
 and rain-whipped windows. " It is truly another 
 flood," she said, " and I am to be left alone in my 
 ark." She suddenly turned and gave me a keen 
 look. " But you will surely not go without saying 
 good-by to Ada ? " 
 
 I was prepared for this. But before I could
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 353 
 
 answer Casimir struck merrily in : " Oh, aunt, do 
 you not see that the prospect of bidding Made 
 moiselle Ada farewell is what torments our poor 
 Romeo here ? But we will order the carriage a 
 half hour earlier than is necessary, and stop at the 
 cottage on our way to the station." 
 
 We did order the carriage a half-hour too early, 
 but without afterward stopping at the cottage. I 
 was to write Ada from New-York if I could. 
 To meet her and to enact this hypocrisy before her 
 as I had done in the presence of Mrs. Dorian, 
 would have been a sheer foolhardy trial of my 
 own endurance. And Casimir, if I had proposed 
 such a plan, would eagerly have discountenanced 
 it. 
 
 That night we rested at a New- York hotel. The 
 rain still fell in torrents here as it had done at 
 Rockside. Before retiring, Casimir mailed to his 
 aunt a letter which was a masterpiece of natural 
 istic deception. New- York, he declared, had im 
 pressed him, during this furious storm, as more 
 appallingly ugly than he had ever yet found it. He 
 had conceived an idea of running on to Washing 
 ton, which he had never seen, and which might 
 prove, now of all other times, a refreshing change. 
 He had induced me to become his companion. I, 
 Otho, was able to send the pleasant news that 
 matters at my office were in less of a turmoil than 
 we had both anticipated. Of course I had writ 
 ten the usual amorous lament to Miss Gramercey,
 
 354 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 whom at the last moment I had been ridiculously 
 unable to bid farewell. 
 
 "But I have written nothing," I said, with 
 a heavy sigh. "My pen has refused to shape a 
 single word." 
 
 Casimir lifted a sheet of paper from a table near 
 him. It was covered with characters. " I feared 
 as much," he said. " You have only to copy 
 that." . . . 
 
 The next day we went to Washington. Travel 
 and the complete change of scene helped to restore 
 me both in mind and body. With every day the 
 desire to live and to elude punishment became 
 stronger. I felt both craft and antagonism assert 
 themselves within me. My remorse must be death 
 less, but life with its incessant sting was now vastly 
 preferable to exposure, obloquy, and a shameful 
 end. Life, too, with Ada! That would temper 
 every guilty dream, every secret throe, every or 
 deal of suspense, every qualm of disquietude, with 
 a new lenitive element. The sun would never 
 shine again for me as of old, but it would shine on 
 her, and therefore I craved not to be shut from its 
 beams. Then, too, there were other reasons for 
 living, even fighting to live. Years might yet be 
 spared to me. What enormity of expiation might 
 I not attain in them ! Men had existed before 
 now with skeletons in their closets as bony and 
 grim as mine. They had died at last with the 
 world s respect and honor. I had rare talents,
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 355 
 
 the art of winning esteem and affection with ease. 
 Why should I not some day pass from earth with 
 the consciousness that I had offset against one 
 great crime a thousand acts of goodness to my 
 fellow-men? 
 
 The political atmosphere of Washington helped 
 to kindle my new hope. Of course I saw nothing 
 of its purely social side, but this one could easily 
 imagine as being vivacious, interesting and unique. 
 I forgot my former prejudice against mixing in 
 the politics of my native land. The magnificent 
 marble Capitol, whose faults have been so unjustly 
 exaggerated and whose majesty is beyond dispute 
 
 the Houses of Congress the stately squares, 
 parks and avenues of this noble city, all won and 
 invited me. What should prevent my shining 
 here as a true statesman at some future time ? If 
 corruption reigned in this stronghold of our re 
 public, so much the better reason why a man of 
 fearless virtue and reformatory purpose should 
 bend his best energies toward ameliorating meas 
 ures. And why should not I be such a man? 
 
 All this time I was training and steadying myself 
 to meet what I knew must sooner or later arrive, 
 
 in case detection should not plunge me into open 
 odium and retribution. I watched the daily jour 
 nals for some news regarding him. Casimir watched 
 them too. Meanwhile I wrote repeatedly to Ada, 
 and received from her the most loving replies. I 
 had grown capable of playing the role which hence-
 
 356 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 forth, at any hazard, I must play with firmness and 
 courage. In a fortnight something like the old 
 relations were re-established between Casimir and 
 myself. He ceased to uphold and to fortify me. 
 He saw that I had rallied and meant no surrender. 
 Then, as he thus perceived, he retired once again 
 into his former place of dependence and submis 
 sion. It was I who now meditated, decided and 
 kept myself in readiness to execute. The femi 
 nine part of his nature became re-ascendant ; he 
 looked to me for counsel, not I to him. But for 
 the first time I now discovered the effects of what 
 he had been called upon to undergo. The wear 
 and tear upon his sensitive soul had been fright 
 ful. He was given to nervous seizures which he 
 tried in vain to conceal from me ; he lost flesh and 
 appetite ; he dropped into brooding, dismal, silent 
 moods, from which a word of mine would startle 
 him with a smile that was forced and painful. I 
 observed all this with keen solicitude. 
 
 " You are yourself at last ! " he said to me, one 
 day. " I am so glad, Otho, so glad ! " 
 
 " And 3 r ou," I answered, " are losing all the 
 force that once sustained me." 
 
 " Oh, never mind that," he said. " As long as 
 I served you with it while it lasted, what matter 
 if it leaves me now ? " 
 
 I think it was on the following day that I showed 
 him a paragraph in a certain Washington journal, 
 copied from a New- York one.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 357 
 
 He read the lines with intent care. " Well ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 " You see," I said. " He is merely reported to 
 be missing. No one seems to know of the truth. 
 There is not the slightest suggestion of it. The 
 date of his final appearance in New-York is given, 
 and nothing more." 
 
 " Yes," said Casimir. 
 
 " We must go back," I said, after a long pause. 
 " To remain away longer would be worse than idle. 
 Mrs. Dorian is still at Rockside. We will join her 
 there." 
 
 " Join her there ? " repeated Casimir, with a start. 
 
 " Yes. Are you unwilling ? " 
 
 " Unwilling ? I ? " he returned, hastily. " Oh, 
 no ; far from it. What made you imagine that I 
 was ? " 
 
 "Then we will leave Washington to-night," I 
 said.
 
 358 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 XVI. 
 
 WE reached Rockside on the following evening. 
 Mrs. Dorian was in an ecstasy of welcome at our 
 return. She at once noticed Casimir s altered 
 looks, and expressed fears that his trip had been 
 the reverse of beneficial. We were both prepared 
 for some reference to her missing nephew, and be 
 fore we had been twenty minutes in her company 
 the reference came. 
 
 " My dear boys," she suddenly exclaimed, " have 
 you heard this odd story about Foulke Dorian?" 
 
 " We read of it in the newspapers," I said. 
 
 " Is it not mysterious ? " she pursued. " Nearly, 
 three weeks have passed since he was seen." 
 
 " Who last saw him ? " I heard Casimir say, but 
 I did not turn my eyes upon his face. The voice 
 with which he put the question seemed even and 
 tranquil. 
 
 " A gentleman at his club in New- York," replied 
 Mrs. Dorian. " That was about five o clock on the 
 afternoon of September tenth. This gentleman 
 exchanged a few words with him before he left the 
 club. He appeared in his usual frame of mind, 
 and said nothing about any contemplated journey."
 
 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 359 
 
 " Was he on good terms with his father ? " I 
 inquired. 
 
 "Excellent. The papers declared so, at least. 
 I wrote yesterday to my brother-in-law." 
 
 " You wrote ? " I quickly broke in. 
 
 " Yes. It was only decent, you know. I ex 
 pressed my warm sympathy, and my hopes that 
 the unhappy affair would speedily be cleared up. 
 It was a mere bit of ceremony, of course. And yet 
 it was performed in all sincerity. How can one 
 help being sincere on such a subject? Foulke, 
 whatever were his faults, was not a dissipated 
 fellow, and I should not be surprised if it were 
 a case of secret assassination. These horrors are 
 occurring every year in all great cities." 
 
 I wanted to test my own aplomb and self-com 
 mand. " His known wealth and his regularity of 
 habits would certainly point to some such ugly 
 explanation," I said. And then I looked full at 
 Casimir. " Do you not agree with me ? " I con 
 tinued. 
 
 " Yes," was the reply. " Still, many men have 
 disappeared, like this, from wholly opposite causes. 
 Nous verrons" 
 
 " Detectives are at work," resumed Mrs. Dorian, 
 " and it is possible that some clew may be found at 
 any hour. Pray Heaven that if there has been foul 
 play the miserable, whoever he is, may be brought 
 to justice ! " 
 
 Did my heart sink or my pulse leap at this?
 
 3GO TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 No ; I was so thoroughly equipped for it ; I had 
 already heard it so often in imagination. Worse 
 would be needed to discompose me, to strike me 
 with the least thrill of real panic. . . And how 
 long must I wait before this " worst " might actu 
 ally occur? Would it occur at all? There lay 
 the most poignant torment of my position. I 
 might bear severe shocks with coolness. But this 
 waiting for the shocks to come would there not 
 be a slow, inexorable strain in that which no sharp 
 jeopardy or menace could equal ? The battle is so 
 slight a thing, with its heat and hurry, beside the 
 silence and uncertainty that precede it ! ... 
 
 I did not see Ada that night. Casimir and I 
 talked in whispers long after Mrs. Dorian had re 
 tired. He promised me then that he would go to 
 a certain spot on the shore early to-morrow. I did 
 not like his look, his voice, his eye, his paleness, 
 as we separated. This return to Rockside was 
 evidently telling upon him. We must leave the 
 place within a few days at the farthest. Mrs. 
 Dorian was anxious to go ; and as for the Gram- 
 erceys, she had told me that evening that Ada had 
 formed plans to live modestly in New- York with 
 her father during the remainder of autumn and 
 the coming winter. The Colonel s condition was 
 far from promising, and he had taken a dislike to 
 the cottage, which he declared damp and full of 
 draughts. I am sure that Mrs. Dorian wondered 
 at my not going to Ada before the next day. Her
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 361 
 
 suspicion that some quarrel had occurred between 
 us became manifest as the evening grew late. But 
 a suspicion of this sort was rather desirable than 
 otherwise. To-morrow would dispel it, when she 
 saw my former devotion perpetuated. As it was, 
 I could not go forth into the darkness, even if I 
 took the inland way toward the cottage. At least 
 for one night I must yield to the horror of thus 
 going, and remain indoors. Hereafter I would 
 conquer it if it still continued. But for this one 
 night the first I had experienced since the com 
 mission of my crime I dared not, I could not, I 
 would not go ! 
 
 On the next day, in the morning, I saw Ada. 
 She threw her arms about my neck and gave way 
 to a burst of tears as we met. But they were 
 happy tears. Her love, shown with so sweet an 
 abandonment, was a surpassing joy to me. It gave 
 me fresh vigor of hope, fresh vitality of defiance 
 against all that the future might hold in store. 
 How could I be really vile when such a love paid 
 me such a greeting ? . . . 
 
 The brief autumn afternoon was nearly spent 
 when I returned to Rockside. Never, since that 
 woful night, had I felt so brave and calm as now. 
 I longed for some stirring development to try me 
 and prove the mettle of my resistance. The love 
 of this pure and adorable woman was something 
 not only to live for, but to breast immense ad 
 versity for as well. It should be talismanic with
 
 302 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 me in the exercise of whatever transcendent tact 
 and cunning events might demand. For if the 
 truth ever transpired, it would drag her down with 
 myself, in one common calamity. By saving my 
 own life, therefore, I would be saving her happi 
 ness. Joy was in that thought, and immeasurable 
 incentive also. 
 
 " The days without you dragged so drearily, 
 Otho," she had told me as we sat together. " I 
 think I needed your absence to make me com 
 pletely conscious of how dear you had become." 
 
 Of course we spoke of Foulke Dorian. I my 
 self first referred to him. There seemed a brutal 
 daring in this voluntary mention of the man I had 
 killed, but until I did thus mention him a doubt 
 of my own equipoise had perforce to haunt and 
 dispirit me. 
 
 On reaching the house I went straightway in 
 search of Casimir. I found him in his studio, 
 seated before one of his canvases, brush in hand. 
 
 "You have been painting, Casimir?" I said. 
 
 He gave me a smile that compared almost spec 
 trally with his smile of the past. 
 
 " I have been trying to paint," he said. " But 
 somehow I cannot seize this subject with the old 
 power. It evades me. You remember what I 
 wanted to make of it before?" (That pregnant 
 little word, as softly pronounced by him, had a 
 volume of meaning for me.) " See this Mag 
 dalen . . she was to have wakened from her first
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 363 
 
 dream of Christ. There was to have been sorrow 
 on her face, but a heavenly comfort, too. And 
 now I have put only despair there. Look, Otho, 
 the lips will not curve aright ; they are bitter in 
 spite of me. And the eyes I wanted them to 
 melt in unshed tears, but they are still so hard, 
 so hopeless ! " 
 
 He tossed his brush away and rose. As he did 
 so the words of Ada were re-uttered within my 
 memory : 
 
 " He is a sort of Poe touched with sunshine. 
 And yet, if some great grief or disaster came to 
 him, would not the sunshine die out of all that he 
 did? Might not his work turn grim and even 
 malign? " . . 
 
 " Casimir," I exclaimed, going up to him and 
 grasping his arm, "you must paint no more at 
 present. It will be torture for me to see a genius 
 like yours fail and seem almost to perish, because 
 I (God help me ! ) have " 
 
 " Hush ! " he broke in, w.ith an affrighted start. 
 " What are you saying, Otho ? And so loudly, 
 too ! Some servant might be passing. And do 
 not imagine it is that ! You are wrong, wholly 
 wrong, mon ami. " 
 
 "I am right," I answered him. 
 
 He started again, and looked at me fixedly. Then 
 he took both of my hands in his, slowly pressing 
 them. "I will do as you advise," he said, in 
 measured tones, as though convinced by me. " I
 
 364 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 will paint no more for the present. I promise 
 you. . . Yes, it is surely best." . . 
 
 A little later I asked him : " Did you go to the 
 shore, Casimir?" 
 
 He had seated himself again ; he was staring 
 down at the carpet ; he seemed not to have heard 
 my question, for he neither lifted his eyes nor 
 answered it. I repeated it, and then he met my 
 gaze. His voice, as he now addressed me, was 
 nearly inaudible, and combined with his manner 
 to betray a vacillation, a nerveless, forceless 
 insecurity, which I had never till this moment 
 witnessed in him. 
 
 " Otho," he faltered, "I I went as far as that 
 dead tree. You know where it stands just mid 
 way between our stretch of shore and that which 
 fronts the cottage. .1 I went as far as that, and 
 then I I could go no farther. A weight came 
 upon my limbs, a freezing sensation filled my 
 blood I was a coward, no doubt, but I I could 
 not walk one step farther ! " . . 
 
 " No matter," I said soothingly. I was stand 
 ing at his side, and I put my hand on his beautiful, 
 silky blond hair, smoothing it. How strange that 
 I should speak to him in the placid voice I then 
 used ! What a complete reversing of our previous 
 acts and words ! You would have thought that he, 
 not I, had been the wearer of this deadly and 
 baleful yoke. " Never make the effort again," I 
 .continued, in the same consoling tones, "if it
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 365 
 
 affects you like this. There is, after all, no need 
 of going to the hateful spot . . no need whatever." 
 
 Five days passed crisp, brilliant, October days. 
 On the shore in front of Rockside there was a 
 cluster of sumacs. I could see them from the 
 piazza, from the windows, from whatever place 
 on the lawns I happened to glance seaward. They 
 seemed to intrude themselves on my vision, to 
 follow me, to whisper " Look." They were a vivid 
 red ; they had the hue of blood. I never went 
 near the shore. 
 
 I saw Ada constantly. She noticed nothing 
 novel or different from of old in my demeanor. On 
 seeing Casimir she was almost shocked by the 
 change in him. For myself, so relentless was the 
 pressure upon nerves and brain that I often felt 
 as if I were haggard of cheek and hollow of voice. 
 I knew well enough what suspense would do with 
 both visage and conduct if I continued many days 
 longer in this accursed place. But we had already 
 planned an early departure. The Gramerceys were 
 to leave when we did. Mrs. Dorian had begun her 
 preparations for departure. 
 
 " Poor Casimir," she said to me pityingly. " He 
 has contracted some malarial trouble here. It 
 must be that." 
 
 " Perhaps," I answered. 
 
 My dreams, when I now slept at night, were 
 terrific. . . I would wake from them dripping with 
 clammy sweat. Sometimes I lay listening for the
 
 366 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 sound of footsteps at the door of my bed-chamber 
 after I had thus waked. It seemed to me that 
 I must have shrieked wildly in this mockery of 
 slumber, and that all the inmates of the house 
 had been roused. But worse than such dreams 
 were those of rapture and exquisite peace with 
 Ada as my wife. I would wake from these to 
 the anguish of the actual ! And then my dim 
 room, with its familiar appointments, became an 
 abode of misery beyond all that the most antic 
 fantasies of nightmare could make it ! Calm, still, 
 shadowy, it racked and tortured me with what 
 really was ! 
 
 It was marvellous that I held out physically as 
 I did during these five days, each one divided 
 from the other by a night of horror. Again and 
 again I saw Casimir furtively watch me, and read 
 in his altered, dimmed, lustreless eyes astonish 
 ment at my serenity and control. 
 
 I saw the newspapers regularly. Each day 
 there would be some notice in them of the missing 
 man. But no clew had yet been found. The 
 detectives were still at work, but entirely without 
 avail. 
 
 On one of these momentous days the third 
 of the series a distressing and horrible thing 
 occurred. Though I did not even fancy so then, 
 it was the beginning of the end like the first 
 stroke of a knell to the being whom it vitally and 
 wretchedly concerned.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 367 
 
 Ada had come to Rockside, and after holding 
 a little talk with Casimir she requested to be 
 shown once more the contents of his studio. 
 
 "But I have done nothing, Mademoiselle," he 
 answered sadly, " since you last saw my pictures. 
 You are welcome to look upon the old work again, 
 however, if you so desire." 
 
 Ada did desire, and signified her wish. " He 
 is miserably unwell, I should say," she whispered 
 to me, as we passed up stairs behind Casimir. 
 "See how he has lost that old springing step 
 of his ! Does he ever complain to you, Otho, of 
 feeling ill ? " 
 
 " Never, 5 I said. 
 
 " You have fairly won your leisure," she said a 
 little later to the young artist, while moving about 
 his studio. "You have made yourself a hand 
 some pile of laurels to rest on ; you can now afford 
 to be idle." 
 
 " It is very good of you to call them laurels," 
 said Casimir, with one of his graceful bows. 
 
 " And Otho s portrait ? " Ada continued. " Does 
 that remain unfinished still ? " 
 
 " Yes, Mademoiselle." 
 
 " Casimir will finish it when he is better more 
 en veine" I said. 
 
 "Perhaps you are too much alone when you 
 paint," said Ada, looking at my friend in her 
 frank, sweet, interested way. " There would be 
 something delightfully social, I should think, in
 
 368 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 your giving Otho a sitting, for example, while 
 Mrs. Dorian or myself also occupied the studio." 
 
 Casimir seemed to muse for a moment. Then 
 he walked rapidly toward a portion of the room 
 in which my portrait was placed. A decisive 
 change now became apparent in his manner; his 
 native gayety seemed to break from repression. 
 
 " We will do as you say, Mademoiselle," he 
 exclaimed. " We will do it now." 
 
 " Now ! " I swiftly retorted. 
 
 " Yes," said Casimir. In a trice he had placed 
 the canvas upon his easel, which stood near a 
 bright window. " I will see what I can do," he 
 went on. " I will see whether I cannot give Otho 
 a sitting to-da} r ." 
 
 His demeanor had the buoyancy of former 
 times. He motioned for me to seat myself, and 
 I did so. Rapidly he mixed a few colors on his 
 palette. Ada sank into a chair at my side. 
 
 Casimir went to work with apparent zest. The 
 features of the portrait were perfectly limned ; 
 the resemblance was already striking. He painted 
 with vigorous strokes for several minutes, after 
 looking at me, and in a way that presently im 
 pressed me as wild and unnatural. 
 
 Suddenly his look changed to one of extreme 
 dismay and agitation. Before I could anticipate 
 the action, he had dashed his brush upon the floor 
 and sunk into a seat, covering his face with both 
 hands.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 369 
 
 Ada rose flurriedly. " He is ill," she cried. 
 
 I also rose and went toward him. But as I 
 reached his side he uncovered his face. 
 
 " I cannot paint you ! " rang his voice, in shrill, 
 plaintive tones. Then it dropped so that I alone 
 heard it. " You are not the same to me as you 
 were ! I see you as I saw you then ! I " 
 
 The next instant I had placed my hand over his 
 mouth. " Casimir ! " I said. 
 
 Ada was observing intently. As his eyes met 
 mine a shiver convulsed him, and he pointed 
 toward the portrait. Then his gaze drooped, and 
 his head also. In another moment, however, he 
 made a quick, violent gesture, such as a man 
 might make who struggles against a swoon, and 
 staggered to his feet. 
 
 "Pardon me, Mademoiselle," he stammered to 
 Ada in French. "I I am truly unwell. I I 
 tried to paint Otho, and see what I have done ! " 
 
 He was motioning toward the portrait. But 
 Ada s eyes did not follow the waving of his hand. 
 She was regarding me in evident consternation. 
 
 " Why did you try to stop him from speaking, 
 Otho ? " she questioned. " Why did you put your 
 hand against his mouth ? " 
 
 I hurried toward her. " Ada, can you ask 
 this ? " I said. " Foolish hysteria in a man is not 
 as it is with you women . . I did not wish Casi 
 mir to make himself absurd, ridiculous." 
 
 She inclined her head ; an expression of sym-
 
 370 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 pathy crossed her features. She turned toward 
 the portrait, clearly visible from where she stood. 
 
 " Ah ! " broke from her lips. " He has made it 
 so different, Otho ! It is not you. It is " 
 
 She paused abruptly, for just then Casimir 
 seized a brush, dipped it hastily in some dark 
 paint, and literally slashed it across the canvas. 
 A laugh sounded from him immediately after 
 ward. 
 
 " It is a failure ! " he cried "a horrible fail 
 ure ! I will do it again when I I am in better 
 mood." Then he flung this brush away, as he had 
 done the other, and re-seated himself. 
 
 "Did you see it?" murmured Ada, catching 
 my hand. 
 
 " Yes," I answered. 
 
 " He he made it so unlike you," she continued. 
 " He gave the face a horrible expression . . What 
 does it mean, Otho?" 
 
 "It means that Casimir is ill not himself," I 
 responded. " Come." 
 
 I at once led her from the studio. . . It may 
 have been an hour later when I returned thither. 
 Casimir sat in the same chair, with a dejected 
 attitude. I went up to him and shook him 
 roughly by the shoulder. 
 
 " What wretched folly is this ? " I asked of him. 
 
 He burst into tears. I stood beside him as he 
 wept. Presently he said, looking up at me : 
 
 " Forgive me, Otho ! I I thought I could
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 371 
 
 paint you as you are. But the shadows gather so 
 thickly, now, whenever I touch brush to canvas. 
 I I saw you, in spite of myself, as you were that 
 niffht!" 
 
 I leaned over him and spoke with my lips close 
 at his ear. "Casimir," I said, "you must go from 
 this place. You must go at once." 
 
 "I I cannot go without you," he murmured, 
 weakly. " I cannot be alone. I I will go when 
 you go not before." 
 
 " Be it so," I answered, after a pause. " On 
 Monday we will all leave. But until then be 
 guarded. I implore you, Casimir do you under 
 stand ? " 
 
 "Yes!" 
 
 He sprang to his feet as he spoke the word. 
 His eyes flashed, and he gave sign of being his old 
 self. 
 
 " I trust you," I said, grasping his hand. " But 
 beware! Your nerves are unstrung you are ill 
 reckless fits like these carry peril if you think 
 another of them may seize you " 
 
 He interrupted me with an almost scoffing toss 
 of his disengaged hand. "Nothing more will 
 occur," he said. " It was merely the painting. I 
 should have kept my promise to you. I broke it, 
 and you saw the result. I will not paint again 
 till you bid me." 
 
 " Do not," I said. 
 
 On the fifth day of this series, while I sat alone
 
 372 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 in the breakfast room before an untasted meal, 
 having appeared later there than either Casimir 
 or my guardian, a stern shock came to me. 
 
 Mrs. Dorian entered and at once laid her hand 
 on my shoulder. " Otho," she said, " who is here, 
 do you think ? " 
 
 " Who ? " I asked, steadying myself instantly. 
 
 " Steven Dorian." 
 
 I rose. " He comes to speak of his son ? " 
 
 Yes." 
 
 " Why does he come here ? " 
 
 " He has an idea about coming." 
 
 "An idea?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "What is it?" 
 
 "He thinks that Foulke was last seen in this 
 place." 
 
 I gave a slow, amazed smile. My brain was 
 ice, my nerves were iron. " In this place ? " I 
 repeated. " How absurd ! Where is he ? " 
 
 " In the sitting-room. Will you come and see 
 him?" 
 
 " Did he ask to see me ? " 
 
 " Yes. He has demanded to see you." 
 
 " Is he alone ? " 
 
 " No. A man is with him a detective. And 
 a boy a lad from the village." 
 
 " Really ? And pray what do they all want ? " 
 
 " I have no conception. It is insulting for 
 Monsieur Steven to come here like this. But he
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 373 
 
 is so wretched in appearance so evidently an 
 invalid that one can forgive him almost when 
 one looks at him." 
 
 I looked at him soon afterward. He was seated 
 as Mrs. Dorian and I presently entered the sitting- 
 room, but a man and a boy stood on either side of 
 him. The man was a slender, beardless person, 
 quietly and darkly dressed. I do not know that 
 it would be possible for any member of humanity 
 to make himself more inconspicuous, more ordi 
 nary, than this man had somehow succeeded in 
 doing. Nature had certainly aided the effort, if 
 effort it was. A sallow, mottled complexion and 
 a dull, sleepy eye seemed to include every charac 
 teristic of his visage. Even to mention these traits 
 of it was to pass undue comment. Everything 
 about his figure bespoke modesty, retirement, a 
 tendency to escape observation. The very lines 
 of his coat and trousers indicated personal seques 
 tration ; they drooped and sagged as if chary of 
 contact with more social broadcloth. What a 
 man to slip through a crowd unnoticed, I thought, 
 on seeing him. What a man to watch without 
 being watched ! 
 
 The boy was a ruddy little fellow of about ten. 
 He looked somewhat confused, and was plainly 
 stupid. 
 
 Mr. Steven Dorian sat between the two, as I 
 have stated. He bore every sign of having risen 
 from a bed of illness. Mrs. Dorian s past descrip-
 
 374 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 tion had not been exaggerated. He was cadav 
 erous, hollow-eyed, chalky in his pallor, and so 
 pitifully bowed down as to seem almost the size of 
 a dwarf. I should never have dreamed of recog 
 nizing him. He grasped a stout stick with a big 
 wooden handle, and his hand was so outlined upon 
 its ponderous hilt that its claw-like effect had a 
 grotesque saliency. He rapped the stick upon 
 the floor as he saw me, and his rheumy eyes gave 
 forth a faint, somnolent twinkle. His face was so 
 lined and wan that it might well have been a 
 ghost s. While I paused before him he said in 
 a jerky, asthmatic voice : 
 
 "You re Otho Claud?" 
 
 " Yes, sir." 
 
 " Your name isn t Claud a bit. I know. My 
 son Foulke knew it, too. Both knew it. Been a 
 fraud. Son of that man Clauss who was hanged 
 for murdering his wife years ago." 
 
 I did riot flinch. " Otho ! " cried Mrs. Dorian, 
 coming close to me. " He said this before. I can 
 not think how he found it out. I " 
 
 " Let it pass, madame," I broke in, with a voice 
 as cold and regular as human lips ever used. 
 I fixed my eyes calmly upon Mr. Steven Dorian. 
 " Did you come here to tell me this ? " I inquired. 
 
 " No," he said. " Didn t come here to tell you 
 that. Came here for a different reason." 
 
 " Ah ? I should have supposed otherwise from 
 your greeting."
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 375 
 
 " Would you, indeed ? " He was suddenly 
 seized with a fit of coughing that lasted for some 
 time and seemed to rack and half shatter his feeble 
 frame. T]he detective bent over him and took 
 him by both shoulders while the paroxysm lasted. 
 When it had lessened, he continued, still gasping 
 and clearing his throat. "Came, Mr. Clauss 
 for Clauss is your real name to ask you about 
 my son. He never liked you. Enemies, you and 
 he. Told me so. Yes, sir, told me so. You know 
 better n I do bout Colonel Gramercey s daughter. 
 That business brought me here. Thought he 
 might have come up to this place that night. Find 
 he did. . . . Speak up, sonny." 
 
 This last sentence was addressed to the boy at 
 his side. He gave the boy a sharp, abrupt poke 
 with one of his emaciated hands. 
 
 The boy seemed to understand. But he was 
 very embarrassed. 
 
 "I I can t speak up much, sir," he mur 
 mured. 
 
 Steven Dorian rapped his cane irascibly upon 
 the carpet. " Speak up," he cried huskily. " Tell 
 what you saw on the tenth of September last." 
 
 "I I think I seen the gent man leave the cars 
 at bout eight o clock that night," stammered the 
 boy. "I I guess it was him." 
 
 Suddenly the detective slipped round to the 
 boy s side. His neutral face for an instant be 
 came assertive and intelligent.
 
 376 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " You guess ? " he growled. " You says a little 
 time ago you was sure." 
 
 " Well," admitted the boy, " I m sure." 
 
 " Go on," said the detective. 
 
 "The gent man left the cars," continued the 
 boy. " I seen him at the deepow. I d seen him 
 afore. He come here by the train a good spell 
 ago I guess twas some time in August. He 
 asked me the short cut to the shore an I give 
 him the pints bout th ole Harrison road. I went 
 with m s far as Nickleses ole pull-down shanty. 
 Then I stopped an was goiii to leave him. But 
 he give me fifty cents then, an a letter to take, 
 to the small cottage, nigh this house the one as 
 Mr. Lambert s folks used to live in. I took the 
 letter, an give it to a young lady as come to 
 the door. That was afternoon. But twas dark the 
 next time I see the gent man, gettin off the cars. 
 I guess it was him, but I ain t certain sure. T 
 looked wonderful like him if t wasn t." 
 
 " Otho," now struck in Mrs. Dorian, turning to 
 me with much smothered indignation, "do you 
 quite see why we should be subjected to this sort 
 of nonsense?" 
 
 " Frankly, madame," I said, " no." 
 
 " Excuse me, ma am and sir," here said the de 
 tective civilly, "but the boy was recommended 
 to me in the village almost as soon as we got here 
 and made inquiries. He said then he did see 
 the missing man that is, the one that give him the
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 377 
 
 letter and he showed the road to. I don t mean 
 to say," continued the detective self-correctingly, 
 "that he ever saw Mr. Foulke Dorian. But his 
 parents thought, from the description in the news 
 papers, and from the description this boy had 
 given of the gentleman who paid him the money, 
 and from the boy s conviction he d seen the same 
 gentleman afterward, on September tenth, that 
 matters pointed one way." 
 
 " And you have merely this boy s evidence for 
 thinking that Mr. Dorian left the cars here on the 
 evening of September tenth ? " I asked. 
 
 The detective nodded dubiously. "Yes, sir," 
 he said. " That s all." 
 
 "And you come here," I pursued, "to tell us 
 that Mr. Dorian did visit this part of the country 
 on that special night? " 
 
 " Ridiculous ! " here cried Mrs. Dorian, address 
 ing her brother-in-law. "Steven, what is the 
 meaning of this visit ? You bring your gend arme 
 with you it is preposterous! Do you think we 
 have murdered your son, and hidden him some 
 where ? " 
 
 Steven Dorian answered with his eyes upon my 
 face, " I think," he said, " that there is something 
 in this boy s story." 
 
 Mrs. Dorian gave an exasperated sigh. " Who 
 cares about this boy s story? What he says is 
 the merest absurdity. You come here to my 
 house with a disguised policeman, and you ask
 
 378 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 questions in the village before you arrive here. 
 You pick up a boy who thinks he saw a gentle 
 man whom he showed the Harrison road to weeks 
 before at the station, once again on the tenth of 
 September. Pray who was the gentleman whom 
 the boy first saw ? Was it your son ? " 
 
 " Yes ! " exclaimed Steven Dorian, with another 
 rap of his cane, but with his eyes still fixed upon 
 me, although he answered his sister-in-law. " It 
 ivas my son. Know he came to these parts 
 weeks ago. Told me so. Saw Miss Gramercey, too. 
 Met her on the shore. The old Colonel didn t like 
 him, for some reason something that happened 
 in Paris. Yes, Foulke did come here once. Why 
 not twice ? " 
 
 " You look at me, sir, all the time that you 
 address Mrs. Dorian," I now said. " Why do 
 you do this ? " 
 
 Steven Dorian rose, totteringly. My placid 
 audacity seemed to have had its weight. " I look 
 at you, Mr. Clauss," he said, while accepting on 
 either side the assistance of the detective and the 
 boy, " because I came here to to " (another 
 briefer fit of coughing seized him) "well, to re 
 mind you that you you hated Foulke always. 
 Yes, always." 
 
 " Steven ! " cried Mrs. Dorian, " what are you 
 saying ? Do you dare to assert that my Otho 
 you may call him Claud or Clauss as you see fit 
 had anything to do with your sou s disappearance?"
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 379 
 
 "Didn t say that" answered Steven Dorian. 
 "Came here to look round. Came here to 
 to "... He was again seized with, so violent a 
 fit of coughing that he had to put both arras 
 about the detective s neck until it had ceased. 
 
 " Guess we better go now," I heard the detective 
 whisper in his ear. 
 
 The boy nervously and covertly plucked the 
 detective by the coat sleeve. " Yes, let s go," 
 the boy said. 
 
 I now spoke again, fixing my eyes upon Steven 
 Dorian s ghostly, drooped face. I exulted in 
 the masterpiece of hypocrisy that I might here 
 achieve. " If you have any desire to search the 
 house or the premises, sir, I am quite at your 
 command." 
 
 " Otho ! " exclaimed Mrs. Dorian, now almost in 
 a passion, " this insult for it is nothing else 
 has already gone too far ! . . . Steven Dorian," 
 she went on, addressing her brother-in-law, "your 
 visit here has had an insulting motive only. You 
 and I were never friends, as you well know. But 
 I pitied your ill health ; I was sorry for your suf 
 fering. Still, I can t help regretting all the sym 
 pathy I ever gave you, when I find you searching 
 in my house for signs of your missing son ! " 
 
 Those dim, detestable eyes were yet upon my 
 face. " Will you take some refreshment, sir," I 
 asked, " before you leave us ? " 
 
 " No," he said gruffly. The man and the boy
 
 380 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 had to support each step which he now made to 
 ward the door. As he passed over its threshold, 
 taking his eyes from ine, I felt an immense relief. 
 A little later he had passed into the outer hall. 
 Mrs. Dorian followed the trio. Not long after 
 ward she returned, hurrying to my side. 
 
 " Otho ! " she exclaimed. 
 
 "Well, madame." 
 
 " What what do you think ? They are taking 
 the shore way. They are walking along the shore 
 to the Harrison road. They are scanning every 
 bit of rock as if they expected to find something. 
 . . Is it not too abominable ? " 
 
 My blood froze then. I darted from the room. 
 I gained the shore. The blood -red sumachs 
 seemed to gibe at me. I saw them while moving 
 slowly toward that part of the shore which skirted 
 the cottage grounds. Steven Dorian walked very 
 insecurely. But he was peering downward, and 
 so were the boy and the man who still supported 
 him. I followed them. I knew that there was 
 only one place the great dark crevice where 
 they could possibly pause with any positive intent 
 of search. 
 
 They presently reached it. I saw the detective 
 disengage his arm from Mr. Dorian s and stoop 
 downward. He was peering into the slim, dusky 
 chasm. 
 
 The world stood still with me while I waited, 
 watching.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 381 
 
 XVII. 
 
 PRESENTLY the detective raised his head. He 
 took Mr. Dorian s arm again. The three disap 
 peared round the bend of the shore. It was their 
 homeward road. They were going back to the 
 village and thence, of course, to the train. 
 
 I took out my watch. It was half-past eleven 
 o clock. I knew that no train went to New- 
 York till fifteen minutes past twelve. They must 
 wait at the station. But what mattered that? 
 They had come ; they had confronted me ; they 
 had searched the shore ; they had chatted and 
 questioned in the village. But nothing had come 
 of it. Foulke Dorian had taken an evening train 
 hither, and had alighted from it unnoticed, as 
 hundreds of people do in the dusk at railway 
 stations like ours. The boy s evidence weighed 
 nothing. My demeanor had been perfect. A sus 
 picion had brought Steven Dorian to this spot, 
 and that suspicion had ended in vapor. No real 
 clew existed. The body lay far down between the 
 stone lips of that crevice, where Casimir had 
 dropped it. I was safe. 
 
 Safe at last !
 
 382 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 It had all passed more quickly than I had ex 
 pected. The aching uncertainty was at an end. 
 A huge gap in the evidence existed. Steven Do 
 rian had come here with a forlorn hope. Detec 
 tive science had exhausted itself; he had remem 
 bered his son s discovery of my real birth : he had 
 connected that discovery with some possible fierce 
 feud. But my magnificent tranquillity had crushed 
 his last doubt. I was safe. 
 
 Safe! 
 
 I drew a long breath of infinite relief. I sank 
 down upon a flat, jutting rock, and smiled to my 
 own thoughts as they fell like balm upon my wea 
 ried, over-taxed brain. To be safe wholly safe ! 
 how exquisitely comforting ! Casimir had done his 
 work well my Casimir, my stanch, devoted friend ! 
 
 Nothing could harm me now. I had erred ter 
 ribly, but there was escape, delivery. Men would 
 never know. Only Casimir would know, and his 
 fidelity was more loyal in its permanence than the 
 heaven I looked at, the earth I rested on. Ada 
 would never know ! We would marry ; children 
 would be born to us ; I would use every talent to win 
 distinction ; the grace of being loved by my kind 
 should be added to the grace of being respected, 
 honored, revered by them. All would be well-- 
 all except that one black blot on my conscience. 
 But the years would help to cleanse and even 
 whiten that. Why not? In time I might sleep 
 lightly, dream pleasurably. 
 
 -
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 383 
 
 I was safe ! 
 
 It was a lost clew. He had come here, but no 
 one had really seen him come. Was it God s work? 
 I had been wont, in the old Ziirich days, to think 
 and speak of God with a certain scientific coldness. 
 Ought I to do so hereafter? What combination 
 of circumstances had saved me except some merci 
 ful intelligence apart from mere blind fate ? And 
 I was saved. It was all ended now. 
 
 What could discover and convict me ? No power 
 of man. The detectives had tried every method, 
 every resource. The coming of Steven Dorian, in 
 his wretchedly feeble condition, was of itself con 
 vincing proof. The father of the missing man had 
 used his last chance, and this had failed. Let him 
 tell the world that I was the son of Leopold 
 Clauss ! What did I care ? How slight the pub 
 licity of this fact seemed, now that I had evaded 
 the darker publicity of arrest and arraignment? 
 Let him tell it if he chose. Ada would still cling 
 to me and marry me. Her affection had been 
 shown me by a new lurid light, but with force that 
 made its deepest springs of impulse plain ! . . . 
 
 I must have bowed my head while sitting there 
 on the shore, thinking these happy thoughts 
 supremely happy by contrast with the Gethsemane 
 of pain that I recently endured when something 
 seemed to touch my shoulder. I was too overjoyed 
 to do more than just notice the contact. The touch 
 was light as a leaf, and if a leaf, then Nature and I
 
 384 TlIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 were reconciled again, for escape at this golden 
 moment meant pardon, and pardon meant a revivi 
 fied sense in all that was beautiful on earth ! 
 
 But the touch grew heavier. I raised my head. 
 Casimir stood beside me. I sprang to my feet. I 
 flung my arms about my friend s neck. 
 
 " Casimir," I exclaimed, " it is all over ! I am 
 saved ! " 
 
 He had not returned my embrace. I now 
 observed that his face was deathly white and that 
 his eyes were glittering strangely. 
 
 " Saved ? " he repeated. " How ? " 
 
 I spoke many swift words to him ; I told him all 
 that had lately passed. He listened, or seemed to 
 listen, with intentness. 
 
 " You see," I finished, " this misery of suspense 
 is over. To-day ends it ; you know why ; I have 
 told you." 
 
 " Yes, you have told me," he repeated. 
 
 His voice was cold, his tones slow. In a flash 
 it came to me that he bore every semblance of a 
 man distraught. " You have told me," he contin 
 ued, "that those people have come and gone. 
 They know nothing they have seen nothing." 
 
 I withdrew my arms from his neck. " No, Casi 
 mir," I said, wonderingly. 
 
 " But I ? " he said, with a strange, peering, hos 
 tile look straight into my eyes. 
 
 " You, Casimir?" I faltered. 
 
 " Yes, /." He grasped my shoulder. A sort
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 385 
 
 of blaze leapt from his eyes and died. " Do you 
 think that I can bear this awful secret as you bear 
 it ? If you think that, you are wrong frightfully 
 wrong ! I heard every word that Steven Dorian 
 his father spoke to you. I was listening and 
 I heard. You did it all well. You are a man 
 of such accomplishment, such savoir dire you 
 always were, Otho, and you were then. . But what 
 of me ? " 
 
 "You, Casimir?" 
 
 " Yes what of me f " His face became distorted 
 with fury. He receded a step or two from me, 
 and then, looking upon him, I saw that change 
 which is so infinitely worse in those we love than 
 the white change of death itself. I saw that he 
 was mad. And I realized that my own crime 
 had made him so. 
 
 " Shall 1 carry this horrid secret to the grave ? " 
 He pointed at me, with tremulous yet accusing 
 forefinger, as madmen point. " Shall I divulge 
 nothing because you are without conscience, with 
 out remorse? I loved you once, Otho, but I 
 hate and damn you now ! And I will tell every 
 thing ! I can wash my soul from sin by no other 
 means! " 
 
 He shot past me, and then paused. One of 
 his hands, as he faced me, gropingly reached back 
 ward. " The body lies there in that place where I 
 dropped it," he went on. " But it shall not lie 
 there much longer. I "
 
 386 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 At this I flung myself upon him. " Casimir," 
 I cried, wildly, " in God s name do not tell ! You 
 loved me you shielded me you helped me, at 
 that other time ! Be merciful now ! It is not you 
 I have heard ! It is some devil of madness ! . . 
 Oh, in pity s name . . think of her of Ada whom 
 I love ! . . Casimir ! " . . 
 
 He had wrested himself away from me. I stag 
 gered backward, and saw him dash round the 
 clump of trees. I understood, then. Vengeance, 
 justice was to fall upon me through this man. 
 This man who had been my safeguard, my protec 
 tive angel, my absolute and infallible source of 
 trust ! Through his madness I was to meet my 
 doom. Not Casimir would betray me not my 
 old unswerving, faithful Casimir, but some genius 
 of divine wrath, usurping his brain, body and soul. 
 By this ingress the one of all others least imagined 
 or imaginable the penalty of my crime would 
 reach me ! 
 
 I moved inland, and waited there behind some 
 trees. I had no thought of stopping Casimir. It 
 would be like trying to stop fate itself ; for he had 
 indeed become fate. I waited, gazing through the 
 trees at that part of the shore where the gloomy 
 fissure could plainly be seen. I knew quite well 
 what would happen, now ; I knew as well as if I 
 had already viewed it. And presently it did hap 
 pen, just as it had been pictured in my mind. 
 
 Four people soon turned the bend in the shore.
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 387 
 
 Casimir came first ; he gesticulated excitedly as 
 he spoke, though I was too far off to hear his 
 words. In a little while he had paused beside the 
 crevice in the rocks, and pointed downward. As 
 he did so Steven Dorian and the detective seemed 
 to watch his face with the keenest eagerness. . . . 
 
 My thoughts flew to Ada, then. All was over, 
 now. She must be told. I wanted to tell her 
 before others could. It was best that way. I 
 think my steps never once hesitated as I walked 
 toward the cottage. I ascended the veranda ; the 
 front door was kept closed in this chilly weather. 
 I rang the bell. A moment afterward Ada ap 
 peared in the hall. I saw her through the glass 
 panes of the door. My heart gave a great leap. 
 I forgot my own sorrow, so thrilled was I with 
 pity at what she must soon be called upon to 
 hear. 
 
 We passed together into the sitting-room, with 
 its well-remembered appointments. A separate 
 farewell seemed to breathe to me from each one. 
 I had taken her hand, and as I moved along the 
 hall with her, still holding it, I heard, her say that 
 ni3 r own hand was icy-cold. But I did not answer 
 her until we were seated side by side. Then I 
 said: 
 
 " Oh, Ada, better if it were the coldness of 
 death ! " 
 
 She grew pale. " Otho, she murmured, " what 
 do you mean ? Tell me. Tell me at once ! "
 
 388 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 " You will loathe me when I have told you. 
 And yet it must be told." 
 
 " Nothing would ever make me loathe you ! " 
 she broke forth, passionately, searching my face 
 with her alarmed eyes. 
 
 "Nothing?" I repeated. "Oh, Ada, think I 
 If it only were so! But when you have heard, 
 you you will feel all the love die in your breast, 
 and contempt, if not hate, will take its place ! " 
 
 " When I have heard, Otho ? " 
 
 " Yes. Listen." ... I dropped my face, then, 
 and told her. I no longer held her hand. I was 
 composed enough, at first, but gradually voice and 
 frame began alike to tremble. Yet I did not sup 
 press a single wretched incident. The narration 
 more than once cost me a fearful effort ; but I 
 persevered until all had been spoken. Then, amid 
 the new silence, I raised my head and looked at 
 her. 
 
 She sat quite rigid and colorless, staring at me. 
 Except for the horror in her eyes there was no 
 evidence that she lived at all. I seized one of her 
 hands and pressed it to my lips, while my tears fell 
 upon it. 
 
 " Oh, my love," I moaned, " my lost love ! Give 
 me one word just one, Ada, if it is only good- 
 by !" 
 
 Her lips suddenly tightened, then relaxed, and 
 a deep sob broke from them. In another instant 
 she had thrown both arms about my neck.
 
 TIIE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 389 
 
 "Whatever you have done," she cried, "you 
 are still my Otho ! " And then, while she yet 
 clung to me, her tears, for a little time, rushed in 
 torrents. 
 
 " Bless you, my darling," I said. " I did doubt 
 you. You were once so proud, you know, Ada. 
 And even now I should not blame you if you 
 changed. Many a woman s heart would change. 
 The crime had no excuse none. Such crimes 
 never can have. . . And it is so bitter a thought 
 to me now that I shall drag you down with 
 myself into disgrace and infamy ! But if you 
 repulsed me from this hour if you declared 
 yourself alienated, disgusted, outraged by the deed 
 I have done if you cast me off and snapped 
 with one wrench the ties that love and time 
 have wrought between us, then the world, while 
 it could have no reproach for this desertion, would 
 acquit you of all sympathy with a man so de 
 graded as I. In that way you would escape all 
 odium, and " 
 
 " I do not wish to escape it ! " she interrupted, 
 struggling with her tears and clinging yet closer 
 to my neck. " I wish that I could only take it all 
 upon myself! I love you, I love you that is 
 enough! Do not speak of snapping the ties be 
 tween us! Your misfortune, your misery, your 
 guilt, strengthens those ties, Otho ! It makes 
 them like iron ! " 
 
 She withdrew her arms from me. I perceived
 
 390 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 in another moment that she was striving to be 
 more composed. I read her thoughts, now, as well 
 as if her quivering voice had not immediately 
 revealed them. 
 
 " But Casimir, as you say, has gone mad. Even 
 if they find the body there, his testimony will not 
 be believed against you. And and there were 
 no other real witnesses, Otho. You can deny it 
 all. You must ! In that way it will not be 3 7 ou 
 know what I mean the very worst ! " 
 
 "It will be death for me, I think," was my 
 answer. " Death on the scaffold." 
 
 " No, no I " She caught both my hands. " It 
 shall not be ! So much will depend upon your 
 self. You must be calm and I must be calm as 
 well. We we must laugh at them when the 
 accusation comes. Your previous record is so fine, 
 so spotless. They can suspect what they will, but 
 they cannot prove." 
 
 I shook my head drearily. " I am beyond this 
 hope," I said. " The ignominy of such suspicion 
 would be worse than that of death. Death is an 
 end . . . but the other would be a long, doleful 
 continuance ! " 
 
 "You think so now!" she cried, with a sort of 
 wail in her voice. " But will my undying love, 
 my ceaseless companionship, not soften and miti 
 gate your future pain? Remember that I shall 
 always be near you, unswerving, untiring in my 
 offices of comfort. Oh, Otho, for my sake if not 
 for your own, fight, fight to the very last ! "
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 391 
 
 I looked at her with surprise. Every trace of 
 her recent tearfulness had vanished. A color had 
 come to her cheek, a sparkle to her eye. She was 
 so strong, now, and so beautiful in her strength ! 
 
 I caught her in my arms. " Be it as you say," 
 I responded. "I will fight for your sake, and 
 for the priceless reward you offer! But it will 
 be a terrible battle, and if I come forth from it 
 with my life, the wounds will have maimed and 
 crippled me for all time." 
 
 She kissed me on the lips. There was a wild 
 gladness in her look. " No ! " she cried, " for I 
 will heal your wounds ! I can and I will ! " 
 
 I answered her kiss. " God has not been un 
 kind to me, after all," I whispered. " He lets 
 this moment measure and unveil your love, in its 
 glory, its courage, its sweetness, its nobility, its 
 power ! " 
 
 Just then we heard a sound of steps on the 
 veranda outside. I knew what the sound meant. 
 
 " They have c.ome," I said. " They have come 
 to take me." 
 
 "VVe both rose, as if by one impulse. We were 
 locked in one another s arms. The next instant 
 we heard the bell of the front entrance sharply 
 ring ; then a heavy knock on the panels of the 
 door followed it. 
 
 " Remember ! " said Ada. Her voice was firm 
 and tranquil. " They come with a madman as 
 your accuser. . . Remember and promise !
 
 392 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 My voice, as I responded, was no less firm than 
 hers. 
 
 " I do remember and I do promise ! " 
 
 The knock was repeated, heavier, louder than 
 before. Ada still clung to me. We heard voices 
 on the veranda as of people speaking together. 
 
 "You you will fight to live," she persisted, 
 " for my sake. You swear it, Otho ? " 
 
 " For your sake," I answered, " I will do all 
 that lies in human power. I swear it."
 
 TUE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 393 
 
 CONCLUSION. 
 
 WHAT more now remains for me to tell ? Did 
 not the whole country ring for weeks with the 
 tale of my agonizing trial as the suspected mur 
 derer of Foulke Dorian ? But I kept my word to 
 Ada ; I fought for my life. At times during the 
 trial, as so many know, the noose seemed tighten 
 ing about my neck. Ada, brave and almost pre- 
 ternaturally calm, was at my side throughout, and 
 Mrs. Dorian, passionately believing in my inno 
 cence, remained there as well. Ada s support was 
 approved by her dying father, whose deep pity her 
 own anguish had aroused. Steven Dorian, aided 
 by the most brilliant and capable lawyers whom 
 money could command, was fierce in his efforts for 
 my condemnation. But Casimir had been my 
 accuser, and Casimir s malady, at the time when 
 the trial took place, had assumed so violent a form 
 that he could not appear in court. Even if he had 
 appeared there, his evidence would have gone for 
 nothing. 
 
 There was that one great gap in the testimony. 
 Nothing could bridge it except suspicion, and 
 suspicion, however strong, is not proof. At last 
 the misery ended, and I was acquitted.
 
 394 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 
 
 But what need even to glance at these details, 
 so familiar to thousands ? 
 
 Immediately after the trial ended, Ada and I 
 were married with the utmost privacy. Colonel 
 Gramercey breathed his last two days after our 
 marriage. And then my wife, myself and Mrs. 
 Dorian went abroad. 
 
 I have remained in my beloved Switzerland ever 
 since. My life has been one of the most absolute 
 retirement from the world. Mrs. Dorian has often 
 left me, travelling about Europe. Ada has never 
 left me. I have always known that men and 
 women at large scarcely hold a doubt of my guilt. 
 But between me and their scorn has ever risen the 
 angelic devotion of my wife. I will touch no 
 further upon that subject ; its sanctity seems to 
 forbid any save this briefly reverent mention. . . 
 
 No children have been born to us. This was 
 far best. I am thankful for it. 
 
 I have written these confessions carefully, slow 
 ly, amid the long leisure of my seclusion. Per 
 haps when I am dead, my wife, if she still lives, 
 will give them to the world. In any case, I shall 
 shortly place them within her keeping, to preserve 
 or destroy hereafter, as she thinks best. 
 
 That is all. My story has been told. Many will 
 judge me, should these memoirs ever be made pub 
 lic. But of all who read them who shall dare to 
 say (whether his verdict prove harsh or merciful) 
 that he has judged aright ?
 
 THE CONFESSIONS OF CLAUD. 395 
 
 And now only one word more. My wife has 
 never for an instant caused me to regret the prom 
 ise I gave her of striving to live. Each new day 
 that dawns for us, in our quiet home, her tender 
 and patient look seems to whisper : " Thank God 
 that you are spared me, Otho no matter at what 
 cost!"
 
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