THE BALANCE ARTHUR. 1.ITLC-, " There were times . . . when he sat gazing at his dark tenement landscape in a despondency that Ricorton thought would never lift" THE BALANCE A Novel BY FRANCIS R. BELLAMY Illustrated by Arthur Litle GARDEN CITY NEW YORK DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY 1917 Copyright, 1917, by DOUBLEDAY, PAGE & COMPANY All rights reserved, including that of translation into foreign languages, including the Scandinavian TO MY WIFE WITHOUT WHOM SAMMY WOULD NEVER HAVE EXISTED 2134364 I CONTENTS CHAPTER I. In Which, for the First Time, Sammy's Legs Are Thin to Carrie .... 3 II. In Which Sammy Writes Some Letters, but Unfortunately Neglects to Ad- here to the Truth 12 III. In Which Sammy Finally Loses Mrs. Schroeder's Favour, but Gains her Daughter's 20 IV. In Which Carrie Tells Sammy Some Un- palatable Truths Which Do Not Turn Out Badly at All 31 V. In Which Sammy Has an Interview with Mr. Schroeder and Resolves To Imi- tate his Example 42 VI. In Which Mr. Pike Makes His Appearance only in Order to Disappear from View . 58 VII. In Which the Path of Life Begins [to Fork, and Carrie and Sammy Part Company for a While 66 VIII. In Which Our Sammy Becomes a Theat- rical Magnate, and Nearly Returns to Melchester But Stays to Write a Play 79 IX. In Which Sammy Changes His Spots, and Goes Home to Show Them . . 102 X. In Which Carrie Has a Pleasant Break- fast with Her Father, and Sylvia Spends a Disagreeable Afternoon 122 vii viii CONTENTS CHAPTER PAGE XI. In Which Sammy, with Sylvia's Help, Shows Off His Spots, and Returns to New York to Ponder upon Carrie's Opinion of Them 137 XII. In Which Sammy Becomes a Successful Playwright in Gotham, and Narrowly Misses Having a Thought . . . 163 XIII. In Which Carrie Urges Sammy to Think, and Ruby Comes Back with Bantry to the Halfway House .... 183 XIV. In Which a Depression Plays the Deuce with Them All, and Sammy Hears Some Music 199 XV. In Which Sammy Gets His Idea at Last 216 XVI. In Which Mr. Schroeder and John Rouse Conspire Together, Although Neither of Them Knows It, and Carrie Leaves Melchester, as a Result . . 236 XVII. In Which Fate First Gives a Hint That She May Have One More Heroic Role for Sammy 250 XVIII. In Which Poverty Wins Its First Victory Over Them, but Is Cheated of the Fruits of the Triumph by Sammy . 271 XIX. In Which Bantry Congratulates Him- self, and Carrie Sees a New Play by S. Sydney Tappan at the Fine Arts . 289 XX. In Which Carrie Makes a Call upon Sammy, and Ruby Regrets It Most 3 10 XXI. In Which Bantry Tells the Truth, and No One Finds It Palatable . . . 324 XXII. In Which Sammy Makes a Prayer, for the Second Time and Gets It . . 337 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS "There were times . . when he sat gazing at his dark tenement landscape in a despond- ency that Ricorton thought would never lift" Frontispiece FACING PAGE "I forgot, Sammy. . . . I can't see you any more!"' 38 "Godfrey! . . . what a part! The Lady in the Lion Skin, eh?" 102 " Sammy's faith faltered as he . . . saw that vast audience stream in from the rainswept street" 294 Y fOW Sammy's youth differed / / from that recorded in the official biography ofS. Sydney Tappan, Playwright How Sammy grew up in Melchester and elsewhere How he fell in love with Carrie Schroeder, prayed his first prayer, and entered, alas, a plumb- ing business Also some account of Mrs. Schroeder's disapproval of "twosing" when done with impecunious youths The collapse of the plumbing enterprise And Sammy y s journey to try his fortune in New York. THE BALANCE CHAPTER I IN WHICH, FOR THE FIRST TIME, SAMMY'S LEGS ARE THIN TO CARRIE "No one who met S. Sydney Tappan ever failed to be impressed at once by his compelling personality. He conquered always, like Caesar, upon sight." From the biography of S. Sydney Tappan, Playwright. WELL, it is a hard thing to contradict a biography and a thankless one, too, perhaps; but first impressions are apt to be varied. Is it fair, at this late day, to record the first impression a certain young lady had of S. Sydney Tappan ? It was: "How thin his legs are!" And her eyes filled with tears for the boy whose legs were so thin that the morti- fication must be exquisite. "/ don't think they're so thin!" she cried out impul- sively, and her hand flew to her throat with the intense pity she felt. "They could only get hockey sticks in my stockings last Christmas," he said, with a grin on his face and a well of gratitude in his heart. Exaggeration was al- ways his mask for emotion and the girl before him had touched his heart. But her dark eyebrows curved until they almost met, and she clenched her hands in compassion. She thought that he meant it. "Oh, the meanies!" she cried. "Oh, I don't think 4 THE BALANCE that was nice!" And her hand crept to her throat again. Sammy never saw Carrie's hand fly to her throat afterward without looking instinctively to see if his trousers had shrunk to the knee. It is the reason for all those finely proportioned heroes in the plays of S. Sydney Tappan. None of his leading ladies should ever be caught with her hand at her throat and her eyes on her lover's legs! And yet it is not because I have anything against S. Sydney Tappan that I have begun this history; this is to be no attempt to tear down a popular idol. My only reason for writing the truth now, indeed, is because the real story of his struggle is so much finer than the com- monplace periods of his official biography that I have not been able to restrain myself from crying out to the world: "Not so it was but thus!" That is the reason for these pages. If you think sometimes that I am hard upon Sammy remember that I could never be downright unfair to him. I should have Carrie's picture crying out at me then: "Oh, please, please! Whatever he did, it was always his best!" No the only thing I will ever be hard on in this history will be that biography and that only because the truth about Sammy was always hard enough to discover without the handicap which the biographers have added. This time we shall have the thing as it was, without the claptrap, and without the glory. You who met Sammy may perhaps have noticed a slight look of patience around his mouth. It redeemed what otherwise might have been justly called a rather weak chin. When it was there he was thinking of Carrie. I am glad for her that it was nearly always there. Once he did not see her for two years, but his picture came out in the dramatic section of one of our leading magazines just after one of Sylvia Tremaine, and Carrie wept for pure happiness when she saw it. THE BALANCE 5 The look was there and she knew that his eyes were ask- ing for her. "Sammy!" she cried and she kissed the tinted paper passionately. There was no picture of Sammy in her settlement room; but no one could object to one of our most con- scientious magazines. She bought twelve. The pub- lishers never sent S. Sydney Tappan any commission, but he brought them a lifelong subscriber. She could never see those magazines afterward with- out glimpsing again the fading vision of her youth in elm-shaded Melchester the rustle of branches in Haw- thorne Street, the smell of burning leaves on Washing- ton Avenue, the clanging bell of the ancient horsecars as they took their leisurely way down to Main Street the Melchester she and Sammy had known as children. The pulse of progress had not quickened then. There were no fine marble buildings on Main Street; no settlement houses on Hague; Washington Avenue descended ignominiously to a country road running through nursery fields, over which one could see in the distance hills and woods, and long, covered bridges spanning the turbid river. The Country Club had just been formed miles out in the rural district; feed stores under flat tin roofs were still in evidence upon Main Street; Prince's Garden early home of the drama had not yet sold its arched entrance to the First City Bank, so the Washington Theatre was still to be built. Long, high windows with white signs on the glass stared down from the brick Preston Block upon the cobbled thorough- fare of Washington Corners; even the carved stone of the Stark Building, fireproof, was just being lifted laboriously into place, while from all directions, in place of black poles of iron, rows of shady elms marched upon the merchandise-lined sidewalks of the small business section with its high, narrow store fronts, hitching posts, and horse troughs. Nowhere in sight, in those days of the eighties, was there any hint of the magic with which the years to 6 THE BALANCE come would gild Melchester, until the great city of to- day would come to pass the city of mighty industries and factories, of great stores and fine streets, and, alas ! of dingy tenements and slums. Nowhere any sign then of the coming age of industrialism which would supersede those small shopkeepers, those cobblers, those scattered, unorganized remnants of an older era of production and distribution supersede and crush, leaving behind the inevitable displacement of society in the form of ruined hopes, failing families, and out Washington Avenue new homes and fine houses, sym- bols of a newer success. The first families were living across the river in the old Second Ward then; their iron fences and metal animals discouraging the invitation of their green lawns. Few indeed had been bold enough to cross the river and build their houses upon Washington Avenue and its side streets. Only as far as Hawthorne Street did any one with social position dare to live. Beyond was the land of the benighted. Nowhere was there any hint of the coming tide of prosperity which would crowd those fields with trees and fine houses, with churches and tailored humanity, until the Four Hundred would add and subtract and multiply and divide, and, in despair, finally separate into all the many groups of a large city. Only rows of unassuming houses amid sunny lawns and graceful elms, with here and there a barn thinning gradually into the open fields, and at last the green countryside; nowhere a sign of change, of the future. It was in one of those unassuming houses that our Sammy was born and grew up. You have all read of his boyhood there: of the endless campaigns of lead soldiers which he conducted high in the attic; of the Brownie Republic and its newspaper, laboriously written and pasted together, one issue a week; of the plays that he staged through the proscenium arch of the large velvet picture frame he found under the eaves, plays lighted by candles, written and acted by the THE BALANCE 7 Scotch Brownie, inspired by the brain of S. Sydney Tappan; of his views on Paris, too at the age of eight expressed by that remark in the widely reprinted letter to his nurse home in Melchester: "We dont go in at the back door, here in Paris, because the arent no backdoor to go in at!" showing clearly some Dutch or German ancestry somewhere in the past! You have read all these things even if you have forgotten them. The magazines have told them all. The biography itself, also, has told you of his social position, springing as I fear they have forgotten to mention from the fact that his grandfather had known the founder of one of those leading Second Ward fam- ilies since the halcyon days when the founder ran a canal boat. It has told you, too, of Annie, his Irish nurse, and the love that became his on the day her policeman died and the child stole into her empty heart; of Marian Tappan, his mother, and her unavailing efforts to make a widow's life insurance still play the part of an income after the death of her father-in-law, when the European trips had ceased and genteel poverty come to stay. The old gentleman had been improvident. It is only necessary indeed to read that curious vol- ume of S. Sydney Tappan's earlier and unpresented plays to see this part of Sammy's boyhood sticking out. The curtain almost invariably descends upon an humbled and repentant father, while the hero with well-built legs stands nobly by. It is because, to use his own remark to horrified spinsters, Sammy never had a father. John Tappan died when Sammy was but three years old. It was later, when Sammy found that other boys had fathers while he had none, and that people somehow rather pitied his mother on account of it it was then that his pride in his family led him to as- sert that his mother, for her part, had never cared to get him one. No one could have been more intolerant of fathers than S. Sydney Tappan, aged six. The child of Hawthorne Street, however, would never have recognized those clear-cut actions and motives 8 THE BALANCE which pass for a description of his youth in the biog- raphy. To him the characters of his boyhood were al- ways like people who moved in a fog. He never knew where they were going or why. In his mind in after years the first sixteen years of his life appeared as a shadowy cinema drama, punctuated by occasional clear pictures: now of himself in Melchester, watching Asa Dobbs upon a new velocipede, pedalling swiftly down the elm-shadowed length of Hawthorne Street; now packing in the heat of July or the frost of Febru- ary for trips to far-off Bermuda or California or distant Vienna and Paris; now snowballing tiny Dorothy Alden and Carolyn Schroeder bright January noons after school had let out; now singing, hopelessly, in minstrel shows in Asa's attic to a suspiciously appreciative audience; now paying long visits with his mother and the Dobbs to London and Paris through changing seasons. It was odd that long after Melchester became a blur he could remember those months in Paris, the city of charm indescribable. An embryo Wagner he was then to the kaleidoscopic fancy of his mother; spending long hours practising rebelliously over the battered grand piano while outside the gardens of Auteuil called to him. There is, indeed, a third of a grand opera score to be found now that bears in scrawling hand the signature of S. Sydney Tappan. It is the sum total of his musical genius. He could always remember, too, with uncanny dis- tinctness, those hours he spent with Asa upon the plain wooden floor of that Parisian apartment, leading the armies of the First Napoleon across the level fields of France. Murat! Beloved Lannes! Brave Ney! What mattered it that those legions were of lead, that the fields of France stretched a bare ten feet, and the Alps were sketched in chalk upon the wooden floor? Sometimes, even now, on blowy winter evenings, when S. Sydney Tappan sits playing chess beside the apple- wood fire in Melchester, the chessboard fades as if by magic, and once more there stretch before him the sunlit THE BALANCE 9 fields of France, with the Guard charging as of old be- fore the'stern eyes of their Emperor, as he sits astride his white charger saying to Marshal Tappan "Check!" a cool voice speaks. And S. Sydney Tappan, in Melchester once more, plays his move at chess. It is the closest even a play- wright of fifty can come to the romance of childhood's brave campaigns. His imagination can give his char- acter a tussle even yet. How strangely silent the biography is upon the youthful character of Sammy! That character of many starts, many impulses, and no finishes, no ends, with- out an understanding of which his career is unintelli- fible. It seemed afterward almost as if the Gods of rony directed the fond imagination of his mother in her attempts to bring him up. A budding genius our Sammy, to Mrs. Tappan but alas! in every way except the real one. An embryo Wagner in Paris; in London a Whistler; in Vienna a De Reszke; in California a Stevenson; in Melchester a St. Gaudens what a mag- nificent educational chaos that bringing-up resulted in! Everything but what he was. It did not seem to occur to her, in spite of the Brownie Theatre, that he might be a playwright perhaps because Melchester society did not look then with its present favour on the people of the theatre. That he could follow so faithfully all the artistic changes of program which she made during those years was due to that profound imaginative abil- ity of his he was always a sort of dramatic chameleon incarnated by some strange alchemy and at the beck and call of his environment. His life would be incom- prehensible without this fact. Poverty, too, did not overtake him until his boyhood was past. It explains why his education was so finely adapted to the part he finally played; and his tastes, alas! so ill fitted to those surroundings against which he was soon forced to struggle. His boyhood has passed completely away now. You have probably often passed through Melchester on the 10 THE BALANCE fast train and seen the very fields and woods where he played. They are gone to-day. The ball grounds first drove them out and houses in turn have dispossessed the ball grounds. The fields are cut up with fine streets and beautiful residences, mostly mortgaged to Mr. Schroeder. Those Schroeders! How curiously uncommunica- tive the biography is upon the subject of Carrie and that family of hers! Hard facts, of course, are not the stuff of which existence is made: it is ideas that make a man and his life but the biography does not even seem to have all the facts. The first great reality of S. Sydney Tappan's youth, for instance, is not even men- tioned. It was his meeting with Carrie again, when he came home to Melchester from that last trip to England and France. He was sixteen then. It was at their first party that fall that the meeting took place; and as they came home after it that Sammy first showed the changeability of those chameleon spots of his. It was by the little dark hedge on Haw- thorne Street, it is gray with age now, that he took the hand she swung so lightly by her side. "Carrie!" he said, his boyish voice husky with emo- tion. He did not really know what he was going to say, beyond that the situation demanded something romantic, until after he had started and there was no retreat. But he got no chance to say it then. Carrie Schroeder never deceived herself though there were many times when she wished passionately she could. "Please don't!" she answered. It was instinctive, her drawing back. That Sammy himself might not be entirely in earnest did not occur to her. But it was Sammy's first chance at a dramatic scene, and he fell in love with it on the spot. What more dramatically appealing, indeed, than a rejected lover? It was his first embrace with his heroi-comic Imp. "Is there no chance for me?" he asked brokenly. He meant it, perhaps, divided by twenty-four. THE BALANCE 11 Things were always very real to Carrie, however. "Oh, Sam!" she said, almost in a whisper, as her hand flew to her throat. "I just wish I could!" And she kissed him impulsively and ran into the house closing the door after her. It was only then that Sammy realized how much he should have been in earnest. It was like a shock of cold water. He only prayed twice in his life for any- thing. This was the first time. He looked up at the light as it flashed out from Carrie's window. "God!" he said in a whisper, "God! Please let me love Carrie and please make Carrie love me all of our lives." He always meant well, did Sammy. If it was merely another colour flashing from the spectrum of his char- acter, he was properly punished. God never for- got. . . . "Why, how ideal!" I can almost hear you saying. "The boyhood, the very romance S. Sydney Tappan should have had! The very surroundings for his genius! Paris, Vienna, London, Hawthorne Street, this is the kind of palette he should have had from which to paint those glowing scenes of his later career." Alas! This is not the biography. This time we deal with the truth. Glowing scenes call for dark and boldly lined figures in relief. We approach the shadows on the canvas. CHAPTER II IN WHICH SAMMY WRITES SOME LETTERS, BUT UN- FORTUNATELY NEGLECTS TO ADHERE TO THE TRUTH A FAMILY supremely unconscious of the impending fame of S. Sydney Tappan, that Schroeder family, then. Even the dragon of the family, Mrs. Schroeder, seemed quite unaware of his existence, until the duties of her position called her to witness that he was writing to her eldest daughter from college. She did not seem unduly excited then. "Who is this from?" she inquired, in a tone which implied unspeakable distrust for the author of the letter which she held up before her daughter's gaze. She seemed to disregard the opened envelope completely. The humblest correspondent with a Schroeder daughter, indeed, could always be sure of two readers, at least: Mrs. Schroeder first and then the daughter. "Sam Tappan," Carrie replied in her low, musical voice. She was the only one of the three daughters who did not seem completely effaced by the mere pres- ence of her mother. Mrs. Schroeder sniffed audibly while her husband buried himself deeper in his newspaper. She had come upon some particularly fine flourish of that dramatic mind, I suppose. "Well, he's a fool!" she said angrily. "You needn't encourage him /" It was her capital instinct always to consider all people fools. Such was our Sammy's first introduction to that family. Alas! for the Schroeders! To be thus flung into place as mere scenery before which to enact again the drama 12 THE BALANCE 18 of S. Sydney Tappan's life! Does no one remember now Charles W. Schroeder, or the great Schroeder gro- cery stores for themselves? Is all the vast Schroeder achievement lost sight of in the blaze of our Sammy's name? Jit was not so once upon a time. There was a day, indeed, when most of Melchester, society and all, lay prostrate beneath the spell of that success, before S. Sydney Tappan had even been heard of. It was when the Schroeder stores were merged with a vast chain of others, leaving only the large yellow brick building on South Avenue to bear the Schroeder name and Mr. Schroeder himself became the mainstay and a partner in Hopkin- son, Balmer & Lawrence, the big department store of which the city has always been so proud. A hard-working corner grocer in the beginning, too, this same Schroeder, and not in the society column at all, Melchester said with bated breath, lest pride be meanly construed as spite. That the nucleus of the first grocery had been given its owner by his brother in an illegal effort to alleviate the pain of a bankruptcy, Melchester did not hint. The store had succeeded, so there seemed little doubt that Providence considered the transaction proper. To Melchester the inference seemed fairly obvious. Who were they to cavil well, and it had all happened a long time ago, too, before the bulk of the business was in wholesale, before the Schroeders appeared in the society columns. Who knew? There were always carpers, people critical of any success, worse themselves no doubt than the success- ful people they criticised. A vast achievement, that Schroeder success! Its mere size carried with it much justification. A man of singular perspicacity, too, Mr. Schroeder, so people said, even where his wife was concerned. From the first year of their marriage there had been no doubt in his mind as to what course to pursue where she was concerned. At the first sign of domestic bad weather he had always merely prepared for the change. The 14 THE BALANCE arrival of three daughters, one by one, followed by the usual hard problems incidental to such folk, had con- firmed him in the wisdom of this choice. Upon any subject regarding them, his opinion was neither asked for nor required. It was assumed by his wife that he had none. By such a simple device had he secured the control of all his time in order to devote it to his busi- ness. He went to the yellow brick building on South Avenue every morning at eight; and except for his visit to Hopkinson, Balmer & Lawrence, lasting from ten until twelve, he did not emerge until half after five. Gossip had it that the reason he did not lunch at the store was because his noon meal in the brick building consisted of items which, unless eaten, might prove a total loss to the grocery company. This no doubt is a libel. At five-thirty he came out, putting on his coat, and stepped into the Schroeder carriage unless the en- gagements of the family which had a sort of holy pre- cedence had preempted it; in which case he purchased a paper from the boy on the corner, being careful to receive the correct number of pennies in change, and walked slowly home. He arrived as a rule at six. By imperceptible ma- noeuvres the dinner hour in his household had been de- ferred, by degrees, until now he dined at seven; and it was during this intervening hour that he read the Democrat Herald from front page to last. He particu- larly liked the editorials. If you are one of those un- fortunate people who are acquainted with the Democrat Herald you will understand from this, without further explanation, the exact mental equipment of Mr. Schroeder. He was one of the most magnificently solid of Melchester's solid business men. Such was that Schroeder family then. Nothing could have been farther from Sammy's thoughts than the Schroeders, however, the March afternoon he alighted in the smoke-blackened train shed which in those days proclaimed to the traveller his THE BALANCE 15 arrival in Melchester. There was only one thought, one question in the future playwright's mind then. It was whether his mother was still alive in the house on Hawthorne Street. And if by any chance she could know yet of the failure in English which had dropped him from college this week of her illness. He had not thought of much else, this tall, rather handsome youth, since the stone station in the Berk- shires faded from sight, some hours ago, in the sparkling blue white of winter, and he turned a little blindly into the warm comfort of the parlour car, leaving a college career behind him forever. Well, he does not deserve a college career, he has told himself grimly all day. Somehow he has not been able to escape a burning sense of his unworthiness ever since the letter came from Annie, his old nurse, telling him of his mother's illness. Breakdown it is, in reality, he knows. Breakdown from the worry of trying to live and support a son in college, also, on an income insuffi- cient for either. A son, too, who has known for many long weeks that only a miracle can keep him still in college once the mid-year examinations are past; and who has worried only lest his mother find it out before the last moment possible. That has been the reason for those letters of his, he has assured himself all day. Why should she suffer before it is absolutely necessary? The letters must have pleased her for the moment. It has been really kindness, at bottom. It is odd, however, how certain lines and phrases in them have been slinking across his vision. Phrases which, somehow, he has not been able to banish from his mind. There has seemed something cheap about those letters this afternoon, something crude and tawdry, like old scenery blinking garishly in daylight, its poor effort shamed by nature's reality. Reality! Is that it? Well, they have not been quite the truth, of course. The ones on the dramatic club, for instance, and his 16 THE BALANCE lofty duty to the Fine Arts in the college! On his character God save the mark and its improvement! On his efforts for the class football team, the debating club, for what not, because mere trying means so much to the soul! His self-sacrifices for the good of the majority, the university The weight of them has pressed heavily upon his conscience. They are but lies, that clear, cold light tells him mercilessly. There is no mention in them of North Adams with its bars and cheap theatres, he re- members uncomfortably, of Troy and its new hotel, of Albany and its near metropolitan attractions; of any of those devilish week-ends he has spent there proving himself a man in the time-honoured custom of young men since the world began; no mention in them, in a word, of that real, actual life of his of which classrooms and Williamstown have been but the necessary evils, only endured that the joys of existence might be tasted elsewhere. Letters a son at college should write to a widowed mother at home! That is what they are not S. Syd- ney Tappan's letters to the failing woman on Hawthorne Street. They are the record of his first heroic role, that is all. Poor Sammy! He was not well acquainted with that Imp of his in those days. I am sure, as he drove to Hawthorne Street, that he thought he was conscious of nothing except the picture of his mother, pale, drawn with worry, struggling to fit him for the place tradition had mapped out for him when Melchester was young and the Tappan name a sesame. And yet his heroic Imp was with him even then, catching on behind the carriage as it rolled away from the ugly brick station and whispering through the little back window: "It's you whom she may leave alone, Sydney! A fine part if you play it correctly!" The rest of the ride was so filled with the idea, splen- didly worked out, that his eyes were even swimming a little with tears as he dismissed the carriage and THE BALANCE 17 walked up the steps with a self-command worthy of his grandfather himself. He was thinking what an object of sympathy he might easily be, and playing the hero bearing bravely up beneath the weight of sorrow! It was Annie's first words which told him that what he had been merely imagining had become the truth. "You poor boy," she said, weeping, as she drew him in. "She has left us!" He hardly grasped then what she meant until he went upstairs to the big front room that had been playroom, nursery, and bedroom to his youth, and saw the face of his mother, the strain gone out of it, and the quiet of peace everlasting upon it. It was a moment then for that dramatic devil, but somehow the devil was strangely absent. Only the stunned soul of Sammy was left in the room. She was dead. Death to youth, however, is not a happening, it is a slow, grim realization that the loved one has gone. The realization for Sammy was spread out over all of his life. All that he could remember of those days, afterward, was the hush of the house; the faces of the relatives as they talked with him in just the right key for use with a cousin so recently orphaned; the silent meals at the Dobbs' next door, broken only by the loud nose-blowing of the great uncle from Washington; the embarrassed sympathy of Carrie as she asked if there were not some- thing she could do; the frightened way Dorothy Alden from across the street talked to him in the hall; the inexorable preparations for the funeral; and the misty rain as his carriage drove to the cemetery behind the hearse; and then the quiet of the house. It seemed odd, that quiet, broken only by the sound of Annie upstairs as she ransacked some old bureau drawers. It brought home to the boy a sense of his loneliness; a loneliness intensified by the dawning com- prehension that this house, with all its associations, must be left behind now even the old cat, as well as Annie, left to seek a new place for herself. He would 18 THE BALANCE have only a little money, perhaps ten thousand dollars. The great uncle from Washington had said so. There might be enough income to enable him to board some place while he took up the law, the old gentleman had said, blowing his nose. That would be all. His mother had lived on her capital. He could not do that, too. . . . He realized a little then his vast ignorance of the life to which he had returned so suddenly, and yet which he had never really known. The horizon of youth is small. He would work, of course, though at just what he did not know. He had friends. In time it would be all right. His ability must be of a high order. Poor Sammy ! That was the extent of his outlook. It was not a good afternoon for Fate to have started her work upon his character. But Fate is not tender hearted. She was coming even then with Annie as the Irish girl came in to light the lamps and pull the shades on the dusk of the March afternoon. "It's a package she left for you," Annie said as she gave him a little bundle by the lamp. "A week now," she added, "I was meaning to send it on to you at the college." He looks near like a man, she thinks to herself as she goes out to the kitchen a man! And she wheeled him herself on that sidewalk outside. . . . In the old-fashioned drawing-room, however, our Sammy is gazing curiously at a package he is unwrap- ping. Yes, he is almost a man except for that weak look around his mouth. He seems quite immature when his chin is plain in the light from the lamp. Letters, he sees, as he unwraps the bundle completely some one's letters, and a book. It is not until the light falls on the writing, however, that he sees they are his own letters from college! His letters, all care- fully arranged in the order of their date. His letters upon his college activities, upon his obligations, upon his duties, his sacrifices his letters on everything, perhaps, except the truth. THE BALANCE 19 It is with an odd feeling of chill, of cold, that he reads the note with them in that familiar, fine handwriting of his mother's. Emerson! He is like Emerson, she has written, may yet be another such philosopher in time. Yes, that is the book, too "Emerson on Character," it says on the cover. On the flyleaf is written : "To my son Sammy, on the eighteenth anniversary of his father's death, with the hope that he, too, is proud of his son!" I wonder if he felt, just a trifle, the tragedy of his mother's life in that simple line upon the flyleaf? It was his first awakening. Let us leave him to gaze on the face of his conscience there in the drawing-room by the fire while we tiptoe out and are gone. And yet I cannot resist a quotation from the biography as we close the door behind us. It will tell you, perhaps, why I find it hard to be fair. "Faithful to those high ideals which he formed so early in life S. Sydney Tappan upon his mother's death resolved to deny himself all thought of a college career and set about the serious business of life at once." Ah, those early high ideals! I doubt if they ever existed except in the pages of the biography. They are pure high imagination, I suspect! It is the reason why publishers' entreaties to put out those letters nowadays as a single volume for young men are always met by S. Sydney Tappan with such an ungracious refusal. He does not care to be reminded of the youth who penned them. They are the only part of that biography which he has never read. When he comes to the letters, he skips them. CHAPTER III IN WHICH SAMMY FINALLY LOSES MRS. SCHROEDER'S FAVOUR BUT GAINS HER DAUGHTER'S MELCHESTER, in those days, was growing beyond the expectations of her most optimistic citizens. A vacant lot here received a house, an old dwelling there made way for a new brick block; high rents attracted the Boston flat builder; new streets were laid out with little noise, and a mile away no comment; new pave- ments gave opportunity for old couples to sell dingy gray houses and move farther out to hardwood floors, to view in surprise, a little later, the apartment house where once their home had stood; buildings with store fronts outraged the sedate old houses beneath the elms until slowly they lost courage and became boarding places for clerks from the outreaching business section. Slowly the downtown stores crept away from Main Street and soon people transferred from car to car to reach their different shopping destinations. The Corners became dingy, and at night nearly deserted; while on a half-dozen thoroughfares the glory that once was theirs blazed forth in electric lights and plate-glass display windows into which the theatre crowds stared with awe and longing as they waited for their home- bound cars cars no longer small and lined with long, longitudinal seats, but splendid, bright, and big, with electric signs and demands to have your fare ready be- fore boarding in the rear. New fortunes rose to formidable dimensions, from factories whose goods, spread far and wide over the land even to the Pacific Coast, lent lustre and a name to the city which was just conscious of their presence. 30 THE BALANCE 21 Unfamiliar names appeared on the signs "For Sale." The strange metal animals and gods and goddesses of the front lawns of the old aristocracy disappeared be- fore the onslaught of the landscape architect and a newer taste. Fine automobiles went speeding far out Washington Avenue, and turned in at big new houses of mushroom growth. At night the boxes at the theatres gleamed with new and finer jewels. New figures rose and spoke at Chamber of Commerce din- ners while Mr. Schroeder wondered when they had come to town. New names were posted on the bulletin boards at the clubs. Even the Schroeder grocery stores were forgotten, their name still known only in the world of real estate when men asked each other where Charles W. Schroeder got the money to buy this lot or that block. To cap all Mrs. Schroeder was heard one day referring to the nouveau riche! Progress could do no more. Melchester had become a city while her citizens gossiped. Sammy hardly realized it, he was so busy enjoying himself. Evenings at the Country Club or at dances, after- noons of bowling or tennis, all the gay parties which made up the life of Melchester's younger society set before the town became a great city filled the greater part of his time then. Afterward those years always seemed to him like an indistinct memory from some other existence, the people he knew then mere phan- toms of a youthful dream, his love affair with Carrie the only thing projected from the world of his actual life with his real career waiting patiently all the while for its beginning in the streets of New York. He never knew how that affair with Carrie began again, never could put his finger upon any incident and say here it began. He gravitated toward her natur- ally, the essential sympathy of their natures obscured only slightly by the thoughtlessness of youth, flaring into a conscious passion by the twin accidents of pro- pinquity and young love. 22 THE BALANCE Years later he could see the wherefore of those ac- tions of Mrs. Schroeder's and understand the hidden causes of the youthful drama which hurled him at last into the current of raw existence. But in the days of his early twenties he did not analyze the nature of the world he set about conquering so nonchalantly. Such analysis did not seem necessary in the simple concep- tion of success he held then. His horizon was bounded by those friends of his friends of circumstance and en- vironment only who made up the small social circle his birth entitled him to in Melchester so long as his finances could keep him there. Success appeared to him as a mere continuing in the path in which a kind Providence had placed him. It was why he ignored his failure in English and his lack of a college education and chose the law in old religious Mr. Dabney's office in the Preston Block; trying, spasmodically, to write plays in the odd mo- ments of his profession. Those plays! Poor Carrie! He read them all to her and looked for applause. It is a matter for wonder that she did not notice that strange peculiarity which all of them had. He counted afterward, and there were sixteen plays that he started, and not one that he finished. There were no last acts. He always lost interest before they were done. That Mrs. Schroeder did not look with favour upon the tall, slender youth who studied law so desultorily between social engagements is not surprising. It was not that she had any firmer grasp of essentials than our Sammy; it was because she saw no place for him in the growing aristocracy of wealth in Melchester and wealth was her standard. Slowly the sesame of the Tappan name was fading even among those to whom old Mr. Tappan and Sammy's parents had been real breathing people and not names. The power of the old families was dwindling. It was not until the New Year's dance at the Wash- ington Club, however, that Sammy ever seriously THE BALANCE 23 entered her mind. She had counted upon her first warning to keep Carrie from anything foolish before. Her suspicion took its first look around then as she sat in the little balcony and watched Carrie dancing with him rather oftener than seemed actually necessary. It coloured that view she took of him, coloured it so that she was not conscious of his rather fine looks, his clear gray eye, his dark hair and brown face, re- deemed from mere good breeding by the latent strength beginning to show around the chin. All that she saw as she gazed was a family vanished, and a fortune with them, and a young man of dreamy mind left to make his own way in the world a young man with no longer even a home on Hawthorne Street from which to start out his home a room on the discouraged elm-lined street where the business clerks were boarding and Annie, his nurse, her own maid now in the house on Washington Avenue. "What does that Tappan boy intend to be?" she asked Mrs. Halton, her next-door neighbour but one on the Avenue. Mr. Schroeder would hardly have recognized the correct tone of his wife's voice in the question. The club always overawed her just a trifle. In spite of Mr. Schroeder's membership she could not always forget the time when the store there was but one grocery then had supplied the club with its food. Thank Heaven the steward of those days was dead and gone! It had been one of the first questions she asked when her husband brought her the news of his election; and she had not entered the hallowed precincts until the truth had been ascertained: it was another name. "A lawyer, I believe/' returned Mrs. Halton list- lessly, in response to the half-forgotten question. Her son would have a factory for the running when he graduated from college, and she had no daughters so was safe so far as impecunious Sammies were con- cerned. "Humph!" remarked Mrs. Schroeder disdainfully. 24 THE BALANCE "A scheme to have a good time and call it work, I suppose. I don't know what the world is coming to. All the men seem to be either fools or devils though as for me, give me a devil! They've all got that in 'em! But I never could stand a fool." Possibly twenty-five years of Mr. Schroeder had in- fluenced her taste. She has risen now to pay her respects to Mrs. Alden, however, and left Sammy thus flat upon his back, plainly tagged as a fool. Mrs. Alden is just a step higher in the social ladder, you see, having been once or twice to the home of the canal boat driver's descend- ants so must be treated with due consideration. But Mrs. Halton is not properly impressed. "She wants her daughter to get some one like Fred, I suppose," she says comfortably to herself. Fred is the future factory owner, distinguished so far only forspend- ing magnificent sums of some one else's money. As she watches the crowd coming out from supper, however, she is forced to admit that of them all the daughter of the house of Schroeder is the most attrac- tive. She is not exactly beautiful, she reflects to change her opinion instantly, as Carrie stands for a moment smiling at S. Sydney Tappan, her charming figure instinct with tenderness and grace, her face say- ing all unconsciously in every curve of its smile, "I love you, Sammy!" How plainly her dream glowed in her face as she stood in the ballroom, there! That dream of eternal kindness she always had herself clad in the furs and fine rai- ment of the duchess alighting from her automobile to help past the dangerous crossing the poor and ill-clad old woman who stood on the corner. There, Sammy, had you but known it, glowed the inspiration which the world has called yours. Gone your farces, your dramas, your pageants, and shining through the mask of characters and words the soul of Carrie speaking kind- ness. Had Carrie been at that famous dinner of the English court where the New World guest aroused the THE BALANCE 25 titters of the courtiers by tucking his napkin beneath his chin Queen Victoria would not have been the first to gravely follow suit with a silent rebuke for such un- kind discourtesy. Well, you never became a duchess, Carrie, and dan- gerous crossings have their traffic officer in Melchester now but you changed the dream scene later anyway, so it does not matter. You could not bear those fine garments when the old woman was so poorly clad. . . . It was in the early summer that Mrs. Schroeder al- lowed her suspicions to drive her into action so that she took to sitting in the library across the hall. It was not her love for books, however, that led her to select the library. Indeed by far the most of her volumes showed plainly that they had not been touched. A skilful writer indeed who could escape the displeasure of Mrs. Schroeder and not be branded as a fool before he had spoken for two chapters in self-defense! Conversa- tions in the drawing-room could be overheard without much effort that was the secret of the change. Mr. Schroeder grumbled when he found his easy chair gone from the den; but his revolt was feeble, and after the first outbreak he sat sulkily through long evenings enlivened by snatches of conversation from the draw- ing-room. It took the flavour from the Democrat Herald editorials somehow and he often took refuge in sleep, but his wife could hear her daughter in the next room and was satisfied. The banisters had been undignified. It was only when a young man came whose voice was low and infrequent that she lost patience and could with difficulty restrain herself from bursting forth and crying "louder ! " through the curtains. Such young men were classed as fools after the first call, and ever after discouraged. She never forgot that evening when S. Sydney Tap- pan called and she listened to him carefully for the first time. "It will be fine to be a lawyer, Sammy," she could 26 THE BALANCE hear Carrie saying in her low voice. "There are such chances, such opportunities for being some one big." "Yes," says Sammy. "And it isn't just working for money. I don't think money means much to me." "To me, either," responds Carrie, in a glow. "Be- yond the chance it gives one of doing good." Oh, for a photograph of Mrs. Schroeder's face! "You see, though," Sammy goes on, "I have so little money, that's the trouble. It takes so long to become a lawyer, before you make anything, I mean." "I know," cries Carrie, "but think of Lincoln how he worked and worked and read by the fire and rode around on the circuit and had hardly any money and see how much he made of himself! " "But we can't all be Lincolns," Sammy answers. In his heart he is saying, "You modest devil!" "No," Carrie cries, a little flushed, "but we can all try!" In the library Mrs. Schroeder is bursting. Lincoln, indeed! The day for Lincolns has gone by. Sammy seems a trifle despondent. "I don't know," he says sombrely. "It means get- ting so far behind the other fellows they'll all be out and married and making money before I have even started." Carrie, however, is thrilled. "The right girl would always wait!" she cries out. She means she herself would, of course. "And you would do something for the world in the end, while the others would never go beyond just making money." She is a youthful altruist, not knowing that this road she is urging upon S. Sydney Tappan leads to the martyrdom of the revolutionist as well as the halo of the great man, and that no signpost marks the place where the ways divide. But he has not forgotten those letters to his mother yet and he shrinks from climbing upon his pedestal so soon and so is silent. "An upright lawyer is so fine," Carrie continues. "He can stand for so much in the world and oh, I THE BALANCE 27 don't know, it seems as if there were so much to be done really fine things like stopping all this poverty and things like that doesn't it seem like that to you, too?" Why, the girl is a fool! Mrs. Schroeder, in the next room, makes a grimace. "Yes, somebody ought to write a play on poverty," Sammy replies, unconscious prophet, "and make every- body think about it!" Shades of all the revolutionists since time began ! This youth in the Schroeder parlour thinks people should have the subject of poverty called to their notice! The irony does not strike Mrs. Schroeder, however, as she sits in the library. She mutters: "A play indeed, the fool!" Why, no one would go to see such a play, she thinks, provided even that any one sufficiently idiotic could be found to write it. Poverty, indeed it is their own fault if they are poor, those wretched frequenters of saloons. Let them work and save, instead of asking people to write plays about them. Of all the fools this Tappan boy is certainly the worst. He will never make a dollar. That Imp of Sammy's is feeling the sting of the lash, meanwhile, in the drawing-room as Carrie continues: "I just know you could do things like that, Sammy," she cries eagerly, "because you've got the character and the ideals and the perseverance!" Oh! That perseverance of our Sammy's! The Imp disregards all the facts for a moment. "Yes," he replies, "that is why Gordon of Khartoum was always my hero he stayed by his guns until the end, and died for it." It is not until Sammy goes down the steps that his English course recurs to him; and those letters from college; and those unfinished plays ! And his face shows a tiny grim look in the half light of Washington Avenue's lamps. He is catching on to himself a little more. He has no perseverance at all. 28 THE BALANCE When he has gone the storm breaks upon Carrie. "I don't want Sam Tappan coming here any more, young lady," her mother says angrily, as the front door closes. "I won't have it. It is time he was sent about his business." Mr. Schroeder has discreetly folded up his paper and gone to lock the doors and windows. If there is to be any sending of people anywhere he will escape while there is time. But Mrs. Schroeder's blood is up, and discretion cast to the winds. "Do you hear?" she says angrily. In Carrie's eye there is a tiny spark. "Why, mother?" she asks quietly. " Because I don't want him here, that's why enough ! " says Mrs. Schroeder loudly. "The next time he comes here I'll show him the door!" Mr. Schroeder has spent as much time at the win- dows and doors now as he feels is consistent with safety. "Well, well, now," he begins, apologetically to his daughter, "there are lots of other young men." It is an actual situation which confronts Carrie, however. "But what shall I tell him, father?" she repeats still quietly. "Tell him," her father repeats vaguely, "why, just don't have him come!" Confound these reasons! Families are certainly the devil! Why must they al- ways have reasons? "And tell him nothing?" she repeats. It is .as much for her sake as for Sammy's that she wishes to know. "Oh, tell him you don't want to see him, that's all," says Mrs. Schroeder angrily. Such talk about noth- ing! "But that isn't the truth," answers Carrie. "I do want to see him." "My Lord!" groans Mrs. Schroeder. "The truth!" "Fred Halton now," says Mr. Schroeder clumsily, "have Fred come and call." To his mind, in a haze THE BALANCE 29 regarding such affairs, this is a helpful suggestion, his lovely daughter surely being able to have whatever callers may be desired and this affair apparently being merely a matter of one caller or another. Carrie, however, has a brief glimpse of the consola- tion offered as he sits during a call, snapping his fingers loudly to give an impression of masculine verve to all his remarks remarks which are sadly in need of it, too. "I don't want Fred Halton to call," she says in a low tone. Have her parents no feelings ? "Well," says her mother angrily, "you've seen the last of Sam Tappan, anyhow!" "Perhaps you could tell him better when you've had some sleep," says Mr. Schroeder apologetically. Sleep! Is this the extent of her parents' comprehen- sion? She shook her head. To the end of her life she could never do anything of which that conscience of hers did not approve. "I've got to tell him the truth," she said doggedly. "Don't you see that at all, mother?" She was ceasing very rapidly to be a child as she stood before her par- ents in the old fancy drawing-room the marks of the soul shining dimly through the first flush of youth. Her mother recognized where the difficulty lay then. "Well, tell him the truth, then," she said harshly. "So long as you keep him away!" She was at the end of her patience. A half-hour later the storm had all cleared away, however, as she went humming to bed. Sam Tappan was disposed of, at least, she was thinking. Only in Carrie's room down the hall was there a sign of the tempest. She could hear that light tune of her mother's there as she stared into her mirror, the iron of injustice burning into her soul. Her mother could even sing while she gave up Sammy! And they had not told her after all just why she must give him up! Well, she must tell him the truth, anyway, to-morrow that at least she has promised. As for the rest 30 THE BALANCE As she stared into her mirror a new light came into her eyes. Would Sammy give her up so easily, too, she asked of the face in the glass ? And a faint blush flooded through her cheeks and spread down her slender throat. He had said he had perseverance! CHAPTER IV IN WHICH CARRIE TELLS SAMMY SOME UNPALATABLE TRUTHS WHICH Do NOT TURN OUT BADLY AT ALL IT is less than twenty-four hours later that Sammy is calling again at the house on Washington Avenue, all unconscious of the fact that his partner for the evening has been so rudely charged with the duty of telling him such unpalatable truths. He has been quite despondent all day in the dusty, ill-lighted office in the Preston Block, watching the slow eddies of trade which drift around Washington Corners like backwater from the swift current four blocks away. Success at the law, somehow, has lost all its attraction. It seems more like a dull and sombre path leading to a dry and dusty old age, with perhaps the price of a coffin at the end, than a heroic career. The real heroes are that brilliant crowd four blocks away, where, glimpsed through the frame of side streets, the bright stream of life roars, its colours and flags shining magnificently in the sunlight. Success! That is success out there, not here in the dusty law office with the picture of Lincoln on the wall! The Imp has been straining at the leash all day. Mixed with his despondency, too, there has been a new, queer feeling about Carrie. Slowly there has been growing in his mind the conviction that he cannot live without her. What chance of winning her will this slow hero of the law office have against those brilliant conquerors of commerce out there? Success! A law- yer! Why, there is but one god Mercury. He, him- self, is simply falling farther and farther behind that brilliant crowd which is surging on to success so rapidly 81 32 THE BALANCE on the routes of trade, following the prophet Gold. The Imp has decidedly sickened of the solid pathway of the law. Mrs. Schroeder is calling down the banisters after her daughter now, however, as she goes out with Sammy to the carriage: "Remember what I said last night! He can't come here!" She is quite undaunted by the sight of S. Sydney Tappan's silk hat in the hall. Her daughter can go to dinner dances given by the Dobbs, but Sam Tappan shall not call. She has been in somewhat of a quan- dary all day, trying to decide whether the Schroeder social position will be sufficiently improved by her daughter's attendance at the dance to pay for the risk run by Carrie in meeting the Tappan boy once more. But the Dobbs' overpowering position has won the day. In Carrie's mind, as she and Sammy drive out along the river road toward the sunset, there is an unusual little undercurrent of excitement, questioning her, thrilling her, making her heart beat and her pulses quiver just a trifle faster than usual. She has been wondering all day, since early morning, just how Sammy will take what she has to say wondering, too, just how she will say it, and when. There have been a dozen times already when she has not been able to remember at all how she will put it to him. It is why she sits in silence as they drive. Perhaps the thing will work itself out she thinks, the telling perhaps be easier, when darkness has come and they can walk on the Country Club lawn between dances. Freddie Halton is snapping his fingers as their car- riage draws up and they alight at the porte-cochere. On the railing some one in white flannels is posing Max Stimpson, making it a point, as usual, to show himself off to the best advantage. Beyond is the crowd, that crowd of gay young people who represented life to S. Sydney Tappan then. "Welcome to our city," says Asa Dobbs gaily, hold- THE BALANCE 33 ing out his hands to the arriving couple. He has al- ways envied his old roommate the chance he has to see Carrie and all the other girls while he himself is compelled to plug away at college. "How is dear old North Ad?" our Sammy asks, with the devilish smile that always goes with the mention of such things at twenty-five. "Yes," Dorothy Alden breaks in roguishly, "confess, Asa! I've been hearing the wildest tales! Wild and reckless!" Freddie Halton snaps his fingers loudly. "Pooh!" he says, "wild oats, Dot! They all get over it when they grow up." He has just graduated, and is about to join our Elder Statesmen if his remarks are any criterion of intention. "And they all get over it!" sings Max Stimpson, so as to display his fine, deep tones. "Yes," says Asa ponderously, "it doesn't last." And they file in to dinner, these youths who, to judge from their expressions, have tasted life to its dregs. It seems incredible now to be told that after the dinner has started, and the repartee of the twenties is flying thick and fast, there rises up in Sammy a great envy of these old friends of his; and yet he never forgot the odd sensation he had that night. It was that dramatic devil pulling at his coat tails again that was the explanation. "The West for me this summer," Asa was saying with an air of high adventure. "BifF and I you re- member BifF, Sam we're going to put his new car through to the coast. Montana and the Dakotas, through Bismarck and the Bad Lands, that way!" Automobile trips are still classed as adventure. "All mere civilization," sneers Max Stimpson. " Better come with Fred and me through the Hudson's Bay country. Just canoes and duffle bags, and a frying pan and axe!" "You bet!" says Freddie. "That's the stuff! The wilds and backwoods for mine every time!" He is 34 THE BALANCE evidently trying to give the impression of one of Sir Henry Morgan's buccaneers just off the ship for an even- ingin the town. That Imp can contain himself no longer now, and S. Sydney Tappan is filled with a great longing to resume this old life, to plunge once more into this vista of mod- ern romance and high exploit which his companions are opening so temptingly before him. Why, they will have gone everywhere and seen everything worth while in life while he sits and studies in his stuffy office or perhaps grubs for money in some business! What is success beside a career of adventure that takes a man to the ends of the earth to return him home browned and lean and tough like whipcord or fine steel, with a halo of daring deeds around his head and a bag of strange stories with which to hold the men at the club enthralled until far into the morning? He would have left for the North Pole at that moment had there been no delay in starting. Only the salad and later, the dancing saved him. He watched the dancing quite despondently. An old tune had brought into his mind a long-past scene. It was of Asa on a new velocipede on Hawthorne Street with himself standing enviously pressing his nose to the glass the better to see him disappear toward Washing- ton Avenue. Well, Asa was still riding the velocipede, it seemed, while he himself watched enviously from the background only it was Montana and the coast now instead of the far shadows of Hawthorne Street into which the rider was about to disappear. He turned his gaze then to watch Carrie, an odd sen- sation filling his heart as he looked after her while she and Freddie walked out upon the shadowy lawn. Did she care much for Halton, he wondered? He had never considered before just how dangerous any of these rivals of his might be. He might have pondered more seriously had he been able to hear Freddie out on the links. "I haven't seen you in the longest while," that young THE BALANCE 35 gentleman is saying earnestly to Carrie. "You seem to have so many engagements!" It is an ominous sign, Freddie, those engagements! "I've lots of books I want to send you," he continues. Carrie's expression changes ever so slightly. "How nice!" she says. "But you won't send any yet, will you? I am simply rushed to death, aren't you? I haven't read anything in weeks!" But Freddie is either not rushed to death or is think- ing of something else. "It isn't just the books," he bursts out. "They're just symbols symbolic, you know, of all the things I wish I could do for you!" He has forgotten to snap his fingers during these remarks an omission that sends a little shiver over Carrie. He must be very much in earnest. "Who could want anything to-night, Freddie?" she says, a trifle hurriedly. "Isn't it just perfect for a dance?" But the dance of the moonbeams on the river below them has no more charm for Freddie than that other dance upon the club piazza a few yards away. "It is perfect when I am with you, Carrie," he says in a low tone. "Somehow, you're not like the other girls. You are different." Carrie laughs as lightly as she knows how. She rec- ognizes the earmarks of the speech. "You just think I am this minute, Freddie," she says. "You needn't jolly me! We all heard of your goings on in Troy. What was her name? Everybody in Melchester had you married off to her last year. And now it's me!" And she bows before him in mock gratitude. But Freddie is in no mood to jest. "Oh, I just took her to one dance," he says irritably. "The way the fellows talk makes me sick!" "Yes," answers Carrie, seizing her cue, "none of us wants to settle down yet, do we? I know I, for one, don't. The world is too lovely. Think of all there 36 THE BALANCE is to see that those stars and that moon gaze down upon!" This might all be a quotation from her mother ex- cept for the moon and stars. But Freddie is doubtful. "I didn't think you were that kind," he remarks. He looks at her a moment. "Somebody will carry you off one of these days before the rest of us know it. That's what I think," he ends moodily. He has caught sight of S. Sydney Tappan on the piazza. Poor Freddie ! Have some of Fate's whispers reached ears for which they were not intended ? Carrie's laughter is clear, however, reaching even to the piazza where Sammy stirs so uneasily on the railing. "I'm not so fatally attractive as all that, Freddie," she laughs. Freddie's heart nearly bursts then with the courage it takes to make his next remark. " I think you are ! " he says. "Freddie!" she laughs mockingly. "Trying to flirt with me!" She will not be serious. It is the natural caution of budding womanhood. Her confusion, however, al- though it does not appear to Freddie, is the effect which Fate has intended to produce. Only wonderment at this new person in the guise of Freddie Halton could ever have made her miss the music of that new dance beginning upon the piazza. It is the next dance, a waltz with Sammy. Halton hears it with a sinking heart. He has just started making progress and now they must return to the brightly lighted porch where Sam Tappan will take Carrie away from him. It was odd the way he fell so easily into the role of the heavy villain then. "Another encore," he says slyly, motioning toward the twinkling club. "I am very fortunate to-night." Oh, wicked Freddie! "Let's walk then," says Carrie ingenuously. "It's damp standing here." Passing and repassing other THE BALANCE 37 couples will be safer than this dark spot beside the river, she thinks. That is why they walk out upon the moonlit Ifnks instead of returning to the club piazza where S. Sydney Tappan sits and waits, a strange feeling gradually over- whelming his heart. The floor is filled and the number in full swing now and he can see Carrie and Halton talking earnestly out in the moonlight. Can it be that she has forgotten? Or is it that she does not care? Either supposition is unbearable. Well, there are other girls, he thinks grimly Carrie is not the only one. It is his set jaw and clenched hand that give his thoughts the lie, however. Foolish Sammy! He has never realized before the place she has in his heart because her favour has always come to him so easily, so frankly bestowed. Her other engage- ments have always faded away before his invitations, dances with her requiring only that he write them down upon her program. There have been none of these quarrels or coquettish misunderstandings with which young ladies sometimes bedevil their anxious suitors or are bedeviled in turn. He has never realized the strength of his desire to win this girl for himself, because the pathway of his courtship has been made so smooth by their mutual attraction. He is realizing it now, however, as his pulses throb with a new, queer pain. Has Halton captured her away from him, he wonders, while he himself has been fatuously wasting his time? The thought is unbear- able. It is the first billow of an ocean of passion which will engulf him that wave of feeling that is so plain in S. Sydney Tappan's dark face. No Freddie Halton shall take Carrie away from him no, by Heaven, he wants her himself! She shall not be captured so easily if he can prevent it shall not forget in an instant all that their good times have meant! For the first time in his life S. Sydney Tappan is thoroughly, exquisitely conscious that he cares for Carrie that he must have her though thousands stand in between. She has 38 THE BALANCE acquired a value of a sudden that cannot be esti- mated ! And it is that moment that Fate chooses for bringing Carrie and Freddie Halton back to the piazza. "Why, isn't this an encore?" Carrie asks wonderingly of S. Sydney Tappan, as he stands gazing at her sternly. She is a mixture of culprit and angel in his mind. "Yes, isn't it?" echoes Halton plausibly. But Sammy is looking at Carrie with a gl'ince that is new to her a glance that has forgotten the existence of Halton in its desire to claim the girl before him. "It's the twelfth," he replies, in a tone of voice that corresponds oddly with his glance. There is something of the Final Judgment Day in both. He seems hardly aware that Halton has disappeared, muttering some- thing about a partner, and that Carrie is alone in front of him. "Oh, I'm so sorry, Sammy I didn't know," she says contritely, holding out her hands in an unconscious gesture. It is all she can do to keep one of them from flying to her throat. But the floodgates inside S. Sydney Tappan are loosed and emotion sweeps full tide into his voice. " Let'swalk," he says huskily, " I can'tdance just now." They have hardly reached the path beside the river before the tumult inside him finds expression. He loves her, has always loved her, and will die unless she loves him, too. "Carrie!" he cries passionately. "Carrie, tell me you love me! You've go*t to tell me! I can't stand not knowing now!"; He never knew afterward whether she answered him or not. He only knew that he had swept her into his trembling arms the next moment, and kissed her blindly on the fresh, cool mouth and slender throat, and crushed her to him until she whispered, "Let me kiss you, too!" to bury her face then upon his shoulder, half in shyness half in gladness, her loosened hair playing riot across his cheeks. He did not need to have her AM-HUT5- UTLE_ 'I forgot, Sammy . . . / cant see you any more!" THE BALANCE 39 answer then. Every fibre of her cried it aloud. To the day of his death he never forgot that first instant when he held Carrie in his arms. . . . It is a little later that she recollects, with a gasp of whimsical horror, her mother's parting instructions over the banisters. "I forgot, Sammy," she says then, half laughing, half sobbing. "I can't see you any more!" "Why not?" demands Sammy lightly. All conver- sation seems a trifle distant, far away, with the sweetness of their new-found passion so fresh upon them. "Mother!" says Carrie, unconscious of the satire of her position as she says it. She sees it the next mo- ment. "She doesn't want to encourage you!" There is a funny little smile on her face. Encourage! Had you been a cartoonist, Sammy, you would have laughed aloud. As it was, he smiled. "Why not?" he asked. He said it as much for the sake of making a remark as anything. She pressed closer to him to ward off the hurt of her answer. " Because you aren't rich," she said. It was odd the way she hurried the rest of her remark so that he could forget the beginning. "As if that made any difference! So long as we love each other there can't be anything else that matters very much." It was not her youth that prompted the remark, either. Such has been the philosophy of lovers since the world began. They had no opportunity for discussing that aiways interesting subject just then, however. A voice from the piazza was shouting out their names in a tone cal- culated to reach even their unheeding ears. "Oh, Sam! Oh, Carrie! Good-night! Sorry you can't be with us this evening! Oh, there you are! Well, well!" "Good gracious!" blushed Carrie in the dark, "do you suppose they saw?" and drew away a little in- stinctively as she said it. 40 THE BALANCE But Sammy drew her to him again. "They wouldn't have called us if they had!" he an- swered wisely. Manlike, he did not care to give up so quickly what he had just won. To both of them, afterward, the rest of the evening seemed to have passed almost in a moment; even the ride home lasting but an instant an instant snatched from paradise, during which they were magically and all too quickly transported to Washington Avenue. Clever Sammy! He gave the coachman two dollars as -they approached the Schroeder mansion and pur- chased thereby a half-hour more of heaven at a ridicu- lously low price. What the coachman thought he never stopped to inquire afterward. But they drove back to the deserted club where Sammy made a pre- tense of getting out and going inside in search of some- thing. Whatever it was, he plainly did not find it, because out he came still empty handed in a moment, and they drove again to the house upon the elm-shaded avenue. It was two o'clock when Carrie tiptoed up the stairs to her room in an effort to avoid the inevitable head which was always thrust out from her mother's door whenever any late member of the family sought to avoid the publicity connected with arriving after mid- night. Mrs. Schroeder, in a dressing-gown, met her as she opened her door, however. "Did you tell Sam Tappan what I told you to?" she demanded. She had just returned from an evening out herself so was still wide awake. The question had not been absent from her mind since the door closed behind Carrie at six. The reply was all that she could reasonably expect. "Yes, mother," Carrie answered in a low voice. It was low, this time, because she felt the deception of her answer, and her conscience was crying out for a full reply. But her mother gave her no opportunity just then. THE BALANCE 41 She was not thinking of her daughter, nor noticing that new look of starry happiness in her eyes Sam Tappan had been told, and that affair was off her mind at last. That was all. "Well, thank God for that!" she said half to herself. She could sleep easily again. As for Carrie, I am sure that she was satisfied, too. Sammy had taken his dismissal, I should say, very well indeed! CHAPTER V IN WHICH SAMMY HAS AN INTERVIEW WITH MR. SCHROEDER AND RESOLVES TO IMITATE HlS EXAMPLE IT WAS a strangely agitated S. Sydney Tappan who sat in the law office in the Preston Block the day after the dance at the Country Club. He had arisen to pleas- ant reflections reflections, I need hardly state, of a certain young lady. He can never forget, he has told himself all day, the shyness of her passionate surrender nor her whispered words of love. The world consists of little except Carrie to him just now. He is in the law office to be sure, but simply for the purpose of waiting until two o'clock can arrive so that he can call her on the telephone. Two o'clock is the hour when the family has scattered to its several diversions; and until then life is quite barren, a desert to be traversed with infinite dreariness. Two miles away, however, events are transpiring which will add a distinct liveliness to the journey's end. Freddie Halton is having breakfast with his mother. "You shouldn't stay so late at the dances, Freddie," she is saying anxiously. Freddie is quite pale, perhaps from his efforts to dispose of poached eggs before set- ting forth for that factory which began some hours ago. "I'm all right," he growls, forgetting to snap his fingers. He has forgotten to do so since that moment upon the piazza, the night before when he surrendered Carrie to Sam Tappan. "Was it a nice dance?" his mother inquires. "Oh, yes," he admits. "Only everybody is getting so twosy ! " He makes a little gesture of disgust. 42 THE BALANCE 43 Mrs. Halton scents gossip from afar with the trained nose of the middle-aged matron. "Ridiculous, at your age!" she says. She herself was married .at this same age which her Freddie has attained. But we forget our youth as quickly as is pos- sible. It is more convenient so. "Mrs. Schroeder and I were talking about it at the club. Young people are so silly. I hope you won't get all tied up with some girl at your age!" She is wondering what young lady has been casting eyes upon her heir apparent. "No danger," says Freddie, half humorously. "If I were Mrs. Schroeder I'd keep an eye on Carrie, though. Sam monopolizes her so nobody else gets even a chance. Max had to shout for them before they'd come in last night." He is almost spiteful as he reviews the events of the evening before. "I'm sure / don't know what she's thinking of to allow it!" says Mrs. Halton. This bids fair to be in- teresting. There is a spark of youthful honour in Freddie, how- ever. "Oh, Sam is all right, I guess," he says. "Well, he can't support her for a minute," rejoins his mother pityingly. "Some one ought to tell her!" She does not mean that Carrie should be informed. She means some one ought to tell Mrs. Schroeder. Perhaps it will be news to that lady to be told that S. Sydney Tappan is courting her daughter. It is why she calls for Mrs. Schroeder at eleven o'clock, ostensibly to take her shopping. It may be that this bit of news will be in the nature of a bomb. If such should, happily, be the case, she wishes to be where she can see the carnage close at hand. She does not, therefore, waste any time. "The young people are so frightfully up to date these days, aren't they?" she says in her tired voice. "They're plain fools, if you ask me," her victim re- sponds. 44 THE BALANCE Mrs. Halton lights the fuse then, as they turn into the traffic of the downtown section. "Well," she says, "I told my Freddie very plainly this morning that he needn't indulge in any of this 'twosing' as they call it. I don't want any daughter- in-law presented to me before she is out of short dresses!" Twosing! Expressive simile! Mrs. Schroeder takes the bomb to her bosom. "What twosing?" she asks grimly. She only knows of certain calls. "Well, Freddie admitted that the dance at the club last night was simply no fun at all, because the party was split into little couples who didn't even take the trouble to come to the veranda to dance except every now and then. Imagine! At their age! It's too ridiculous. All those girls ought to marry men at least ten years older. How can those boys make enough money to marry them? Unless we parents step in and give our countenance to the whole thing! Which I for one won't do. We simply shouldn't allow it! We are just stor- ing up trouble for ourselves if it goes on." Mrs. Schroeder gives a short laugh. "It's what I gave Carrie to understand about that Sam Tappan," she says. "There's one twosing party that is broken up!" There will be no one to give any countenance to our Sammy, you see. But Mrs. Halton is watching the short fuse now. "I am so glad you know about it then, Elsa," she sighs sweetly. "I was wondering whether or not I should tell you about last night!" Bang! It is the bomb! "Last night!" says Mrs. Schroeder, turning sharply to her friend. " What about last night ? " "Oh, you don't you hadn't ' stammers Mrs. Halton in excellent confusion. "No. I don't. You tell me this moment, Grace Halton," exclaims Mrs. Schroeder energetically. What a splendid victim she makes! THE BALANCE 45 "I wouldn't have mentioned it for worlds, positively worlds!" murmurs Mrs. Halton. "Only I thought, that is I understood that what you were referring to " she stops, a splendid picture of kind heartedness. The victim, however, is determined, now, to know. "Go on," she commands, compressing her lips. A sudden rush of confidence seems to overwhelm Mrs. Halton. She will tell her friend, no matter how unpleasant it may be for both of them. The truth, after all, should be our first consideration. "Well," she says, "they were all talking about it, Freddie said. It was so noticeable. Max Stimpson calling and calling for them Carolyn and the Tappan boy and, well, they simply weren't at the dance at all! Just out on the links together, in the pitch dark all evening! There! I am so glad I told you. I have just felt, ever since I heard it, that I should tell you. Not, of course, Elsa, that there was anything wrong going on but you know what young people are. And how people do talk!" I fear there is no one who knows that any better than these two riding in the electric. They are author- ities on how people do talk in Melchester. If medals were only given for the gentle art they would stand an excellent chance for the gold and silver ones. Ob- serve how the episode at the dance has grown beneath Mrs. Halton's skilful touch! Of such stuff is scandal made. "Her father shall hear of this," says Mrs. Schroeder, in a tone of suppressed fury. So this is how she dis- courages S. Sydney Tappan! The wild humour of calling in Mr. Schroeder as an avenging Nemesis does not seem to strike her at all. Mrs. Halton, however, is a little fearful lest her bomb has made too big an explosion. "Now, I wouldn't do anything hasty, Elsa," she says sweetly. "It may all be terribly exaggerated, you know. I am sure Carolyn seems like a very sensible girl." 46 THE BALANCE "Well, she'll hear some sense from her father and me, I can tell you that," says Mrs. Schroeder, though Mr. Schroeder is sitting just now in the office in the yellow brick building figuring on hams, and is not in the least aware of the honour that is being thrust upon him. The roar of traffic runs past the Halton electric as the two women draw up before Jansen's Exclusive Ladies' Tailoring Establishment, just ofFthe Main Street. "Don't wait for me, Grace," says Mrs. Schroeder, as she alights. " Jansen is always so particular. It takes positively hours for the simplest thing." She means, of course, that she wishes to call up the husband who sits in the yellow brick building and figures on hams. His job is cut out for him now. She will not always do all the work. . . . As he left the yellow brick building, just an hour later, Mr. Schroeder was visibly disturbed. Curse this Tappan boy, anyway! Why should he pick on Carrie, when Mrs. Schroeder was so unalterably opposed to the idea? Of the general case Mr. Schroeder knew only what his wife had been pleased to tell him, in those hours just before falling off to sleep when, as a rule, he received his instructions; but he knew that the Tappan boy must be extremely undesirable. If he could have had five minutes alone with Sammy, and told him the truth, he would have confided in him that there was absolutely no chance. Mrs. Schroeder objected. As it was, he knew that he would have to convince his daughter that her mother was right and he shrank from the idea. This it was that disturbed him so visibly. He was not so sure of himself when he thought of his eldest daughter. So far in life his business had stood him in good stead. Life appeared, by and large, to consist mostly of food. It seemed to him that when he had not been engaged in the buying and selling of foods, he had been busy discussing them with interested listeners. But, somehow, he had a vague feeling that this daughter THE BALANCE 47 of his had lost interest in ideas of this kind if indeed she had ever entertained them very seriously. What people could find to engage their attention when foods had been definitely disposed of, he himself could not imagine. It was why he had had that strange feeling of insecurity of late when confronted with the clear eyes and gaze of his daughter. He had an idea which amounted almost to a conviction that she was thinking of things with which he was not familiar. His position in his business, these last few years, had been that of the autocrat secure in his place; his partner- ship in Hopkinson, Balmer & Lawrence giving him a sense of importance which the mere leadership of the groceries had never seemed to impart. The taste of power resultant had rather gone to his head, its plainest outlet, perhaps, being a loud habit of talking and, when his decisions for any reason were called in question, a disagreeable way of pounding on handy tables and chairs to drive home his point. He had found this rather an easy method of quelling incipient riots among his offspring, lately. He simply yelled at them, and they subsided. But somehow, he felt, it had rather lost its force with Carrie these last few months. There seemed something lacking in the effect it produced on her. It was why he sighed as he mounted the steps. Curse the Tappan boy, anyhow! It was going to be a most disagreeable affair. Over the luncheon in the old-fashioned dining-room, with the heavy oak furniture and bespangled walls, there hung the ominous silence that always preceded a family storm. Mrs. Schroeder ate with a frown that made the two younger offspring doubtful of eating at all. They always steeled with the wind. On Mr. Schroeder's countenance there was the look of the stern parent outraged. Hovering over Carrie, invisible to all but ourselves, there floated for the last time the shadow of Elsie Dinsmore, the girl who was so good in those stories of girlhood that it is a source of constant 48 THE BALANCE wonder that she never died of it. Carrie, herself, is emerging from the mist of youth to-day, although as yet pnly flashes of vision illuminate her landscape. God and her father are still a little mixed in personality, obligations to her family and to her own self still tangled in one skein, might and right not yet abstractions, to be separated and examined. A few remarks which her mother has let fall on entering the house have left her little doubt as to the character of the tempest so plainly discernible in the offing Sammy is to be finally disposed of. Just what she herself will think or do, she cannot see yet through that drifting mist. The first drops of the storm are falling now, however. Let us lean forward a little and listen as Annie is doing behind the pantry door. It is her Sammy of whom they are talking. Mr. Schroeder has determined to be diplomatic. So the stern parent will open the attack rather gently. "What is this I hear about last night, Carolyn?" he asks, as he finishes his pie and pushes back from the table. This use of her full name tells Carrie the storm is about to break. These parents are formidable to the girl of twenty-three, and she has to struggle to keep her composure. She must do what is right, and still man- age to keep her secret. "I don't know just what you mean, father," she re- plies quietly. There is just a suspicion of a tremor in her voice. "You know well enough, I guess," says her mother angrily. "IIP you don't, you ought to. The whole town is talking about you." The other two offspring have hurriedly bolted their dessert now, and proceed to make their escape before they shall be drawn into the fray. They are younger, and have not been to the dance. "Talking about what?" Carrie asks quietly. Did some one see, after all, she wonders. It is all she can do to keep back the blush which threatens to spread its telltale colour through her cheeks. THE BALANCE 49 "Your actions last night, of course," says her mother. "Spending the evening out on the links with Sam Tap- pan after all my talking. I don't know what you can be thinking of." It is the side issue that Carrie seizes immediately. "It wasn't all evening," she says. "We just walked for a couple of dances." "I don't care if it was two dances or ten," her mother replies angrily. "I won't have it!" The flame we saw lighted in Carrie's eyes that night of Sammy's call burns bright now. "But it's not true!" she cries. "Who told you it was all evening?" Her father feels that he has been silent too long. "It makes no difference who told your mother," he says sternly. "This Tappan business has got to be stopped." It was the first time that Carrie ever rebelled. She raised her head then, and looked at him clearly. "Why? "she asked. It was then that Mr. Schroeder raised his voice, and pounded on the table a trifle. "It doesn't make any difference why, young lady!" he shouted. "You'll obey your parents and cut out this fellow ! Do you hear me ? " His question was rather futile. They could hear him even out in the kitchen. "But why?" asked Carrie, again. It was the begin- ning of her frightful desire to know the reason of every- thing. It gave her father a splendid opportunity for banging the table, however. I do not think he ever quite forgave his wife for the way she forestalled him. His expression, as she spoke, was that of a man from whom a table has been snatched away just as he is about to pound it magnificently. "Because we won't have it, that's why," she re- sponded coldly. She was clever enough to keep from putting the idea of marriage into her daughter's head. Her husband upset the kettle the next moment. 50 THE BALANCE "I don't know what the boy is thinking of!" he said heavily. "How can he support a wife on his income!" "Good heavens, Charlie! It isn't a question of marriage, not yet!" Mrs. Schroeder exclaimed. "If he was anybody he wouldn't try to monopolize all the girl's time when he isn't in any position to marry. That is the point!" There! That is the point, Mr. Schroeder! "What does he intend to be?" he asks his daughter. He has his cue now. "A lawyer," says Carrie, in a low tone. "A lawyer! Humph!" her father returns. "That takes a long time." "Ten years," said Mrs. Schroeder, in her most un- pleasant way. "When he is able to marry, he will want some nice young girl then. That is what always happens. Any girl who waits for a man is a fool!" "Yes," adds Mr. Schroeder. "If he can't marry you, Carrie, he ought to leave you alone." I think he al- ways really liked his daughter in spite of the fact that they could never agree. But Carrie has learned more in the last ten minutes than in all her life before regarding her intentions. "I don't want him to leave me alone," she says, with an effort. She has hardly admitted to herself before how much she cares for S. Sydney Tappan. But her parents have opened her eyes to the extent of her in- tentions in regard to him. She will marry him, if he will have her. "That has nothing to do with it!" says her father. "The boy should consider your chances." "My chances of what?" asks Carrie, surprisingly steadily. "Making a good marriage, of course," replies her mother witheringly. The girl can't be a fool. But Carrie is determined to follow out her course now. "What is a good marriage?" she asks curiously. "Marrying somebody not that young fool," replies THE BALANCE 51 her mother angrily. She was never good at explana- tions. They required real reasons. "Somebody who can support you the way you have been used to," adds Mr. Schroeder. This style of remark always seems to shed a sort of glory on him, he thinks. It usually, too, eliminates the boy. " But we don't want to be married yet," says Carrie. She would have said that there was no question of marriage between them had it not been for that con- science of hers. She could not seem to hide from her- self the real truth. Mrs. Schroeder heaves a sigh of relief. "Well, you won't get a chance," she says trucu- lently. In Carrie, too, there is a great feeling of relief that the conversation is taking this turn. The affair upon the links bids fair to be forgotten, at least. "I don't see how I can stop having anything to do with him just because he isn't rich," she says. Her mother, however, is equal to the occasion. "You don't have to see," she says majestically. "Your father will attend to that." But Mr. Schroeder does not relish the job. "Well, now, Elsa " he begins. But his wife cuts him short. "The boy can't marry her," she says icily. "The sooner it's done, the better for both. She would tell him herself if she wasn't a ninny." She rises then, and folds her napkin. "He will never be anybody. He is one of these dreamers!" "I think he will be somebody some day," Carrie cries after her. But "Oh, you!" says Mrs. Schroeder. She herself has heard some of this particular young man's drawing- room conversation, and he is a fool. Where the girl has gotten these ideas she cannot imagine. Perhaps the boy has pulled the wool over her eyes. It was the first time that Sammy began to change a little in her mind. He was executing the first step around the 52 THE BALANCE corner from fool to scoundrel then. He will be a scoundrel full grown before long. "Well," says Mr. Schroeder gloomily. "I will see the boy, myself." He is gloomy because at heart he is rather a mild person; and he does not find the pro- spective interview attractive. It is merely inevitable. It is an hour later that S. Sydney Tappan ascends the steps on Washington Avenue. He has been hastily warned of his approaching fate in a whispered telephone message from Carrie, but though his hands are a trifle clammy as he closes the door of the den behind him, he is putting up a bold front. After all, you see, this is the part of the hero! And our Sammy is always at home in the dramatic scenes. Mr. Schroeder, however, does not seem to have a proper appreciation of heroics this afternoon. A re- membrance of his own boyhood has come back to him as the young man before him stands fumbling uncer- tainly with his hat. He was not always fifty, and a retired grocer, you see. After all, what has he against this young man who has charmed his hitherto submis- sive daughter into such revolt against authority? I am afraid, Mrs. Schroeder, you should have stood outside and shouted advice to your better half through a key- hole. He is fast forgetting his arguments. It is with a distinct shock, indeed, that he is brought to the busi- ness in hand by the voice of our Sammy. "Sit down, Sam," he says affably then. "Sit down." A good half of the heroics fly out the window as S. Sydney Tappan sits down. There is evidently to be no battle at all, merely a discussion. "It is about Carolyn," Mr. Schroeder continues, lighting a cigar, and offering our Sammy another. There is, of course, nothing about which to get excited, he is thinking. It is a mere matter of explanation to this young man before him, an explanation of a self- evident fact. The young man is in no position to marry. That it may be a youthful tragedy to S. Sydney Tappan and to the clear-eyed daughter who awaits the issue with THE BALANCE 53 such tightly clenched hands in the drawing-room, does not appear to him. He is a man of little imagination. If the discussion should degenerate into an argument, why there is the old library table beside him! What- ever is not perfectly clear, he will pound home on that. "I just wanted to give you a word of advice," he says, gazing carefully at his cigar. "Carolyn is too young to spend all her time with any one person, any one young man, Sam. Her mother and I don't like to see it. You young people are in no position to be married, or even engaged. Take my advice and leave Carrie alone for a few years yet till you have made some money, and can give the girl what she has been used to." He heaves a sigh of relief. He has put it much better even than he thought possible. I fear the youth opposite him, however, does not appreciate the fine points of the presentment. A few years, he is thinking! Ye Gods! A few years! I wonder, Mr. Schroeder, did you ever figure up a few years when you were young? The total is not at all like that arrived at when figuring hams. I think Sammy was dumb for a moment, with a kind of horror, until he remembered his ten thousand dollars, that small remnant of the once fair Tappan fortune. He had not thought they would come in so handy. "I have a little money," he begins modestly. He means he has millions. But Mr. Schroeder shakes his head quite paternally. He has nothing against S. Sydney Tappan if only he will leave his daughter alone. "You will need it, my boy," he says, "if you are going to be a lawyer." He knows it is but ten thousand dollars. He recollects his duty then. Perhaps a footstep upstairs has reminded him that he has a wife to whom to report once this interview is over. "A few months, and you will have forgotten all this nonsense," he continues. "Don't tie yourself down at 54 THE BALANCE your age, Sam. Cut out this calling and dancing business, and get down to work. There is nothing finer in the world." I think he might have gone on ex- pounding the joys of the grocery business had he not checked himself and turned again to the subject in hand. "Give Carolyn a chance to see some of the world. See some of it yourself. But don't tie each other down. That is the thing, Sam. A great mis- take!" Evidently he can conceive of no worse fate than this mutually weighted condition. Somewhere, somehow, however, S. Sydney Tappan feels, there is a flaw in these remarks of the grocer's; but he cannot for the life of him seem to find it. That the heights which they two, by their mutual bondage, would keep each other from scaling are the heights of gilded materialism gilded for Mr. Schroeder by the hand of his wife the youth of Sammy does not allow him to see. He can only sit silent while Mr. Schroeder blunders on to blunder, miraculously, into victory. " It isn't possible for either of you to know your own mind at your age," he says. "Especially Carrie. Give her a chance, Sam, even if it costs you a thought or two. You are man enough for that, I am sure." Man enough! Why this is the part of the hero! Surely if there is anything a man should do, our Sammy is the one to do it! "I see what you mean," he says, slowly, at last. " I don't want to tie her down to me." "It means tying you down, too," Mr. Schroeder adds. "There is nothing that holds a young fellow down more than marrying before he can afford it." He thinks this may be an added inducement. But, though the truth, it is an error in judgment. S. Sydney Tappan will sacrifice himself for Carrie, but not to gain anything for himself. That would not be heroic at all. "I am only thinking of Carrie," he says proudly. In spite of his heroics, however, his eyes fill a little with tears. He is feeling very much alone in the world THE BALANCE 55 at this moment. He does not see exactly how he will get along without Carrie now that he has found her; but if it is the thing he should do, why, he will do it. He always started out bravely, did our Sammy. "Just try it for six months," says Mr. Schroeder cheerfully. It is the same tone of voice in which he recommends the Schroeder brand of good coffee. "Leave each other alone for that length of time, and see if I am not right." Sammy's heart fails him just a little. "You mean not see her," he asks, "at all?" "Certainly not," says Mr. Schroeder. The thing is nearly settled he feels, and he can get back to the brick building soon now, and finish those hams. If the trick is not turned in six months, it will be very simple to insist then upon a longer period. Meanwhile, every- thing will be arranged satisfactorily. These family troubles are very annoying. That it means to the young man opposite him renun- ciation of all his twenty-five years hold dear, does not occur to him for a single instant. It is a peculiarity of those who usually ask for the sacrifices of this world that they fail to realize that there can be any other standard of value than their own. The real fanatic in this case, however, has been stand- ing, for some minutes now, in the old-fashioned car- peted hallway awaiting the departure of Sammy. It is time, Mrs. Schroeder is thinking, that the thing was finally settled. It should be a matter of very few words, with quarter neither asked for nor given. It is their daughter for whom they are fighting with this boy. He must be disposed of before he does any harm. That there can be any distinction between Carrie's happi- ness and the career that has been picked out for her does not enter her mind. There was never room for a doubt, no matter how tiny, in the mind of Mrs. Schroeder. "My goodness," she says to her daughter, "what on earth do you suppose your father can be finding to say to him all this time?" 56 THE BALANCE What can there be to discuss? It is why, when ten minutes have passed and no rejected suitor has yet come forth from the den, that she can control herself no longer. Self-control was not one of Mrs. Schroeder's talents. "I will settle him myself," she says then. She is brave because she knows the enemy is weak. There are no Schroeder millions behind him. It is a moment later that she appears in irresistible force in the doorway, just as our Sammy has finished saying, bravely, that if it is the right thing to do he will do it. "You are not wanted here, Sam Tappan," she says angrily. "If you have any sense you won't wait for Mr. Schroeder to tell you so. There is the door!" The door! I think it was a full moment before S. Sydney Tappan realized that Mrs. Schroeder was actually showing him the door. It was odd how it changed his whole conception of the part he should play then. He would not have given up Carrie after that remark though a world had stepped in between. He was a hero, who had been hurled back by a dragon not a knight errant sacrificing himself for his lady. That proud blood of his Dutch ancestors sprang up and coloured his cheeks. And the hero spoke. "I beg your pardon," he said, in a low voice from which he tried hard to keep out his anger. "I did not understand. I see now that we are mutually unpopu- lar." I think it was the implied slight on the family that stirred Mr. Schroeder so. He saw all those Schroeder stores stretching before him for blocks. What unheard- of impudence. The Schroeder family unpopular with anybody! "That will do, young man," he said angrily. "The Schroeders don't care for you." I think he was lost in horror at the Use majeste of the young man's re- marks. It was his wife who went on. THE BALANCE 57 "Nor any one who can't even support themselves," she added. "I don't want any penniless fools around here!" I must give her the credit, at least, of always speaking her mind. People always knew just where they stood with Mrs. Schroeder. Sammy, however, has his hat in his hand now, as he stands on the doorstep, and looks out on the street. What a sight for the past generation! A Tappan re- fused at the hands of the Schroeders! Verily, times have changed. "Money isn't everything," he says, then, with more wisdom than he knows. "That can be gotten." And he has gone down the elm-shaded Avenue with this slur upon the enormous Schroeder achievements before any answer is forthcoming, in his mind a total forgetfulness that Carrie is still waiting in the drawing- room to know the result. Money, he is thinking; so that is the real requirement in this world. Money! How has it happened in all the Tappan training that this subject has been so neg- lected? Money! Do lawyers ever make very much money, he wonders? It is plain that old Mr. Dabney has never made any. If Mr. Schroeder has made so much, however, it ought to be easy. He does not ap- pear to be a colossus; and he has made it in business. In business. Well, we can now introduce Mr. Pike. Yes, you may look up, now, from that pile of bills payable, Mr. Pike, and gaze on your "New Capital Required to Expand a Large and Growing Business," as he turns into the Preston Block and mounts the stairs to Mr. Dabney's office. The Democrat Herald printed your very flattering letter in full such satisfied advertisers do not write in every day but I think at least half of the credit should have gone to the Schroeders. The law is not the only way of amassing a fortune when one already possesses ten thousand dollars. CHAPTER VI IN WHICH MR. PIKE MAKES His APPEARANCE ONLY IN ORDER TO DISAPPEAR FROM VIEW You who have read the biography do not recall the name of Pike. It is because he is mentioned as an unsuccessful business venture of S. Sydney Tappan's and not by name. He was the gentleman whom Fate allotted to our Sammy as pilot through the commercial maelstrom a pilot, alas! who, under the pretense of putting in plumbing, steered the ten thousand dollars straight on the rocks. That Mr. Pike had been installing plumbing in Mel- chester for some twenty years is, as a matter of fact, an example of human credulity with very few parallels. He had tended furnace once, in time gone by, for one of Mr. Schroeder's partners and in this way obtained a recommendation when things mechanical were under discussion. And it was thus that the fable of his abil- ity had had origin. But that he had lasted these twenty years as a contracting plumber was due wholly to the favouring smile of chance. His guesses had av- eraged nearly as well as correctly figured estimates might have. There is to be added the fact, too, that when plumbing which he had installed required repair- ing, he had usually been the man who was called in for the job. So that for a number of years he had succeeded in burying again most of his own mis- takes. His guesses during the last few years, however, had been particularly atrocious. He seemed to guess wrong not only on the jobs, but also on the repairs! And ex- cept for a few of the older generation the fashion of 58 THE BALANCE 59 simply calling in Pike the plumber to fix the thing up appeared to have gone out of date. Not until the pile of bills payable had risen to such an alarming height that the fact was evident to even his foggy mentality, however not until then had he conceived the brilliant idea of expanding the business! This business which grew so rapidly that the bills piled in faster than he could collect money wherewith to pay them! Forthwith the advertisement in the Democrat Herald. To Sammy it came as a magnificent chance. A business which consisted simply of buying homely earthenware articles and installing them at a handsome profit over the cost appeared to his ready gaze as the acme of safety safety, somehow, being considered the hand maiden of dullness. Surely no business could be duller than installing plumbing hence its surpass- ing safety. No adventurer of high finance he felt sure would ever be attracted by the romance of plumbing. He did not know that Mr. Pike was an adventurer on uncharted seas without sextant or compass and supremely unaware of the fact. It is almost needless to state that it was the ten thousand dollars which secured for S. Sydney Tappan the honour of accompanying him on the voyage. Posi- tions as partner in growing businesses do not drop from the clouds. It would have been difficult for Mr. Pike to have secured a worse addition to his crew than Sammy, however. To see Sammy was to know instinctively that he did not understand in the least about plumbing just as to view Mr. Pike without being aware of his inner workings convinced the most hardened that here at last was a plumber. Appearances count for a great deal in this world of ours. The precarious state of Martin Pike, Incorporated, Plumbers, was not, there- fore, greatly relieved by the entrance of our Sammy upon the scene. He sat in the office upon a stool exceedingly high for even his long legs, and answered the telephone in the 60 THE BALANCE long hot days of summer; figuring in even hazier man- ner than his experienced partner on the profits to be shared in the first six months. It always figured out to a glorious future. So much plumbing installed at so much profit the profit seemed huge resulted in such and such an income for him! Neither he nor Carrie ever doubted that it was a mere matter of time before they would show Mr. Schroeder how simple the whole thing was. They were not aware then, either of them, of that outside world of Melchester. They had never heard of a street named Hague, nor of a house upon it called the Settlement House had never heard the name of John Rouse, that iron moulder with the thick brick- red hair who was even then turning over in his burning brain the questions from which S. Sydney Tappan's inspiration was to emerge. Only in Carrie, in that passionate desire of hers to know the truth, the reason why of the things of this world, was there the first in- dication of the future. Even to her, however, Washington Avenue and its side streets with the beautiful residences and lawns that gradually seemed to grow more ambitious until at last as country estates they lay proudly in the sunlight along the Country Club road these were Melchester still to Carrie. There was no one else worth knowing save those who came forth in automobiles from flowered gates. There were other people of course there must be, the crowds on Main Street of a Saturday night were so enormous. But somehow they did not seem to count. They were in the nature of a background, a huge chorus in front of which the favoured few played the drama of life to the proper accompaniment and setting. She was only just dimly conscious that there was any real relation between the two, a responsibility to certain intangible ideals of a common humanity expressed for her perhaps in Miss Strong, the nurse her charity committee supported for visiting the poor. Some- where, dimly, there must be a duty back of it all. THE BALANCE 61 They all talked of it vaguely, .those girls in that Beecher Conference which she had joined at her mother's sug- gestion; talked and listened to meaningless reports and consumed pleasant quantities of tea and little cakes in comfortable libraries; and secured sufficient funds to keep their Miss Strong going, and their own minds happy with the thought of accomplishment and duty done. A very good thing to belong to, Mrs. Schroeder would have told you, with many of the very best younger society upon its roster. Whence it really sprang, and why, or when, she could not have told you at all. It was always enough for her that it was the thing to do, to join, even though Mr. Schroeder had to make a little heavier contribution than would otherwise have been the case. All the canal boat driver's descendants belonged. There could have been no better reason for the thing's existence. Just what would be finally accomplished I am sure none of the members ever knew. Only three classes in Melchester were sure of that: those older members who had resigned a decade ago; the proletariat upon whom they had practised so assiduously in vain; and the patient business men who had contributed so cheer- fully because it could not hurt things as they were and would perhaps advance their families on the road to social preferment and possibly to Heaven, too. It was only occasionally that a spark of the fire called divine, slumbering in some girlish breast, set ofF a fuse amidst the dangerous social explosive with which they dealt so lightly, and the futility of the business stood revealed before the light of real purpose and serious endeavour. Such explosions were usually frowned upon as being in poor taste, however. There was plenty enough work for all in merely understanding the Bible as it was understood a number of centuries ago. Present-day application could be safely left to the churches and the smiling clergymen who occasionally addressed the Conference. Meanwhile there was the 62 THE BALANCE district nurse to fall back upon if the gates of Heaven needed any extra forcing. That Carrie could ever become seriously interested in such things was perhaps the last thing in her mother's mind that first year of her daughter's membership. The only disturbing thing about it all to Mrs. Schroeder then was the fact that S. Sydney Tappan still called for Carrie and took her home from the meetings meetings from which he most certainly should have been excluded. Had she been able to overhear any of those conversations as they walked home through the dusk she would have blown up the entire Conference without mercy. The fuse was sputtering a little in Carrie. "I think I shall take a class of girls at the Y. W. C. A. this winter, Sammy," she said earnestly. "I think I have gotten to the point where I really want to do something instead of just pretending. It's a place to start from anyway ! " "Fine!" Sammy replied lightly. "I can come and call for you there evenings, too!" Manlike, he saw only his own pleasure the girls were quite lost sight of. "I don't see, though, what you know that you can teach them," he added thoughtfully. "Sewing?" No, Carrie could not sew well at all. "Or cooking?" Heavens, no! Not Mrs. Schroeder's daughter. "I don't know much really, do I?" she cried in dis- may then. But it was not the fashion for young ladies of the best society to know much, Carrie, so you were not alone! "Oh, you can learn," Sammy said sagely. "I didn't know much about plumbing either when I started!" Great heavens! Had six months of tutelage from Mr. Pike made of him a master plumber? "I will learn," cried Carrie determinedly. It was dancing that she taught them finally, those factory girls who whispered among themselves on the THE BALANCE 63 chairs around the room and said to one another when Carrie came in, "There she is, Carolyn Schroeder!" It was the closest to the society column they could come. Carrie always had a tiny heartache when she heard it. It was the beginning of her infinite pity. .It did not occur to either Carrie or S. Sydney Tappan that winter, however, that the foundations of their own existence might be in any danger of slipping. The amount of plumbing that Martin Pike, Inc., was doing seemed truly stupendous to the new partner. That the bills also were not lolling by the wayside Sammy was not aware. They came in to be sure, but so far the ten thousand dollars had paid them magnificently. That the splendid guesses of the senior member were weirder than ever and the credulity of Melchester nearer to the breaking point did not appear upon the surface. Financial reports had assured Sammy that two-thirds of the failures in business came in the first year and from lack of sufficient capital. The firm of Pike had been going some twenty years. In fact, their own plumbing on Hawthorne Street had been put in and repaired very regularly by this very same firm! Add to this the ten thousand dollars and there surely remained very little about which to worry! It was thus that he talked to Carrie. . . . Well, the biography, if you remember at all, calls it, casually, his first failure. It is an odd thing, neverthe- less, that without it he might never have been the sub- ject of a biography at all. It was the first thing in S. Sydney Tappan's life that he ever finished. That he should have chosen a plumbing business tottering to its grave for his first attempt at finishing the thing he had begun was a supreme irony which he never appreciated. Yet that he did finish it is to his everlasting credit. It was the first thing our Sammy stuck to grimly until the bitter end. I wonder would we be very far wrong if we called it his first success ? It was late in March that the ship of Pike, Inc., dis- appeared with S. Sydney Tappan's ten thousand dol- 64 THE BALANCE lars on board. Mrs. Schroeder saw the notice of the bankruptcy in the evening paper just before that seven o'clock dinner. She tossed it across to her husband. "Well," she said grimly, "I guess that's the end of him!" She had been justified after all though she had never entertained any doubt on that point, of course. She did not have doubts. "The end of who?" her husband inquired. Alas! business had been pressing of late and Mr. Schroeder had forgotten that the firm of Pike was being conducted as a lesson to him the past year. "That Tappan boy," his wife replied. "That ought to finish him!" Certainly Carrie would not propose to marry a pauper! It is a question, however, whether Mr. Schroeder ever got past the market quotations in time to look at the item. He remembered the Tappan boy only as a frightful example of the ignorance and impudence of the new generation. Boys certainly had not been like that when he was young. They had had respect. He felt the need of agreeing with his wife, nevertheless. "Yes, indeed," he said vaguely, "I don't think he will bother again. Or Carrie either. It ought to be a lesson." His wife was already sharpening her axe. "I'd like to know what she will say to this!" she said vindictively. She always enjoyed a victory to the full. It did not seem to occur to her that Carrie had most likely known for many heart-breaking weeks of the approaching failure of Pike, Inc. An engagement was impossible now! That was her only thought. Things were always social to her, never spiritual. That engagement could be merely a state of mind would probably have called forth from Mrs. Schroeder the remark that the proper name for such a state was in- sanity. She stood over her husband for a moment, then, with the closest approach to a sigh that one could imagine from her : THE BALANCE 65 "It will be social work, I suppose, now," she said. "She's always got some queer idea about her. Why the devil she can't be like any other decent ordinary person I don't know!" Which only meant after all, if it meant anything, that Carrie could not be like Mrs. Schroeder. It was why she could not understand the calmness with which her daughter greeted the news of the failure at dinner that night. "I would have told you sooner, myself," Carrie said calmly, "if I had thought you were interested in know- ing." It was one of the most silent dinners the Schroeders ever had. For some unknown reason Mrs. Schroeder did not bring out her axe. It might have been those unshed tears in Carrie's eyes. CHAPTER VII IN WHICH THE PATH OF LIFE BEGINS TO FORK, AND CARRIE AND SAMMY PART COMPANY FOR A WHILE IT WAS not long before those forebodings of Mrs. Schroeder's bade fair to be realized. "Father," said Carrie at breakfast several weeks later, "what would you think if I went into real social work?" "Social work, eh?" her father repeated vaguely. Social work! He always repeated thus, so as to gain time in which to think. Social work? He has a dim glimpse of meetings and settlement houses and things well, things like that. "Why very nice, my dear," he says finally. He knows that Mr. Hopkinson is always contributing some of the firm's money to social work, and most of the society leaders seem to be interested in one way or another. This is a matter which belongs more in Mrs. Schroeder's province. He looks again at the editorial he has been reading. "What would you do?" he asks, to show a pretence of interest. The editorial is on the insatiability of la- bour unions, a matter of interest to him just now, when the clerks in the store are showing a disposition to rebel against the benevolent ideas of the owners by taking the direction of their personal affairs into their own hands. "I don't know," answers his daughter slowly. "I would like to do kindergarten work in the settlement. I like little children." This almost shyly, though the man is her father. "But it seems as if there must be other things that are more useful than that such as being a nurse." THE BALANCE 67 Mr. Schroeder puts down his paper very quickly. "A nurse!" he says sharply. "Nonsense! That requires real work, and knowledge. Unpleasant work, too. That isn't social work. That is a profession." "Perhaps that is why I should like it," says Carrie quietly. "I would feel then that I knew something, was doing something in the world." "What is the matter with what you are doing, I should like to know?" he asks. "You have everything you want, haven't you?" "Everything," she answers seriously, "except some- thing to do." His laughter was too loud to be mere amusement. I think it contained just the hint of a sneer or was it a sense of superiority coming out ? This girl before him cannot know much of the world. "A couple of days in the store would cure you of those ideas," he says shortly. "A couple of days on your feet, from eight-thirty till six!" He laughs again, although this time with a slight sense of forcing his humour. There is a curious look of purpose and de- termination in those eyes across the table. "Take my advice, my dear, and don't worry about such things. You don't understand them." His children usually appear to Mr. Schroeder in the light of genial incompetents, of whom, for some reason, he is inordinately proud particularly the eldest daughter, with her indefinable air of breeding. Just where she has come by this air it is hard to explain. To Mr. Schroeder, however, she seems to shed a little added glory on the family, in spite of her ideas ideas for which there seems to be no explanation. "That is why I should like to be a nurse," she says, as she rises from the table. "I want to understand, if I can." This morning is the first of many for Mr. Schroeder in which the unrest of his daughter is finally to stir in him a sense of impending doom. When one has built, as Mr. Schroeder, an edifice of success on a social basis 68 THE BALANCE already made to hand, with its plan and justice unques- tioned, nothing is more disruptive of one's peace of mind than simple questions. Perhaps the truism that nothing is ever perfect, is the only refuge possible for him who thinks. To the Mr. Schroeders of the world, however, it seems to be considered a duty to explain everything, enthusiastically, as the very best brand anywhere obtainable. I never have been able to with- hold my pity for him during those mornings when a heartless fate left him opposite his inquiring daughter. Asking questions is better than many batteries of big guns, and Mr. Schroeder lay out in the open. It was on those mornings when Carrie brought up the question of what her father thought a girl should do with her life, that he suffered the greatest casualties. "But I cannot go on attending parties all my life," she would say, on these occasions. "Bridge, and danc- ing, and automobiling cannot last forever, father. Don't you see?" Her father was badly hampered in those engage- ments, because the obvious answer was forbidden to him by his wife. Marriage could not be held out to Carrie as a goal with this Tappan affair still in her mind. It is just as well not to bring up the subject again they have decided. Mr. Schroeder has not realized quite so keenly before, however, that when marriage is eliminated from the list of his defenses, he is helpless. Confound it, why do girls have minds any- how? Things would be much better all around if they had none at all a belief he has privately held since early in his married life with Mrs. Schroeder. It is very plain that all they can do is to get married! To expect a solution when the great mystery of marriage has been eliminated is ridiculous! He is glad, though, that his wife is not an early riser. He shudders to think that once she considers the time propitious to urge on their daughter a good marriage, the whole question will have to be threshed out thor- oughly again. He wonders, vaguely, if this is why the THE BALANCE 69 suffragettes wish to vote. Perhaps they wish to vote themselves careers. There is but one career to his wife, and he knows it the noble one of climbing in society. This is the mainspring which Carrie seems, somehow, to have mislaid; substituting for it questions about wages in department stores and a vast confusion of unintel- ligible aspirations to which there seems to be no answer. It is a poor exchange for the peace of mind of Mr. Schroeder. Women should, at least, be ornamental, he thinks, if they cannot be useful like their grand- mothers were before them. It is true for all classes. He has noticed it before in the groceries. The more education that people have, the more dissatisfied they seem. The working people now! they are beginning to know too much to work! And his daughter has been educated until she is a menace to her own father's peace of mind. He can discharge clerks in the store when they get above their position, of course; but one cannot discharge one's own daughter. Education is a bitter thing. And Mr. Schroeder leaves the house. His sense of impending doom is stirred, but that is all. After all, wo- men are another sex. He does not realize that when the seed of revolution flowers finally in woman, the end is near at hand. In his daughter's mind there are the first few gropings after justice which will finally result in her aligning her- self in that new crusade whose end humanity cannot see as yet, but which is destined to raze those ideas of Mr. Schroeder's in its first assault upon the barricades. Meanwhile, the bottom has fallen from Si, Sydney Tappan's world. The firm of Pike, Incorporated, Plumbers, has dwindled to two dusty windows, and a sign for rent; while the accounts are being wrestled with by cheery lawyers for whom the failures of the world spell livelihood. The ten thousand dollars, so gayly risked, have taken wings, and vanished from our Sammy's gaze. 70 THE BALANCE In his room on George Street he is sitting this after- noon, because he cannot muster up enough courage to go out. In the eyes of men, he thinks, S. Sydney Tap- pan is branded with the stigma of failure. For the first time in his life his belief in himself is shaken just a little. To fail at twenty-five is comparable, indeed, only to a social cataclysm from which the world can never rise again. It is the spirit of the age translating itself into terms of youth that keeps our Sammy lying on the couch there in the sunlight, disgraced beyond recall, disappearance his only hope the spirit called success, which he feels staring at him, through the win- dows, with disapproving eyes. He is a failure, and must go. Just where, he does not know nor care. The soul's bitterness has little sense of proportion when the mind is young. S. Sydney Tappan is doing some thinking this after- noon, however, which will not harm him. He is won- dering just where all those friends of a year ago are now. Those friends of Williams, of the Country Club, of those dances and parties which meant so much to him when they took place. Unconsciously now, he sees, his environment has been changing, although he has not left this city of his youth at all. Carrie seems to him to be almost the only landmark left of all that was once his world. With a little wonder, he realizes now he has not seen Asa in months. Asa! At the word, his childhood rushes back upon him, and a sharp pain strikes him in the heart. The walls have faded, and he sees instead the room in college where he sits composing a last letter to the mother who already lies so quietly in the big front room upstairs on Hawthorne Street. Hawthorne Street! All the song of summer days, long quiet afternoons, and sunny rooms! Our Sammy chokes a little in his barren room on George Street. He is twenty-five and a man this afternoon, but he is thinking of his mother. Let us look away and wait patiently outside until he comes down the steps an hour later, and turns quickly THE BALANCE 71 to the left. I think there is a tiny, new look around his mouth, a look of patience. It is to become more noticeable soon, more pronounced, until finally his picture is not recognizable without it. He is thinking of Carrie. He may be a failure, but there is fight in him yet, if he but knew it. His steps, however, are not turned in the direction of Washington Avenue. He crosses George Street, bound the other way; bound, as we shall see in a few moments, toward that little Dutch Reformed Church far down on Ross Street, where a youngish man with tangled yellow hair, like a thatch upon his head, sits in the choir room before an old grand piano; the dull light of the late winter afternoon struggling through the cloudy panes, falling on the sheets of half-filled manuscript, on the score of Pelleas et Melisande lying open on the table, on the half-closed blue eyes of its peruser, who reads it as a book. He is Ricorton, organist and choir mas- ter of this Dutch Reformed Church, a kindred spirit. Sammy cannot remember, now, where he first 'met this sympathetic musician. He knows only that they think alike and find mutual inspiration in the exercise of those talents of which the world seems to have so little understanding. It is perhaps no more than natural that they should have drifted into writing an ambitious comic opera together. Ricorton does not rise at the sound of footsteps on the vestibule's marble floor, but calls out without look- ing up : "Hullo, Tappy, how go the bills ? ; * Our Sammy smiles ruefully as he sits down. "The firm of Pike is no more, Ric Vale! " He stares at the music while Ricorton leans back and fills his pipe. "Well, it's rough, Tappy,' ; he says softly. "I can appreciate it." He stretches a little. "I've al- ways been a failure, myself and I'm thirty-five." "You know something," answers Sammy. "I don't." 72 THE BALANCE "Music!" says Ricorton scornfully. "Music!" He looks at the printed page over which Debussy toiled. "There is no money in music, unless you write junk." "You have a job, though," says Sammy lifelessly. "Yes," replies Ricorton. "I have a job where I yell at twenty chorus boys so many times a week, for a pittance; put on stuff that no one in the pews appre- ciates, and earn my salary by taking orders from a damn fool "musical committee. A job you said it!" He puffs at his pipe, in the darkening silence. The twilight hides from view the lines around the mouth, the wrinkles in the forehead. "They don't want a musician in this church. They want a social mountebank -a blonde yap, with pretty words, who will please the leading families and never drink a glass of beer. Down with 'em all, Tappy! I wish I were out of it, now." Sammy pulls out some sheets of paper. "I have the next song, Ric," he says. "It's awful, it's sickening but it's what they want and it's not plumbing!" "Noble Tappy!" says Ric, as he reads it, and repeats the words of the chorus. "How you must have suf- fered! Well, the music shall be equally sickening, if I can make it so." "Let 'em die in their seats!" says Sammy brutally. "We don't care as long as they'll come and listen, at two dollars each." Ricorton, however, seems to have turned serious of a sudden. "Well, Tappy," he says seriously, "perhaps we are fools. But we will finish the thing and see what it is worth, anyhow. We've nothing to lose. My time is up next month anyway; and Sternenberg's letters about a new job aren't very encouraging. There is just about one more fling left in me." Sternenberg is his agent in New York. I do not think, however, as he sits there, that he is thinking of THE BALANCE 73 Sternenberg. He is seeing, once more, his life until now: the little church in Maine, and the shipyards be- side the ocean where he played as a child; the strange, alternating ambitions of his boyhood, the one to be a ship mechanic, the other a great musician, resulting only in this career of organist, against the wishes of that father long since dead, and early widowed. It is many years since he has even heard from that scattered fam- ily of which he was once a distant part. He sees plainly now the reasons for his father's grim insistence on the business world for his son. Art is long, and life quite short when money is the object in view. Yet he is glad, after all, that he is not a clerk. The piteousness of the dull, blank life of the slaves of modern industry is overpowering to him. A few centuries ago, and he would have been an idealistic Francis Villon, this youngish man with the tender heart and thatchlike hair. In Melchester, as he sits this late afternoon, he is merely a wandering musician, with the pocketbook of a struggling dramatist and the soul of a poet with underneath a genius that flashes out even in the poor cheap songs to which he prostitutes his talent, in order to eke out his living. It is the last song of their opera's second act which they are writing to-day the waltz song so necessary to any musical piece's success. They do not know that just at present musical producers will view askance a piece with three acts, and ask them to compress it into two. They do not follow those fashions of Broadway which are so necessary, except to genius, in the com- mercial drama. In fact, they are blissfully ignorant of what is before them, in the future of this comic opera on which they labour so cheerfully, and hopefully, with dreams of fame and quick success. "But a month" Ricorton rises with a gesture of relief "a month, Tappy, and we'll try Broadway ourselves!" And Sammy nods his head. Broadway! At least it will not be Melchester. He is rilled with a great hatred for Melchester now. 74 THE BALANCE "How much money have you got?" asks Ricorton when the silence has grown long. "About five hundred dollars," answers Sammy, "I guess. " "Why, a fortune!" cries Ricorton. Sammy is recalling the rapidity with which the ten thousand vanished, however. "Well, hardly," he says gloomily. At the moment the idea that he will ever accumulate any more money seems preposterous. Some scheme must be devised whereby this five hundred will last the rest of his natural life. It is partly because he feels that the Tappan name can never clerk in Melchester. Success at twenty-five seldom means a decade long plodding to a modest salary. He must make a success, yes, a fine success to win Carrie! A coup d'etat! Ambition could have taken no other form in S. Sydney Tappan. I think he was destined for Broadway. It looked like madness to old Mr. Dabney that night two months later when Sammy told him he was going to New York to try the show business with Ricorton. But it was only our old friend the Imp taking charge of S. Sydney Tappan that he might flee the town of his birth and yet escape the stigma of defeat. This desperate advance upon the show business will make of him a gallant knight once more to Carrie, you see, going out from the home stronghold to assault the far-off city with colours flying, and drums beating, and in the rear only five hundred now of that once brave ten thousand who drove so courageously upon the plumbing citadel. Again the dramatic scene! In spite of defeat he can still play the hero. As he sits in the Pullman smoking compartment not many nights later, however, he does not feel like a hero at all. He is trying hard to forget his last parting from Carrie, as he stares out at the disappearing lights of Melchester, a strange feeling in his heart trying hard and not succeeding. All that he can see in the window before him is that compassionate face of hers, THE BALANCE 75 her eyes brimming with tears for the empty days and nights ahead, days and nights no one else can fill. All he can hear, her low-broken "I just don't see, Sammy don't see how we can ever endure it." All he can remember, the last convulsive sob she so bravely swal- lowed as she pressed his hand good-bye, and he kissed her soft cheek, while the twinkling street lamp shone on the budding branches of the elms in the spring dusk. When he awakes in the morning it will be to a new life in New York, he knows; with Melchester but a half-remembered dream of mingled happiness and pain; before him a new world to conquer now and Ricorton and Carrie's letters the only links between him and the place that was once his home. f fOW Broadway 'presented to I i Sammy and his friend Ricorton an opportunity to purchase an operetta cheap How an introduction to Sylvia Tremaine resulted in some lonely days for Carrie in Melchester while her Sammy wrote a play in New York Presenting, too, an advance and private rehearsal of the Lady in the Lion Skin for Sammy alone And also the slightly different view of that smashing triumph in Melchester of which the bi- ography is so proud With a few words on Carrie's feelings. CHAPTER VIII IN WHICH OUR SAMMY BECOMES A THEATRICAL MAGNATE, AND NEARLY RETURNS TO MELCHESTER BUT STAYS TO WRITE A PLAY SAMMY'S views of New York were almost numberless, but he was never conscious of seeing the city more than twice in his life. Both times he came to it direct from Melchester and Carrie. Both times it brought to him a sense of overwhelming solitude. The long vista of streets, noisily succeeding one another, with grim inter- vals of high walls and narrow, shut-in backyards, where the clothes of a nation seemed hung out to dry, guarded by old bottles and rusted iron and lean cats, with here and there a discouraged tree whose thin branches and colourless leaves seemed symbolic of the dying soul of the inhabitants; the endless succession of glimpses within the windows of poverty, the dirty bedclothes thrown back on the bed awaiting night and the return of the occupant; the glaring, confident, brightly painted signs shrieking commercial virtues to the sky; the dirty, tiny children playing discordantly on the hard and steaming sidewalks; the mounting grandeur of facade and neighbourhood, melting into the mighty buildings of commerce and industry, as the centre of the city drew near culminating, at last, in the roar and rush of Broadway and Forty-second Street, with its endless confusion of trucks, and cars, and taxicabs, its million- voiced, million-visaged, hurrying humanity to S. Sydney Tappan they all spelled but the one thing always overwhelming solitude. Solitude, and with it fear the fear of ignorance. Could any one ever breast the current of this vast tide 79 80 THE BALANCE of strident, hurrying people ? Ever make a mark in the changing, swirling sands of fortune of this tempest city? This city of cities not of brick or stone or concrete, but of brilliant success and miserable failure, of wealth and poverty above, waves of the fortune favoured called from the ends of the continent, mounting higher and higher; below, little whirlpools of the dregs and flotsam, the ruined in mind and body, spewing forth disease and death; with between the treadmill of the dull majority, heavy, lifeless, ignorant, and menacing, re- volving their daily round of grinding out a profit amid the solitude that throngs the streets. Except for Ricorton, our Sammy is alone. Within his inside pocket is a New York draft for five hundred dollars. With these two aids he has come to storm New York, and learn what solitude can mean. He is looking, rather appalled if the truth be told, out of the window of his Pullman this morning as the panorama of New York rolls by his gaze, until the tunnel shuts off his view and the rising passengers say plainly that the journey's end has come. It is Ricorton who takes charge, then, as they go in search of three addresses, each taken from a morning paper, and setting forth the glories of furnished rooms to rent at sums of from four to six dollars weekly. He has three introductions rone to an organist, a friend, once, back in Maine, playing now at noon hour in a department store; a second to that agent for choir masters and organists, Sternenberg; and a third, ah, what hopes! the third is from the dramatic editor of the Melchester Democrat Herald to a Mr. Hazleton, a gentleman of consequence in the great Kane's office, that producer of many musical comedies, and legitimate prey for these two babes in the modern woods, with their masterpiece so carefully bestowed in our Sammy's bag. Sammy is under solemn promise to telegraph to Carrie just exactly what the great man says. Unless, how- ever, he wires that the great Kane has fallen upon his neck and wept for gratitude, I fear she will labour THE BALANCE 81 under the suspicion that there are very few discerning minds in the theatres. Appreciation of S. Sydney Tappan was always her criterion of judgment. This back room on West Twenty-ninth Street looks quite inviting, Ricorton and our Sammy decide, as the landlord, French and muscular, yet singularly effemi- nate, stands smiling at them. He does not suspect, this landlord, that they are in any way connected with the profession theatrical, of course or he would discour- age them from taking rooms with him. Uncertain pay, these under Thespians, and possessed of strange flitting habits, leaving trunks as security, to which no one ever returns. S. Sydney Tappan, however, can be nothing less than a gentleman, M'sieu Clouet decides. A rare sight these days, upon the streets of this New York! There can be no mistaking the high cheek bone and forehead, the lines of chin and head. His companion well, an artist, perhaps, with that straggling hair and black bow tie, and an artist M'sieu Clouet can understand, particu- larly when accompanied by a gentleman. He is not too particular, this landlord there is some doubt, for instance, of the lady, not quite young now, who has the hall bedroom on the second floor. She laughs and giggles nights, when presumably alone in her room. Of course, the light is on, and it may be that she reads. But the front door seems to close quite late, on evenings such as those, and a visitor from some one's room has gone home it may not be, of course, from hers. Still she pays her rent, and that is a great deal these days in New York. No, M'sieu Clouet is not too particular. Unless business is quite poor he discour- ages actors that is all. These gentlemen have trunks, too, they tell him so that possibly they have come to make a long stay. He has gone down the stairs in a moment, still smiling, and the two wanderers are left alone in the room that is to see the death of one and change the course of the other's life. This particular room is fitted up with two gas plates 82 THE BALANCE by the closet, so that meals may be gotten by the occupant. On the floor the faded remnant of a once fine parlour carpet holds forth its invitation to the insect world, while beside the windows with their cheap green shades, brave makeshifts at linen curtains hang in white strings. Between the windows, the cheap oak dresser holds a cracked but still gallant mirror, reflecting the cheap prints and vegetable litho- graphs upon the walls, while upon one side of the room two beds take up the space, the one of iron, painted white, with strange curved head and foot, the other a small cot, with sunken centre and wan, anaemic pillow. Over all the desperate poverty of the chamber, the spirit of the faded carpet struggles, achieving a feeling in the beholder, somehow, in spite of all the tawdriness, of comfort and of home. It is this which has made our two friends think the room quite inviting. They will be installed soon, Sammy with his typewriter, and Ricorton with his manuscripts. There is a restaurant around the corner on Eighth Avenue, past the inevitable saloon, called the Bee, at which they propose to dine for an average expense of twenty-five cents a meal. In this way, S. Sydney Tappan believes his five hundred dollars will last until he is famous. As for Ricorton, he is frankly looking for a job, although he does not know what he will say when they ask him what show he had out last. He only knows that he can read ''Tristan et Isolde "at sight, and so does not fear any comic-opera music ever written. He at least can drill the show. The chorus work will come first, and it will be two months before the leader's baton can be pushed into his unwilling hands. At chorus work, too, he knows that he will shine. His work with choirs will come in handy, now. The thing he does not know is that, with the coming of spring and warm weather, comes also the dull time for Thespians. Warm weather and summer, when the cafes around Forty-second Street will be thronged THE BALANCE 83 with actors two deep around the bar at Paddock's, the Hermitage, the old Cadillac, the Kaiser Hof, the chosen few at Shanley's where the bar prices are higher, and the rest scattered far and wide in Green Teapots and German Hofs, the Knickerbocker, and the other hotels and clubs around this district which is New York to them. They will be crowded thick into the leather- seated stalls exchanging reminiscences, each one for his own ears alone, stories in which managers and theatre magnates play undesirable, ignominious parts, and audiences are stricken dead all the way from Peak's Island to Frisco. A strange, wild country, this United States, from the accounts one may gather on Forty- second Street of a June afternoon. This is what is coming to our Sammy and his friend Ricorton, until they will wonder, in stunned despair, if there can ever be jobs enough in the theatrical world to support this hoard, ever enough money taken in at box offices to pay even half the salaries these Thespians say they must receive before they will go out again. Two days suffice to bring home to S. Sydney Tappan the realization that things cannot be hurried in New York. There are one or two people ahead of him, who have other plans than his. Hazleton has received them, in a bored way, at the great Kane's offices on Forty-sixth Street he can barely remember who the dramatic editor of the Melchester Democrat Herald is and has looked through their great work with languid interest. Yes, he will have it read, he says. The book will have to be revised and rewritten, of course. They do not use left centre any more, and the name of the character who is speaking must be written in the centre of the page, not at the side. Directions, too, in red, not black. Quite useless probably, but he will have their readers look it over. No, there is no need of his hearing the music; they would not take it, any- way, if the book is not up to the mark. S. Sydney Tappan is shrewd enough to know that these are super- 84 THE BALANCE ficial objections. But of what avail the knowledge, if they are potent with Mr. Hazleton? Their pro- ductions are all mapped out for next year now, any- way, the great man's secretary says but they are always glad to look things over. They have waited three hours to hear him say this, three hours in the dark anteroom beneath the super- cilious scowl of the red-haired, lordly office boy; so that it is afternoon when they turn away, and go down toward Sternenberg's. S. Sydney Tappan waits outside, to the sound of seven simultaneously played pianos in the rooms of a musical firm, each instrument suffering from a different com- position, while Ricorton goes up in the elevator and interviews him. Ric is rather grim faced when he comes out. "It's robbery, Tappy," he says shortly. Mr. Sternenberg has refused to secure him any job unless the percentage is raised another 5 per cent., and an advance payment made. He has been cheated too many times, he has told Ricorton. Secretly, how- ever, I fear Mr. Sternenberg has suspected that our friend Ricorton wishes a job of some kind rather badly. He has told him of a certain Grote, a branch member of the famous chorus girl agency, where summer jobs for musical directors can sometimes be secured. Ricorton does not hear Mr. Sternenberg telephoning to his friend Mark Grote, as he and Sammy bend their steps toward that gentleman's place of business, or he would not be so surprised when he finds that there, too, the same terms are in force except for the advance payment. It has looked to Mr. Sternenberg as if this particular seeker for a job has not the necessary cash to pay in advance. Perhaps that is why Mr. Grote so kindly waives that condition, as a favour, and does what he can for him. It is a favour! The extra 5 per cent, is not to be despised, you see. Lyric Hall at ten-thirty! so the little man tells them. Mr. Hagaman is the name for which to ask. Room THE BALANCE 85 number five, "The Honeymooners!" Ricorton has an opportunity to try for a position as musical director of a piece for vaudeville. Sammy shall come along, they decide that night at Ricotti's, the 'Italian joint' on Tenth Street, where they have gone to celebrate their entrance into the world of art; and they drink the dark, red ink Signer Ricotti provides until the horses and animals which are painted on the windows beneath the balcony seem to wink and nod their heads at them, and the place assume the appearance of a courtyard. S. Sydney Tappan shall be introduced as an author to Mr. Haga- man, and perhaps secure an entrance, in this way, to the vaudeville world. Fame is thus at hand, and all necessity for twenty-five-cent meals at the Bee dissi- pated. A gay pair, our two friends to-night. It is when they return to West Twenty-ninth Street at midnight, still flushed with the excitement of their success, that Sammy finds a letter thrust under the door of their room. It is from Carrie. She has written: " Dearest Sammy, I have been thinking of you ever since we said good-bye, although I know I must not, but must be brave, and not make you homesick or miserable with my troubles. Home seems to have departed with you on the train to New York. I no longer can hope to run into you when I go down- town, and all the joy of existence seems to have gone. There is nothing but the houses left. I have been wondering so much, too, how you have come out with Mr. Kane, and what he said, and did, and how he liked it, and what he is going to do. I just know that he will take it! It is so good! And it will be a great success, and make you all a lot of money. Though I do not care so much for money as I do for the success which will enable us to be together, and let you do the things you ought to in the world. "Father is just the same as ever, and so is mother! Is it just age do you suppose, and will we get that way? Or have they for- gotten everything in the money father has made? Money success seems to be all they think of. I wonder is it true of everybody, after they have worked and struggled, and met the world, and our social plan has moulded them? Do they all become so hard and cynical? "I have started my work down at the Settlement, in spite of 86 THE BALANCE father's laughter and mother's sarcasm. She calls them 'scum!' I am sure your mother wouldn't if she had lived. Though the older generation do not seem to feel the way some of us young girls do. I wish you could meet Mrs. Lewis, our director she is such an inspiration. She makes the work a pleasure. We are all just lumps of coal, she says. Undeveloped possibilities! A match to light us, and our power is magnificent. I wonder is father all burned out, or never lighted at all? Some of the people I visit work for him I find, but they don't kaow I am his daughter. I would not tell it to any one but you, but there are times down there when I am not proud of being Carolyn Schroeder. "It is awfully late now, however, and I won't catch the last col- lection unless I stop. I am always hoping, Sammy, for your suc- cess you know that, don't you? As always, "CARRIE." Ah, Carrie! She is the same always. Yet how far away that world in Melchester seems, how insignificant, our Sammy thinks, as he sits down beneath the crooked gas jet, and answers her letter so that she will know that the great Kane has said nothing yet that will warrant a telegram. They have a start now, however, in Ricorton's chance at this job and perhaps that is the start of "getting in!" There is no habitat for day dreams, I suppose, but cracked mirrors and old green shades seem to harbour those of the grander sort furnished rooms, by a kind of inverted power of suggestion, bringing to their occupants visions of fame and crowded theatres, steam yachts and country clubs. Carrie could never have realized from that letter of S. Sydney Tappan's that a second floor back room was sheltering two dreamy young men, with every chance for failure, and hardly one for success armed, only, with unconquerable hope and profound ignorance, and Ricorton's ability to read music at sight. An ability to read at sight! How far a trifle of real knowledge, a modicum of real ability will carry one in this world of mediocrity and slovenliness ! Seven musical directors so far this next morning in Lyric Hall, and not one who can really read the world-old THE BALANCE 87 harmonies and almost prehistoric melodies of "The Honeymooners" score. Musical memory, alone, should very nearly have sufficed to read it. It is why Ricorton heaves that sigh of relief as he hears the seven struggling with it, their fingers striking wrong notes, their eyes upon the fifty dollars per week which the union scale allows directors, while the other rooms of the building give forth that horrible malady of sound called re- hearsal. Gods of Harmony, who named Lyric Hall? S. Sydney Tappan, sitting on an empty bench at the far end of the room from the piano and the little knot of people who are gathered round it, wonders when Ric will get a chance. That girl in gray, with the mouth whose corners seem always about to turn up in a smile, must be the leading lady, he reflects. She seems quite conscious of her figure, and not at all averse to treating bystanders to glimpses of her well- turned ankles, and more, as she sits swinging her legs on a table. Ruby, they all call her. Is that Irish- man beside her the other lead, he wonders? There is something about the man which is not attractive, S. Sydney Tappan decides. It is not his loud checked suit nor his habit of posing either, he sees a moment later, but a sort of offensive self-assurance, speaking of inordinate conceit. He seems to have a strange habit of disregarding what is said to him, brushing aside the conversation, at times, to join in suddenly with statements made in an unanswerable tone. Jack Bantry is his name. Sammy's thoughts are cut short, however, by the advent of Ricorton at the piano. That the reason for the seven poor musical directors is because this vaudeville act has very uncertain back- ing is unknown to the musician as he sits down rather shakily, and tries a chord or two. He is as nervous as if this were the Metropolitan Opera House. In back of him, too, he can hear the people talking. "Oh, quit being so sorry for yourself, Jack," the girl called Ruby is saying easily. "You're a regular gloom these days!" "Get on to the wig," Bantry retorts, with evident reference to Ricorton's yellow thatch. "That's all right, Baby doll," Ruby replies. "He can play. Listen. He's a real one." For Ricorton has started now, and the score is un- rolling beneath his facile fingers. No, there is not much doubt about it Ricorton is a real one. The small, pale young man, with an ugly trick of speaking from the corner of his mouth, whom they all call Hagaman, springs up from beside a puffy-faced gentleman, and stops him. "You will do," he says quickly. "Let's start them on the show." He means play it all for them, while somebody ex- plains the stage business. George Matspn, an old hand at this game, in spite of his youthful, immaculate look, will do this to-day. Indeed, it seems to S. Sydney Tappan, as he watches, that Matson and Haga- man, the agent, leave very little for the puffy-faced gentleman, who sits in the only armchair, to say. He is Thompson, "the angel," with little puffs from last night's gayety beneath his eyes, his gaze fixed, now, for the most part, upon Ruby. There is not much money in vaudeville so far, but there are a great many attractive girls with whom one is thrown quite informally. Our Mr. Thompson is endeavouring for once, however, to put the allurements of the fair sex from his mind. He has thrown away most of his money upon Broadway, and if he is not to retire again to Pittsburgh must recoup himself. This "Honey- mooners" act must succeed. It is only habit asserting itself, when he gazes upon Ruby. Thousands, these vanishing, reappearing figures on Broadway of which our Mr. Thompson is one; coming from the great inland continent that stretches from Montreal to Galveston, retiring again, after a short space, to their theatres in Williamsport, their iron THE BALANCE 89 furnaces in Muskegon, their wheat lands in the Red River Valley, their mines in Cripple Creek, their stores in Salt Lake City; gamblers mostly, some serious, vi- cious, the majority weak all victims sooner or later of the lights of the sex drama of Broadway; the smell of perfume and of powder bringing up to them for a life- time the vision of New York at night. From them the Hagamans of the theatrical buildings derive their living, and the Matsons fill in their vacant time from staging real productions. Our Mr. Thompson has little money now; so little that he does not care to think of the time when it will be necessary to secure the costumes and scenery he has ordered when, too, the people he has hired will begin to ask for advances on their salaries, so that they may live. No money in their pockets ever, these under Thes- pians, these inconsequential chorus girls of widely vary- ing types; some with the hard look and manner of the burlesque queens they have supported; some with earnest eyes and poor voices, and a great desire to make enough money to justify their choice of a livelihood, with, perhaps, enough over to send much-needed as- sistance to a home in Vermont or Indiana; others, with the inviting eyes and enticing manners which betray their characters; still others with rouged lips and powd- ered cheeks, and memories of midnight suppers in cafes in St. Louis and in Cleveland, of college youths and brokers, and a first-class show by Herbert or Friml newspaper chorus girls, these last, the chorus girls of the cheap paragrapher; by far in the minority, how- ever, in the actual life of the stage. No money ever in the pockets of these chorus men either; these ex- press clerks with voices; youths from the ribbon coun- ters, possessing good looks of a type; serious students of the voice, desirous of experience; and once in a while that professional chorus type the ne'er-do-well who loves the vagabond life of the under Thespian. Our Mr. Thompson does not fear these credulous 90 THE BALANCE beings, however, these people willing to be hired by any chance bystander who has sufficient courage to ask them. He only fears lest his money give out before the first tryout weeks are over weeks when, he knows from past experience, he will not make expenses. The graft of the booking offices must first be paid; and a fine show, playing at starvation wages in certain fa- voured theatres, is the first part of the graft. Thompson realizes this as he turns away from Ruby's slender ankles to devote himself to the business in hand. He must save his money, and rush this show through to a success. This new musical director completes the company now, once more provided that he knows his business, and does not disappoint as the ones before him have done. But Ricorton is of different stuff than his predecessors. You need not fear that he will not work, Mr. Thompson! It is when the rehearsal is over that Ricorton in- troduces S. Sydney Tappan to them all. S. Sydney Tappan, author and playwright! As Sammy thus makes his first bow to New York, I think he is trying to decide just how much importance he may safely take to himself. It was fortunate for him that he decided in that moment that the truth would never do. New York listens only to those who shout. Matson is talking to him now. " What line of stuff? " he asks, half interested. Every new playwright may some day have a piece upon the boards, and whipping pieces of all kinds into shape is his livelihood. It was then that S. Sydney Tappan decided. "Plays," he says easily. The moment he has said it, he wonders how he could ever have considered say- ing anything else. How simple, this pose as a play- wright! New York is large. Well and he is one of a kind, too. "Any one-act plays for vaudeville?" queries Haga- man. THE BALANCE 91 It occurs to our Sammy that this may be an order. He will lose no opportunity. "Oh, a couple," he replies carelessly. Hagaman takes out a card, and scribbles on it. "Tremaine is looking for one," he says. "She wants a little tour on the big time, on the strength of 'The Betrayer.'" The big time! Oh, yes, he means the circuit of large vaudeville theatres which can offer good salaries. Dimly, too, Sammy remembers this name on the card. Sylvia Tremaine. A well-known actress, and a suc- cessful play. Here is a chance, indeed ! "I will look her up, if I have time," he answers easily. How the part of the great man fits him! It is the hero, grown older. Rehearsal is not again until two o'clock, so he and Ricorton go out for luncheon. " Did you notice the girl with the gray eyes, Tappy ?" asks Ricorton, trying to be casual, as they go down Forty-second Street. "You mean Ruby?" Sammy replies. Yes, he has noticed her. "She rather gets to me, Tappy," Ricorton confesses, a little shamefacedly. "I could stand having her around though that Jack affair seems to think she is his preserve." Sammy is silent. Ruby is attractive, he can see, in her way, but in his mind is the image of Carrie, back in Melchester, and the comparison does Ruby little credit. Ricorton, however, is not the only one who has found attractive new acquaintances. Ruby, too, has taken a great liking to the tall young man with the sensitive face and thatchlike hair. He does not look her over in that way that still makes her shrink in spite of six years' experience in musicalcomedy. He reminds her of the people with whom she once went to high school up in Utica, and whom she still meets once in a great while, when she runs back to see her mother in the millinery department of one of the stores. 92 THE BALANCE That is why, when he asks her, that afternoon, to go for dinner with himself and Tappy, she does not refuse. A free and easy world, this theatrical New York, with less vice than show of it. She likes Ricorton, the new musical director, and his silent friend Sammy does not wish to break that great man illusion by ignorant remarks ! so why should she not go ? "How did you get in on this affair?" asks Ricorton, as they begin the soup of a sixty-cent table d'hote. "Me?" replies Ruby calmly, fixing her gray eyes on him. "Oh, Matson dropped me a card. It's low-brow stuff, and ought to get over. No more of that tall- dome drama for mine. High and dry, twice now. The last time in Lafayette, Indiana. The college boys got us to Fort Wayne and the Erie, gosh, that Erie! It must go to China on its way to New York. You wake up in the morning and you're farther off from the bright lights than ever." " Who is this Thompson ? " asks Sammy. "You've got me," she answers. "Looks like a chicken chaser to me. The backwoods for his if he doesn't give himself a vacation. Those eyes!" This girl is free and easy, with the laxity that the stage imparts, but her eye is clear S. Sydney Tappan sees, and she knows her mind. It is a new type to him. Inwardly, he marvels over the heedlessness with which she will go out on the road in this show whose backer she does not know at all. Her self-possession, also, is new to him. How does it happen he has never heard of her in any of those musical shows which have gone through Melchester? Her voice, he remembers from the afternoon, is quite good, very nearly fine. He can judge that instinctively, with the unconscious knowl- edge those musical evenings of his early life in Paris and Melchester have given him. But she has turned to Ricorton, now. "I am glad you're going," she says frankly, "instead of that last one they had. The little French pig! Where he got his recommend from is a mystery to me." THE BALANCE 93 Sammy is filled with a curiosity to know the history of this girl. "Where did you study?" he asks. She looks at him with a puzzled expression. "Study?" she repeats. "Why, I haven't studied since I left Utica, I guess. I don't want anybody monkeying with my vocal chords. Why?" "Why, you've got a good voice, that is all. I won- dered who trained it," replies Sammy. She stares at him a moment half in doubt. "Don't try to kid me," she says, then. "Thank God, it stays with me." "I wasn't kidding," our Sammy replies seriously. "I meant it." She stares at him a second, still puzzled. Then she gives a little laugh. "We'll let it pass this time," she says. He has meant it, after all. She turns to Ricorton. "I like your friend," she cries. "Oh, he's taken already," Ricorton replies with a smile. Ruby looks at Sammy with an expression of frank friendship. "You tell her, for me, she better come and rope you before somebody else snatches you up." It was the only time, I think, that Carrie's existence was brought to Ruby's attention, until the end. I have always liked to think that she promptly forgot it. Ricorton, however, has no Carrie back in Melchester, and the gay laughter and clear voice of this girl brighten his gray world as it has not been brightened since he left Maine. He realized, even then, how attractive she was to him. It was partly her mere physical pres- ence that stirred him so, as he noticed the dainty ten- drils of her hair, the velvet softness of her cheeks; but beyond all pulse of passion there was the feeling of frank, spontaneous companionship which she exuded like a perfume. She is not exotic, this young actress; in spite of 94 THE BALANCE nights of paint and powder, she gives an indefinable impression of health and warm blood. In the sparkling eyes, however, there is just a hint of temperament, per- haps of moods, which betrays the reason for her choice of a profession. One hundred dollars a week is her price, and vaudeville is easier than comic opera. That is why she is in j appan. "My dear lady," he says contritely, "I have been very miserable." "I don't care," she answers. "You didn't die and that is the very least you could do, with that kind of an excuse." "I don't mean that I was sick!" he says hastily. "You might have had the grace to be even that!" she retorts. "I might have overlooked your behaviour then." THE BALANCE 173 "I've been miserable over you," he says. "It's all been your fault!" She looks at him suspiciously. "I don't believe it!" "It's the truth," he replies humbly. She stands up. "It isn't the truth," she says. "Go home, Sydney. I won't have it. Either the real truth, or else you go!" "On my honour," he says seriously. "It is the truth." She claps her hands suddenly. "You fell in love with me in the bathing suit!" she cries. "I saw you in that before," he reminds her. "So you did," she says. She looks at him a moment. "You must be made of stone, Sydney. Don't you like me just a little?" He nods his head. "I do," he says. "I never pretended otherwise." "I am quite good looking," she says modestly. "Tell me, was Carrie jealous?" He considers a moment. "No," he says. Sylvia's face. falls. "But she didn't like the play." "You mean, she didn't like me in it!" she cries. "She was jealous! Oh, and I never even met her! You are a pig, Sydney. I suppose you gave her the impression that I was entranced with you!" "No," he answers. "She said you had made me over to suit yourself, until I was as willing to sell myself for success as you were in fact, had!" "She said that!" Sylvia says, with a little gasp. She screws her face up into a little knot as she thinks. Then she turns to S. Sydney Tappan again. "Well," she says cheerfully, "I guess she's right. I thought you said she was just a girl." "That's all she is," retorts Sammy in an injured way. Is Sylvia, too, going to agree with Carrie now? Sylvia shakes her head. 174 THE BALANCE "She is old enough to be your mother," she says with a little laugh. "Thank you," says Sammy. She considers him again. "Was it serious?" she asks. "Yes," replies Sammy. "Quite. In fact, we've broken off." "What!" cries Sylvia in disbelief. "Because of a play?" "That is the reason I didn't see you. I came down to New York immediately." He hesitated. "You see, the flavour was out of the triumph, somehow." "Oh, I'm the pig," she says remorsefully. "I am sorry." She hesitates for a moment. "People with priggish ideas are usually quite unbear- able," she says at last. "It's just conceit, in a way; so provincial everything is just a matter of experi- ence." "Carrie wasn't priggish," says Sammy honestly. He cannot bear, strange as it is, to hear Carrie criticised either. "I don't know but what she's right." Sylvia stares at him in astonishment. 'Then what's the row, my dear boy?" she asks. "I think it is because I can't do without success," he answers slowly. "But I can't!" Sylvia shudders. "Poverty always means being dirty to me," she says, stretching out her silken ankles. "That's why I always keep myself scrubbed within an inch of my life! I couldn't stand a dirty saint, could you?" "No," he says. "I've been through poverty, and it isn't pleasant." Poor Sammy. Because he has lost some money, and so has had to deny himself a few things, he thinks he has been through poverty. He cannot conceive to-day, either, of any kind of success which allows one to keep one's soul. His difficulty is that success means a great deal of money to him money, and nothing else. He THE BALANCE 175 does not know that to all the really great successes the money has been but incidental. Sylvia stares into the fire. "Well," she says, "I've made money and I haven't found much happiness. I am happy when I am on the stage except, perhaps, in scenes like our bathing suit one. I feel, then, that I am degrading my art. That is all that I have found out, Sydney. No one is happy un- less they are doing the best work that is in them." "It is what Carrie meant, I suppose," says Sammy unhappily. "It's true," Sylvia says, in a low tone. "Any chorus girl can appear in a bathing suit. Well, I am only a glorified chorus girl, I think. I was one once." She laughs a bitter laugh. "That's the way I got my start. The manager picked me for a Circassian slave, and I ap- peared in a veil and little else. I could have had a better part right away if I had wanted to stand for him. But that's my dead line. I have sold everything else for success. I want something left that I can give for love." She ridicules the world, this Sylvia Tremaine, and yet inside, in her strange way, she is an idealist. All people are, if you can but find the spot. She realizes now, however, that she is talking too in- timately to Sydney Tappan; is in danger, indeed, of giving her inside beliefs away. "Oh, it's all theory," she cries impatiently. "I wish that I could believe all they teach in the churches. How can I, in my wo rid, or any real, actual world for that mat- ter? Everything would always have to be a com- promise! And I don't see any one else doing it, except a few idiots whom everybody does up." Sylvia is one of those who sees all the martyrs in the past and none at all in the present. Sammy takes a big breath. "Well," he says, "I only know that I have one ability I can write plays; and unless I write them so they'll sell, I will starve ! I can't do anything else, so far 176 THE BALANCE as I can see. Particularly when I've gotten my chance at last." "Yes," says Sylvia lightly. "If you've got a mes- sage, Tappy, forget it before you ruin your reputation for writing saleable stuff. The 'Lady in the Lion Skin' is saleable. If you feel you can't make money from such stuff you better go fight in somebody's foreign legion, or work in an office for twenty-five a week. But don't write plays!" "I guess I'm not quite ready for the foreign legion yet, thank you," he answers. "I'll write for a while yet." "Perhaps this thing won't last for long, Sydney, any- way,", she says, at the door. "Meanwhile, come and see me, and I'll cheer you up!" Sammy is quite sure it will last, however, as he takes his departure from the apartment, and strolls down Fifth Avenue. As he walks he gazes curiously at the names upon the brass plates by the entrances, the names upon the windows, and over the doors, A beau- tiful marble street, this lower Fifth Avenue, beautiful buildings, beautiful offices. How attractive our mod- ern commercial world seems in the romance of these triumphs of architecture! And yet, are they, too, like his play? Behind their artistic fronts does something horrible lurk? Great smelters in far-off Montana, with half-naked workmen sweating beneath travelling cranes, in their ears the crash of levers and machinery, the hiss and swirl of molten metal punctuated by loud detonations as the steam bubbles in the great pouring pots explode with frightful showers of white, burning, blinding metal sparks! Outside, the blue and yellow flats, edged by the desolate sage-brush hills, the distance blurring the wretched shacks of the town, rendering indistinct the foreign names upon the saloons and lunch-rooms, leav- ing plain and distinct in all the squalor only the huge company-owned store, and the company-owned hotel, where visitors of the owners may be entertained, until THE BALANCE 177 they start their journey back to the green, cool East! Factories in near Massachusetts, the stark mass of wood and glass that make up the buildings rising from the barren hillside and the hovels which edge up to them from the town. Inside, at the far end, a thigh- deep mass of stinking skins from distant Australia, surrounding a small group of low-browed, sweating humanity, who stretch, and sort, and throw them into the humid steam; skins from which the fur will fly off as if by magic beneath the ceaseless scraping of machines in another part of the building, where the dust of filth rises to the ceiling, stifling and choking more half-clad workmen men here, women and young girls there, and once in a while a child shrinking, shaping, blocking endless shapes of soggy fur, to the unceasing crash of metal, the interminable buzz of belts, the grinding of machinery, the heat and dust and hideous confusion of the ordered industry of felt hat making! Are the thousand replicas of these, spread thousands of miles from coast to coast, the sweating parents of these calm marble buildings on lower Fifth Avenue, with, inside, the fine rugs and mahogany furniture? Look out, Sammy, as you think or you may stumble upon your message, and spoil your scarce-won popu- larity. Your public likes much better half-naked ladies than half-starved workmen. It takes character to think straight. We know that he has not lost that popularity yet, however, as he sits in the box with Friedman, at the Players' Theatre the next night, and sees the duplicate of Melchester's ovation which New York and Diamond Jim Brady call first night. For it is Melchester over again, only this time on a grander scale. The "Lady in the Lion Skin" has caught on in Gotham. "We are safe for all the winter, Sydney," Sylvia says radiantly, as they sit at late supper in Churchill's. All about them men are staring and women whisper- ing, '^That's Sylvia Tremaine!" while on the small stage an unhappy young lady with a fine voice but no 178 THE BALANCE stage presence is lending colour to the advertisements for the cabaret. Hartmann is with them, a trifle amused at the fancy Sylvia seems to have taken for this Tappan. But then, she usually does make a fuss over her new play- wright each time. She cannot resist the temptation to make a conquest, is his version of it. For once, however, he is wrong. Sylvia is not thinking of making a conquest at all. She is almost in love with S. Sydney Tappan, and she feels quite sorry for him. He is honest and quite unassuming in spite of his success, and she feels somehow that there is a reality, a reserve force somewhere in him, that these men she has known so well in New York lack conspicuously. She does not know it, but she senses the genius of S. Sydney Tap- pan, buried for so long, but coming closer to the surface now and destined to burst forth one day and astound even its possessor with its irresistible demand for recognition. To her dying day Sylvia swore by S. Sydney Tappan, though she never acted in a play of his again. It was the great cross of her existence that she could not. It is as Sammy is walking home, an out-of-place figure in a dress suit so late at night on lower Eighth Avenue, that he realizes his loneliness; that loneliness which seems the peculiar property of New York the loneliness of great cities. It is different than the lone- liness of Melchester; induced somehow by the floating river of humanity which makes up the vast town; added to by the myriads of streets and blocks and buildings, seemingly without end; made tragic by the callous heart of its inhabitants, each intent upon his special aim, and with no time even to bury his neigh- bour should one fall dead. He has not felt it so overwhelmingly until now, be- cause he has not been really alone before. In his mind has always been the feeling that Carrie's heart is with him, her letter there at West Twenty-ninth Street, beneath the door, awaiting only his return to give him THE BALANCE 179 her renewed message of encouragement. It is because there will be no letter there to-night that he feels this loneliness pressing on his soul. Will there ever be an- other letter there from her, he wonders ? He is glad that to-morrow night the banquet for all the cast and managers will be held at Rector's. Sylvia always invites her former playwrights, too, so that it is very much her family affair. Her family, indeed, is what she always calls it. It will serve to fill the time, at least. It was, in truth, a gay party, that banquet at Rec- tor's. I doubt, too, if any one there contributed more to the gayety than S. Sydney Tappan. Even Hart- mann was quite captured, and drank a final cocktail with him out in the bar once the supper was over and the dancing had begun. But through it all there was a little strange expression in Sylvia's eyes. Our Sammy is a trifle too gay, she thinks, as she watches him be- tween times. He quite dislikes petite, flirtatious Marie Marcel, and to-night he is throwing her com- pliments across the table. In his face is a new strained look that has not been there before. S. Sydney Tap- pan is not happy. He has taken one or two more cocktails than are strictly necessary for good form. Society always acted like wine upon him, but to-night he has felt the need of a trifle extra stimulant, in order to be gay. He does not wish to be idle for a moment, lest his mind have time for thought. There is no one here to whom he wishes to say anything except in lightest badinage no one, that is, except Sylvia. And he will not spoil her party. She slips her arm through his in the taxicab, on the way to her apartment. "Poor Tappy," she says feelingly. "You're really solemn as an owl, aren't you?" "The owl," he says quite bitterly," is a gay and in- consequential bird compared to me to-night. I hope I haven't spoiled your party." She shrugs her shoulders a little. 180 THE BALANCE "Let them worry, Tappy. They only come because I am successful, I know that. Those in the business, because it's policy and free. The outsiders, because well, it's quite au fait ! I am a public character, an institution, an advertisement, and they are quite devilish, quite devil may care, to know me. They would like to give the impression, if they could, without saying so, that I usually dine in tights, and receive them in a nightie. It is all quite silly. I am not so very different from any other woman, am I, Tappy? Except, perhaps, I am hard. You didn't spoil the party anyway. No one noticed it but me." He has not taken the trouble to deny that he is un- happy. At the door he refuses to come in. "I am very dull," he says apologetically. He is thinking that perhaps there is a letter under- neath his door by now a late mail. He has not been home since afternoon. In his mind is still that strange, unsettled, nervous feeling which he cannot seem to shake off. Dimly he realizes that he would rather go and see whether there is not a letter there for him, than listen to any amount of condolences from Sylvia. There is something imperative about an expected letter. And sooner or later, he thinks, Carrie will be obliged to write. This is not a tiff that they are having. They simply have agreed to differ. Well, if she does not write to him, he will write to her. He must tell her about the play's success, at any rate. He is made in New York financially. Marriage is not a question of expense any longer. Does she also feel as queerly as he does, to-night ? If only Ric were in town, at least, he thinks, as he pays off the taxicab and mounts the stairs. As he ascends the winding carpeted stairs, and lights a match, there is a little gleam of white under- neath the door. A letter from Carrie at last, he sees, with a strange, little, trembling eagerness; and he lights the gas and breaks the seal. She has written: THE BALANCE 181 "Dear Sammy, I am very unhappy, and wish that you would write to me. (Ah, Carrie, you always said exactly what you thought !) "I can't bear to think of you alone in New York without even Ric, and with just the memory of our talk. Please, won't you write to me, just as before? I need our friendship, don't you, too? I can't seem, somehow, to realize that things are different between us, and find myself falling back into the old ways all the time. I know, too, of course, that we could never be happy together. We are just starting on our paths in life and they diverge too widely. Some married people don't go on, or only one does, but with us the unhappiness would come almost at once. We neither of us would wish to stand still. And yet, I think I love you, Sammy, almost the same. Isn't it quite strange? Per- haps I should have pride and mail you back an engagement ring and say all is over between us; but someway I can't. I don't think it is all over, or ever can be. I know I never can forget you, Sammy. How could I? It would be silly to pretend. They say that years make everything different, but I don't see just now how my life can ever be a married one. I should still be married just the same to you. You have given me enough happiness to last. "I have been thinking it all out these last few days, hoping, too, for a little note from you, trying to see honestly for both of us just whatjis best. So I have left 1200 Washington Avenue, as S)u can see by the paper, and am the assistant resident worker on ague St. I have been unhappy all my life because I was not living a life that was real at all, or useful either, and I have found, like Stevenson, that the things and amusements of my own class do not amuse me or make me happy. I am out of place. But I am not a genius like R. L. S., and so there is nothing much for me except to do the best I can. Needless much to mention, the family is outraged. You know them well enough to imagine all the de- tails. Just at present there is trouble in the store, too, and many of the disaffected as father calls them grandly live in this sec- tion. So that he thinks I am giving aid and comfort to the enemy by coming down here just now. But I cannot stand it at home any longer. I only ever could because I was waiting just for you, and felt my life there was temporary. And if I am to help I cannot wait while father straightens out his labour trouble. His whole policy is delay, and I must do what I believe. I won't overturn the world, Sammy, but at least I can be true to my own beliefs. "I wasn't going to say anything about the play but I find I have to, now that I am writing to you. It would be affectation to ignore it, wouldn't it? I am so sorry that I can't wish it success. I can 182 THE BALANCE make up for it, though, Sammy, by wishing you all the success in the world. I hope you will really find yourself some day. I sound so sure, don't I? Am I quite unbearable? Don't quake, Sammy. I shall never try to convert you. You are so much smarter than I, that you would always win the argument anyway. So I won't enter in the lists. " But I have a little, well a kind of vision, I think, that buoys me in my work I hope you have one, too. Write a kindly play, Sammy, next time, will you? If you can't please me, write one that will make the world's heart beat a little faster. You could do that, I know I shall never forget those tickets to poor Annie! Good-bye, Sammy am I just sincerely yours, now? I wonder. "CARRIE." A long time our Sammy sits in the room on West Twenty-ninth Street, staring at her letter. He has lost her, for good, he knows now. And he has no anch- orage in the world. There has been practically no religion in his life save when he has been too young to understand. Now, into his mind, as he sits in the lighted room that gives upon the darkened tenements, and listens to the occasional trains upon the elevated road a block away, there comes a tremendous sense of emptiness, of loss. Is this why men say that God is love? Still, Carrie has lost love, and seems to have a vision. What is it then? Has he lost God? Or has he sold Him, too, for success ? Success! Into his mind comes dimly, again, a beau- tiful marble street. Well, Sammy, you are not quite ready yet for your task in the world. So I cannot blame you for your obtuseness. You are not shrinking from the ordeal. You simply do not see it. Saul still rules in Antioch. CHAPTER XIII IN WHICH CARRIE URGES SAMMY TO THINK, AND RUBY COMES BACK WITH BANTRY TO THE HALFWAY HOUSE IT is a curious thing to reflect upon the odd frag- ments of the past which our memories choose to treasure up. We are seldom conscious of any measured se- quence of events, except we have lived intensely and view them from a far-removed point of vantage some time later. Many years afterward S. Sydney Tappan became aware of the gradual trend of events which led to his great inspiration; but it was not until all real con- nection with them had been removed that he was able to identify each separate happening for what it was worth. And when that day came, Time had al- ready begun its task of dulling all the edges, until the picture no longer stood out clear and distinct to him, and he only realized that he had once been dif- ferent, and had changed. * So it was in regard to Carrie's letters. He never could remember how they changed and altered, or how his replies strange, halting replies they were met the changing argument, until all correspondence had ceased, and they no longer heard from each other. It was partly pride upon our Sammy's part, I think, that final failure of his to answer her last letter. On Carrie's side, I am almost afraid it was a broken heart. As she went deeper into her work, the very hope- lessness of her task only served to intensify in her the conviction that she must never falter. I think she realized, too, the tinsel world in which her Sammy 183 184 THE BALANCE gilded imitations with the splendour of his gift, while the real world of suffering cried out at his door. That divine sympathy of hers, which finally made Hague Street take her to its heart, seemed to stop short, someway, before it reached S. Sydney Tappan's door. She had less and less patience with him as her knowledge of the world increased, and that first naive conviction of hers, that the world but needed to be informed to tear the canker of poverty from its soul, gave way to the realization that this knowledge was but the begin- ning of the bitter fight; a fight made more poignant by the picture of the world of man growing older with each day, a new generation of sorrow and of ignor- ance coming to manhood and womanhood with each year a generation to be struggled with anew, helped, guided, combatted, and everlastingly pushed on. Her ounce of inspiration fought ceaselessly with the inert tons of humanity, while only here and there was there an answering flash of light which showed the spirit still was in the mass, and would some day move the whole. It was the picture of S. Sydney Tappan blowing pretty bubbles, with inimitable genius, for the favoured ifew to praise, while around him a nation struggled for existence against a monster it was this picture which destroyed a great part of her old sympathy for him. Through it all, too, there was the bitter feeling of dis- appointment that the bulk of him was weighing down so lightly on the scales. It was only when she sat alone, in her tiny bedroom off the plainly furnished sitting-room of the Settle- ment house, that the spirit sometimes flickered low within her, and she felt sorry, oh, so sorry for her Sammy yes, and a little sorry for herself. Her Settle- ment was in a district overwhelmed with little children what Settlement is not? and it was always when she had seen a boy with dark hair and brown face, and his legs a trifle thin, that her heart came in her throat, and bedtime could not come too early for her. She THE BALANCE 185 did not blush a little nights, or her heart beat quickly, as once it had in that room of hers on Washington Avenue when she thought of Sammy and the little child their marriage would mean. There was a tight- ness in her throat, now, and a curious dryness in her eyes, that sometimes lasted until morning had come, and the peddlers were astir. I think, perhaps, that was why she won all their childish hearts; each one some day might be a Sammy, and she did not want to miss a single chance. Ah, Carrie, what would some of the rest of us not give to have had the children of Hague Street kiss the ground where we had passed! It is a pathetic fact that a small group of little Jewish children from Roumania asked, when they first heard of her in the Settlement, if she were perhaps some relative of God's. Well, I for one think they were not so far from right. We all are in greater or less degree. Carrie only looked up her Great Relative, and never forgot their relationship. It is curious, too, to reflect that though S. Sydney Tappan might have lived and died content to blow his bubbles had not Carrie been in his life, it was his own personality which finally prodded him into action. Well, we are not interested, most of us, in things which lie outside our own personal circle of experience. A thousand deaths in China do not stir some of us in any degree approaching the death of a pet dog. It is not because we are flinty hearted and monsters of iniquity, each with a personal devil to be exorcised until we take deaths in China to heart. It is because we have no imaginations. Thus it was that Sammy, in spite of his dramatic soul, was not stirred to action until his personal experiences had egged him on. It has been said, by supposedly impartial commen- tators upon S. Sydney Tappan's life, that he had in him the making of a martyr, and that success deprived him of a halo They are referring, of course, to his later life. The truth of the matter is that it was but the dramatic instant each time that fired him, and 186 THE BALANCE his gift did the rest. He fell in love with the idea, just as he had with the idea of the "Lady in the Lion Skin." There is not one iota of difference. As for the one great sacrifice of his life, I am loathe to tear away his crown, and yet that was the same. If you find me tearing off his wreath, remember it is because I wish to show you the real thing that lay beneath. There was something fine beneath in the end, Sammy, I give you credit for that, at least! It is only that there is always left with me the sneaking feeling that perhaps after all you simply stayed in love with the idea all the time and so it was not hard for you. . . . Most of Carrie's letters about this time he destroyed in periodic rages. She was too sure to please him who was never sure of anything except the motives of his characters. There were only one or two that he found afterward which brought back vividly to him that time in his life. Why he had not destroyed them, he never knew. He had moved to the Lambs' Club for the time being, though still keeping that old room on West Twenty-ninth Street, until Ricorton should return, when one of them was brought up to him as he dressed for a late breakfast. Our Sammy has been tasting New York life a little these last few months, as the little puffs beneath his eyes show quite unmistakably. Let us not be shocked, however. There are worse things to fall back on for diversion than an extra cocktail at Churchill's or Rector's. Sylvia is compelled to lead a fairly regular and blameless life, too, if she is to preserve unimpaired that beauty she sells nightly, and our Sammy has not been leading, in consequence, the wild, abandoned existence which seems so necessary for the popular estimate of the stage. As he takes the letter from its tray, there is a curious look in his eye. This correspondence has assumed a startling likeness to an argument now, so far as he can see. Is it because neither of them feels that personal THE BALANCE 187 feelings are of much importance when their points of view are so far apart? He is obliged to confess, however, that he has taken to dropping in at the public library for information just previous to writing her each time. She writes: "I don't see how you can be so blind, Sammy, when you are living in the midst of it, of the most terrible results of it, with the East Side and its poverty so close to you. Don't you ever go south of Forty-second Street? It doesn't sound so to me. I don't believe you could see these children, children, children, here where I am, and know what they must grow up to-^-and still never lift a hand. If only people knew! I am beginning to see now, however, that it isn't enough just to know. But it is enough for so many of us to work at, just this mere knowing, this new knowledge of what the poverty-stricken soul of a nation thinks. "It isn't just teaching children to play, Sammy, or showing girls how to sew and economize just for the thing alone. It is so they can face the world, self-reliantly, and not sink lower in degradation simply because they are poor and have no chance. "I have tried arguing with father, as you say you think should be my chance tried and failed. He either can't or won't see. He is the head of his companies, and they must produce a good profit to be successful and that is everything to him. He cannot pay any one a minimum wage unless other industries do, too, because he won't be able to compete if he does. That is why he is fighting the new trade union of the clerks, though I notice the papers quote him as saying that each person ought to be able to work as he pleases, and he himself is capable of running his own business without outside interference. He is very angry at me because I have been helping the girls to organize, also. He doesn't see that they must. They can hardly live on what they get now, and when hard times come I cannot see what they will do. They had no place to meet even, except old Germania Hall with the bar down- stairs, until I got a brick block for them across from Hague Street. "Father declared yesterday he would stop his contributions to the Settlements from now on unless they ceased stirring up trouble. He says I do not realize the harm I have been doing, and have no business working in Settlements at all. I am not so sure but what he will try to have me put out if things go on as they have been. I simply cannot make him out at all. He thinks charity is fine, and yet when I do something real, so that the poor may help them- selves until conditions can be bettered, he is furious, and says that I have become a Socialist and Anarchist and I. W. W. I wonder if he thinks they are all the same? Perhaps I should have helped some one he didn't know, and then he would not have classed me in with the people he thinks throw dynamite. 188 THE BALANCE "I have learned, however, that people do not throw bombs for amusement, Sammy. I know that now. Please don't laugh at these I. W. W.'s. To think that America should sneer at people who give up everything for their ideas no matter what the ideas may be sneer, too, without listening, so that they do not know what they are saying. You don't know how I tremble for the bal- ance, sometimes, down here on Hague Street. If only people would read their Bible in the present tense, and not way back in Galilee so many centuries ago; read it as they walk through the slums, through the factories, the mines, the cities, read it, and have their Bible classes in the light of this Twentieth Century. I don't see how you can sit down in New York, Sammy, and not feel the desire to help. You have never had any religion, I know, because of your life, and because religion has never had any thrills for you. It is because the thrill isn't in the churches any more, in most of them anyway it is outside, in the people who are giving up their lives for their fellows, and calling it by all these names some of them wrong, some of them dimly right, their real standard the name of Christ and the Sermon on the Mount, only all overshadowed, mangled, and embittered by their human failings and the misery of their lives. How will it all turn out ? "The thing to me is that they are trying, Sammy they are trying to do something about it all. While so many of the rest of us sit quietly at home, or do little things which won't inconvenience us at all. Sitting as you are sitting, Sammy, just putting wrong and foolish ideas into people's heads " It was at points like this, usually, that our Sammy tore up the letters, to fish the pieces out of the waste basket a moment later and read on to the end. Carrie, like all enthusiasts, was riding her new mission at a gallop in those days. Sammy told her many years afterward that he was nearly ready then to go upon his future way, but that he did not care to be pushed down it. I think he added, too, that he was not sitting, either. He was evolving as well as the rush of life in New York would allow him a new play for Sylvia, one which should be a fitting successor to the "Lady in the Lion Skin." How far he really was from seeing! No, Sammy, you are to have a few more experiences yet before you qualify with Carrie. I do not think, either, that you would have ever started upon your path from the Lambs' Club. Perhaps that is why it was taken away from you. THE BALANCE 189 To-day, however, is not a day for him to bother himself about such matters. Ricorton and Ruby and the Honeymooners are coming home to-day, and Sylvia has insisted upon entertaining them at a little party in her apartment after the play. Ric has never even seen the "Lady in the Lion Skin!" All the Honeymooners are to see the performance, too. There is no one quite so spendthrift as the actor when in luck. So a dinner will be given the rest of the Com- pany, after which Sylvia has donated the tickets to the play, and a midnight supper afterward. A lot of children together, these jolly Thespians, striving to outdo each other in gayety, because all are now suc- cessful! Conceit aside, there is something lovable about the people of the stage. So our Sammy has no time for answering letters this morning, but must finish dressing and hurry down to breakfast. In his heart, though, is a little feeling that might almost be jealousy, when he thinks of Carrie and the young doctors whom she sometimes mentions in her letters. He would be willing to wager a great deal that some of them come to the tenements at her call because she is pretty in her cotton dress! Well, little good it will do them, he thinks cynically, if they are not sincere. She will see through them at the start. Still, there might be one who is in earnest! S. Sydney Tappan puts the thought from him as if it burnt. On his mind, though, it has left a little mark. He may not always be able to have Carrie for a mere change in his ideas. In his soul, I some- times wonder, did he ever give her up? Or was he always conscious that she could never love any one but him? It was always exquisite torture to him to even think of her with any one else. If only she had been born without a brain, and so could never have had any of these ideas at all! It was the only point on which Mr. Schroeder and S. Sydney Tappan might ever have agreed. The quaint Halfway House, with its narrow passage 190 THE BALANCE past the saloon, and the pathetic imitation of a garden which surrounds the green tables in the rear, has sel- dom housed a more uproarious party, I will wager, than the one that trailed after our Sammy upon the bright afternoon of Ric's arrival. What a commentary upon wealth and its advantages, that Ricorton and our Sammy, with Ruby and Jack Bantry tight between them, spent money gayly for a taxicab to draw them only a few short blocks to the German saloon garden, with its rough surroundings and its five-cent beer drawn from the wood ! It represents pleasure to them and hospitality now, as in the days when they had but the five cents to spend for beer. Ric has longed for this place ever since the act left New York, nearly a year ago. He likes the shouting down the dumb waiter for "zwei bier und kartofFeln ! " for "drei bier und pot r-r-roast ! " likes, too, the sweet, fresh-drawn beer and all the free and easy familiarity of the place. A strange mixed crowd in here usually in those days when Ric came before, but none of them here just now, this late June afternoon. But it is New York once more and Tappy, and Ric is content. Let us go up with the little round German waiter and hear what these four are saying, particularly that stylish-looking girl in gray with the free and easy carriage and aplomb of the stage. It is Ruby, quite fashionable in her tailored suit from Pittsburgh bought at a sale and overflowing with gay spirits and good health. Ric, too, is almost impressive in his new dark gray curaway and cane. The contrast between his appearance and this place he has chosen almost before they have alighted from the train, is ludicrous. There is nothing of the aristocrat in Ric, except his taste in music. Only when they speak would we recognize them all as our old friends of Lyric Hall. They have not altered in the slightest degree. Even Ruby's ankles are as plainly visible as ever, with perhaps even a shade more prettily shaped silk stocking THE BALANCE 191 exposed to view. Were there any doubt of the profes- sion of these people, too, the vision of Bantry's checked suit, gray spats, bright shirt, panama hat, and natty cane would dissipate it at once. Thespians in luck! "We can't get much more than a month out of New York, now," Ricorton is saying. They have pounded each other upon the back and S. Sydney Tappan has even kissed Ruby, in the excitement, and they are only able now to settle down to talk. "There's only the Fifth Avenue and the Alhambra and the rest of the city circuit for us, with perhaps a week at Hammerstein's. We ought to get busy right away on the thing!" He is referring to the musical act which he has pro- posed to S. Sydney Tappan in his letters. Short, good acts for vaudeville are not easily procured, especially when the time is short. "You bet!" cries Ruby. "And it's got to be good. We have got to depend on the act itself getting over. They won't pay seven hundred and fifty just to see me, and hear the Gloom here exercise his lungs!" She means Bantry. "Well, I'm not a specialty artist," the Irishman retorts. "Or I wouldn't be singin' in * The Honeymoon- ers,' would I ? I'd be a single and book myself." "You'd pay yourself a million dollars a night, too, wouldn't you, Jack?' 11 asks Ruby maliciously. This masterful Irishman attracts her, even though she sees through him. There is something about his person- ality that magnetizes her. Is it his ^never-ending pursuit of her that hypnotizes her at times? She is clever enough, too, to realize that it is but the nature of the man; that were she any attractive woman it would be the same. A man of his passions, this Jack Bantry, whom Ruby would do well to leave alone. There is something irresistible to her, however, about the idea of tantalizing him. His conceit is seemingly so bullet proof. S. Sydney Tappan has never looked very closely at this Irishman before this afternoon, either, but he 192 THE BALANCE realizes also, as he sits opposite him now, that there is a sort of moodiness in his manner. Is it jealousy, he wonders? That inevitable accompaniment of all suc- cess in the artistic world! Well, it may well be. S. Sydney Tappan has been in this business hardly more than a year and has climbed well to the top already, without those seasons of discouragement that dog the actor's career; without running the gauntlet of cheap theatres, without the one-night stands in second-hand plays, the hand-me-down comedies with songs, the months of unemployment, the under parts in musical productions, the fill-in weeks at starvation wages in the three-a-day, the days of waiting in agents' booking offices, the summer stock in Maine or the Middle West at half salary these unpleasant, unavoidable acces- sories of the actor's life have not fallen to S. Sydney Tappan at all and yet he has won success. What can it be but luck to this Jack Bantry, with his Irish temper? Jack Bantry 's God is luck. Whoever suc- ceeds or fails does so by luck. This is why he feels to-day the envious disdain of the half-educated profes- sional conscious of his practical experience and over- rating it, for the knowledge of the mere amateur who has scored by a fluke. To Ruby, however, this manliness adds a touch of masculine aggressiveness which attracts her. There are times when the tall musician with the thatch-like hair does not seem quite masterful enough. Ricorton's eyes blaze a little, nevertheless, as Ruby gives Bantry a provocative glance from beneath her half-closed lids. He is never quite sure of her when the Irishman is around. S. Sydney Tappan, however, is quite unconscious as he outlines his idea to Ric. He is speaking of their old opera. "There are at least six good numbers in the thing," he says enthusiastically. "We'll take them, build a short romantic Oriental story around them, put in about six lines of recitative dialogue and action for the THE BALANCE 193 principals between, pantomime for the chorus, get up a bang-up Asiatic setting, with a rose-trellised window for the serenade and duet, add a minute overture, figure out a climax, and put on the 'Rose of Asia,' a light opera in thirty minutes. How does it sound ? " "Immense!" cries Ric warmly. "Too high brow," says Bantry. "They want com- edy stuff in vaudeville." "You'll furnish that, Jack," says Ruby with a grin. "It will be all right, Tappy, if you dress the thing up for the women gorgeous costumes, settings; and chiffon and bare legs for the chorus. That gets the men." "Our chorus wouldn't get a college kid," says Bantry cynically. "The voices never seem to have the legs." "Oh, forget it, Jack, will you?" cries Ruby impa- tiently. "You ought to live in a cemetery." He is extraordinarily gloomy to-day. They can get the score of the opera from Kane's office that afternoon, they decide, and start work upon the act right away. It will take about three thousand dollars to do it rightly, but should be a good investment. As they go to the great Kane's offices for the score, however, and find it on the second floor behind a piano, let us stay behind and listen to this girl in gray and her Irishman. It is some two hours before the dinner for the company, and Bantry does not seem to be enjoy- ing the prospect. He is staring moodily at the green table in front of him, as Ricorton and Tappy go up Seventh Avenue. "I think I'll not go to-night," he says. I wonder does he say this because he cannot bear the thought of celebrating some one else's triumph ? "Please yourself, Jack," Ruby answers lightly. She knows his moods by this time. "You always do any- way." He turns to her with that strange intensity which al- ways seems to give her a tiny thrill. "I believe you don't give one continental damn, Ruby," he says. 194 THE BALANCE "About you?" she responds contemptuously. It is a queer fighting spirit this mood of his arouses. Does he never think of anything except himself? "Go tell yourself a joke. You've been grouching around for weeks. Quit bein' so sorry for yourself." She knows this will enrage him. Somehow, she is never satisfied until he is mad. "Oh, hell!" he says angrily. This girl is the devil. What is it about her that keeps him chasing her? She isn't so cursed attractive. I fear it is because you cannot dominate her, Mr. Bantry, and so will not give up. There is in your mind no thought of marriage, however. Mr. Bantry leaves marriage for those who care for it. He does not care to be anybody's meal ticket. No one shall be a drag upon the career of John Herbert Bantry, Bari- tone, late of Covent Garden, London, England. This handsome Irishman wishes to succeed; and measures everything by his desire. Is there, indeed, any one left in these days of haste who does not care about suc- ceeding ? He is but following the fashion of the century. "Let's cut this thing to-night," he says, now. "Cut it, and go have a quiet little dinner by ourselves down on Tenth Street." Ruby shakes her head. "I promised Ric I'd go," she says. "Anyway, I want to see what Tappy's done. Aren't you keen for Tremaine?" He gives a scornful grunt. "Chorus girl with a figure," he says. "I knew her when she was pulling down about twenty-five a week." "She must have brains then," says Ruby. She says this, top, because she knows it will not please Bantry. He gives a scornful laugh this time. "She's wise," he says. "If you call that brains." They are alone now in this back garden of the Half- way House. Suddenly Bantry reaches across and takes Ruby's hand. "Listen," he says intensely. "You come with me. THE BALANCE 195 Throw over Ricorton for once! I knew you before you ever set eyes on him and his Tappy." Ruby looks up at him coolly. " Forget it, Jack," she says. "You're jealous, that's all." Her coolness enrages him. "You've been crazy about me before, Ruby," he says passionately. "I know it, I've felt it. I've fascinated you, got you going like that night at Elitch Gardens in Denver, don't you remember? I could tell it in your eyes!" A little flush steals into Ruby's cheek, and she fum- bles with her gloves. There has always been something about Jack Bantry which makes her pulses tingle. "You aren't like all the rest, Ruby," he goes on. "There is something about you that makes me mad to rouse you you're so cool!" "Am I?" she murmurs. She is not so self-possessed as she was a moment since. "By God!" he says hoarsely. "Haven't you* any feelings at all?" Her cheeks burn a little now, but she looks at him easily, her flushed chin in her hands. Did he but know it, there is a tempest within her. "You don't even miss a matinee on this stuff, do you, Jack?" is what she says, however. She cannot be indifferent to his masculinity, this girl with the sensuous eyes and firm lips, he thinks. There seems to be a contradiction somewhere in her, however; her eyes and manner speaking of impetuous desire which all the rest of her seems to hold in leash. She has felt the hot strength of it at times, and it has frightened her. She does not always trust herself any more. Why is it, she wonders, that she is never satisfied, these days, until she has roused the man be- side her to danger pitch? It seems to have a fascina- tion for her, somehow. Is it the danger that attracts her ? Take care, Ruby you are playing with a world- old fire, and many have been scorched before now! 196 THE BALANCE He has disregarded her last remark, however, and put his hand upon her arm. The touch of her sends a cloud to his brain. " By God, I don't see how you can help feeling some- thing," he says in his low, hoarse voice. "You can't, I tell you She stares into his eyes almost as if hypnotized, until she feels her heart beating strangely. A moment only, and then the spell breaks. "Svengali!" she laughs, though there is a little catch in her throat that makes it difficult. "You missed your role, Jack, try it on some one else " She looks at him with a fine assumption of coolness. "Any little girl will do for you, Jack, and Broadway's only a block over!" "That's a lie, Ruby, and you know it," he says hotly. His passion has mastered him now. "It's you you!" There is no one in the little garden to see him, now, as his grasp closes tightly upon her arm. Almost in an in- stant he has crushed her to him, beating down her struggles lasting a brief moment his brain on fire. Just an instant, too, that her lips crush themselves upon his, her whole self thrilling with the contact; and then she has risen breathlessly, her hands clinging a little to the table for support. "By God, Ruby! I knew!" he says hoarsely. The blood has rushed again to her face as she pulls on her gloves, however, and she looks at him with a little smile of deviltry. "Did you?" she says lightly. It is only the next in- stant, and yet she apparently has changed completely. "Why, I thought we were just having a stage kiss, Jack!" A narrow escape, she is saying, trembling a little in- side. The tempest has frightened her again. It is with a great effort that she is appearing calm and indifferent. "That was no stage kiss," he says. "You know! You have had all kinds of experience, THE BALANCE 197 Jack!" she retorts. In her relief at being safe again, it does not occur to her to be angry. He eyes her a moment, anger flashing in his gaze. "All right," angrily. "Go on to your dinner! I'll stay here, I think!" She tilts her hat to a slightly more becoming angle. "You were always tactful, anyway, Jack," she says artfully. "You mean I'll be in Ricorton's way to-night!" he says savagely. How easily she plays upon him! "No one mentioned Ric," she answers airily. He takes a step forward. "Are you going to marry him?" he asks. She laughs lightly. "Oh, who'll be the next President, Jackie?" she returns. "Come on. It is time for the dinner, now." He stares at her a moment, half resentful, half con- scious of being chaffed. "Come on," she says placatingly. "Don't spoil the evening. It's going to be a swell party." And a moment later he has followed her down the long passage to the street, and they are headed toward Broad- way and the restaurant. New York does not exist for an actor below Washington Square or above Columbus Circle, except in tiny fragments. It is after the party is all over, and S. Sydney sits in front of Sylvia's divan, the door downstairs closing on the rest, that Sylvia speaks her mind. "I like your Ric," she says, sitting cross-legged, under the lamplight. "He is real. He will do something, if some one doesn't take him in." S. Sydney Tappan agrees. "He is soft hearted," he admits. He hesitates a mo- ment. "How do you like Ruby?" Sylvia steals a little glance at him. "Is she engaged to Ric?" she asks. Sammy smiles. "I think so," he answers. 198 THE BALANCE "Then she isn't quite on the level," says Sylvia. "I noticed her with Bantry." Sammy is amused. "You are feminine after all, aren't you?" he cries. "A rival in attraction! I guess you are all alike!" "You're a pig, Tappy!" Sylvia retorts hotly. "What a thing to say! Why should I care what Ruby Williams says to Jack Bantry? I knew your friend Bantry once. I'm giving you my opinion, that is all." "And you think Ruby flirts?" he queries. He has never found anything before with which to tease Sylvia Tremaine. Sylvia sniffs. "Of course she does. A woman could see it in a second. Oh, you men ! You are so easily taken in ! " "Why, I thought her quite attractive," says Sammy adroitly. Sylvia looks at him pityingly. "You are like them all, aren't you, Tappy? A pretty face and attractive figure!" "Well, they aren't to be despised!" retorts Sammy. "Particularly by Sylvia Tremaine." Sylvia sweeps the floor with her courtesy. "Darling Sydney!" she says. As she closes the door behind him a little while after, however, there is a meditative look in her eyes. Good heavens, is she starting to be jealous of every woman with a speck of charm who comes near S. Sydney Tappan ? She inspects herself quite closely in her mirror as she undresses. Does she really distrust Ruby Wil- liams, as she has said she does? Except for that tiny feeling in her heart would she have said the girl was an impulsive creature, generosity personified? CHAPTER XIV IN WHICH A DEPRESSION PLAYS THE DEUCE WITH THEM ALL, AND SAMMY HEARS SOME Music IT WAS three months after Sylvia's party that the "Lady in the Lion Skin" was suddenly withdrawn from the Players' Theatre after only one week of its much-ad- vertised fall run had been completed; withdrawn, even after a summer's rest, to pine away in the shadow of neg- lect, dragging out a miserable existence in stock years later, and dying finally in Wichita, Kansas, at the hands of a summer company from St. Louis. Before any premature applauding is done, however, let me hasten to add that it was not S. Sydney Tappan, urged on by a tardy conscience and Carrie's prayers, who withdrew it. Its withdrawal was but one of the many thousand results of one of those periodical storms of industrial depression which seem to sweep over our economic world every so often storms for which no one can seem to find either explanation or remedy except the economic heretics and cranks to whom, very prop- erly, we do not pay the least attention. We must be consistent, even if we have the storms. Indeed, it is only occasionally, when one buys a paper- covered book from some gentleman upon a barrel, and reads it to see what possibly could have induced the man to mount his keg, that we can see these explana- tions; and have, perhaps, a moment or two of doubt of the smooth gentlemen from whom we usually derive our economic inspiration. For they seem quite reasonable, these theories, strangely enough, until we have dis- covered their name. Single tax! Socialism! They are done for then, of course, and plausibility, weirdly 199 200 THE BALANCE enough, becomes insidiousness. The power of a name! Chambers of Commerce, however, and associations of manufacturers do not buy paper-covered books from gentlemen who so far forget themselves as to stand on barrels. So, I suppose, they are immune from the general doubt. The slums are not yet crowded enough to suit their boosters' committees, not enough attention given at Washington to the special needs of their pros- perous businesses. The leaders of the workingmen, these business men ! They will lead them to prosperity ! Well, hardly. Each man leads himself in industry to- day. It is only once in a great while that we find a man who can forget his own personal profit long enough to stand upon a barrel and offer us an explanation of our ills. The particular depression which played the deuce with our Sammy, however, did not seem to differ very much from any of the others we have all seen, except in its duration. In this respect it displayed a perseverance which would have earned it a high mark in almost any vocation. Industrial depressions strike at the theatri- cal business as with a dagger, and the "Lady in the Lion Skin" was among the early victims of the knife. It was not that the fear of God prevented temporarily em- barrassed people from seeing Sylvia Tremaine while they still flocked to see Maude Adams or Forbes-Robertson. It was the financial condition of Messrs. Friedman and Marshall that forced the issue. The tour of their com- panies through the industrial towns of Ohio, Pennsyl- vania, and part of Indiana seemed destined to bankrupt them, when taken in connection with conditions upon the Pacific Coast and the Northwest. Gentlemen who mine coal by weight, or work in steel mills at so much per hour, or spend their waking hours in potteries or factories can only buy back a certain fixed percentage of what they produce, if a profit must be added to the price before they can buy it. Once, then, our wealthy friends have been surfeited with everything that can tempt money from them, there is little left for THE BALANCE 201 us to do but look abroad. We will sell them all that re- mains! Wherefore our Open Doors, our Foreign Mar- kets, our Tariffs and our Troubles. Whether, in this particular depression, our foreign market has failed, or some diplomatic European neighbour has taken it for its own exploitation no one knows. The only phenomena visible are that the merchants' stocks do not move, be- cause their customers apparently are hard up and can- not buy, and so the factories must shut down and throw more possible purchasers out of work a vicious circle without end. Possibly, upon this occasion when our Sammy has been robbed of his "Lady in the Lion Skin," we have been playing the part of some one else's foreign market and have failed them at the wrong moment! It was the wrong moment for S. Sydney Tappan, at all events. The people had no money for the theatre that winter. In vain Sylvia scolded, wept, and pleaded, ending up with the name of nearly every creature in the Zoo. Friedman remained obdurate for once, resting heavily beneath the name of Pig. No, she would have to play in Boston, in a revival of "The Betrayer." She had never played Boston out in that. The offer for the Players' Theatre was too good to refuse, considering the frightful losses of their other companies. There were no royal- ties upon "The Betrayer," and S. Sydney Tappan was re- ceiving 6 per cent. She could revive this "Lady in the Lion Skin" next season. It cost some three hundred dol- lars less a week to run "The Betrayer" also. It was in- sanity to do anything else, in view of conditions. It was with tears in her eyes that she told S. Sydney Tappan. "Isn't it just too mean!" she cried rebelliously. "After I got you to write the thing for me. A paltry twelve thousand dollars in royalties! It makes me sick, Tappy. The Pigs!" And she shook her strong little fist at the absent Friedman. But the depression is creeping daily, now, from the in- 202 THE BALANCE dustrial districts first, into the big cities and then the towns; hardly felt, as yet, in those villages which can be called farming communities, and which have not yet been enough affected by our industrial organization to feel its ills, real or manipulated, but which read the newspapers and hang tight to their purses at the first headlines of panic. Old men with independent in- comes from wheat lands in the Red River Valley, or alfalfa fields in Kansas and Nebraska, cornfields in Iowa, or apple orchards in Oregon or cattle on the green, undulating foothills of Wyoming, or mines in rugged Montana old men sitting now in Mason City, Iowa, Decatur, 111., Manistee, Mich., Owensboro, Ky., sitting and gossiping with other men whose incomes flow from railroad bonds and coal road bonds, or steel and copper stock, with here and there a real industrial of the com- mercial East ; the East of chimney-spotted New England, sooty Pennsylvania, garden-raising New Jersey, spec- tacular New York these men are curtailing all their purchases, and the expenditures of their families, until the iron ring of depression is welded tight, and news- papers all over the country from Galveston and New Orleans to St. Paul and Seattle get out desperate slogans, "Buy it now! Do your shopping now!" and other worried gentlemen, in clothing factories, in auto- mobile shops, wonder if their new advertising, their latest bowing before Mercury to whom, they recog- nize, all mankind is paying homage to-day can still be used. Prosperity Overcoats, Symbol of Success Motor Cars, Men of Means Scarves, Prosperous Gentlemen's Cigarettes halt a moment just before the launching, while their sponsors scan the commercial sky and re- solve, the next time, to vote some other ticket. Twelve thousand dollars! It seems like a great deal of money to S. Sydney Tappan, though not so much as it would have a short time ago. Eight thousand of it, however, has not been paid, and there are ugly rumours of a receivership for Friedman and Marshall. The show business is uncertain. Our Sammy, too, has THE BALANCE 203 nearly three thousand dollars in the "Rose of Asia," which has reached rehearsal stage, and wants but two weeks before it is ready for the booking agents to look at. "The Honeymooners" has just finished playing its final run at the Alhambra and is upon the shelf, after having made our Sammy some twenty-five hundred dollars in the course of its varied career. He could wish, however, that his financial condition were a trifle different in view of the rather dubious outlook just ahead. S. Sydney Tappan has not been playing the part of a hermit these months, and does not seem to have a great deal more actual cash in hand than when he came down to New York some sixteen months ago. He will need the six hundred dollars he has in the bank if this depression holds for very long. Ricorton will not be much help. The musician seems a great deal like a child with the world for his nursery. He and Ruby have but little money now even after a successful season in vaudeville. They have spent the greater part of their savings dur- ing the summer. It seems characteristic of the artistic temperament; the morrow can take care of itself. Well, usually, the morrow can be no worse than to-day and perhaps that is the reason. I think, however, that you are going to be glad that you kept the second-floor room on West Twenty-ninth Street, Sammy. The ballroom now is vacant, too, for Ruby. The lady who giggled so at night has been taken from the river at Twenty-third Street and left a month's rent unpaid. That was M'sieu Clouet's only addition to the reporter's story in the World. It may seem strange to some of you that Carrie should have heard of the withdrawal of the "Lady in the Lion Skin" and not have known the real reason why. Well, they do not need to read the newspapers in the Settlement districts of Melchester to know that a depression exists. It is a grim reality spelled in words of hunger and despair. Carrie had not had time to read newspapers for some two months before 204 THE BALANCE the "Lady in the Lion Skin" was withdrawn. She might not have known it then had not Mrs. Schroeder brought her the clipping from the local dramatic news from New York. A brief sentence or two it was, saying that the "Lady in the Lion Skin" had been withdrawn for the present owing to certain difficulties, and that Miss Tremaine would appear again in Boston in "The Betrayer," as a result. The spirit in which Mrs. Schroeder brought it to her daughter would be hard to describe. It was such a mixture of pride, and curiosity, and affection, too. Since her daughter left the house on Washington Avenue for this gloomy Settlement it is gloomy to Mrs. Schroeder she has not been quite so sure, quite so dogmatic in her ways. Dimly she has realized that this Settlement and S. Sydney Tappan and the "Lady in the Lion Skin" and her daughter are all bound up together in some odd way. Just how, she does not know, but she is wondering. An essayist has said that after thirty-five a great many of us humans close the blinds of our intellects, and go to bed. If this is true, Mrs. Schroeder is up again 'and peeking out the blinds. Her successful spouse, however, will sleep on until they fire the house beneath him. In Carrie's mind there comes a great tenderness for Sammy, as she reads the little news item. There is not a moment's doubt for her as to the reason why S. Sydney Tappan has done this thing. He has decided to be some one in the world, after all! She hopes he does not think, however, that it is enough merely to withdraw this play. That is only a beginning of retracing all his steps. He must do that, of course, before he can step out in the right direction; but he must not stop with a withdrawal! The little hurt she has felt, at first, because he has not written her about it is quickly assuaged by her pride in his achievement. She writes him: "Dear Sammy, I haven't any words in which to tell you what I think of your withdrawal of the play. I only hope THE BALANCE 205 I haven't hurt you too much in what I have said about it. You can have no conception of what a feeling it gives me to know that your name is no longer before the world beneath its title. I think it has made me miserable in the past principally because I realized how futile all my efforts for these working girls of mine were, with their ten-cent store jewellery, and sale shoes and cheap underwear, when they could see things like your play. It does not take much to put wrong ideas in young girls' heads. And they are so constitutionally good, most all of them! I wonder if you can see what I mean? My little efforts seem so hopeless against the immense, intangible evil you could wield against me and did wield, unthinkingly! for I know, of course, that you would never have done it intentionally. "The fine thing to me, Sammy, is that you could count the cost to yourself of withdrawing that play, and yet do it just the same! That means something to me. You can never know what it does mean to me, even here on Hague Street. I am not expecting you to revolutionize the world, of course; but your influence, exerted in the way you can exert it, will be the equal of the efforts of hun- dreds of people such as I am. Though we have our mission. There is a part of Hague Street where but one kind of preaching carries conviction and that is example. "I won't let loose my enthusiasm on you just yet, however. I still have it in quantity, though minus that immediate optimism! I wonder do you remember when you first told me about those imaginary hockey sticks you said people put in your stockings for Christmas? That is just the way I feel about all the unthinking people who are doing so much harm, so heedlessly. The Meanies! "At least we had our youth, Sammy, our bright sun-shadowed youth. These poor souls among whom I live never seem to have had even that. Just think a moment, of your life, with all its youth left out! It is bad enough in good times, but at present there seems to be a depression, and a kind of suffering is beginning about which I do not dare to think. So many of the shops are closing down, and throwing girls out of work. "I am in despair about one of my girls, here Martha Grossman. Poor dear, she seems more sensitive than most to her surroundings. She has been saving for so long to go to the Northfield Conference, 'to see if there is really anything fine or decent in the world!' though on what she has been saving I can't imagine, as she has always done her own cooking, washing, and housekeeping! But she lost her position yesterday, and so will never get to Northfield now, I suppose. We need all our money for real relief. If only she doesn't get discouraged! Their despair is what I fear. You can never know how I hate this depression. "John Rouse is preaching to all the strikers nights to leave the labour unions and join the I. W. W. I am so afraid that this depression will make what he says ring true to them. Practically 206 THE BALANCE all of the clerks and the girls have joined the new labour union, but it looks to me as if the Federation of Labour will have its own affairs to look after this winter without helping any one new. And the stores won't need their clerks so badly, either. That is why I am so afraid they may believe in Rouse. Why shouldn't they believe him? The doctrine of sabotage, of destruction, is so frightful, to my ideas. And yet how can they think that morality is anything else than hypocrisy, when it doesn't govern anything in the industrial world but conversation ? I can't find it in my heart to blame them our ideas have simply made a hell on earth for them to live in; why should they think them right? "There is so much for you to do, Sammy! Simply setting people right, showing people how to think. I sometimes think that no one cares to use his or her brains any more. But you could make them think, and make them pay two dollars for the privilege, too. How I hope you will! Anyway, you have withdrawn the play and I can think of nothing else. "Ever yours, "CARRIE." What a raving Sammy it was who finished that letter, and caught a glimpse of his position! With- draw the "Lady in the Lion Skin," on his own account, and lose six hundred dollars a week! From where had she gotten this inspiration? The irony of it! A letter of congratulation when he had been holding his head for ten days in indignation at the selfish action of Messrs. Friedman and Marshall! To his credit, I do not think the idea ever occurred to him of writing Carrie and telling her that she was right, and he had heroically withdrawn it for the reason she had given. Perhaps there was a little memory left of certain letters from college to his mother. And yet, without that memory, I think our Sammy had become too much of a man, then, to stoop so low as that. He always told Carrie the truth. What made him rave the most was that he could not withdraw the accursed thing now, even if he wanted to! Mr. Friedman had done it for him first. There was only left to him the ignominy of writing Carrie and telling her that his heroism had been forced upon him. And that was all! His chance to palliate that bald answer had been taken from him by the depression. It was THE BALANCE 207 one of the only times when he could find absolutely no heroic role left to play. Do you wonder that he raved ? It was when his period of raging was over that he sat down and sent a check for fifty dollars to the account of Martha Grossman! At least, she need not miss Northfield if it meant so much to her. He did not enclose a note to Carrie. He was a very queer Sammy. It was from the check that Carrie knew he had gotten her letter, and she wrote and thanked him for the thing he had done for Martha. He was rapidly retrieving his pedestal in Carrie's mind those weeks of the early winter. But though he tried a dozen times, he could not bring himself to answer her letter. Several times he even sat down with the pen in his hand, but he had not the least idea of what he wished to say, and no words would come. Some days he was not sure that he would ever have withdrawn the "Lady in the Lion Skin" at all. On others, he was positive that, had the play been still running, he would have telephoned Friedman the moment he got the letter and had the thing taken off. Still others, he wondered when Sylvia would be able to use it again, and what royalty he would ask for when the time came. In it all, however, he knew in his heart that he would never be able to write another play like his first one. Carrie's sentences had sunk deep into his soul, and the zest was gone forever from a drama of that kind. He knew, too, that it was hopeless to try to dodge the issue with Carrie. He could not write and not mention the play or its withdrawal. She would write him at once, in that case, demanding an explanation. It was why he ended up by not writing at all. I think his contempt for himself would have been greater, too, had it not been overshadowed by a fear that grew more menacing to him every day. Would he ever be able to write an- other play, now that his first one was done for? He is not worried yet for his future, however, be- cause no definite purpose has circumscribed his horizon. 208 THE BALANCE The steadily increasing length of the bread line at Fleischmann's, the slow increase of all-night lodgers on the cheerless benches of the city parks, the mounting proportion of jobless Thespians upon Broadway, the growing throngs around the soap-box orators upon the East Side of nights, the swelling crowd about the want-ad counters of the newspapers crowds that hurry in, and slink out quickly lest some one see them, that give their plea for work to the superior clerk with some feeble jest meant to cover and allay the mortify- ing humiliation of their act all these have not yet impressed themselves upon his consciousness. The depression is only reaching out its tentacles now, thrusting upward from the tenements of the poor into the world of commerce and of art. S. Sydney Tappan's first intimation that this vague depression, of which he reads daily in the papers, can become a grim reality to him is when Hagaman announces that he cannot secure satisfactory booking for the new "Rose of Asia" until the storm blows over. "They're cutting down, Tappy," he says grimly, after one of his daily visits to the United Offices up- stairs. "I can't get work for some of my animals even! It's the boobs from the legit that are doing all the damage. They'll work for pretty near nothing just to fill in the time. There is nothing doing all right, for some little while, now. Unless you want to play Poli for four-fifty a week!" But Sammy will lose nearly fifty dollars a week on terms of that kind, and cannot consider it. Stars with reputation, who will draw on their name, are plentiful since so many road productions have been withdrawn. It is these people who are crowding out the regular vaudeville teams and sketches. "It's just a case of wait, Claude," he says lightly. He is rather used to having things go wrong, our Sammy. This past year and a half has always seemed a little out of drawing to him. Success is not his nat- ural conception of his environment. THE BALANCE 209 To Ric and Ruby the news, somehow, does not appear overwhelming. So long as Ricorton has money in his pocket he will never worry. In Ruby there is always a tiny thrill of fear when poverty confronts her. She knows the fate of so many of those chorus people she has known since first she left Utica. But she has a deathless faith in her own lucky star, and the thrill soon passes. She has been out of work before, and something always seems to turn up. Mr. Micawber would not seem unreasonable to her. In her mind, however, there is the realization that she is no longer a young girl, as girls are rated upon the stage, and that as yet she has heaped up no reserve of experience upon which to draw, once youth and beauty are gone. She has always played practically the same parts, and trusted to her voice and looks to carry her to success. There is but one safe road for the woman who must stay upon the stage, unmarried, and without exceptional genius: it is the road of character acting and this as yet she has never followed. Well, she will make a start this next season, if she can. She is about thirty now, and surely will be at- tractive a few years more. She does not like to think of the future, always. There are times when she envies, with an envy that is almost a pain, those girls she once knew in Utica, who have married now, and have homes and children, and a husband who comes home at six o'clock. That is life, perhaps. Yet they do not seem to think so, most of them. They envy her, and her wide views of life, her freedom and her clothes. She could never marry a man like their husbands. In fact, until she met this fair-haired musician, she has never seen a man she would care to marry. Jack Bantry! Ugh! He is hateful to her at times. Why does she ever have anything to do with him ? Marriage with Ric will never be a settled life, she knows, either. He is half genius, half vagabond Bohemian, and his gift will make him little money until after he is dead. He seldom has a 210 THE BALANCE chance to use it these days, too; composing is not aided by banging the piano in a rehearsal hall from ten till six. She feels the tenderness she might have for a child for this tender-hearted man who treats her with such un- failing courtesy, in spite of the tawdry surroundings of their lives. Somehow, she cannot feel poor or second class when Ricorton is around. They are simply poor for the present, standing upon the verge of great deeds ! If only she could protect him from the sordidness of their present! It is a queer feeling, this love for Ricorton that stirs her so. It is seldom passion; and yet she knows how easily it could be, if he wished it above all the rest. It is genuine love that Ricorton inspires in this curiously blended nature of hers. She feels the same happiness, the same safety she can dimly remember experiencing in her father's arms, with now, however, an added thrill. It is only because Ricorton does not press his suit quite passionately enough that she has not married him already. There is a strain of primitive shyness in Ruby, a desire to be surprised, perhaps conquered; an out- growth possibly of her hot blood, that makes her inter- pose deft obstacles to his easy conquest. Perhaps, too, this is why the brutal strength of Bantry has such a fas- cination for her at times. He is elemental, dangerous. How many obstacles can he surmount? To the Irishman, the news that booking cannot be secured for some time is not terrifying. He has floated now, over almost all the world, and Williamson's, Melbourne, Australia, seems the same to him as Hong Kong, China, Covent Garden, London, the La Salle, Chicago, or Broadway, New York. Life is change, and this is but one of the changes. He does not spend all his money, either. He is thrifty. He has saved enough by this time so that depressions do not frighten him. He will never lend money, this strange Irishman, and in the theatrical profession that is the final word. It is the flat refusal of Friedman and Marshall to pay S. Sydney Tappan a cent of his eight thousand back THE BALANCE 211 royalties that first awakens Sammy to his situation. His writing has been chaotic lately, and he has no play which he can complete and offer for sale. He is sure that he could sell another like the "Lady in the Lion Skin" to several producing firms if he had it just now. His name would suffice at this present moment, with the other play so fresh in Broadway's mind. But there is something wrong with his dramatic gift these days. He cannot seem to settle down to constructing anything. He has been overrun with details for a long time in stagingthe "Rose of Asia.'* Perhaps that is it. And yet, there is something else. He seems to lack inspiration. He cannot take that fancy to any of the ideas which present themselves, the fancy which was always so necessary for S. Sydney Tappan when he produced a thing worth while. He is worried to-night, as they all sit in the room on West Twenty-ninth Street and make light of their troubles. Perhaps, too, the vague uncertainty with which all his relations with Carrie are now clouded has served to keep him depressed. "I'll give most of 'em a week!" Ruby is saying. She is flat upon the bed, and is referring to the chorus of the "Rose of Asia." "They'd stick longer for you, Tappy, than for any one else, but they've got to eat!" "Oh, I suppose we can get a new crowd and teach the thing all over again," says Tappy wearily. It is dis- couraging, this necessity of starting all anew. The Thespians he has gathered together will have to scatter like wolves for food, if booking is not forthcoming. Ricorton looks up from the gas plate, where he is standing in rapt absorption over a new dish of his own concoction. "What do you hear from Sylvia?" he asks. " She is in Boston," Sammy answers. " 'The Betrayer' again!" "Remick said they would consider those two last songs I took over there," Ricorton adds as an after- thought. 212 THE BALANCE "I suppose their own stuff gets first chance," Sammy says. He means the song writers who compose on salary, and whose work belongs to their house. "And it is all such poor stuff, too!" He stares at the cracked mirror. "Oh, it all makes me sick!" he adds despondently. "I'm going out!" He is very gloomy to-night, our Sammy, as he takes his way along Seventh Avenue to Broadway and Forty- second Street. It is very dispiriting to be obliged to put this "Rose of Asia" in the storehouse just when the time for showing it seemed to be at hand. He resents the glitter and magnificence of the lighted streets, of the great electric signs, of the gay theatres, because they hold out no invitation to him. He can go and see almost any of these plays which are holding the boards to-night, by merely presenting his card at the box office; but he does not wish to see them. He wishes to be alone, he thinks. Some place where he can think. It is time he considered seriously this life of his, his pres- ent situation. Where can one think in New York ? Let us hold pur breaths a little, S. Sydney Tappan is going to try thinking! The sound of distant violins catches his ear as he passes Sixth Avenue on his way to the library; and he stops a moment, beside the bulk of Carnegie Hall. It is the Russian Philharmonic Orchestra, he sees by the posters. This will be better than the library. He has not heard any good music since his mother died. They are finishing a suite by Rimsky Korsakov as he takes a seat in the rear, and in a moment are beginning something by Grieg, he does not know what, except that it has the unmistakable harmonies of the Nor- wegian. It is an odd Sammy who sits here to-night, and listens to the haunting sweep of the strings. In his mind memories are crowding: memories of nights of child- hood when he lay upstairs and his mother sang in the drawing-room below; memories of summer nights on THE BALANCE 213 Hawthorne Street, of evenings in Paris and Vienna and a little boy in a wide white collar hanging over the plush balconies of an opera house, his eyes wide at the wonder workers in the pit and on the stage below him, and in his little soul a great, thrilling resolve to do it, too! Yes, there is Wagner, now, upon the instruments of the orchestra before him in Carnegie Hall to-night, the genius of the man sounding even plainer to the world because the years are rolling thick upon his grave. Deathless music! That same music he listened to in Paris so many years ago listened and thrilled and re- solved ! The labour of the man ! The soul of greatness in an attic! Before his eyes and in his ears the music of eternity! The character of him, the endless patience, the wonder of the vision, world without end ! The imper- ishablefaithbeforeaworldof pharisees. Before Heaven, a man! "Tristan und Isolde," has faded from the orchestral harp before our Sammy, now, however, and in the mounting silence a new melody has started. A strange, broken waltz, that lifts him on with ever- changing variations; melting, shifting chords that shimmer into great crashes of sheer music; blending, softening, then, into a mincing theme with flashes of incandescent beauty lighting up the progressing mel- ody, like showering golden stars upon a dark, ultra- marine stream; breaking into the exquisite madness of the waltz strain, now, more and more, until it bursts upon the orchestra at last in matchless, passionate abandon, overwhelming the harmonic typhoon of its accompaniment with the great, swelling sweetness of its cadenced melody! Only the crash of silence tells our Sammy that the poem is over. "Don Juan," by Strauss, he sees ! Into the soul of S. Sydney Tappan, inch by inch, a deathless thrill is creeping, as he sits entranced, his face tight clutched between his palms, the waves of melody trembling in his brain; a thrill, I think, that is to be his vision. He is seeing the genius of the ages, the inspira- 214 THE BALANCE tion of the centuries, piling up its slow laborious bulk, age by age; emerging from the shadowy path of fabled muses, the aisles of distant endeavour where trod the sons of God; calling forth, each decade, to the living flame in man; striking fire from ancient tinder, now showers of half-remembered chansons which dim min- strels sang, now tiny tongues of flame blazing in monk- scriven records, in inspired crusades, in the Assisan ever gaining fuel from what it feeds on; lighting now into a blaze that casts its light and shadow far over the world of man over art in painting, in literature, in music, in sculpture, in architecture, in religion; its flames rising high toward the Heavens through the Renaissance, touching with life the figures of Luther, Stradavari, Palestrina the brilliant figures of Dante and Giotto still flaming upon the horizon Da Vinci, Diirer, Bach, Scarlatti by dozens, by scores, by hundreds, by thousands they march, until names are useless, unending, all marching down Tennyson's ring- ing grooves of change, the mighty bulk of human genius looming higher and higher, adding the talent, the spirit of each generation, as the inspiration of the past strikes fire on the talent of the present, until the flame that lies latent in the breasts of the S. Sydney Tappans of to- day leaps into life, strains madly to reach its Heaven, hot, lambent, wonderful, transfusing the life of the man it inhabits, and joins finally the great sweep of the re- vealing fire of the ages as the Spirit that is Man goes crashing down the vista of the future! The memories are gone now from S. Sydney Tappan, and as he rises blindly, and bursts out upon the street, his soul is flashing fire within him. Great music, great books, great deeds, great art, these are the deathless things of man, and their creators the roll of honour in a thousand creeds! His gift is taking flame from the blaze that once was Wagner, once was Ibsen, once was Francis, once was Paul, yes, once was Christ and be- fore Him, Buddha! The Spirit of God in Man! I would like to give all the credit to Carrie, as S. THE BALANCE 215 Sydney Tappan's vision floods his soul, and the resolve of Paris, of Vienna, so many years ago, rekindles into the flame which is to light the lifetime of his endeavour; but there is other credit for her. Vision without pur- pose cannot move the mountain. Soon we can grant Carrie all his purpose. To-night, as S. Sydney Tappan strides on, unconscious of his surroundings, intent only upon this blinding light within his soul, I think the credit belongs to God. He has touched the prostrate talent of our Sammy with the vision of the ages. Is the day for miracles quite over? S. Sydney Tappan is entering the path that Wagner trod, to-night. He has fallen in love with the idea of his lifetime; fallen in love, this time, forever. He, too, will give the world to prove his inspiration. CHAPTER XV IN WHICH SAMMY GETS His IDEA AT LAST THERE are few things more irritating than to resolve to write something great, and then find an utter lack of subject. It has only a few parallels. Carrie could have presented one without hesitation. The young ladies who resolve nobly to help the poor, and start out to do it! In that case, however, the inspiration is usually a terrible thing for the poor, also. To S. Sydney Tappan, however, in the weeks follow- ing his resolve a resolve crystallized into a determina- tion astonishing to one familiar with his character there could not have been given anything approaching the exasperation of this dearth of genius. What, in- deed, more provoking than to conclude to do some- thing fine, and then sit helplessly before a stony type- writer, one's brain and inventive genius quite cold and unresponsive! It is well known that the best way never to write a play is to start with the desire to write one, and with nothing else. Perhaps this is why our Sammy spent so many discouraging weeks scowling savagely at his usually faithful typewriter, without a single result worth mentioning. Always, too, just around the corner from his dra- matic vision there lay lurking the very idea which made him famous, finally. Perhaps it was obscured by the swarm of tiny devils of sensuousness which crowded around him in those days, leaping with little malignant grins upon the silent keys, daring him to strike them. That he never did is the best proof to me of the strength of his resolve. There are to be no more Ladies in Lion Skins from the mind of S. Sydney 216 THE BALANCE 217 Tappan. It was the height of irony, the variety of plots of that kind which presented themselves to him in those gloomy weeks. But beneath them all he could see the malevolent grins of the little devils, and he put them from him manfully. He will write the best that is in him from now on, though he may starve in the attempt. He did not falter even upon the memorable day when the great Kane sent for him, to provide one of his wan- ing stars with a new piece of delicately done suggestion. It was the fashion for some time in New York, that style of drama, and no one more responsive to fashion than our American producers. One rhinoceros drama, if successful, would find, I verily believe, at least nine- teen comrades jogging along behind and that, before the season was half over. "The Lady in the Lion Skin" impelled one of these small waves, and our Sammy's great name seemed promising. The great Kane's face expressed more than incre- dulity when he heard our Sammy's answer to his pro- posal. "But my dear man," he is quoted as saying. "It is what the public wants!" To which our Sammy replied that for him, at least, the public could be damned! "The public just follow after," he said, staring at the great Kane's little nose. "It is for us to pull the sodden mass along a little farther during our lives!" If he had told him his whole idea I think the great Kane would have rung for an attendant. He did go so far as to ask him what kind of a play he contemplated writing to which our Sammy had no reply. He had no means of knowing as yet! He was mentally noting that when he did write it this Kane should have the last chance at it. His conception of his own ability was stronger than ever as he took his departure. But he saw a little plainer that his struggle would but have begun once this new play of his was finished. I think he saw it plainer and plainer as the days followed one 218 THE BALANCE another, and the avenues down which others sought fame gradually closed for him. But he did not ever even entertain the thought of giving up, now he had started. His vision always held him to his course. It was startling how quickly his name and his face disappeared from Broadway. I think he was hardly mentioned three months after he resigned from the Lambs' Club. It was partly, of course, because Sylvia was in Boston. The memories of cities, those of republics, are wofully short, however, and S. Sydney Tappan had vanished completely before even half that dull season was over. It is strange to think that he was in his room on West Twenty-ninth Street all the while. Even had Sylvia been in town, I doubt if his name would have stayed in the swim. Perhaps it was the just penalty he paid for the worthlessness of his work. Money was all that Sylvia's play ever meant; and money is easily spent. I venture to say that in all New York there was not a soul to remark on the passing of Sammy. There were times, of course, when he nearly de- spaired; when he sat gazing at his dark tenement land- scape in a despondency that Ricorton thought would never lift. For the literary mind there can be no an- guish approaching that which lack of ideas induces when ideas are at a premium. It was not aided by the persistent endeavours of Ricorton to play the cornet those evenings, either. It was the only instrument in the orchestra with which he was not upon speaking terms, and he put in the time making its intimate acquaintance. Evenings, now, when S. Sydney Tap- pan takes down the volume in which "Doctor Paulding" heads the list, I think there are echoes of cornet tones, a trifle off the key, in some parts of the dialogue. I am not sure, either, but what he would give up "Dr. Pauld- ing" in its entirety to hear those notes once more. When he finally did get his great idea, the idea which runs through all his later work, Ricorton could have rehearsed a Cubist orchestra in their second-floor back THE BALANCE 219 room and our Sammy would never have heard it. There were days then when he never looked up from the manuscript which unrolled itself before his troubled eyes; when Ricorton played the cornet in untroubled peace, and Ruby altered her clothes to meet the chang- ing fashion while Bantry smoked in gloomy silence. An odd quartette, these four. The rented rooms of New York are filled with their replicas, altered in various ways, perhaps, to suit the whims of the Gods of Circumstance, in all else the same. To Ricorton it was only a matter of time before there would be more shows to drill and conduct, and meanwhile he could write a few good songs and master the cornet. To Ruby and Bantry it was but the common experience of life incidental to the stage. I hardly believe any of them expected the fight for life which the depression entailed, that year, upon the poor of New York. When it had been three months with them, and all hope of employment had vanished until times were better, they had their first, dim glimpse of what the future might hold for them. The brutal thing about an industrial depression is that it closes all industries at once. The desperate worker has no place to turn for relief, and so must starve with folded hands. It was some two months before this fact became embedded in Ricorton's mind, and he ceased trying for waiter's jobs, for jobs in hotel orches- tras, and at the piano in picture shows; gave up in despair and settled himself to his cornet in grim pa- tience, while S. Sydney Tappan's money gradually melted beneath the onslaught of their necessities. In all New York there was no one to buy Ricorton's genius for the proverbial shilling. That it was S. Sydney Tappan's dwindling capital which held all their heads above the waves of starvation but served to intensify the musician's feeling of the ignominy of it all. The hurt of it bit to the quick of Ricorton's soul. A man, and helpless! There were even times when he put away those scores and manuscripts, and said good-bye 220 THE BALANCE \ to them forever. His father had been right. Art is long, and life is short, and needs money to support it. I do not think I blame Ruby over much, now, for those evenings she spent with Bantry at the restaurant on Tenth Street. There are times in people's lives when they will sell their souls for the cozy lights and cheap wine of Ricotti's. And there seemed to be a fatal sameness about Ricorton's menus, induced per- haps by lack of funds. Spaghetti is cheapest, and will nourish, too. It lacks variety, however, upon too much repetition. It is to our Sammy's everlasting honour that, through it all, it never occurred to him that his money would last longer if he had only himself to support. He would have thought as soon of casting these friends of his adrift in mid-ocean as on the streets of New York. I do not wonder that gradually there dawned in Ruby's eyes an appreciation of the strange code of honour of the man who sat writing "Doctor Paulding," with starva- tion three months ahead, and never stopped even to question the motives of his friends. It is, too, the one dark, ineffaceable blot upon the soul of Ruby that she recognized, and took advantage of her discovery. There were extenuating circumstances, but they could never excuse the deed. Sammy never knew from what specific thing he derived his great idea. It seemed to come full born, suddenly, from out the kaleidoscopic memory of those nights and days spent wandering aimlessly about the island of despair: memories of icy waterfronts, of warm, evil-smelling saloons, of snow-swept parks of iron and stone, of rags and stumbling horses, all jumbled up with half-remembered glimpses of the world of Forty-second Street which he knew so well and avoided as much as possible. He always remembered just when it came. It was as he sat staring at Ric in the West Twenty- ninth Street room, noting the look of hopelessness in the musician's blue eyes, realizing the fine texture of the THE BALANCE 221 man's soul that felt more keenly every day the sordid- ness of his defeat. Poverty ! A world of wolves at one another's throats, professing, too, the brotherhood of man; all life a war, all effort turned, not to magnificent endeavour, but toward grinding out a profit from the work of some one else! The beastly survival of the fittest, apologized for by the excuse of man's frailty of soul: necessity the driving power, the greed of the comparative few and not the natural instincts of the many the main- spring; greed, without any possible substitute because of the inherent evil of man's so-called nature! As in a flash, he saw the reality which men see as in a mirror all things reversed but still holding their rela- tion; the reality of this Frankenstein of Man, man al- lowed, man created by the evil passion of the avaricious of ages past, spreading out and down from the feudal ages of Europe to gather in gradually the reins of dominion over all mankind, a great Monster of En- vironment now, crushing with its mighty bulk the light of all men's souls, creating with its own weight the evil at which it points for the justification of its continued existence, casting the blight of its materialism upon the flowering of man in the centuries since chivalry, the greed of ages past revivified by each generation's glut- tons, crushing under foot from childhood the tiny light of each man's soul except where some Tolstoi flames despite it, while the religion that was Christ's cries out reprovingly against the despairing deeds of its wracked victims, and shuts its eyes with the strength of Habit against the Monster itself. Man moulded now by the Monster he himself allowed to fatten when the greed of capitalism first emerged from the Middle Ages of the race; not a new Monster fed afresh each generation by the evil hand of Man's ineradicable nature, and so destined to be always with us! Before Heaven, no not that! No great deed of the world done for greed! No Wagners starving in their attics for greed! No fine thing of Man done except 222 THE BALANCE for the doing the race run for the running! All else as dust. You will remember in the play of "Doctor Paulding" that the doctor proves his point of the nature of man's soul by his belief in three people, a belief so strong that their evil intentions intentions induced in great part by their necessity cannot be carried out in the face of his love for them. It was but S. Sydney Tappan's first assault upon that idea that there is a new monster with each generation. In "Doctor Paulding" the age-old monster took Sammy's characters in hand and the love of the doctor saved them. Afterward, Sammy could never understand how he searched so long for his idea when it lay about him all the while in that poorly furnished room. It was his genius, of course, that held the audience breathless in the working out of the idea. People after seeing "Doctor Paulding" were often at a loss to account for the strength of the interest. It was because, beneath the texture of the play, there beat the eternal truth. To this day, however, I fear there are some managers who never understood it. I have always wondered, too, if some time during those months in which he wrote "Doctor Paulding," a certain old-fashioned drawing-room in Melchester, with an eager-faced girl sitting before him, never came into his mind; or if his own remark of years ago "that some one should write a play about it!" did not ever occur to him. The roots of our ideas and actions extend down and back so far in the soil of our subcon- cious minds that it is difficult sometimes to trace the exact seed from which some of our inspirations spring. Perhaps, after all, the flowering of his soul under the sunshine of the divine inspiration was only the final development of that seed planted in his mind so long ago by Carrie; planted, and unconsciously nurtured by her during those years afterward. I am certain, at least, that our Sammy would not be sitting just now, writing "Doctor Paulding" in his cheap room, had it not THE BALANCE 223 been for Carrie. He might have arrived at the same goal by other and devious routes long after, but we can give Carrie all the credit, this time, for the great idea which stirs him so. The miracle of his awakening has been succeeded by this task, ready made apparently for him to grapple with. He is beginning his attack upon the nation's monster, poverty! And beginning it at the beginning: the moral anarchy of the human minds that cause it. A rather large contract ! I can hear you saying, with a smile. Well, remember that the larger the concep- tion, the greater always was S. Sydney Tappan's enthusiasm. For the time being he has conceived of himself as but one step down that Vista of the Future; and behind him he can still see the glory of all the others, as they hold high their torches down the many different aisles. At least he will blaze the way another foot! It was one evening some two months after his inspira- tion that our Sammy was tempted again, in his odd way, by that old conception he had held of success. A note from Dorothy, asking him to take her for dinner at the Ritz and to the theatre afterward, was the guise in which the temptation came. Poor Dorothy! Money was always the last thing in the world about which she ever took thought. Sammy is one of her oldest friends, a friend of Hawthorne Street, and can surely spare the time to spend an evening with her this has been the way she has put it to herself as she writes the note. He is rather worth keeping track of, too, nowadays, since his great triumph in Melchester. He will make an interesting addition to society whenever he comes to town ; and, for some reason, he is no longer upon Carrie's string. Perhaps because Carrie has turned out to be so odd. He has made a tremendous amount of money, too, by this time, most likely. People who write plays which get on always do. She has not followed the season in New York this year, and so does not know of S. Sydney Tappan's 224 THE BALANCE brief, meteoric career and sudden vanishment. To Mel- chester he will always be a tremendous success, from now henceforth. The weaknesses of the man! Our Sammy has his vision now, and yet there still hangs about him the ghost of that old mania of success. Despite our visions, environment can always offer us a battle still. He does not care so far as New York is concerned, but he cannot bear that Melchester shall ever know of the change in his circumstances. It was partly pure pride, too, of course; that same pride which did our Sammy for character so long, and which still stands about waiting for a chance to serve again. I do not know which of the two was the impelling motive that urged him on to entertain Dorothy. I can add no commentary, how- ever, which would illuminate more plainly the odd mix- ture of this S. Sydney Tappan than the mere fact that he drew out twenty-five of his few remaining dollars to take her to the Ritz! Thank Heaven, dress clothes for men stay in style for comparatively long periods. His spirits rose, too, oddly enough, as he trod Fifth Avenue once more, on his way to the hotel. He forgot his circumstances completely in those few minutes during which he walked up Fifth Avenue and looked at the buildings with a new interest. He was thinking of the wide application of his new play, now well under way. In fact, he was just refusing the great Kane the opportunity of producing it as he walked into the lobby! While he waits in the lobby, however, his old per- plexities come back to plague him. He has not written to Carrie yet! And it is nearly three months since he received her note thanking him for the Martha Grossman check. As he waits for Dorothy to come downstairs he realizes afresh that he does not know even yet what to say in answer to that letter of con- gratulation; and this dinner will be talked of in Mel- chester, will come to Carrie's ears in time, perhaps before he has screwed up courage to write. To all intents and purposes he must say to-night what he THE BALANCE 225 will say later about the "Lady in the Lion Skin" and its withdrawal unless the subject can be avoided. It will have to be the truth, of course, he decides a mo- ment later. To realize upon the instant the unfair- ness of the thing to him! The old truth is no longer the truth about him. The Sammy who sits in the Ritz Carlton to-night could never have written any "Lady in the Lion Skin." What will Sylvia say, he wonders? In a way he dreads seeing Sylvia again she will not understand his new point of view, he fears. He has not said any- thing to her in his letters beyond the fact, that he is writing a new play. She is coming to New York to- night, too, for a week-end stay, and he will be seeing her soon. And he rises to greet Dorothy and they go in to din- ner. To Dorothy it is quite an exciting occasion. She does not take dinner every night at the Ritz with suc- cessful playwrights. No doubt the diners are all wondering if she is his fiancee! "Do tell me," she says vivaciously, as some of our Sammy's precious twenty-five dollars disappear with the first course. "Do tell me about the play!'-* "The play?" our Sammy repeats, a little blankly. It does not seem reasonable that she can mean "Doctor Paulding," so soon! "Yes," she goes on, "your Lion Lady " "You mean the 'Lady in the Lion Skin/" says S. Sydney Tappan hastily. He can stand anything except wrong titles on his plays! "So I do," says Dorothy, "of course!" "Withdrawn," says Sammy laconically. She stares at him blankly. "You don't mean it!" she cries. "But why? I thought it was such a success!" "It was," says Sammy drily. Good heavens, is this to be his punishment, this bringing up of that miserable play every time he meets people he has not 226 THE BALANCE seen for some time? To certain old ladies in Mel- chester, he knows, he is still a plumber, probably to remain one until plumbing goes out of style. He had not thought the " Lady in the Lion Skin" would dog his footsteps in the same manner. "The depression," he explains, although he loathes to. He always hated to explain anything, and this is particularly unpleasant, coming so soon after his hope that the subject might not be touched on. Dorothy attempts to look knowing. Depression? Where has she heard of this before? But she is saved the bother of thinking by a diversion. Sammy has risen from his chair to greet a woman, girl she seems almost, with fine bronze hair and ivory complexion, who is running with little steps across the dining-room to seize him by both hands and hug him. "Sylvia!" he says, in his voice the ring of unmistak- able pleasure. It is partly because he is really glad to see her, partly because he will not have to explain now just why he has no new play upon Broadway, nor that he is writing a new one of a different hue, meant to overshadow all the others. Dorothy will be side tracked. "Tappy," Sylvia cries out. "I'm just in from Boston I've finished there I couldn't get you on the telephone just now!" With a little grin, S. Sydney Tappan introduces Dorothy. "We were just talking about you," he says to Sylvia, who has sat down now, leaving her two partners quite nonplussed at the table over by the windows. "Yes," says Dorothy, "and the 'Lady in the Lion Skin!" This is the most thrilling thing that has ever happened to her. She is actually dining in the Ritz with a playwright and Sylvia Tremaine. Melchester can offer nothing like this! "Poor Tappy," says Sylvia, patting him upon the arm. "Wasn't it too mean?" she turns to Dorothy. THE BALANCE 227 "And after I got him to write it, too! You don't know how much I've missed you, Sydney How are all your troubles? Oh! And the new play! You must bring it to-morrow!" Sammy shakes his head. "No," he says in an odd tone. Dorothy gasps a little. Why, he treats her quite rudely, nonchalantly and she is so evidently in love with him! "You will!" says Sylvia imperiously. She changes to her wheedling tone once more: "Please don't be a pig, Tappy." She turns again to Dorothy. "He^s very piggy at times." "No," reiterates Sammy, defending himself. "It isn't done." "Of course it isn't not in nice society !" Sylvia says in a flash. Sammy stares at her soberly. "You've degenerated, Sylly," he says. "You knew I meant the play. I shall not read from unfinished masterpieces!' "You will," she says. "You've got to come.'* She considers him a moment. " I'm going to whisper to him, now, and ruin him,'* she says to Dorothy. "They're victims when I whisper.' 7 "I don't hear you," says Sammy. "Besides, I shall call the head waiter. I won't be persecuted in a public place." But Sylvia leans over and whispers in his ear. "Come to-night," she whispers. "I'll be back, too, at twelve-thirty." And with a little nod to Dorothy she hurries away to her two waiting partners before our Sammy can make his negative take effect. "She is darling," cries Dorothy. "Isn't she?" "She's the devil," replies S. Sydney Tappan, rue- fully. He will have to go, he knows. He would rather put it off, too. She will require a great deal of ex- plaining from him before she lets him off. Still, she 228 THE BALANCE is a brick after all. She is the same as if he had fifty plays upon Broadway at the moment. There is a little catch in his throat as he looks after her. There is something fine about Sylvia Tremaine, after all. In his heart he knows that she has made just a tiny extra fuss about him because just at the moment he is not a fine success! It is her way of comforting him, though all the Ritz is looking on ! Dorothy brings him back with a little jolt. "Do tell me, Sammy is she in love with you?" Sammy flushes a little. "Ridiculous," he says rudely. Inside he is con- scious that she does like him perhaps a trifle more than friendship calls for. "Tell me, what is the news from Melchester ? Is it the same?" Dorothy denies indignantly the implication that nothing much ever occurs in the old city of their youth. "All sorts of changes," she says. "Deaths, and marriages, and engagements!" "Any one I know?" he asks. "Old Mr. Dabney," she says tentatively. "Old Mr. Dabney!" he exclaims. There is a little pain in his heart. He has never written the old man yet! And now it is too late. Old Mr. Dabney why the old gentleman knew his grandfather, his mother the law office overlooking the corners comes before his eyes for a brief second. "I am sorry to hear that," he adds quietly. Dorothy has been naming others meanwhile but he has not heard her. He has been standing in old-fashioned Melchester, a little boy once more, waiting by the horse-car for old Mr. Dabney to give him a quarter to celebrate his seventh birthday. He has never forgotten that thrill. Perhaps the deed is being read aloud in Heaven, at that moment, and it has silenced Sammy. Old Mr. Dabney, with his old-fashioned ideas! Was he ever young? Well, he has vanished now, along with the horse-cars forever. Dorothy is watching S. Sydney Tappan rather THE BALANCE 229 closely, however. She has always wondered just what this boy good heavens, he is a man, now! what his feelings toward Carrie are. She has heard rumours of a certain young doctor in the Settlement. Is it all off between her and Sam Tappan, or was there never anything except old friendship between them? He is a good catch, now, S. Sydney Tappan; not so good, perhaps, as Asa Dobbs, but there is a younger genera- tion coming along in Melchester these days that threat- ens her hold on him. It frightens her a little at times, this coming generation of young girls. They are dangerous, as she herself approaches the thirty mark. She has always liked Sammy, too. He can be some- body in Melchester society with the proper wife. "They say Carrie is engaged," she says keenly, "as perhaps you know though it isn't announced, so congrats aren't in order." She watches for the effect. "You were sweet on her once, weren't you, Sam?" "In my youth," answers Sammy easily. "Who is the man?" His self-control astonishes him. Of course he has thought of this before has imagined things from her letters; but the reality, somehow, seems to have plunged a cold, cruel knife into his heart, killing all feeling at first. Slowly, the knife withdraws. Carrie! Carrie belonging to some one else! A tiny cloud of red throws itself athwart his brain, and on it his mem- ory paints the golf course beside the river, the lights of the club, and in the shadows a starry-eyed young nymph of love, her trembling arms and shy smile speaking of dawning passion. It is with a great effort that S. Sydney Tappan retains his calm seat in the Ritz dining-room beside the glowing candlebulbs. Be- fore Heaven, there is but one Carrie! "One of those doctors in the Settlements, they say," says Dorothy quite frankly. She has not noticed the slightest thing that would betoken any emotion in the man before her. It must be Sylvia Tremaine with whom she must fight for Sammy. 230 THE BALANCE Why, he has not even asked for the doctor's name, she thinks, a little relievedly, in the theatre afterward; though she has but told the gossip about Carrie, and could give the man's name, if it were required. S. Sydney Tappan cannot be very much interested there any longer, if he does not even wish to know that! She parts from him with a long, warm handclasp that can mean everything or nothing, just as he may choose to think. She will follow this up. Old friendship is a handy cloak. In Sammy's mind, however, as he hurries along down to Sylvia's apartment with but three dollars left from the fund taken for the evening's entertainment, there is nothing but the stunning news about Carrie. That Dorothy is left with the impression of his intimacy with Sylvia, and of a play withdrawn because of a depres- sion, but soon to be followed by another for Miss Tre- maine, he has not the least conception. He has not explained, and the conclusion is unescapable. To him there is but the one vital fact: the piercing dread of some of those old letters of Carrie's has become a grim reality; he has lost her for good and all. He does not care to see Dorothy again. He knows now, however, what Carrie meant in that first letter of hers. A vision! Well, he has a vision, too, now. Thank God for that! There is nothing that can upset his grim determination to follow out to the bitter end this path he is treading. He has a purpose in the world, an ideal; and will attain it despite everything. There have been others. A world of pharisees! The phrase recurs to him. Will that music ever cease resounding in his soul? In her apartment Sylvia surveys him with a little stab of pain at the look still in his eyes. He has not forgotten that old trouble of his yet, she thinks. What would she not give to stir him like this? It is his trouble, nevertheless, and she wishes passionately to help him no matter at what cost. ' I wouldn't care," she is saying hotly. "I would THE BALANCE 231 go back to-morrow, and see her! I wouldn't let any one take her from me if I loved her and wanted her!" But S. Sydney Tappan has spread out his hands. "Just seventy-eight dollars, Sylvia," he says in grim jest. "See my hoard!" Sylvia starts back in amazement. "You are joking, Sydney," she says. "It can't be." "It is," says Sammy grimly. "Not while I have money," she says impetuously. "All I have is yours, Tappy don't think of that for a minute money! Good God, what is money just now?" He smiles. "Perhaps she doesn't want me any longer, Sylvia," he says painfully. "She's a fool if she doesn't," Sylvia retorts. "Any- way, Tappy, you must go and see " He shakes his head. "No prospects, now," he says oddly. "What do you mean?" cries Sylvia. "What is back of it all in your mind ? You aren't worrying about sup- porting her, are you? With your ability? You can sell all you can write, I know it! I can place it. This depression can't last forever!" "You don't understand, Sylvia," he says at last. He has a strange, new doubt of his own worthiness added to the growing conviction that his fight with poverty has only begun in all its phases. "It is all different, there different from your standards, your ideas I can't ask her, anyway to " He falls silent. She flushes. "I am cheap, I know," she says strangely. She realizes for perhaps the first time the gulf their past has placed between them. Sammy is touched. "You're all gold, Sylvia," he says huskily. He stoops a moment, and kisses her hand. "I know that." In Sylvia's soul, however, there is a queer despair. She feels helpless, as though she were struggling with some weird enemy whom she cannot see, and so does not 232 THE BALANCE know how to fight. This trouble of Sydney's is mental, with roots far down in soil she has never seen. If only it could be solved by action, by emotion, by beauty! With a little sob she realizes her limitations; the limita- tions of her brains. Her charm of what avail all this passionate charm of hers to-night, when it does not win this man for her, or help him in the hour of his trouble? She is lifting to-night, almost for the first time, the cross she will hereafter bear. "Oh, I've changed," Sammy bursts out. "That's all Sylvia. It's what she wanted I can't write that that stuff any longer. I've changed somehow!" "But can't you write it a little longer to get her?" cries Sylvia in astonishment. "Good God, that's it!" says Sammy, striding up and down before the fire. "The damnable part of it I can't have her if I continue to write it. She doesn't want me, can't have me. And if I don't, I can't have her myself don't you see? It's one of those vicious circles!" He knows too well his financial chances with a play like "Doctor Paulding," to blind himself to what he is doing. He must contain himself in patience if he is to tread this path he has entered; a patience which he has no right to require Carrie to share on West Twenty- ninth Street, if she can love another in happiness. Poverty is not overburdened with self-assurance. "Write me a play," she says, an odd look in her face. "I'll break with Friedman and produce it!" She is offering her oldest friendship upon the altar of his necessity did he but know it. She does not exactly understand his difficulty, but she does know that her name will carry almost any play to a financial suc- cess. He shakes his head. "I can't write one for you, any " he starts; and stops, aghast at the thing he was about to say. A light flashes upon her. "Because I am cheap," she says in a strange, low THE BALANCE 233 tone. "Cheap and vulgar, and degrading, Tappy I don't elevate at all! Is that it?" "No, no!" he cries, strangely shaken. "It is," she says imperiously. "I know it! Don't you suppose I know what they say about me?" "It isn't that!" cries Sammy. "It is that I've got something fine this time, Sylvia something I can't sacrifice." She turns on him quickly. "A message?" she demands. And, as he nods, she throws up her arms in dismay. "Good-night! Tappy! In pace requiescat, S. Sydney Tappan. What is it?" "Poverty," he says, stung. "The poverty that is all about us " "Poverty!" she groans. "They don't want poverty in the theatre. Rot and insanity, Sydney. It's en- tertainment they want ! " "Well, by God, I've got it!" he says, flashing fire at last. They could say anything they wished to S. Sydney Tappan, so long as they left his dramatic gift alone. Criticism of that made of him a raging tiger. " I've got a play, a real play! A play they can't escape from. A play that will sweep the country, and their souls! I know it I'm no fool about things like that. I have a thousand Ladies in Lion Ski~s in a half-hour of this I would stake my life on it!" This is a new Sammy to Sylvia Tremaine, but she is touched to the quick now. "Too good for Sylvia Tremaine, I suppose?" she says, like a rapier. "Not for the real Sylvia," he cries significantly. She looks at him for a moment. Then a little, bitter laugh comes to her lips. "Which is the real?" she cries. There is a wild, new conflict in her soul, a strange, fierce antagonism. "Which is the real, Sydney talking to you here, or out on the stage, your heroine of passion ? Don't talk to me of the real Sylvia! Perhaps I want you, and won't stop 234 THE BALANCE at anything to get you, keep you, sell myself to you for the price of a play; perhaps that is the real me not what you see here in the apartment ' She stares at him hotly, her breath coming fast and thick. Her brain is a little bit in a whirl. Then she flings her hands back of her head and laughs. "Perhaps I've fallen in love with you because you haven't ever made love to me," she says. "Who knows? Who knows, I'm a contrary thing. What is the real Sylvia?" Her expression changes, and she looks at him a little wistfully. "Feel a tiny bit sorry for me, Tappy, anyway. I'm too old to change much, any more. I couldn't live without the stage I have been used to. It is life to me. You would hate me in a little while if I should try to change there is nothing left except when I am acting. There is no real Sylvia any more." She rises and makes a little face. "You're right, Tappy you should have said it all. Tell me about the first two acts, even if I can't ever play it." He looks at her, a new feeling tugging at his heart. I wonder is it pity? She had looked iust a trifle old for a fleeting second. "You could do it, Sylvia," he says hoarsely. "Be- fore Heaven, you could!" "Do what?" she asks bluntly. "The play " he begins. But she cuts him short. "Forget it, Tappy," she says grimly. "You can't teach an old dog new tricks. They'd be looking for the wrong thing all the while. Sylvia Tremaine's mark is made too plainly now, I think, Tappy. Let's eat!" It is not until the door at West Twenty-ninth Street closes behind him that S. Sydney Tappan sees plainly the figure of Sylvia standing staring after him, as he blazes his way onward down the Future, her hand upon her heart, and on her lips an odd little smile of pain. She THE BALANCE 235 will never have a vision, although she wants it so badly. She has gone so far down her path that she can never turn back now. Her next play was "A Modern Cleo- patra," if my memory is right. If only Sammy had loved her, she might have changed after all. I do not think, however, that he was ever sure just how much she really meant of what she said. Perhaps, though, that was merely his way of declining to see that he had refused her. Poor Sylvia! I am afraid he did not think of her once again that night after the door had closed behind him at two o'clock on West Twenty-ninth Street. He was thinking, with a little ache around his heart, of Carrie. CHAPTER XVI IN WHICH MR. SCHROEDER AND JOHN ROUSE CONSPIRE TOGETHER, ALTHOUGH NEITHER OF THEM KNOWS IT, AND CARRIE LEAVES MEL- CHESTER, AS A RESULT THERE was little opportunity allowed Carrie for thinking about herself that winter in Melchester. It was the first time that any doubt of the ultimate suc- cess of her work ever presented itself to her, also. But the tasks of each day pressed hard and fast upon the occupants of the house on Hague Street as the biting cold of the northern winter set in, and the snow and ice festooned the dark, draughty houses of the poor, and the milk upon the crooked window sills of the tenements of Melchester froze and thrust out its icy head to meet the blast from Canada and Lake Erie. Gone now, in great measure, the ever-threatening menace of outside disease, and come the endless misery of bleak, raw morn- ings, and cold, nipping, gelid, wintry nights, when the frosty gale swept through the creaking dwellings, and the warmth of God Himself seemed to have departed from the shivering inmates. The little playground in the rear of the Settlement house is dark and icy, the small, thin trees seeming to moan a little, in the snowy dusk of February after- noons, for the voices of the summer; voices only heard from afar off, now and then, when the wind brings the sound of children crying from the shut-in, stuffy rooms of the comfortless, squalid tenements; hiding-places, now, for the youth of Hague Street, until the mean, sleety streets are transformed into playgrounds once more by the sun of summer. Melchester has its tene- 236 THE BALANCE 237 ments nowadays, you see it has progressed from the little city of thirty years ago. The snow lies white and clean, however, except where the traffic has soiled the pavements and walks. There are few factories running this year of the depression, and no soot from the chimneys of industry floats over the snow of Hague Street. The snow is deep this winter, also, so deep that there have been complaints from the limousine owners of Washington Avenue upon the con- dition of the streets for motor driving. The great elms are beautiful, their graceful branches filled with the tracery of the Winter God. In the country, where the ice in the creeks glitters in the sun, the fields rest quietly beneath their covering of white, and the forests sway gently, clothed in magic, flashing brilliant gems upon their moving branches, with here and there the solid green of hemlocks and firs holding out always the mem- ory of summer. Summer will come again! Summer will not come again, however, for many of the people Carrie is looking after this bleak winter. She has had to fight hard against the prejudice which she has found attaches to charity among the poor. Some of these people will die for lack of proper attendance rather than call on charity for assistance. Gradually, how- ever, the wall of bias has crumbled before the untiring efforts of the nurses, and that part of her task is over. She is one of them, despite her origin, and they no longer resent her in the cold, dirty tenements where haggard women lift hot boilers of wash, and starving in- fants cough upon the floor. How often she has wished that her father might spend just one night in these tene- ments on Hague Street; might look in the frosty win- dows a while from the barren fire-escapes places deserted now, since the molten heat of summer is gone, and icy winter makes them choice sleeping quarters no longer. She is certain, now, that Settlements can never make over America and yet, slowly but surely, they are get- ting hold of the children! The children of the tene- 238 THE BALANCE ments, the poor of to-morrow. Surely this is some- thing. Too, she can feel that up through the mass of society there is permeating gradually the consciousness of social justice, blind, unthinking as yet, sometimes a mere impulse without real knowledge, but vital, real, flaming nevertheless. That half-glimpsed vision of Sammy's, the night they walked home before the play, recurs to her these days with ever-increasing force. Can these Settlements hold the balance from destruction while slow, sodden society moves painfully, infinitesi- mally toward the goal? Life is to-day to the down- trodden, foreign miner of the Hocking Valley as much as in the elm-shadowed mansions of Washington Avenue. Will the vast class they of the Hocking Valley sym- bolize wait, she wonders? Or is the adjustment of so- ciety so slow that to them no movement is visible, and do they think the wait will be forever unless they move themselves ? Over in O'Halloran's saloon there is a symptom of un- rest which does not augur well for that patient wait in Melchester this winter. In the warmth and comfort there, O'Halloran is keeping an eye upon John Rouse where he sits drinking moodily, sparingly, around him a group of silent, half-angry, sullen workmen. That strike indorsed by the Federation of Labour has spread now, until half the city's trades are involved, beside the ill-advised new union of the clerks, and O'Halloran wants no disturbance in his place. This Rouse is an Industrial Worker of the World, and may be throwing dynamite before the evening is over. O'Halloran knows these I. W. W.'s for what they are. They will bear watching if what the Democrat Herald has always said is the truth. "Damn your socialists, your milk and water political socialists!" Rouse is saying, harshly, his eyes flashing, his red bushy hair standing out from his head like that of some animal. O'Halloran can hardly believe his ears. Aren't so- cialists and all this crew alike, he wonders blankly? THE BALANCE 239 He leans over the bar to hear what more the firebrand may have to say. "Hell is here right now, boys and who in hell wants to vote?" Rouse goes on morosely. There is a sugges- tion of a smouldering volcano about him. "Suckers! That's what you are, suckers! Every one of you. What's your fine Federation of Labour going to do for you, I'd like to know? Treat you like the Brotherhood of Engineers did ! Use you to climb out of the dirt with, and then throw you over! Look at them too proud to help in any strike now because they've got what they want ! I've been a Knight of Labour you can't tell me anything. What's the use of it all? Vote! Vote, they tell you ! What's the good of that, when every one of 'em is a capitalist ticket? Get you the eight-hour day, eh ? Well, what's the good of an eight-hour day ' if they can throw you out of work whenever they want to? Answer me that?" He takes a long drink of his beer. These men around him do not all agree with him, but they are silent. Rouse knows what he thinks, and they do not; and so he dominates. "And your patriotism and your army!" he laughs, sneeringly, while the men at the tables shift uncomfort- ably. There is in them still an indefinable feeling for this country in which they get their living a feeling that rouses a little at these words of his. They are not desperate enough yet to have lost their inherited tradi- tion. It is only in the men of foreign birth that the sneer meets with real approval. They have experienced the power of the military in Odessa, in Berlin, perhaps in Birmingham. Rouse is not daunted. He can see only the ignorance of these men before him of their personal situation in the world. "The militia the regulars! Go and fight for what? Capitalist property ? The right to lose my job ? Think, in God's name, boys! Join the National Guard or the Army and go shoot down your brother workmen? Is 240 THE BALANCE that what you want to do ? Fight for the capitalist, as well as work for him ? Both for wages ? Wages ! Who wants just wages? Fools who don't know any better! That's what all these employers think we are fools! And, by God, we are!" There is a murmur of approval at this. Rouse looks around him, his smouldering eyes lighting a little. "One big union, that's what we want! The I. W. W. and direct action! Altogether one test; do you work for wages ? If you do, by God, you're with us ! To hell with their law, and churches all capitalist! We'll stick together, too direct action!" It is the counsel of despair that this busy-headed revo- lutionist is preaching to these disgruntled strikers to- night. He calls himself I. W. W. or syndicalist, and it is the red flag of destruction, of revolution that he is calling for to accomplish his ends. Only one man, too, this John Rouse; one of thousands sprinkled across the continent from the leaden-coloured hills of Butte to the narrow streets of Fall River, Mass.; from the rocky hills of the copper country beside the cold blue of Lake Superior to the flaring mills of West Virginia as they stretch along the Ohio River, lighting up the turbid stream at night with their flames of steel thousands, preaching this same doctrine of destruction, of revolu- tion undermining the staid labour unions, revolution- ary once themselves, sapping the roots of the -socialists' broad ideas of universal opportunity and socialized industries, catching the flotsam and jetsam of the in- dustrial stream, the failures, the wrecks, the unsuccess- ful, the bankrupt, the hungry, the poor, the red-hot visionaries, the fanatics, the dreamers, carrying them all along to destruction upon the platform of class con- sciousness, class victory, selfishness personified; ignoring all classes other than their own, declaring war upon that vast public beyond all classification who struggle vainly to make a living between the grindstones of the in- dustrial strife. Destruction, riot, bloodshed! THE BALANCE 241 Will the rest of the world see it all plainly enough, or will they refuse, while the balance swings more and more until the world goes crashing down again, and they are left gaping among the ruins? Ignorance is weighing on the scales in O'Halloran's saloon to-night. A lanky, black-haired man with a face something like a turtle's is answering John Rouse. "That's all right, John Rouse," he is saying, "but how about now? To-night? I've got a wife, and children, and I've got to earn food for them. You tell me how to feed them to-night, and I'm with your one Big Union." Another murmur of approval goes up from the men. These plans never seem to have much to do with the present as they know it. Men with families cannot afford to join a desperate cause unless forced to it. Rouse's eyes contract. "Is your strikers' committee feeding them?" he asks scornfully. "No, by God! They got you to strike and now they leave you in the lurch! That's all the good organized labour is to you. Get you out, and then tell you to slink back like a lot of whipped curs, and beg back your old jobs. Dp you want me to tell you to-night to strike for the one Big Union like that ? I want your confidence. Can I get it by thinking first of trouble, or of success? Why, success of course! Prepare first, and then, when ready, strike! What was Buchanan's double rule? Is it just? And can it succeed? Of course it's just. But can it succeed? No! Not yet. So wait! Prepare! And while you wait practise sabotage, obstruction, burn down their plants." "It's revolution!" says a light-haired Welshman. "You bet it is," cries Rouse. "Will anything else get it for you? No. Force! That's us! That's our only chance!" The depression has forced the hand of these strikers in Melchester this winter. The central treasury can- not stand the drain to which appeals from all over the 242 THE BALANCE country are subjecting it. Labour is in poor shape. And so the Melchester strike, called too soon in order to aid the hastily organized clerks' union, has been called off again. It has not been necessary to resort to paid detectives or strike breakers, with carefully planned dynamitings, to cast discredit on and finally break up the strikers. Hunger has taken charge of the campaign for capital; and several thousand more recruits have enlisted beneath the banner of revolution, with despair and injustice in their hearts, and in their minds the final conviction that there is no hope, no solution for them except in the I. W. W. and its red flag of destruction, despite its crowd of worthless hangers-on. Well, who shall blame them, when the rest of the world looks coldly on ? We know our friends in times of trouble and despair, and this I. W. W. is the only group in the world with one word of immediate hope or promise for the disinherited of the earth, their flag upon the streets of Melchester an accusing finger pointed directly at our strangely unresponsive social conscience. Inaction is sometimes as productive of results as vig- orous deeds; it is usually the case, however, that the results are not so pleasing. It is but natural, therefore, that we should not give a rousing welcome to this new- comer in our midst, a newcomer who grows daily in the power of despair while we look comfortably on. There are to be others besides strikers, however, who are to lose positions in Melchester this winter. The losing of this strike has made other people the winners; and in the back office of Hopkinson, Balmer & Law- rence there is sitting a middle-aged man with a hard look around his mouth. "Not one cent!" Mr.' Schroeder is saying harshly to the little group of mild-faced ladies and uncomfortable clergymen who make up the majority of the directing committee of the Hague Settlement Association. " My ideas on the usefulness of such institutions have changed!" THE BALANCE 243 His ideas! It is Carrie who breaks the silence. " Because we have extended aid impartially, father?" she asks. She always went to the root of a thing. "Certainly not!" her father replies angrily. "Be- cause it isn't an aid it simply stirs up trouble, aids no one, helps only these agitators in their efforts at dis- sension. I have no objection to the charitable aims of the organization." He is referring to the course the settlement has taken in aiding the strikers' families during this trouble yes, and in guiding some of them in their acts. They have taught some of them to think and act for them- selves, in fact have taught them a great many things that have made them better able to continue the fight. The little group is rendered more uncomfortable, however, by the strangeness of the situation. It is this man's daughter, who sits beside Mrs. Lewis, on whom a great portion of the responsibility for the affair rests. What shall they say or do ? To them Mr. Schroeder is one of the leading citizens of Melchester, with power to make many gifts to charity; a man of brains and character, a tremendous success. In Carrie's mind, however, as she looks at him, there is the memory of twenty years of muddled thinking, his life devoted to the one thing of making money. How can he be expected to view anything outside his business with clearness and fairmindedness ? The idol has feet of clay. Making money does not fit for anything except keeping it. A bigot in a position of false value is what she would say of the man who sits in the mahogany chair, were he any one except her father. Into her mind flashes the picture of John Rouse talking to disgruntled strikers in the streets of Mel- chester. Somehow, he bears a strange resemblance in his point of view to the man who sits here in Hop- kinson, Balmer & Lawrence. It is in his stubborn- ness, she decides, the intenseness of his hate for people who do not agree with him. Neither of them can 244 THE BALANCE yield an inch, neither ever grant the other the smallest concession, neither concede anything of justice each to the other. Dimly she realizes that if both these two industrial extremes insist upon their way the world will crash in pieces at the contact. Somewhere there must be a compromise. Her father in his office is but adding to that weight of ignorance and despair which is becoming so heavy upon the scales, adding by his iron refusal to even consider that there can be another side to this dispute than his own. This is why he can condemn the Settlement for keeping that open mind so necessary, if the balance is to be pre- served. It is when the committee have gone, the Schroeder ultimatum of charity but no uplift in their ears, that Carrie realizes the strength of her father's ideas. He is the weak man of one idea, and holding it with the strength of ten. It is revenge, I think, with Mr. Schroeder partly, a desire to show this daughter with her impractical ideas that he is right after all, despite those ignominious morning conversations. Her sure- ness has irritated him ever since he can remember; a sureness seemingly only increased by the addition of a few years of knowledge. He will show her, now! Well, you always were a trifle too sure, Carrie; but you have lost a little of it, I think, in those tenements on Hague Street, whether your father can see it or not. Ideas are curious things and Mr. Schroeder is not buying or selling groceries to-day. "What do you really want, father?" she asks quietly, at last. "Do you want to destroy the Settlement for the work it is doing, or do you want me to resign?" She has a shrewd idea that a good part of his opposition comes from her participation in the work. He looks at her in an odd way. He has never under- stood this daughter of his, and yet he has always had for her a certain respect, a certain admiration which he has never granted the others. "You can do what you like," he says. There is a THE BALANCE 245 trace of irritation in his tone, which he tries hard to conceal. "You are usually quite certain of your course. I can only say what I said before. So long as you care to pursue this course of which we do not approve we can hardly be blamed for withholding our support and any others we can influence. The thing is pernicious, a menace. You are merely a girl, and do not under- stand." "I see," she says steadily. "We must hold your ideas if we are to receive your money?* "Certainly," he replies. He looks out the window a moment before going on. "Of course, I am not saying anything about my personal feelings in the matter. It isn't necessary to state that treachery in the family isn't the most pleasant thing to contemplate." This is a deliberate attempt to place his daughter in the wrong. She feels it immediately, and gazes at him unwaveringly. "It isn't treachery to think for ones' self," she says. "That is one reason I left No. 1200 Washington, so that I shouldn't be either a traitor or a hypocrite. I have always told you what I thought. Your money shouldn't be allowed to make us all hypocrites. We will do without it." There is little of the old relation left between these two any longer. Years of intellectual differences have had their inevitable effect. Mr. Schroeder straightens up in his chair. "You don't know what you are doing, Carolyn," he says. "You won't get any support financially if you don't get ours. Capital is standing together these days. I shouldn't warn you if you weren't my daughter." It is an open threat, a plain statement of the case. Into Carrie's mind comes the realization that this Settlement for which she works, and which she wishes so intensely to succeed in the task it has but begun, is in reality absolutely dependent upon her father and the men he can control for its continued existence. For a little instant she sees why the poor despise charity. 246 THE BALANCE What a tremendous force, too, this is which her father is bringing to bear upon her in his threat of withdrawal of support! If she wishes her ideas to prevail she must see the people in her tenements deprived of even the little godsend the Settlement aid has been. I do not think that from that moment there was in her mind a second's doubt as to what her course should be. She saw too plainly the babies, the dun childhood of Hague Street to ever hesitate for herself. In that moment there came to her, also, a great sympathy for the men and women of the world, the clergymen, the social workers placed in this same position of hers. And I think, too, the remnants of her love for her father passed silently from her heart, never to return. "The fight has moved, hasn't it?" she says oddly, gazing at him. "From tenement work to industry!" She will not give him the satisfaction of knowing the feeling of loneliness this final gulf between them has left in her girlish heart. It has not been thus that she has conceived of father and daughter. "There's always a fool reformer looking around for trouble, everywhere," her father says scornfully. He has gotten this from the columns of the Democrat Herald. A great comfort to him, that paper! "I suppose the trouble all lies at the root," Carrie says, half to herself. "Charity is just really a gilded restoration! Isn't it?" This is above his head. How can even the painters' union gild a restoration ? "Charity is a very creditable thing," he says. His daughter does not seem to hear him. "A gilded restoration," she is saying. "And its symbol John Rouse's mother, on a field of competitive blood, surmounted by the motto 'Profit."' She stands up and holds out her hand. " Good-bye, father," she says strangely. " If it makes any difference in your support, I am going to resign." And she nods to him quite brightly, and goes out. In Mr. Schroeder's mind there is only the one thought THE BALANCE 247 as he looks after her she has not mentioned his gener- osity at all. Well, at least she will have to see now that she cannot struggle against his ideas. She has been quite crazy on this subject of poverty. This, however, will bring her to her senses. She has seen that she must give up her ideas if the Settlement is to go on. The strike, too, is settled satisfactorily. Perhaps things are straightening themselves out after all. Possibly Carrie will return home now and take up her position in society as she should. That she will never do so again does not occur to him. A man of extremely short vision, our Mr. Schroeder. He can never con- ceive of any one doing anything which will not directly redound to that person's material benefit. I fear he gives to charity only because it is looked upon with distinct approval by society. Society has been engaged in it for some time. That always settled everything with Mr. Schroeder. I almost hate to look into our Carrie's mind, two weeks later, as she removes her scanty luggage from the little bedroom in the house on Hague Street. It is because, through her misty eyes, I can see that tiny thought in the back of her mind': she is giving thanks for Sammy. He has never written her but the play has stayed withdrawn. Humanity cannot all be like her father; there must be other Sammys. There does not seem to be any thought in her mind to-day, however, of that rumoured engagement to the young doctor. I wonder what has become of it? We would not wonder long could we look into Mrs. Schroeder's upstairs room and see the look of sad- ness upon her face. She is realizing now for the first time that Carrie is the only one of her family for whom she really cares. Is it, I wonder, because this middle-aged lady feels that of them all this recalcitrant daughter is the only one who cares for her, too? The sadness is because she knows now that they have lost Carrie finally and irrevocably. She is not returning to the house upon Washington Avenue except for dinner 248 THE BALANCE before going to New York. That fair-haired doctor, whom Mrs. Schroeder hoped so much might capture her daughter's heart, has gotten Carrie a position in the Settlements of the East Side where the work is always at hand, endless, never done. His attentions have not resulted in an engagement, after all. Mr. Schroeder has received the news without any comment whatever. He will be stubborn until the end. There was never any quarter in the struggle be- tween the generations of the Schroeders. Perhaps they were all too sure! The only difference noticeable to-day in this latest dis- agreement of the family is that Mrs. Schroeder has called no one fool. She has been looking back over the past since this clear-eyed daughter of hers was a child, mark- ing the steps which have led so inexorably to the final parting. What fools they all have been, not to have realized before this that children still are human souls, with ideas and purposes and lives of their own to live. Her Carrie is going away to-day, perhaps for- ever, because they have not taken thought in time. She is just her child, however, whom she does not ex- pect to know again, as she sits, that evening, having dinner with the assembled family in the old-fashioned dining-room which has seen so many memorable scenes of the Schroeders. And yet Mrs. Schroeder is not so very keen, either, or she would notice that odd look in Carrie's eyes. It is very plain when no one is talking to her; and her heart comes in her eyes. It is not all the pain of a parting, that look a sudden pain the daughter of the house of Schroeder cannot control. Nor is it the picture of the childhood of Hague Street waving good-bye to her in the rain; nor, either, a jumbled glimpse of New York, and her strange future among people she has never seen. It is the queer stab of loneliness that has pierced her with a pain as poignant, as new, as if she had never felt its like be- fore. She has learned from Dorothy of the new play for Sylvia, and the withdrawal of the "Lady in the Lion THE BALANCE 249 Skin ' because of the depression. A depression, instead of a new Sammy! She has not been able to think of anything else since she first learned it. She remembers her letter with little shivers of humiliation. She sees now why he has never answered. What must he think of her ? After all, he is a stranger, too, she sees. She is really alone. It is why she steers the conversation at the table as far as possible from the things she is actually thinking. Indeed, conversation at the Schroeders' never had too much connection with the reality of their lives. It was more like a mental fog than anything, a fog behind which the combatants hugged their own thoughts to their bosoms, and defied the enemy to come on, and discover what they really thought. So she eats her dinner in a strange little chatter of talk, directed mostly at her mother, and meaning noth- ing, swallowing down meanwhile that lump in her throat which threatens now and then to overcome her; and has said good-bye in the hall, and driven down to the station before the tears come to her eyes in the dark of the taxicab. "And they say he is just crazy about his Sylvia Tremaine," Dorothy has said, she remembers, as she steps out at the new station. Well, it is not entirely that, Carrie tells herself; it is principally that she has always counted upon him in spite of the trouble of the past months and he has gone the way of the rest of the world now. Beneath it all, however, I think, there is a starved fire of affection for him that she does not dare to look at herself. Car- rie's heart is slowly breaking for Sammy, although she will not admit it even to herself. In the Schroeders' there has been a strange silence after she has gone. A silence broken by the sound of some one weeping in the kitchen. The soul of the Schroeders and Tappans together has gone away on the train for Annie. The family are quite silent. CHAPTER XVII IN WHICH FATE FIRST GIVES A HINT THAT SHE MAY HAVE ONE MORE HEROIC ROLE FOR SAMMY IT WAS the week after Sammy read the first two acts of "Doctor Paulding" to Sylvia that she spoke about the back royalties to Friedman. He grunted in his usual way. "It will all be fixed up this week, my dear girl," he said, after a moment's hesitation. He did not usually allow any one to ask him questions about finance it is a sore point in the theatrical world but he had never attempted to conceal from Sylvia Tremaine the exact state of his affairs. He knew that he could count upon her unswerving loyalty, no matter what the outlook might be; and they had weathered many a worse storm than this one before. In Sylvia there was an odd sort of loyalty to this ungainly fat man, who had starred her for so many years since he had discovered her playing a minor part in Chicago; a loyalty which would never allow her to even consider any changing of managers or contracts while he still stayed in the game. It would have de- stroyed a great part of her zest in life, I think, not to have had Friedman managing her. Besides, she could never have called any one else all the names she show- ered upon him. In her way she had a great fondness for the slow German. Whether on this occasion he really intended to square his accounts with Sammy, and was prevented by un- foreseen circumstances; or whether, in the back of his mind, the knowledge of Sylvia's impending departu r e for a road tour urged him to placate her with the assur- 250 THE BALANCE 251 ance of his good intentions, she never knew. It is odd to consider, now, that upon his remark hung the great sacrifice of our Sammy's life. Had the truth been known to Sylvia during those next months, I doubt exceedingly if any of their lives had been the same. Ignorance is always the great mischief maker of the world. In this case it allowed Fate to provide a stage for our Sammy's character so overwhelming in its dramatic appeal that he could no more resist playing the leading part thus offered him than he had been able to prevent his first proposal to Carrie, so many years before, beside the little hawthorne hedge in Melchester. The idea carried him away. It is why I have never been able myself to give him all the honour his act really seems to deserve. If only he had had some other character than that queer one he had he would have been a hero to me, too, then. As it is, I must confess to a great admiration for the grown-up boy who responded so gallantly to a cry of distress, and did not seem to count the cost. That was heroic, even though the actor was not a hero. Long afterward, when Sylvia sometimes heaped her- self with self-accusations, S. Sydney Tappan would console her with the assurance that he would not have accepted aid from her had she been there to proffer it. She always knew, however, that the solution which presented itself to our Sammy as the only way out would never have been allowed to carry him away had she been there. He was working upon the third act of "Doctor Pauld- ing" when she left for the road tour. "Three months, Tappy," she is saying, a little rue- fully, in the Grand Central Station, as he looks up at her on the platform of the observation car. "It's a frightfully long time, isn't it ?" Three months! In Sammy's mind there , stretches the lengthened vista of the days of those three months, the sky overcast with the grim spectre of want. Three months! It will be spring, then. He seldom allows 252 THE BALANCE his mind to dwell upon the future which lies beyond the next few days. There is nothing there but doubt, un- certainty, despair; things which do not add to his dra- matic ability in the long, gray days, the late, cold evenings, the dark, gloomy mornings when he is working upon his play. How slowly it seems to take shape! It almost creeps upon the page, though in his mind it leaps ahead with great flashing bounds. How tiny appears each forward move when it has been translated to the manuscript, and the first glamour of the idea has faded, and it has been carved and fitted into its place in the dramatic structure shorn of all its trappings and a mere stone in the pathway of the theme. I wonder are you exclaiming to yourself, "a fool!" When his money is vanishing now, and he will be upon the streets soon unless something happens and some- thing seldom does? Well, our Sammy has not Ibsen's ability to earn much-needed meals with palette and brush when other things fail, as when the theatre in Christiana failed the great Norwegian in fact, has no ability other than this gift he is so determined upon using. He has his great idea, now, and must write while the fit is upon him. That he is a victim of an industrial depression does not occur to him as he sits days in his room, or tramps Central Park in the cold, icy mornings while his ideas fall into shape. He is simply extremely unlucky, just now! It all will pass in time. It perhaps was fortu- nate that the idea of securing employment of some kind to tide him over for the time being never did occur to him. He would have been wasting most precious time. In all New York, that winter, there was no work to be had. His mind comes back, with a jump, to the girl who leans over the car railing looking anxiously at him while he is turning all this over in his mind. " I only hope you draw well," he replies to her question. She leans over and says in a low tone: "Friedy is going to fix up the royalties, I asked him THE BALANCE 253 about it yesterday. Don't blame him too much he's been having the devil's own time of it these last months, Tappy!" And she smiles. "Drop me a line now you have the route, Sydney! Though I know you won't! Two postals and two letters were the sum total in Bos- ton. You must do better than that this time." She looks at him a trifle uncertainly for a moment, and then runs down the open steps, and says, a little wistfully : "Kiss me good-bye, now, Tappy I'm going in before the train starts. I can't bear partings, can you?" I wonder is it some premonition that impels her to do this? A forewarning of that tiny gulf between them which will widen day by day until the separation of mere distance will seem of little moment beside the vast chasm between their souls ? It is Sylvia whom the train is apparently bearing off, but it is our Sammy who is really going on. "Good-bye, Sylvia," he says, with a little lump in his throat as he kisses her good-bye. She is a brick, this girl with the charming smile and beautiful features a brick, in spite of what she stands for on the stage. It is the little cleft in the rock, that thought! He walks away hastily into the crowd, nevertheless, lest the little tears that fill his eyes run down his cheek. Tears! Just why, he wonders? He does not love Sylvia Tremaine. He is sorry to see her go, of course, but Well, Sammy, you do not know why you have those little tears as you wave your handkerchief at the out- going train, but I could have told you. Tiny waves of pity are beginning to chase across your heart be- cause you sense dimly the unhappiness that is slowly flooding Sylvia's soul. Your dramatic soul perceives unconsciously this first act of the tragedy of Sylvia a tragedy that will play out its ever-lengthening scenes during the rest of her life whenever she thinks of you. 254 THE BALANCE That fable of the royalties was soon exploded, how- ever. It was about a week later that Friedman informed S. Sydney Tappan that he was going into bankruptcy. It was one of the most ironical moments of Sammy's life when he received, some two years later, a check from the United States Receiver for two hundred dollars. It was the shrunken dividend from the "Lady in the Lion Skin." Received two years be- fore, it might have altered his whole existence. That he got nothing at all that winter, it is needless to re- mark; also, that Sylvia did not know he had not been paid before the crash. She learned it months later, in the worst half-hour Friedman ever spent. The news was received with grim humour in the room upon West Twenty-ninth Street that wintry day ; a humour to which the remembrance of the vanished twenty-five dollars of Dorothy's visit added a bitter zest. "Not a cent, eh, Tappy?" Ricorton says with an attempt at nonchalance. "Oh, they're all skins," says Ruby. "No wonder everybody quits unless they get their money every Saturday night. They'd strand you, too, if it wasn't against the law any more." She looks on all managers as her natural enemies. There is a rather strange, little, worried look about her when she is not talking, that does not seem to be all caused by this dismal news of Sammy's, however. "I'll get my share of what the lawyers leave, I sup- pose," replies Sammy quietly. This is but natural, too, this failure of Friedman's; it is in line with his life so far, except for that brilliant youth his mother gave him, and his own fine flare of the year past. It does not depress him in the least. In fact, he does not seem to care about anything these days except his new play. He does not like to think of anything else. Somehow, all other things seem to lead to Carrie and that is exquisite torture. You may perhaps have noticed that the principal THE BALANCE 255 characters of "Doctor Paulding" have all left their youth quite far behind. It was our Sammy safeguarding himself from attacks of despair. He pretended to himself that he had ceased to think of Carrie; occasion- ally that she no longer interested him; once in a while even mentioning her name, with an ill-concealed bravado, while the other occupants of the Twenty- ninth Street room turned away that they might not see the look in his eyes. It was only at long intervals, when his mind seemed to have pushed "Doctor Pauld- ing" as far along its path as it would ever go when he lay staring from his pillow at the black tenements rearing themselves against the gray, city-flushed sky, that he allowed himself to see the truth: he would carry the memory of her inside his heart until he died. I do not know that he ever formulated to himself the belief that people love deeply, profoundly, completely but once. I think he only realized that he himself could never love like that again. She still filled his heart so that no other could find room therein; and somehow, he knew, she always would. How useless, after all, had been his losing her! Ricorton always knew when these thoughts came to him by the frightful energy with which he would con- centrate next morning upon "Doctor Paulding." He seemed to work upon the play with an almost religious enthusiasm, then, as if he could live for that alone, while Ricorton ceased playing those melodies of the day upon the cornet lest they should add to his misery. Sometimes in after years, when theatre or hotel orchestras played old favourites again, the eyes of a rather tall, slender man, with gray in his once black hair, would fill, and he would devote himself more assiduously to the business in hand. It was S. Sydney Tappan. He never forgot any of the strange, little incidents of that year. It was as if he turned open for use an unusually sensitive film of his memory that winter, and the impressions remained forever clear, 256 THE BALANCE distinct, undimmed, ready to be called up again on the instant by an echo from the past. The echoes were all pieces of the one melody his heart crooned in those days, though he refused to listen: the melody of loneliness and heartbreak with a high-sounding accompaniment of fine endeavour. It was only the accompaniment that kept the melody from over- whelming him at times. It was the night after the finishing of "Doctor Paulding" that they held the celebration in our Sammy's honour. They held it after eleven at night because of Ricorton's new job in a picture show a job secured just in time to save them all from the street. Picture shows seemed immune from the depression. I hardly think Sammy shared, that night, in the general optimism the finishing of the play produced among the little band of Thespians. He knew in his heart that the struggle had just begun for him, whereas these people thought it had ended. It was Pudney, the Englishman from upstairs, who came in first. "It's a fiver I want, Tappan," he said with difficulty. "I'm flat strapped." Sammy looked at him with a little smile of sym- pathy. "Ric's the banker," he said rather grimly. "I'm broke!" There are little circles beneath his eyes, now, and his face is a trifle thin. He is winning steadily in his fight, but it is costing him something to do it. Pudney sits down nervously. "You, too, eh ?" he says. And after a silence: "It's the rent! By God, I hate to ask you chaps." He has borrowed once or twice before, this Pudney, and paid back when he has sold a story or two to one of the cheaper magazines. There is a sort of freemasonry existing on West Twenty-ninth Street this winter which has enabled many of these Bohemians to sur- vive who otherwise must have given up in despair. THE BALANCE 257 "Queer chap, Ricorton," he says now. "Though a corker!" "A real friend," says our Sammy. "You don't find them every day." When was it that he was think- ing how few real friends there were from all his old life ? Ric, and Carrie He stops suddenly to find Pudney looking at him rather strangely. "I say," the Englishman says, "it's no concern of mine, naturally, but ' he hesitates, "I saw the lady out with the Irishman last evening." "Jack Bantry?" Sammy inquires. He knows the lady means Ruby. "Yes," Pudney replies. He is rather slow in all his ways, this Englishman, with an impenetrable seriousness that always lends the impression of tragedy to whatever he has to say. S. Sydney Tappan smiles. "Ricotti's, I suppose?" he says. One would im- agine Pudney about to disclose a murder. "Exactly," replies Pudney heavily. "Making a cursed show of himself, too the beggar!" Sammy stretches. "Well, what's the harm, Pudney?" he asks. "She gets a good time out of it while Ric is at the show. Let her!" "The chap's after her," Pudney returns ponder- ously. "Trust Ruby to look out for herself," our Sammy laughs lightly. If any one can look out for herself it is Ruby Williams, he thinks. There is no smile on Pudney's face, however, as he rocks back and forth. Life is deadly serious to him. Has life in a rented room in New York induced the point of view, I wonder? This scene, and these words of the stolid English- man's are to come back to S. Sydney Tappan at one of the crucial moments of his life to send the structure of his existence crashing to tne earth. But he has no thought of it yet. He will set about the building 258 THE BALANCE rather soon now, too. Fate is engaged to-night in preparing the ground. "They're all human, Tappan," Pudney says, "these women." "Meaning?" queries Sammy. "All liable to error," Pudney replies. "I've seen things one wouldn't fancy as very likely not in New York tenements either! A word to the wise, you know, Tappan. That's my advice to Ricorton." A knock comes on the door. "Is it Ricorton now?" he asks. His nervousness has returned as he contemplates asking again for a loan. But it is Ruby who enters in response to our Sammy's cheerful "hello!" "Hello, everybody!" she says gayly. "Where's the genius?" "He isn't in yet, Sammy replies, as she makes her- self at home. She gives a little whimsical sigh. "I suppose we can't touch a thing until he gets here, then, or he'll fly off the handle. Gosh! Nothing is any good unless he made it, Pudney. You should have heard him on the trip. He's the only real, good cook in the whole world, I guess if you listen to what he says." Pudney rises heavily. ^"You won't be started yet a while," he says slowly. "I'm going for some air." There is something in our Sammy's face that seems to touch Ruby, as Pudney goes slowly down the stairs. Perhaps it is the incongruity of his fine features against the bright colour of the cheap seed lithograph which decorates the wall. He always seems out of place to her in these rooms, someway. For a moment the little strained look vanishes from her face, and a flood of sympathy overflows her features. "It's not much of a celebration, Tappy, is it?" she says compassionately. Her emotions are always THE BALANCE 259 quick to come to the surface. She looks around at the room's cheap furnishings. "It's rough on you, this sort of thing. You're dif- ferent, someway. I'm used to it. It comes sort of natural to show people, I guess. I wasn't born on a grand piano, anyway." She stops then crosses to him impulsively. "It can't always be this way, anyhow, Tappy. We'll all be up again, some day, just as we're down now." She feels a great pity always when she talks to this man who sits so silently at his typewriter all day. To Sammy the whole thing does not seem quite real, as he looks around this room to-night. How is it that the boy of Hawthorne Street has ever strayed into this furnished room of cheap New York? They are two worlds, now, he sees quite distinctly this world of cheap New York, and the Melchester society which he has left forever. He can remember when he first felt the difference : when he and Ric first took this room, and the girl giggled in the room next door, and Pudney passed them on the stairs. Why, he was only a boy, then. He feels as old as Methuselah to-night. But Ric has come in silently, now, his eyes blazing a trifle as he stops to look at Ruby and Sammy by the window. There is a strange jealousy in his nature that will not allow this girl to look at any one else now that she has agreed at last to become his. Perhaps that is why she goes clandestinely to Ricotti's with Bantry. Engagements seem weirdly useless in these furnished rooms, encumbrances upon the ground of reality. That is why they have made no announcement, these two. They will be married as soon as there is any money to allow of it. That is the way they phrase their engagement. How different from that interview our Sammy had so long ago in the den upon Washington Avenue that interview with our old friend Mr. Schroeder. Why, S. Sydney Tappan actually had ten thousand dollars 260 THE BALANCE once! Once upon a time, would be more the proper way to phrase it, in order to give an adequate render- ing of the feelings the reflection always induces in him now. "Hello, Ricky," Ruby cries, running over to the musician. But Ricorton strikes his palm upon his forehead melodramatically. -"Dried mushrooms, Tappy!" he says. "I forgot 'em! I'll start the ball rolling if you'll rush out and get 'em!" As Sammy hurries down the stairs to the corner delicatessen, Ric deposits his bundles upon the sagging bed by the window. There is a cloud upon his face, as he takes Ruby by the arm. "What were you doing over by the window, with Tappy, just now?" he asks sternly. There is no humour in his face. He has a strange streak of master- fulness where Ruby is concerned, a masterfulness that might be almost cruelty at times were it not for that expression in his face, an expression of kindness. But Ruby seems strangely out of sorts to-night. "Oh, making love to him, what do you suppose?" she flashes back. Her very lightness seems to irritate him. "Is there anything between you two?" he asks tensely. "Every time I come up here suddenly, there is that damn silence!" So, beneath that easy, artistic temperament there is a fire after all! The qualities of a man cannot be gauged until one has seen him in love. Ruby laughs easily, although there seems to be a little odd, discordant note in it. "For goodness' sake, forget it, Ric!" she says pet- tishly. "Can't I talk to him?" It almost sounds like Jack Bantry in his peevish moods, she thinks. Are they all alike? "It drives me mad to think of you with any other man, that's all," he says in a strained voice. THE BALANCE 261 There can't be anything between her and Tappy, of course. He is a fool to suspect anything. The thought is enough to drive him mad. He dismisses it with an effort. "Let's get busy," he says, kissing her. "They'll all be here soon enough now!" Poor Ric! He has surrendered his peace of mind to this girl, along with his heart. It is just as well that Pudney has not confided his ideas in the musician. Jack Bantry might not enjoy his dinner quite as well, perhaps, if that were the case. Let us look carefully at Ruby, however, as she sets the improvised table with the cheap cracked pottery dishes, the thick glasses, the tin knives and forks from behind the red curtain on the shelf beside the gasplate. Something seems to be weighing on her mind: some- thing that drags her steps, slows her movements, as she sets the table. She steals little glances at Ricorton's back where he stands, cooking at the gasplate, in her eyes a little look of fear. It is as she stands staring at the china a moment that Ricorton looks over his shoulder at her and notices her absorption. "What's the matter?" he asks quietly. She gives a little start as if she had roused herself with an effort. "Oh, nothing," she says a little wearily. She sits down and traces patterns on the tablecloth. "I've been wondering if we would ever get married, that's all/' An odd look of cynicism comes into Ricorton's face at the remark. He turns out his pockets grimly. "On that, I suppose?" he says a trifle bitterly. He does not fancy the idea of his helplessness. She is staring at him, now, her face between her palms, her elbows on the table. He cannot remember when he has ever seen her so serious before. "I don't care about the money," she says earnestly. "We've got to eat just the same, single or double. We're going to be married some time; what's the difference if it's now or then ? " 262 THE BALANCE An almost humorous look comes over the musician's face as he mutters, half to himself: "Consequences!" What does she think marriage usually results in? She darts a tiny glance at him. "Kids?" He nods and turns again to his cooking; an odd feeling of delicacy impelling him suddenly to do so. A tiny flush steals into her pale cheeks. "What's the odds?" she says in her low voice. She swallows with a trace of difficulty. "Gosh, would it be any worse than this?" She throws out her arm with a little unconscious dramatic gesture that seems to in- clude the cheap furnished room, the iron beds, the cracked mirror in the dresser, and, outside, the damp street and brick tenements. Ricorton's jaw tightens perceptibly. "No, by God, it wouldn't!" he says, his eyes flashing. "But I won't always skulk here, Ruby." "I know," she answers slowly. She looks away a second. "But we're only young once, Ric." He nods his head. "I've got to pay Tappy back, a little, first," he says. "After that, Ruby r She trembles a little at his words. They seem to rouse something violent in her. "What's that got to do with it, Ricky?" she cries passionately. "I can't wait forever because of Tf) appy She stops suddenly, aware of her vehemence, while Ricorton gazes at her in surprise. "I didn't know you felt that way Ruby about it all," he says oddly. A tiny fire comes in his eyes. "We won't wait they can all go hang before God, they can " "Soon?" she says, going toward him impetuously. The touch of her drives everything from his brain. "Monday," he says impassionedly. And he takes her in his arms in a storm of ardour. THE BALANCE 263 It was only the sound of the others on the stairs out- side that saved the spaghetti from burning that even- ing. It was an odd supper they had then, that supper that celebrated the finishing of "Doctor Paulding"; and not much like those brilliant affairs the biography so dearly loves to detail, those dinners of his later life. It always had a tragic side. It was the first failure the play of "Doctor Paulding" registered. Of them all only Ricorton grasped the greatness of what S. Sydney Tappan had done. It was the first of that long series of disil- lusionments that lay along our Sammy's new path. Had it not been for the musician there would have been a cold silence when the reading of the last act was done. "It's well tremendous, Tappy," he said then quietly, while the others struggled for expression that would not wound the playwright. I think he knew, somehow, that he had just listened to a vision. In the minds of the others, however, there was a welter of doubt and disappointment that seemed to hold them dumb. It was partly because they were looking hard for fine parts for themselves, and there are no fine parts for Rubys or Bantrys in "Doctor Paulding"; partly because they failed to grasp the real drama the dialogue merely shadows and so were disappointed because the play seemed to lack so the theatric effects they were accustomed to enjoy. They were like a group of old Shakesperean tragic actors listening to a Shavian comedy in hopes of some fine effect or scene where they could rant. The climax did not seem to arrive. It was not until they saw it afterward upon the stage that they realized the genius of the thing. It was an ironical Sammy who sat through the rest of the evening and listened to the gayety. Was this evening but a precursor of the fate of this new play of his? It was after the others had gone that Ric told him of his approaching marriage. Next week! 264 THE BALANCE "That's fine, old man," our Sammy says, then. "She's a brick. I'm glad to hear it." He stares a little out of the window. "You might as well get what happiness you can from life." He is thinking that there does not seem to be any great quantity to spare. Ricorton voices his thought. "For there's mighty little of it, anyway, eh?" he says. "Yes," says Sammy slowly. "We should get all we can from what comes to us." Somehow, happiness has always seemed to lie just around the corner from him. From Sylvia, too, he thinks from most of the people he has known. Does it always stay around the corner, he wonders? Well, Ricorton will know soon now, because he is taking Fate by the beard and can test the old gentleman's abilities at dispensing happiness. I doubt if he would be quite so certain of that, how- ever, could he look in at Ricotti's the next evening, and peer down the narrow corridor behind Ruby and Jack Bantry as they go out at half-past ten; and she stands a moment beneath the low doorway putting on her gloves while he looks at her in his mind a mem- ory of the Halfway House and this girl's lips crushed to his, of Ricotti's and other kisses, of the Fontainebleau curse it, why should she still prove so attractive now that he has had his way with her? Is it her wayward- ness, her fancies, her changeability? He is never quite sure how she will treat him even now: she has been as sulky as sin this evening, for instance. "You're a funny one," he says. "What's been into you to-night?" She stares at him irritatingly. "Oh, forget it," she says shortly. "What's your trouble now?" "The same," he retorts. "You!" In the half dark- ness she looks as alluring as he has ever seen her. What is it about her that fires him so? THE BALANCE 205 "By God, you're pretty!" he says abruptly. But she draws back from his attempted embrace, and stares at him with eyes that seem to spurt fire in the dark. "None of that any more, Jack!" she says tensely. "I'm going to be married." There is a fury of bitterness in her tone before which he falls back a step as if it were a physical force. "Married?" he says, stunned. "Yes!" she retorts in a low tone. "What's the joke?" he asks. "No joke," she answers sombrely. "It's true. What's it to you, anyway? You'd let me go to the devil! I know your kind." She has stepped out into the street now, her face showing strange and white in the light from the gas lamps of lower New York. There is an ugly look in Bantry's eyes. "You can't kid me," he says. "Where's the kidding?" she says fiercely. He gives a hoarse laugh, and his voice becomes hard and metallic. "I told you I'd fix you up if anything happened, didn't I?" he says. "And it has," she answers, still in that low tone. A moment of silence. "Who are you going to marry?" he breaks out, then. "Ric," she answers. "I knew it," he says ill-naturedly. He looks at her a moment. "And you'd rather marry him, with a lie in your heart, than " "Who put the lie there?" she flashes at him. "See here," he says in a low, tight voice. "Is this thing a frame-up or isn't it?" "Good God," she cries. "If it only were! I'm no crook!" she breaks out passionately. They are by a little iron fence on lower Fifth Avenue, now, and she leans against it a moment, faint. "I didn't mean anything but fun, flirting!" she 266 THE BALANCE adds desperately. "You know I didn't until you got after me. I must have been crazy God, I wish I'd never seen you!" He stares at her a moment uncertainly. "You trust to me," he says, then, a curious look in his eyes. "I'll see you through, all right!" He puts his hand upon her arm, but she breaks away from his grasp. "Oh, you've lied all along," she says dully. Of a sudden a new array of thoughts spring up in Bantry's brain. "Are you going to tell Ric?" he demands suddenly. Perhaps after all, she is going to tell the tall musician the truth. If she does! He trembles a little, inside Ricorton has a strange look at times a look he does not care to speculate upon just now. ^ "No," says Ruby ironically. "I'll let you tell him." She laughs. "Gee, your life would be worth about one beer." There is something horrible in her mirth. "With your marriage thrown in," he retorts. She cannot tell the truth, he reflects with a tiny feeling of relief, unless she ruins herself also. "What's my marriage to me, now?" she asks bitterly. "If I'd only married Ric last summer." She is silent a moment, reviewing the events of the past year. What a fool she has been, drifting into this sea of destruction without lifting a hand to stop herself while there yet was time. Bantry laughs a cynical little laugh as he leaves her at her door. "Perhaps it would have been the same, married or not," he says sneeringly. And he goes off down the street toward Eighth Avenue, leaving Ruby to climb the stairs in the dark to her room, to stare a long time into her mirror there. Ric! What would she have done without him? Thank God for him and his kind, at least. She has learned her lesson now, for good: there will never be THE BALANCE 267 another Jack Bantry in her life. She will owe that to Ric, at any rate. Well, one Jack Bantry was all that was required by fate in her battle with our Sammy. For this, although Ruby does not suspect it in the least, nor any other of these roomers upon West Twenty-ninth Street this is the beginning of fate's comedy for whose heroic role our Sammy is being cast. And Ruby will play opposite him. Our Sammy 1 I wonder am I left alone to thus call him, in the room on West Twenty-ninth Street, and is he Sammy to no one but me ? I fear very much that his childhood and all that Melchester meant to him have faded into mist now, along with his dreams of Carrie and only S. Sydney Tappan, playwright, is left, staring from his tenement window, thinking of Ricorton's approaching marriage, as Ruby gazes into her mirror in the next room. Sammy has vanished now, forever, into the past; and only a rather thin-faced man in a threadbare suit is left in his face a vision of the future. Will it always be a vision, I wonder, and nothing more ? BETTING forth a certain lack of )^J humour connected with placing a play, while Fate ties the soul of its author in a second floor back furnished room Giving some idea, too, of the price our Sammy pays for his triumph at the Fine Arts And a new view of an heroic sacrifice come home to roost We give a little oj our sympathy to Ruby And take a last view of Sammy as he gets his second prayer. CHAPTER XVIII IN WHICH POVERTY WINS ITS FIRST VICTORY OVER THEM BUT Is CHEATED OF THE FRUITS OF THE TRIUMPH BY SAMMY To THOSE of you who have not tried placing a play, I wonder can I ever convey the despair, the despondency, the hopelessness which dogged the footsteps of our Sammy in those next weeks when he went from office to office with the manuscript of "Doctor Paulding" beneath his arm? It was not the spirit-breaking ennui of outer offices and anterooms, where the hours drag while within mysterious things transpire things of which no one of the downtrodden on the chairs and benches outside has any understanding; it was not this with which our Sammy had to struggle. His name relieved him of all that. It was unbelief, expressed and implied, destruct- ive and ridiculous criticism, impossible suggestions, immovable stupidity, dull materialism, hard cynicism walls of fanatical prejudices which no ladder save that of precedent could ever seem to scale; it was these, mixed with a fine, varied assortment of broken engage- ments, bankrupt promises, changed plans, assorted casts, artistic rivalries, and Thespian conceit which presented S. Sydney Tappan with the endless prospect of permanently dark hue that he had in those days; a prospect up which he seemed to roll the impossibly shaped barrel of his genius with only the despair of hunger to aid his determination that he would push it over the rocks in the path. It is a striking testimonial to the fine fusing of this new character of our Sammy's that each failure but 271 272 THE BALANCE seemed to strengthen his resolve. When the famous Morgenstern suggested adding a dark-faced comedian to lighten up the tragedy of the last act, he did not even begin to lose his temper. Nor when Mason, of Charles Kirstein, Inc. thought the addition of a villain some- where imperative, did he do more than smile faintly and spend the afternoon endeavouring to convince him that the point of the play, partially, was the real lack of personal blackness in the heart of James Osborne, the closest approach to a villain the play has. There was no point at all to the play so far as Mason was concerned, however, so I fear S. Sydney Tappan's time was wasted. Mason could never, even afterward, endure more than two acts of the thing, although he tried manfully to sit it out in order to discover the secret of its success and copy it in two acts with a cabaret scene added. His stage managers, too, tried, one after the other, to dissect it, but without result. There was not a new trick of construction in the whole affair, and almost all the old effective ones were left out! It al- ways remained a mystery to half professional Broad- way. It would have been laughable to our Sammy, the ludicrous difference between the manner of his reception and of his dismissal from the theatrical offices along Broadway and Forty-second Street, laughable had it not been so tragic. It is not really amusing to return to to a bleak, furnished room upon West Twenty-ninth Street, with one more of the slender threads that bind one to the hope of success severed and destroyed; in one's ears, still, the sound of sentences spelling failure and defeat, and in one's soul the raging consciousness of superiority flung down and trampled by the vulgar demon of mediocrity. Like all artists, our Sammy had always his share of conceit; he never doubted for a single moment, for in- stance, that he was reading a masterpiece to those com- mercial gentlemen who sat in the theatrical offices off Broadway. There is a certain something, however, THE BALANCE 273 which whispers hauntingly to the artistic mind when the God of Genius has touched human handiwork with the wand of His approval; and in S. Sydney Tappan's ears the whisper was always there whenever he read "Doctor Paulding." It was why he raged so in the mean rented room, and paced its narrow length so angrily those March nights, and forgot to see the humour of his entrances and de- partures from the offices. It was almost invariable: he entered the victorious author of the "Lady in the Lion Skin," and emerged the defeated purveyor of "Doctor Paulding." New York did not want the work of this new Sammy. Well, the brains which can estimate a play in manu- script are almost as rare as those which can produce the masterpiece. I do not know why S. Sydney Tappan ex- pected such rare genius to spring up in the first room whose door opened to his knock. Even if it had, the long-continued menace of the industrial depression would probably have operated to keep "Doctor Paulding" without a producer that winter and spring. The man- agers were in no mood for experiments. It is easy to see why art is low when its success must travel with a dollar sign. It was perhaps just as well that S. Sydney Tappan was so taken up during those days with his attempts to place his play, and so had little opportunity for thinking of other things. Once in a while, when Ruby would be spending the evening beside Ricorton in the picture show, he would have the room to himself, and the silence then would bring to him a little painfully the perception of how alone he would be after Ricorton's marriage. A little flush would come into his face, too, when he thought how readily he had accepted Ric's offer to delay the marriage another month so that some of the money he had spent for them all could be repaid. He has feared these evenings. They were not pleasant even- ings, those ones alone; but one must be almost a fanatic to accomplish much in the world, and Sammy has 274 THE BALANCE realized this at last. He will stick to "Doctor Paulding" until every producer in the country has turned it down. I have never been quite sure that it was not unshak- able belief in the child of his brain rather than true character that made S. Sydney Tappan hang so to his idea. But the test of the strong man is that he can be- lieve in the face of a doubting world. It was not ignorance, at least, that kept Sammy from faltering. He had progressed a long way since he first went in business with the long-vanished Mr. Pike. It was, perhaps, a good thing that his character came to him a trifle be- lated : what a tragedy, had he believed in Pike's plumb- ing that way! Persistence can be carried too far. In it all, however, there was a certain belief in the star of S. Sydney Tappan which allowed him to shut his eyes to the future, and spend each day upon the placing of the play. It could not possibly yield him money for some months after acceptance, and yet he never con- sidered the advisability of letting it rest while he se- cured some position that would keep body and soul to- gether. It is true that he knew nothing to which he could turn his hand. Even if he had, I doubt if he would have let the knowledge influence his decision. There seemed to be but the one dominant idea in his mind, and its overshadowing power drove all the others out. There would be time for positions afterward. I have heard people say since that he could get nothing to do, so peddled "Doctor Paulding." The opposite was the truth. It would be long after midnight many nights in the room on West Twenty-ninth Street before he and Ri- corton turned in. "It's got the punch in it, Ricky, I tell you!" he would cry, pounding the table with his fist as loudly as he dared because of the other lodgers. He never seemed to lose his enthusiasm for it. It is an odd thing, too, and one that speaks volumes for the boy to whom environment once was everything, THE BALANCE 275 that through all the months of poverty he did not seem to alter a hair. It was different with the tall musician. His glasses of ale and porter grew stronger and more numerous in the corner saloon nights, when he and Sammy and Ruby would stop on the way back from the picture show until economy demanded and received the tin pail he used later, and carried to their rooms because of the extra expense of buying over the bar. Nights, then, there were, after Ruby had gone to her room, and only Sammy and Ricorton remained talking until late in the night, when the musician gradually stifled his brain and mind with the heavy drink, and went to his bed with his failure and all the dull drab of his poverty-stricken existence drowned in the liquor. I do not think S. Sydney Tappan had ever the heart to blame him, however : Ricorton had no "Doctor Paulding" to urge him on to the future as had our Sammy, and the sting of his beggary and failure killed even the happi- ness of his approaching marriage. What could such a marriage be? At night, when Ruby had gone to her room, and there was left to Ricorton only the prospect of lying awake in his ill-shapen bed with his thoughts, I do not wonder that the sad-faced musician drugged him- self into forgetfulness and quick slumber. I only wonder that all the poor do not die in drink. Perhaps such things are the reason why every corner in New York has its saloon. To S. Sydney Tappan there seemed to be a sort of frightful emphasizing of the lesson of "Doctor Paulding" in poverty's slow murder of the genius that had flared once in Ricorton's soul back in the days of the Dutch Reformed Church flared, alas, and gone out. The mu- sician never mentioned, now, his opera which Vienna was to produce some day. His whole existence seemed centred upon the hatred he had for the cheap, flashy music he pounded out in his picture show; upon the tenderness with which his approaching marriage filled his still sensitive heart; and upon that odd, doglike faith 276 THE BALANCE he had in the ability of Tappy that loyalty which nothing could shake. Nights when even the tenements were still, except for some distant quarrel and the sound of cars, he would realize his selfishness in thinking always of his own affairs, and would try clumsily to close the gaping wound in our Sammy's heart. "You're always welcome, as long as we've got even two rooms, Tappy," he would say. "I'm just taking Ruby into our little circle, too, that's all! There's no one can ever take the place of your smiling face!" Alas, I fear Ricorton was a good deal of a senti- mentalist in those days: our Sammy's face was far from a smiling one. I wish, though, that those critics who in after years saw the weak character around his mouth could have looked in on him that winter. There was no weakness in the face of S. Sydney Tap- pan as he climbed the stairs at the close of each day of failure and rebuffs, and set about washing the few dishes and utensils of their meals, while he set his teeth and laid his plans for the next day's campaign. There was in it the granite strength of purpose of the pioneer and frontiersman who pushes ever onward the fringe of civilization, winning a wilderness for a future nation. Sammy was of the new frontiersmen who are felling the tangled growth of poverty, that rank vegetation which bids fair to threaten now all the fair acres the early woodsmen cleared. He was of that ever-growing band of spirits who are translating the winning of the West into the exalted spirit of the East; that band, uncom- prehended in great measure by the Mr. Schroeders of an older generation, uncomprehended by the men of the wide spaces of the plains and mountains, but working steadily and faithfully at their self-appointed task in the dark smoke-hung districts of the industrial East. A boy, the West of our America! Vigorous, healthy, fine-minded, open-hearted ! And yet a boy, nevertheless, in great part; with the problems and questions of the childhood of nations in his head. THE BALANCE 277 A man, the East! With all the weaknesses and knowledge of manhood; the grave problems of adoles- cence, the realization of past mistakes errors now buried beyond recall, and susceptible only of slow re- trievement; but with them, too, the awakened soul of a man, flashing out from a thousand minds that new spirit of manhood, of brotherhood, which is the new spirit of America. Yes, our Sammy was of these elect, even in his barren room in New York, as he washed the cheap dishes in the sink. He had the vision of the new spirit in his soul. Paul had set out upon the way to Athens and his mission. It was at this time that Christy & Co. sent for him and secured his picture, done by their best photographer, for inclusion in their dramatic section with Sylvia Tremaine. A conservative magazine, our friend Christy's, and so properly some few months behind the times. Sammy was no longer able to frequent the cheapest restaurants when his picture came out just after Sylvia's. He was eating off the little black table at the foot of the iron beds. It was then, too, that Carrie in her Settlement room on the lower East Side saw it and wept for happiness. The caption of "Lady in the Lion Skin" was over it but the look around his mouth was there, and she knew his eyes were asking for her. I am glad there was no one there to see her hand fly to her throat except the old bed- ridden woman across the street. Even she was dimly stirred by the old thoughts the gesture evoked. So, there was love in the world, after all it always brought the picture of a thrilling heart, that gesture ! From that day, too, Carrie knew that she would seek out Sammy and see him once more. He was not married, the article said. I do not know just when it was that Sammy first visualized the industrial depression as a monster chok- ing out the life of mankind. He always felt dimly its 278 THE BALANCE intimate relation to the beast of poverty against which he tilted in "Doctor Paulding." But perhaps it did not come to him, full-grown and a monster, until he saw the light that once was Ricorton gradually failing before the iron pitilessness of the monster's advance; saw, too, the fading colour of Ruby and the look of despair in her eyes recognized, obscurely, the silent disappearance of Bantry without a word except perhaps a final quarrel with Ruby; said good-bye to Pudney, and stood apathet- ically upon the dock in Hoboken giving thanks, dully, that the heavy Englishman had made enough from a lucky story to get him steerage back to London; saw about him in the streets the evidences of the grip of hunger upon the city, in the drawn faces of the lank- haired women, the sodden men, the shrill children about the brick churchyard on Ninth Avenue beside the elevated. God ! Was this humanity as Heaven intended ? I cannot help exclaiming even now over the cleverness with which the Gods of Circumstance set the stage for our Sammy. I could almost accuse them of sending that depression and its visualization just for him, were it not that the tempest would be so out of proportion to the result achieved. While I was engaged in making accusations I think I would hold them guilty, too, of the failure of the strike in Melchester, and of the subse- quent removal of John Rouse to the storm centre around the garment makers' strike off" the lower East side in New York were it not that there were so many other agitators the I. W. W. could have sent to achieve the desired effect who would have suited those Gods just as well. I have never been able to shake off en- tirely the idea that they were all but types, these people who took the minor parts in the drama of S. Sydney Tappan's life typifying life, their characters and names quite immaterial to the Gods who contrived all the effects. They were not types to Sammy, however, who knew and struggled with them. It was only the relentless THE BALANCE 279 force of poverty that he felt always and forever as a type: a type of personal monster, its hand ever raised against humanity's aspirations. He saw it in the crowds, the saloons, the slums, the strikers, the stevedores, the working girls, saw it and wondered how it could have escaped his notice all those years of his life before "Doctor Paulding" came into his mind. He was always prone to see the larger side of things, however, to pass over with too cursory a glance those details that are life to most of us the details he did see, the dramatic, the romantic things of existence which is why his youth did not see this beast of poverty plainly before now. Nights when he and Ruby picked their way through the greasy streets that led to the picture show where Ricorton worked, the whole squalid misery of it all seemed to strike him in the face with the force of a human blow: a blow intensified a hundredfold when he saw the pale face of the musician at the banged-out piano beneath the screen. I suppose perhaps a third of the audiences to which Ricorton played those nights knew Carrie by sight at least, and could have told Sammy where to find her, had he known she was in New York. Trouble, however, seems to have a strange reticence which prevents it al- ways from making itself known until there is no alter- native. It is singular to consider that had S. Sydney Tappan confided his desires to those weary, ill-fed audiences they could have given him what he most de- sired without a moment's delay. The Settlement for which Carrie worked lay about three blocks away, and there was scarce a doorway in those tenements which had not framed her figure once at least. A poorer section, this, than the one in which Sammy is dragging out his existence. There are no furnished rooms here because every foot of space is already taken, and board- ers are literally what the name implies ladies and gentlemen with a board to sleep upon instead of to eat from as was once the case. It killed the last vestige of hope that Carrie ever 280 THE BALANCE entertained of saving the poor, when she first realized the misery and squalor that was crowded into that narrow island between the rivers. Charity and Settle- ments, Y. W. C. A.'s and model tenements seemed all swallowed in one gulp of the beast's great jaws. And yet she saw more plainly than ever the crying need for them all. First Aid, she always phrased it First Aid until the doctor of Society could arrive. What a case that first city of the western continents presented to her eyes, still fresh from Melchester and its malady so unacute as yet compared to the desperate condition of this great metropolis of millions. Here was work to her hand for a lifetime! There was a certain satisfaction to her in the thought. A life of crowded days and busy nights does not allow of too much reflection; and our Carrie is but a girl be- neath the shield of her career. She has to strive hard sometimes at night, as in her Settlement room at Mel- chester, to forget the life she might have had with Sammy had things been different with them; to forget the dream faces of the children she has wanted so badly all her life; to forget the little ageing look of her mother as she still sits at the head of the table in the old- fashioned dining-room on Washington Avenue, and sees plainer with every day the blunder her life has been; to forget well, her life, I fear. Her life has always been Sammy. The teas and dinner dances and beautiful clothes of society in Melchester seldom occur to her now, except to bring back to her the scenes of her romance with Sammy. Thank Heaven, at least she was never willing to sell herself for fine clothes ! That temptation has been spared her and clothes and fine things mean less than ever to her now. It is only when she thinks of Sammy that she wishes for some of the exquisite things the windows on Fifth Avenue display. She would like to be quite beautiful, should she ever meet him again, and her father has left her to her own financial devices for some two years now. THE BALANCE 281 I doubt very much, however, Carrie, if the women and children of that part of the East Side ever noticed the plainness of your clothes. You are a millionaire duchess in their hearts, just as you once dreamed of being long ago on the ballroom floor of the Washington Club, with Sammy approaching down the waxed floor to claim you for a dance. How many years ago was that? Thank Heaven for our youth, at least! Even an old melody can bring it all back to Carrie. There has been a rising tide of anger this winter and spring on the East Side as wages are reduced, and shops and factories and workrooms close down, and the in- dustrial depression makes good its threat of hunger. The streets are filled with muttering men and small knots of harsh-faced women and girls, in their eyes the throttling fear that comes from utter despair. They have no control over their destiny, these people, and they have seen starvation before. Before them, too, there is no vision such as Sammy has, no high spirit of the soul such as the Settlement house welcomes evenings when perhaps Tschaikowsky or Katherine Breshkovsky or any of the kindred souls of the great cause of liberty in the world sit around the fire and stir their hearers with the story of martyrdom. . These starving workers on the streets, talking liberty and suffrage and revolu- tion and dynamite in a hundred accents have no flame from God to light their way. They are simply waiting; waiting to die in their rooms, or in the river. They have reached the Promised Land of the West and it has spurned them. It is no wonder that John Rouse made a record for additions to the I. W. W. ranks that winter. No won- der, too, that to most of them the higher justification of his creed fell on deaf ears and only the red riot of his speech, the crash of his dynamite resounded in their brains. A choice to these people so far as they can see death or dynamite! That dynamite acquires a less formidable look under such circumstances is not sur- prising. People do not throw dynamite for fun; and 282 THE BALANCE the humour of life is decidedly lacking this year of the depression in New York. The muttering grew audibly louder to Sammy's ears, too, as he went to and from the picture show those damp nights of early spring; the groups seemed larger and more threatening. That there could be anything prophetic for him in it all never entered his mind, of course. It was not until the blow fell that the stage stood out vividly to him, of a sudden, and he saw the heroic role there waiting for him to play it. Even then had it been a role of circumstances alone he would never have played it. It was why the Gods fired that heroic character of his with an idea. It was the com- bination for which he sold his name. He never forgot the incidents of that night in after years. They seemed seared upon his memory as with a branding iron. He could always repeat, even, all that Ricorton said, every word the driver of the taxicab uttered, hear again the low roar of the mob, the crackle of the police revolvers, and the crash of window panes as the strikers hurled their paving stones into the advanc- ing cordon of detectives, threw wild, and demolished the store fronts behind the plain-clothes men, scattering the crowd left and right. . At the time he was conscious only of his own blind fury against the taxicab driver who could demand the price of his fare in advance while Ricorton lay upon the curbing, his face to the night sky, his head cut deep with a bloody gash from one of the paving stones. To his dying day Sammy never forgot that he and Ruby between them could muster but twenty-seven cents; and the taxicab drove off down the wet, slippery street shining yellow in the light from the street lamps, leav- ing Ruby on her knees in the gutter, Ricorton 's head in her lap, and himself blind with rage against a world of wolves; while down the street the strikers still fought, routed now by mounted police, the shrieks of women sounding from the open windows of the tenements, and in the tiny lulls of the struggle the oaths of maddened men. THE BALANCE 283 One hour it was before the ambulance men laid the musician on the sagging iron bed in the West Twenty- ninth Street room and withdrew, leaving S. Sydney Tappan and a white-faced girl beside him a girl who stared with dilating eyes at the chalky face of the wounded man, and continually sought the surgeon's bandage with her nervous hands. "More shock than anything," the young surgeon had said briefly. A contusion of the brain. Sammy's heart sank when he heard it. A diet of ale and porter and starvation are not good helps for combating death. In Ruby's mind, at first, the hushed voice of self shrank back before the overwhelming question of Ricorton's life. Not until the first light of morning was at hand, and the musician had not recovered con- sciousness yet, but still lay in that heavy stupor, did it begin to seem possible to her that he could ever die while he lay so close to them in this room. It was then, as the roofs of the tenements grew gray in the dim morning light and the cold dawn filled the furnished room, showing the hollows beneath S. Sydney Tappan's eyes, and her own white, strained face looking out at her from the cracked mirror, that the spectre of her own Eosition rose up to haunt her and strike a chill of fear in er heart : a chill that froze her brain with the realization of her certain doom should Ricorton never speak again. How instantaneously, then, her world narrowed, as with a closing shutter, until it consisted only of Utica and her mother's mean house on the side street, and this cheap room on West Twenty-ninth Street with the gaunt form of S. Sydney Tappan beside the bed. These two her only hope! Utica! As in a flash of the shutter she saw its doors, yes, even her mother's door closed to her then. Those women of her mother's world would understand only how best to trample her underfoot. There would be no second's rest for her in the streets of that town once 284 THE BALANCE the truth were known. She could see and hear the whole thing there, now, with her child still seven months unborn. Money ! If only she had some money to figure out a way! At the thought the hopelessness of her situation rushed over her afresh. As well cry for the moon as for money upon West Twenty-ninth Street. There would be no money for her. Bantry, now he had had money put away some place; and had vanished silently and left her helpless, .in hell. There would be no money from any place now. God! If Ric should not live! In all the world there would be no soul to turn to except this hollow-eyed playwright who watched beside the bed of his friend. On Tapp^y would hang her fate should the tall musician never rise again from that sagging cot. I think her solution came to her as the kindly old doctor from down the street examined Ricorton, and she lay on the bed in her hallroom and stared dully at the ceiling, listening for the words from the next room; came with little, ugly steps into her soul, with evil, twisted face and malevolent grin, and whispered to her the way put for her. I do not think she even hesitated rat listening, either, unless I am very much mistaken. A woman fighting for her life, this Ruby Williams, in herback room with its stringy curtains and torn shade. That she has struck by accident upon the one weapon that can yield her victory, she does not realize as the old doctor shakes his head and speaks. "No hope, I fear, unless he rallies soon now,'* he says, blowing his nose loudly, as he looks at the still figure on the bed. Who was it blew his nose like that, Sammy wonders, dully? Oh, yes, Uncle Richard from Washington, at the Dobbs' house, when his mother died. He has never forgotten it. The doctor hesitates at the door. "In fact," he adds slowly, a certain pity in his eyes for the tall, thin-faced man who is holding the door cour- teously, "in fact, I fear no hope at all good-bye " THE BALANCE 285 And he has gone, with no thought of payment in his mind, leaving S. Sydney Tappan gazing in unbelief at the figure on the bed. A figure! Is it no longer Ricor- ton already, he thinks, with a little chill around his heart ? Is Ric to leave him after all they have endured together? In rapid succession there run through his mind the little old Dutch Reformed choir room in Melchester, and the musician sitting in the dull light from the cloudy panes; the smoking-room on the Pullman as the train flashed through the night toward New York; that first day they rented this room in which he stands; the rehearsals in Lyric Hall; the night in the City Theatre on Fourteenth Street, and Ric tapping loudly for Bantry's cue; the day at the station when he left for the Coast trip; the letters; and their reunion at the Half- way House and Sylvia's; and then the "Rose of Asia," and the disappointment they drowned at Ricotti's And then this depression, and the misty night wind on the cobbles where Ric lay with his head in Ruby's lap beneath the yellow street lamp. Before God, is Ric going to leave him, too, as all the rest have done ? He has forgotten Ruby entirely until she steals in and glances fearfully at the figure that breathes so heavily now upon the bed. Is it sorrow for Ricorton that seems to twist her face so? "I wonder," she says in a whisper, "will he live?" She has dropped on her knees beside the bed as Sammy answers. It is only for a second that he has hesitated and glanced out the window. "I think not," he says in a queer, dry voice which he does not recognize himself. The truth must come soon now, anyway, to the girl upon the floor. Some- how, even the cheerfulness seems to have faded from the carpet. He never forgot afterward the single exclamation that escaped her at his remark. "God!" she said. And in the sound there were the accents of the damned crying out to heaven for help. "I think He must be all there is left for us," he says 286 THE BALANCE unsteadily. He knows now that Ricorton will not live. "And no marriage now, for me," Ruby says pain- fully. I have always wondered why the remark did not jar harshly upon our Sammy's consciousness. It was not quite the natural thing to say just then. I suppose, however, he was not apt to be critical when Ricorton lay dying before him. "Don't say it, yet," he says oddly. It seems like taking even the last chance from the dying man, he thinks, and consigning him to death, this considering him as dead already. But this is Ruby's chance, now, and she will take it; the Gods have played into her hands at last. "I've got to say it," she says tensely, a little shudder of horror around her heart. "I've got to be married, Tappy!" She breaks off and looks the other way, as the reali- zation of her meaning sinks gradually into Sammy's brain, and understanding fills his eyes. He thought it humiliation, always, and not the hot hate of herself which had surged suddenly into her soul and made her turn away. ''You mean " he begins slowly, uncertain how to phrase what he is trying to say. But she interrupts him. She will get it over and done with, even if it spoils her chance. Only the sense of her desperate necessity is driving her on now. *^Yes, v she says hoarsely, ";t's happened why wouldn't it here But Sammy is thinking only of the anguish that must have been Ricorton's as he was struck down upon the street. '' Ric ! " he says. In his mind there is no blame for any one. It is only in books that such things do not happen. In Ruoy there is a relief that floods her soul. He has assumed it was Ric who has ruined her, without any question ! THE BALANCE 287 "Don't blame him," she says in a low tone. "We're all human. I didn't know And now " She looks down at the form of Ricorton. "I wish it had been me they hit " Sammy turns away, sick. Is there no end to misery in the world ? "Don't," he says hoarsely. "Why not?" she says desperately. Can she go on with this, she wonders? There is no choice, how- ever, she must. "You know the world you know what it means for me what chance has a woman like me got now?" Our Sammy stares out the window. "Something can be done," he says grimly. There is fight in him yet. "On twenty-seven cents?" cries Ruby relentlessly. With the words there come to Sammy again the cobbles and the night wind, the taxicab and the shout- ing strikers. This is what it means to be poor. Sud- denly that monster of the depression rises before his vision, full grown this time, crushing a world of men beneath its horrible weight, reaching into the villages, the towns, the cities, the slums, the saloons striking down the world of labour, of industry, of art, shop- girls, actors, clerks, stevedores, strikers. This is the monster of poverty taken active form and name and out upon its hunt for human souls, the monster against which he has sworn his oath; America his world of Pharisees, and the destruction of the monster his Parsifal, his Symphony Eroica, his Thermopylae, his crucifixion. No paving stone, but Poverty, has killed Ricorton in the damp streets of New York and, unsatisfied, reaches out now for this girl, this sweetheart of his, and gloats over the weakness of humanity which aids its work of ruin ! But it shall not succeed over her, too! "No, by God !" he cries; and to his astonishment cries it aloud. 288 THE BALANCE His mind is made up now. Of what use all that fine writing in "Doctor Paulding" if its author shrinks from the test himself? Our Sammy has caught the hero's cue in this forsaken furnished room on West Twenty-ninth Street and is about to stride out upon the stage. All the setting of his life is darkened in the dull light of the room, and only the hero's place in the spotlight stands out clear and distinct. One by one, he sees now, all the people of his life have fallen away. The stage is quite empty except for these two, himself and Ruby and the Monster waiting for its cue in the wings. "I'll see you through, just as Ric would have," he says now. The flame is shining in his eyes. Poverty has won its last victory over them. In Ruby there is a hatred of herself that will hardly allow her to speak. "You mean," she says almost in a whisper, "you will marry me?" It does not seem possible she is really saved. But Sammy, as he nods his head in assent, is not looking at her. He has put his ear to the struck man's chest and is staring now at the inanimate form of what was once Ricorton. "He's dead," he says simply. "Perhaps God has been saving me for this!" I do not think any one in the room would have thought it anything except an echo but it is Ruby, by the window, who has whispered half to herself: "God!" It is the tone that cries aloud, it is not an echo. CHAPTER XIX IN WHICH BANTRY CONGRATULATES HIMSELF, AND CARRIE SEES A NEW PLAY BY S. SYDNEY TAPPAN AT THE FINE ARTS IT is an odd thing how the aspect of our actions alters when seen through the glass of Time. S. Sydney Tappan's marriage to Ruby began first to present a different face to him when he realized in the room on East Sixtieth Street where he had moved to escape the memories West Twenty-ninth evoked that it is not possible for us to put away at will all that our lives have been. It has only been for one brief exalted day that he could exist as the nameless, unconnected rescuer of Ruby. He is S. Sydney Tappan of Mel- chester again now. The strands of his life run on as before to run on until the pattern of his career is finished. He is S. Sydney Tappan and married. He has had his hour of anguish, however, and con- quered for all time, that evening after Ruby went back to Utica and the mean side street, upon what little there was still due from Ricorton's salary at the picture show; went back with S. Sydney Tappan's name, and in her soul a vast relief that yet seemed to fade moment by moment before a great hatred of herself. Once she was out of danger she began to see what manner of man it was who had done this for her, and all that was good in her rose up desperately and cried out for the truth. It is strange to consider that at the moment when she thought her peril was past she was but beginning her fight against that real danger which grew stronger and stronger until she could no longer resist it her contempt for herself. 289 290 THE BALANCE That hour of our Sammy's anguish came while he packed on West Twenty-ninth Street; when he saw himself for a brief space as he was; playing that fine part at Williams, in his letters, dazzling Mr. Schroeder with the brilliance of -his success as a captain of in- dustry, lionizing himself in the theatre at Melchester and the Schroeder drawing-room while the audience applauded wildly for Sylvia Tremaine; and selling his own happiness, now, for a final opportunity to play the role of the hero, a hero, too, who could never be ap- plauded by any one except himself. It was as if he caught a glimpse of some one else some one for whom his heart cried out watching the rough box in the Potter's field as it hid Ricorton from his sight for the last time, picking his silent way with Ruby afterward through the wet, misty streets of New York to the office where he gave her his name and sacrificed him- self with it his great recompense her salvation. I think he crowded a lifetime of heartache into that anguished hour alone as he packed into the round trunk he had brought from Melchester he could remember it in the old attic on Hawthorne Street against the eaves as he packed in it their music and threadbare clothes, and all the hundred and one things even their poverty had accumulated; packed in it, too, though his eyes refused to see, those half-torn letters of Carrie's. It was only then that his heart failed him for a mo- ment, and he stood in the gaslight overwhelmed by despair. He pinned his soul in that brief second to the soiled manuscript of "Doctor Paulding" as it lay upon the dresser. It never seemed to him, afterward, as if it could have been only an hour that he spent in the old furnished room. It was his mute testimony to the fierceness of the conflict he had won. It was not until he sat through those evenings upon East Sixtieth Street, however, that he saw with a strange coldness around his heart that his test had in reality but begun; that his sacrifice must be an ever- THE BALANCE 291 lasting one, a lifelong concealment of the truth, if it was to avail Ruby at all; that the realization of the hope of his life must always bear with it the bitter- ness of this fettering secret a secret to last always because of the hopelessness of ever explaining it. His conception that night of Ricorton's death the con- ception he had somehow had of himself as doing this thing and then ceasing to be, had lost the glamour now that made the act possible of performance even to our Sammy. Our lives live with us still, binding us inexorably to the great woof of the past. He must pay now, during his life, for the gilded sacrifice he has made that night in his fight against poverty. This secret of his and Ruby's will be always with him to build its wall between him and human intimacy. It was his one hour of self-pity. His great consolation after it was that he had saved Ruby. The thought stood him in good stead for a long time. That in the final reckoning each of us can save only himself, he did not see for many years. It was Ruby who saw it first; and when she saw it, recognized that she had but exchanged one hell for another, with now the fuel of a second wrong added to the flames. One's conscience does not remember the conventions of society: it is the true inwardness of our actions that sticks. It was Hartmann, oddly enough, who first told Sammy of a possible chance for "Doctor Paulding," and lent him the fifty dollars that finally saved him. S. Sydney Tappan did not notice the little look of hostility with which the actor first greeted him; a look that faded, however, as his keen vision took in the telltale shininess of the playwright's coat, and the dark hollows underneath his eyes faded, and vanished entirely when he learned that Sammy had neither seen nor heard from Sylvia Tremaine for many months. There was always a little jealousy upon his part because of Tappan's influence with Sylvia Tremaine. A shrewd business man, this Hartmann. He has 292 THE BALANCE been camping in the Adirondacks this winter until the depression blows over. He has enough money now so that depressions do not worry him, although he must still work for a living. He does not spend his money easily upon Broadway. Few people do who earn it there. He claps S. Sydney Tappan on the back in the Lambs' Club where he has steered him for a drink. "A play, eh?" he says. This Tappan has genius, he is quite certain. A ghost of a smile comes to Sammy's lips. It is a long time since he has smiled. "No 'Lady in the Lion Skin,' this time, either!" he says quietly. A remembrance of past conversations with Sylvia comes to Hartmann's mind. "A play on poverty, isn't it?" he asks. "Sylvia told me a little about it." The hope that has flashed in Sammy's eyes dies out again. Sylvia has told the actor about his "message" most likely, and the play is damned with him already. Nothing kills quicker with the profession than this handicap of purpose. Is it because gentlemen with a purpose seldom take the trouble to know anything else ? "A play first, though, Hartmann," he says quickly. The actor nods understandingly. This chap is no amateur. He has been through the mill. Any one has who has finally weathered a production with Sylvia Tremaine in the leading role. "Who's got the thing now?" he inquires. "Yours truly," Sammy answers with a little smile. And he tells Hartmann, a little satirically, a few of his experiences, particularly the famous Morgenstern's dark-faced addition to the last act. The actor makes a little face of disgust. It is partly because he considers no one except himself a competent judge of a play. "Burlesque!" he says vindictively. "That is where THE BALANCE 293 Sam Morgenstern got all his ideas burlesque that's all he knows." It is when he has read the manuscript through in Sammy's room on Sixtieth Street that he springs up excitedly. "Why," he says, "this is Cromwell's stuff! I'll give you a card to him you know the Englishman, he's up on Seventy-second Street off the park. It may be just what he wants sounds just like his stuff." Cromwell, S. Sydney Tappan thinks. Oh, yes, the English actor-manager. He has not realized that he was in New York; although he remembers now that he has taken up a residence here. "What do you think of it yourself?" he asks the actor. Hartmann stares at the manuscript thoughtfully. It does not do to be too enthusiastic about these things; no one under heaven can tell about a play. "Some changes, of course," he says cautiously. "But it's good, Tappan, as a whole distinctly good." In his heart, however, as he goes down the street alone toward the Lambs' Club there is a mighty envy. If he is any judge the thing is tremendous. How is it that some chaps seem to have all the luck? Why, he himself could have written it had he gotten the idea! Well, I fear all great plays seem easier to write after they are done, Mr. Hartmann. Our Sammy has not had all the luck; he has paid for the sincerity of "Doctor Paulding" with the anguish of his soul. It was some two weeks after he left the manuscript with Cromwell that the tall, broad-shouldered actor sent for him. "Ah, Doctor Paulding," he calls out cheerfully from upstairs, "be seated and I will be down directly." It is not an excited Sammy, nevertheless, who seats himself in the room below. He can remember the time when he would have walked upon the clouds at such a prospect of selling a play as Cromwell's note has im- plied. He knows now the uncertainty that attaches 294 THE BALANCE to everything theatrical; he, too, has learned patience since he came to New York. Good things do not come to any of us in a hurry. So he is not excited. He is only wondering if this youngish-looking man can ever take the part of Doctor Paulding successfully, as John Cromwell comes down the old darkwood stairs and greets him in the rather formal drawing-room. His deep voice and fine inflection bespeak only the cultured actor, with no trace of a traditional English accent. There is a strange look in the eyes of this John Cromwell, however; introspective, our Sammy thinks, and yet alive with life. It is almost as if he sees and enjoys some other view over the heads of the people of this world into some Golden Gate beyond; a view the mundane dwellers on this sphere do not ob- serve. He was one of the first of the elect whom Sammy knew. He always felt, too, as if he had always known the man before a sentence had passed between them. It might have been the contact of their kindred souls. "I like your play,'* Cromwell says, as he comes in, "provided I have read it aright. Come up!" Upstairs beside the fire, in the room of ancient design and furnishing with its plain blue rugs and armour- studded walls, that John Cromwell calls his study, the actor speaks his mind. "You've two dramas in it, haven't you?" he asks intently. He stares into the fire. "It seemed to me as if I sensed always a second drama ofF stage, the real drama of forces which the action only suggests, hints at, finally brings out on the stage before our eyes in the moment your James Osborne staggers back from the mob outside the Settlement. I sense always a mounting menace off stage, and Doctor P3ulding struggling with the weak weapons of his love and example to ward off the catastrophe! Quite in vain. The rest do not see until the real tragedy bursts in upon the stage. Is that it?" Sammy nods his head. Here is a man. Sammy s faith faltered as he . . . saw that vast audience stream in from the rainswept street" THE BALANCE 295 "You are the first man who has sensed it,'* he says quietly. " The others have just seen a play." He does not know of the strange conviction which possessed Ricorton the night of the reading upon West Twenty-ninth Street. Cromwell smiles. "They will understand when the footlights shine on it, Tappan! No imagination, that's the explanation. You have a play of character, a psychological play if you will, there are no coincidences, no circumstances, no claptrap to make the drama. The forces which mould the characters are inexorable. Where did you come by the thing?" "Ibsen, partially," Sammy replies. He knows the actor means where did he come by the constructive plan. "I simply took the higher social forces where he took say, heredity in Ghosts. Doctor Paulding, in that Settlement scene, might be listening to the mob in the street, as Mrs. Alving to Regina's voice from the dining-room, and say with her, 'Ghosts!' The ghost is that of the dead past industrial wrong " "Poverty!" cries Cromwell. "Exactly my impres- sion of it!" In his mind there is a strange exultation. This man who sits before him seems to his mind to have made a play that flashes with golden gleams of higher truth glimpsed fitfully through the cloud of dull human ac- tion. It has been his purpose he sees now. He is almost a hypnotist, this Cromwell, in his notions of how a play should be staged, and it is four years since he has had anything to work with, against which he did not inwardly rebel and this play seems made for him, at last. A Thespian with the prophet's soul is what John Cromwell is, his only fault, perhaps, a vision which can sometimes forget the hour's need in the future's neces- sity. He sees mankind a trifle too much in the mass, and is thinking of the larger victory while he passes the old woman on the corner whom Carrie will always see. 296 THE BALANCE It is perhaps the best way to demonstrate his mind to simply record the fact that though he took "Doctor Paulding" that afternoon, he yet let its author go out the door without even the purchase price of a dinner in his worn pocket. Sammy was in the last extremity. Hartmann lent him fifty dollars; it was the fifty dollars that saved him. It was a tribute to the changed estimate of success our Sammy had that he never even calculated in advance the possible receipts from the Fine Arts Theatre. He was conscious, of course, that John Cromwell was no sure financial success such as Sylvia Tremaine would always be. Most of these ventures in the Fine Arts do not make world record runs. And yet he never considered the money he might receive beyond the fact that he would no longer starve. In spite of her peeping through the blinds, I am not sure but what Mrs. Schroeder would still call him fool. He is not a fool, however, I will venture to say; fools do not write "Doctor Paul- dings." I wonder, what she would have said had she known that John Cromwell shut himself up from all callers those summer months, denying himself to every one except those connected with the future production of the play, and spent the time with S. Sydney Tappan living Doctor Paulding's life as Sammy saw it; and later as John Cromwell saw it, even clad in the same clothes the audience saw that memorable night of the production I wonder would she have called him fool? Personally I have a strong suspicion that it was the reason why the character of Doctor Paulding secured the hold upon the English-speaking world it did. John Cromwell acted with his brain as well as with his body; and behind him was the brain of Sammy. Perhaps it was only when the immediate financial reward was not evident that Mrs. Schroeder called people fools. Sammy was never a fool to her after the second year of "Doctor Paulding's" run. THE BALANCE 297 I think it was the blood of generations of marriage- reverencing ancestors that first made Sammy uncon- sciously think that Ruby should be present at that first night at the Fine Arts. But it was quickly swal- lowed in the perception of her loneliness once the idea occurred to him. She never knew why it was that he suddenly began to write to her faithfully twice a week. He doubled the number of letters because he had not thought of it before. It was only after it had been settled that she would come that he saw how impossible it would have been to have left her out. Ladies in Utica, even when they live upon mean side streets, do not stay quietly at home while their husbands have first- night productions at the Fine Arts Theatre in New York. It was one of the first lessons he had in the new aspect of that marriage and its secret. Strange, queer letters they were that Ruby wrote back to him, with an odd undercurrent of despair that he could not understand until he thought, with a little curse at his stupidity, of what Ricorton must have meant to her. She was hating Utica, too, along with herself, had he known it, in those days of spring when she looked out at the elms along the streets, and waited for the post- man to bring her letters from New York. The be- draggled, rose-coloured couch in the dining-room beside the high stove seemed unbearable in the hours when dusk crept along the muddy streets and wet sidewalks; and the farmers' wagons went by on their way to the valley, and the old woman from three houses down who came in to get the dinner talked interminably through the kitchen door until the old-fashioned dark clock struck six, and her mother came in from the store. S. Sydney Tappan was sending her money then, from the advance payment John Cromwell had made him. There must have been a sense of doom in her heart, moreover, that day she looked through the geranium- choked window of the parlour, and saw Jack Bantry 298 THE BALANCE swinging down the street staring at the houses. She never knew afterward just how he discovered that she was there; whether he was just playing in Utica and remembered the address, or whether he got it from the theatrical agency in New York and got off the train to see her as he passed through. That home is the place where they must take us in when trouble overcomes us, and that this was once her home, may have been all the clue the Irishman needed. She never forgave the garrulous old woman what she said at the door. Days afterward she remembered the first words that Bantry used before he discovered her new name; and she could never quite rid herself of the idea that possibly he had come with the intention of saving her at the last from the ruin he had brought upon her; and that the news of her new position brought back on him his ugly hatred of Ricorton and S. Sydney Tappan, and put in his mind that idea of revenge and profit which finally destroyed her. "Oh, Mrs. Tappan?" he said, then,^with an odd inflection in his voice that made Ruby in the parlour shiver. " 'Faith, I'll see her.'", I wonder was it her knowledge of the real character of the man that made her experience such a feeling of revulsion as he came to greet her in the dim parlour, or was it merely a prevision of the danger his knowledge would always hold for her? She realized afterward that she had lost her battle before it had begun. She un- consciously lowered her voice at his first words so that the old woman in the kitchen might not hear what they said, and the Irishman knew at once that she was afraid of him, from that. "And why not Mrs. Ricorton?" he asked impudently, as he seated himself in the old rocker. . " Ric's dead," Ruby answered in a low voice. Her tone called up the manhood that there was in Bantry and silenced him for a brief second. She must have loved the musician after all. Then the odd puzzle of the affair smote him sharply. THE BALANCE 299 "So, you're married to Tappan, eh?" he said un- believingly. "Yes," she said defiantly. After all, what business was it of this Irishman's now? "Guff," he said flatly. "When?" He was not sure that he believed it, although in the depths of his con- sciousness there was something that whispered to him that it had an oddly truthful ring. "A month ago," she answered, a slight metallic ring to her voice. There did not seem to be any sound from the old woman in the kitchen, now was the old fool listening, as she had suspected ? Hurriedly, in a panic, she searched her mind for some plausible accounting of this marriage. What a fool, when she had had all these weeks to think of some reasonable explanation which would satisfy this man before her! Why could she not have anticipated this? "Ric was killed in the strike,'* she said slowly. Light flooded Bantry's brain. "Oh," he said. "And Tappan married you?" He had read of that strike in Boston where he had gone to make sure of a summer job. " Yes," said Ruby. Somehow the whole thing seemed so plain and bald, put in the light this conversa- tion placed it. It did not seem possible the man before her could escape the implication of those simple questions and answers. What could she add to soften the effect ? "On what?" the Irishman queried with his ironic smile. There was something strange here, something hidden. He felt it in the girl's tone of voice, in the little side glances she threw toward the kitchen door. "Is Tappan here?" he added. There was something about the tall, gaunt playwright that made him feel outclassed, cheap. ^"No," Ruby replied. "He's in New York. John Cromwell has taken 'Doctor Paulding.' ' Bantry sniffed. "Cromwell's a pompous ass," he observed sneeringly. 300 THE BALANCE . "He'll kill what Tappan hasn't with that stuffy dia- logue." Inside him, however, a bitter jealousy rises up for a moment. This girl, whom he has twisted around his finger until now and the despised dreamer of those cheap furnished rooms are somehow creeping ahead of him. A play at the Fine Arts and perhaps money, while he still waits for employment in the offices! Cromwell commands a certain highbrow following, so that Tappan will be sure of some money at least. And there are always apelike managers to run after a playwright of the Fine Arts. What luck that such a play should happen to strike the fancy of the would-be great Cromwell! A gullible public, too, that may swallow the whole thing, and think it fine because it is so rotten dull. What luck! The evident slur upon S. Sydney Tappan stirs Ruby violently, much to her surprise. She has not realized before her new estimate of the man. "You leave Tappy alone," she says, her eyes flashing. " Stick, tQ Cromwell if you want to throw your mud." Bantry gives a little whistle. * Sudden affection," he says sneeringly. "As sudden as I please," she cries hotly. "What business is it of yours ? *' She is angry now, and does not care what the old idiot in the kitchen may hear. There is a fire in her soul for the man who has saved her, and she rises up in his defense. Bantry 's eyes narrow in an ugly fashion as he says before she can speak: "Who has a better right?" There is a meaning look that goes with the words which turns Ruby cold. "That's over," she says in a low voice. "Is it?" he says. "I'm not so sure!" He stares at her with his old bold look. He has no means of know- ing the change that has taken place in her soul since he saw her last. She has always been contrary like this. Behind that cold exterior perhaps she is on fire already. THE BALANCE 301 It is with a vast surprise that he sees her rise, and throw open the door. "That's over, I said," she says in a strange, bitter voice. "I've got a husband now. Do you under- stand?" He cannot dodge the implication of her action. "You mean I'm not wanted here?" he says danger- ously. There is an astonishment in his voice that he cannot conceal, an astonishment mixed with hurt van- ity. He cannot believe the charms of Jack Bantry do not make him welcome anywhere. In her eyes, now, however, there is a look that makes him uncomfortable of a sudden. "You heard me," she retorts, her tone one of steel. "I've got a husband." Suddenly the quick Irish temper of the man flames out. She is showing him the door! She must have forgotten with whom she is dealing. "By God, then, where is he?" he says furiously, "I want to see him." Is this all a bluff? Or is she telling the truth? Who knows? Why should Tappan have married her? Did the fool do it to save her from dis- grace could he have been such an idiot as that? Or did this girl take him in with her passionate allurement and keep the real truth from him ? The two of them must have been alone on West Twenty-ninth Street after the musician died "See him, perhaps, and talk over old times old troubles eh?" he adds insinuatingly. With a certain wild exultation he sees that he has struck upon some kind of a mark in the way Ruby goes pale of a sudden and stares at him as if struck dumb. By God, she cannot make a monkey out of him! "How's that?" he asks sneeringly. "A sort of West Twenty-ninth Street reunion!" He will follow up this thing, now. She has never told Tappan the real truth, he will wager his last dollar. That is the reason for those glances toward the kitchen, her low tone of voice, 302 THE BALANCE and all the rest of it. She has never told any one the truth ! Surmise becomes conviction as he sees terror gradually dawn in her eyes, and her breath grow short. "Perhaps we'll be closer friends than ever," he says mockingly. "With such things in common as we have, you and I?" His tone of voice is menacing. "Who knows? I'll see you in New York." And he goes out the door and down the street, with eyes that still flash the conflict and his victory. He has the whiplash over this girl now, he thinks grimly, and one way or another it shall yield him something. He has heard before in New York of those fortunate people who "have something" on some one else. Well, by God, he himself has something now. The hours our Sammy spent in the Fine Arts Theatre those weeks of the rehearsals of "Doctor Paulding" were the first happy ones he had spent since that night in Mel- chester when he walked past the darkened theatre and saw upon the signboard " The Lady in the Lion Skin " a play by S. Sydney Tappan. The ideals of the Mr. Schroeders of the world have gone down in ignominious defeat now, and in Sammy's soul there is the con- sciousness of fine effort finely directed, the sense of accomplishment smoothing the obstacles in the path- way of his present, assuaging the sharp hurts the memory of the past gives him. Carrie would applaud him now, I am sure. He was very conscious of his resolution not to think of her during those long days of endless, laborious toil and discussion; but in the little pauses of the work upon the stage, while he sat in the darkened auditorium and made notes, I am afraid there was very little else in his mind. The whole vast audience of the first night was resolved into the face of Carrie, not so eager now, alas, but staring at the stage to see what her old Sammy had done with his genius. All the effects were contrived for her. He was trying to put the new soul of Sammy THE BALANCE 303 upon the stage so that she might know that he had changed. That she would ever again come into the fabric of his Ufe, he never suspected. It was more as if he built a memorial to some one he had once known, to whom he would dedicate this flowering of a long- planted inspiration. She would come, he thought; even if the run were but for two weeks she would contrive to get there neverthe- less. She would never leave him forever judged and damned upon that first play of his when there was new evidence offered that might reverse the verdict. She was too fair for that, and Melchester was but a few hours away by train. Plays in the Fine Arts were always matter for conversation in Melchester. She could not help but hear and come. ., He did not realize the changes, physical and intel- lectual, which were altering him so out of all resemblance to that youth Melchester had once known. A man now, our Sammy, with dark eyes and firm mouth, and in his bearing that spirit of kindness which gradually transformed his life; a man, these people in the cast of "Doctor Paulding" feel instinctively, with the charm of life in his soul. To Melchesterians he might seem a trifle worn, gaunt, yet made of steel, as he walks back to Seventy-second Street with John Cromwell these late summer evenings; his eyes a trifle deepset yet flashing with spirit. But it is only the scar of the conflict he has waged and won. He is a handsome boy no longer; Sammy's first youth has flown from him on West Twenty-ninth Street in the winter. That time bore so lightly upon the charm of Carrie during the months was because of her untroubled spirit. In spite of that little look of sadness I do not think she looked an hour older than in those .days in Mel- chester. Her task lay plain before her, and the full accomplishment of her days and nights left her little opportunity for self-scrutiny. She would have been almost happy had she ever found a way to combat the little memories of the past that sprang up in un- 304 THE BALANCE expected places and cried to her of Sammy. She was glad now, at least, that she could no longer hear the swish of the trees along Washington Avenue in the night breeze of sultry August, need pass no more the Washington Theatre with its memories of a certain play given there long ago, need catch glimpses no longer of the country club across the river with its bars of light falling from the windows out athwart the links; need not pass Hawthorne Street with its ageing hedge catching the snow of December or the rain of fall, and shining before the lamps of the homecoming motors in the dusk. There were none of these things to bring back to her the memory of the promise life had once held; and yet I think they were all there in New York, in different guises, different places, under different names. It was the sun of Melchester and he,r youth that set behind the Jersey hills across the misty, purple river, when she would be returning from a walk upon the drive; it was the rain dripping from the big elms along Melchester streets that she heard falling when the drops fell from the roofs upon the window-sills of Rivington Street tenements; the rippling of the river by the country club that she heard, in the lap, lap of the muddy water along the Floating Church by Henry Street; the billboards of the Washington Theatre in the bright lights of Broad- way and Seventh Avenue, making her wonder always what Sammy was writing now; she could never escape the mournful music of those memories, springing up so suddenly, reminding her of all her life lacked. Almost all that her will ever accomplished was the banishment from her conscious recollection of that evening Sammy kissed her out on the cool, dark links, and the sound of the closing door behind him in the Schroeder drawing- room, the night of the production of the "Lady in the Lion Skin." She wrote Annie once a month. But that Sammy had never answered her own last letter and that she did not hear from him any longer, Carrie never told her. THE BALANCE 305 They were meant for each other was Annie's only thought, as she waited silently upon the family around the quiet table of the Schroeders' in Melchester, were meant, and so would have each other in time. It was through one of those benefits arranged for the victims of some particularly atrocious factory fire that Carrie first heard of the John Cromwell venture at the Fine Arts; heard and thrilled. Dark days for the seekers after social justice, those days of Sammy's early career, with the accumulated forces of ignorance and prejudice, apathy and self-interest arraying them- selves against every advance, even when the object might be the aid of little children in sweatshops; dark days through which ventures like that at the Fine Arts sent a beam of hope and cheer in the gray chill of the social mist, a beam that gathered to the theatre the great hearted of a metropolis in a mighty effort to say godspeed to each new champion should he prove worthy; gathered, too, along with them, the carpers and cynical critics that seem to attend every great movement of the world, their mission perhaps praiseworthy, their methods the world-old ones of the narrow-minded. Sammy never forgot the great variegated crowd of the ''Doctor Paulding" first night. A crowd that streamed along Forty-fourth Street in the rain from two direc- tions, and poured ceaselessly into the mouth of the Fine Arts Theatre, spreading through the lobbies, the promenades, the galleries, the balconies, the boxes, the orchestra circle in a thousand odd colours and voices, a never-ending kaleidoscope of human faces and expres- sions, settling into the hum of humanity in the mass, once seats were found. In the little manager's office, that famous office with the signed portraits on the walls, the small space a breathing memory of all the greatness of the stage, Sammy sat and watched them come; saw those whose faces were marred by poverty taking the side stairways that led to the galleries, the shuffle and side glances of the poor accentuated by the brightness of the lobby; 306 THE BALANCE watched the gayly yet tawdrily dressed occupants of the balconies clerks, stenographers, commuters, teachers, visitors all imitating, unsuccessfully, the style and conscious grandeur of the motor-driven assemblage in evening dress that crowded into the boxes and orchestra circle below painted cheeks beside ascetic-faced pro- fessors, dowagers, brokers, writers, salesmen, first nighters, publishers, debutantes, roues, buyers, society favourites, all in the pushing crowd; marked the tall men from the Southwest, in broad-brimmed hats, bringing for a brief moment the stretching plains of Texas into the heated air of the lobby; the heavy-jowled near statesmen from Nebraska and the Dakotas in their black felt hats; the hawklike ranchers from the far grassy hills of Wyoming, uncomfortable in stiff shirt and collar; the humorous-lined faces of shrewd merchants from Ohio, Illinois, Missouri; beside them ruddy-skinned neighbours from the farms of the Middle West, real Americans all these last, except where some German face from Iowa, some Scandinavian face from Minne- sota proclaimed the mixture of the republic all points of light, these faces, tipping the waves of Gothamites who surged endlessly through the open door into the velvet-hung foyer, waves sprinkled with the intellect of New England, the hot blood of the South, the moustached near-aristocrats of the smaller cities, and, beneath all, the mad hodge-podge of the representatives of the millions of New York. I think Sammy's faith faltered for a moment as he sat in the office by the lamplight on the desk, and saw that vast audience, the unthinking face of America, stream in from the rainswept street. Could all that heterogene- ous mass of humanity possess a common heart and soul, common aspirations? Was there a heart of hu- manity in these Americas? Or was John Cromwell amusing the Pharisees with the dream of what they might have been but now no longer cared to be, except in the comfortable, artistically lighted theatre? And he himself the purveyor of the dream ? THE BALANCE 307 It was only when the lights were lowered to the accom- paniment of tolling bell that proclaims the approach of the first act in the Fine Arts and Sammy looked out from the curtained box where he and Ruby sat looked out upon the illuminated faces of the seated crowd, that he realized the opportunity God had given him in his genius his talent, calling the soul of America to listen before a thousand prosceniums. He never forgot the hush of the voices as the curtain rose on that plain study of Doctor Paulding's which seemed like a real place in the world to him. It was the poverty of lower New York near the river that stood outside that scene in the Fine Arts and came in with Doctor Paulding, as John Cromwell entered and the drama rose, tightened a little, and then led the assem- blage in the seats forward down the valley of imagina- tion; a reality that spoke inexorably to the listeners beyond the footlights; the soul of truth beating through the lines the actors spoke. He never forgot, either, the way in which the menace of the play rose and mounted higher and higher, until it seemed as if even he himself must rise in his box, and cry out to the blind actors on the stage, and warn them of the catastrophe impending there, before it was too late. He knew before the play was half over that he had written something great. It seems odd, now, to consider that he did not once look at that far seat in the left balcony where an oval- faced girl sat, a look of never-failing tenderness in her eyes that somehow hushed the efforts of the two stray medical students behind her to distract her attention to them from the stage. In Carrie's heart the little nervous dread of those first few minutes which she carried with her all her life when- ever she saw one of Sammy's plays has given way to a tiny feeling of exultation, as the drama catches up the wandering threads of mind in the theatre and weaves them into the single strand which holds fast the souls of the audience to the tragedy upon the stage. Gradually, 308 THE BALANCE too, the magic of the conception the actors unroll before her lays hold of her, grips her, until she is no longer con- scious of the theatre, of these people around her, the great tiers of faces is held only as by a bar of fire to the soul of Sammy bared to her gaze, flashing with the spirit of his new vision! No "Lady in the Lionskin," this. Here, too, the same genius, the same deft skill only turned now upon the clay of real humanity, and modelling a figure that seems to turn to breathing reality as the lines appear the fine heart of man apparent in every lineament. Where has Sammy learned all this? It is as the play progresses that her heart comes into her throat with the desire she has to see him once more this is the Sammy she has always known, except for that brief time when those chameleon spots of his shone with a different colour this the Sammy of her idealistic youth, the Sammy of her girlhood love and young passion, the Sammy, thank God, of the rest of her life. The acts passed almost as if without cessation before her gaze, the applause almost unheard until that final climax. No one who saw that ever forgot it. The streaming, uplifted faces of that vast assemblage stirred to the depths of their beings, and applauding wildly the worn, gaunt man whom John Cromwell and his fellow actors held on their shoulders and upraised arms. It was as if all the suffering of S. Sydney Tappan's life leaped full grown before the thousands in the Fine Arts; and they rose as if drawn by some mighty power from their seats rose and cheered until the gray-clad girl in the balcony rose and trembled with the effort of keeping her arms by her side and her hand from her throat. "Sammy!" she cried, in the uproar. But I do not think any one in the theatre heard her. The intangible feeling of the play had become sud- denly real to her as she saw the lined face of S. Sydney Tappan upon the stage, saw the look in his eyes, and that firm line around his mouth and she knew that he had changed. It was as if those trousers of his shrank THE BALANCE 309 suddenly to the knees again, as they had been when she first saw him. She did not see the triumph, the success, the great ovation of the theatre she saw only the loneli- ness, the misery, the adversity which could ever have made him look like that. Even in the Fine Arts those legs of his were still thin to her, and her heart cried out to him over the balcony. I only wish she could have seen through the curtains around Sammy's box where Ruby sat as if turned to stone, her eyes fixed, through the brass rings, on an Irish face in the orchestra circle, in her hand a note which has changed her heart to ice a note from Bantry, congratulating her and himself upon S. Sydney Tappan's fine success. If only Carrie could have seen through and guessed the truth! She would have saved herself and Sammy the bitterest hour of their lives. Well, at least S. Sydney Tappan is weighing heavily on the scales to-night. We can give him credit for that. I think that was why Carrie went home in the rain to her Settlement room, with that feeling of exultation in her heart. He had found himself, at last! CHAPTER XX IN WHICH CARRIE MAKES A CALL UPON SAMMY, AND RUBY REGRETS IT MOST THAT exultation was still in her heart when she awoke next morning and lay for a moment on the plain bed, and saw again the play Sammy had written saw it as she had seen it the night before. She had been right, after all, that day in the Settlement in Melchester so many months ago when she thanked God for Sammy. The world was not all like her father. It was with a fine lightness of heart that she rose to the tasks of the day. For the first time then she began to suspect, unworth- ily, the reliability of our postal service. A letter to Mel- chester would assuredly have been forwarded to her here, had one ever been received at the Settlement on Hague Street. A year now since that last note of his enclosing the Martha Grossman check came to the door! He 'must have written this play since then. And in it surely there was no sign of the influence of Miss Tre- maine. Dorothy must have been in error when she came back from her trip to New York, and reported his engagement and a new play to follow the "Lady in the Lion Skin." He would not be apt to write a play like "Doctor Paulding" with Sylvia Tremaine at his elbow. Too, if he had been engaged he would have written her about it among the first, even if it had been broken off later. Dorothy has never been too noted for her re- liability. Oddly enough it was the conviction she had that Sammy must have written her and the letter gone astray that kept her from writing to him herself, at first. She 310 THE BALANCE 311 could not put from her mind the memory of his changed face as he stood upon the stage for his speech, a smile upon his lips, in his eyes unwavering sadness. But surely he could never have been so cruel as to keep the truth from her, had trouble come to him this past year. It followed her, however, that thought of his trouble and her own aloofness; followed and distressed her in the days that elapsed after the night at the theatre, and prevented her from writing the note of thanks and gratitude she would otherwise have sent him lest it should be a coldly formal answer to his lost cry for sym- pathy and help. It obsessed her the phantasm of his trouble and suffering; a phantasm made more dis- quieting by the lack of definite knowledge that hindered her from writing him her real thoughts; obsessed and haunted her until she called the office of the Fine Arts and inquired, with a little fast beating of her heart, for S. Sydney Tappan's address. "Leave your name, please, and we will deliver your message," the polite youth there responds firmly over the telephone. He has had experience before with the crazy people who seem to chase these playwrights and actors of the Fine Arts. His business is to find out in ad- vance what they want. Carrie, in the dim hall of the house on the East Side, blushes a little. "No message, thank you," she says, a trifle con- fusedly. She has not thought before of the system of bars to strangers which New York presents. Fate seems to be against her in her effort to see Sammy. She does not think of John Cromwell for some time. When she does so, it is with little confidence that she calls the number, and waits while some one at the other end of the wire goes in search of information. But her luck is better this time. S. Sydney Tappan has just moved, it seems. "The Stradford," the voice informs her. "Near Broadway." Some kind of family apartment hotel she sees in the 312 THE BALANCE telephone book. "Doctor Paulding" is probably making Sammy some money and he has moved. Sammy! It is with a little thrill that she contemplates her visit to him. Letters are quite unsatisfactory and this will be a surprise! It has always been a mere question of time before they would meet again, she sees now. They have been undergoing the test in the crucible of life and can perhaps emerge now into happiness. To-morrow, or perhaps Monday, when she has some time to herself, she will go to the Stradford and see Sammy again. She does not dare to allow herself to reflect upon that inter- view, either! It will be so sweet. It was about the same time that, in another section of the city, Bantry was standing grinning cynically to him- self in the doorway of the Sixtieth Street house. They have left the missus sick so the landlady has told him left directly after his own visit that afternoon a few days ago when Mr. Tappan was out; though from what precise disease the lady has been suffering, the landlady has not had time to find out. Left without leaving any address, either! The landlady's husband is a barber, and what with his meals and the cats to be fed, and all the washing and the bells, she has no time for visiting her roomers! There is a triumphant look in Bantry's eyes, a look not unlike the one when he strode off down the street in Utica, as he turns away this time. He is remembering this last interview on Sixtieth Street. So, she is actually afraid of him! That is why they have moved and she is sick. His threat has had its effect this time. He has made it plain. Can it be, though, that the girl is fool enough to think he is still after her, instead of after money? The conceit of 'em all! He has blown her to many a meal in the days when he was a sucker. Well, by God, she can blow him for a little! Tappan will have money now > and she can lay hands upon some as easily as not. That is all. He may need what little money he has still stowed away. He smiles cynically to himself. A mere change of THE BALANCE 313 address will not save her, he thinks; and he is quite certain now that through some queer change in the woman she will prefer giving up her last cent to letting him touch her again. What has produced the change he does not know or care beyond the fact that it is damned lucky for him. And he can find the new address at either the Fine Arts or the Lambs' Club. A thoroughly selfish person, our Mr. Bantry, without visible ties in the world because he has deliberately broken them so as to be better free to act as he wishes. He does not fear S. Sydney Tappan, either. Our Mr. Bantry is not a coward in that way. He has too much self-assurance for that a self-assurance which is real and not assumed, and comes, therefore, as an aid always to his courage. He is perfectly capable of carrying this thing through without a qualm. I think that was why, from the day Ruby saw him from the geranium-choked window of the parlour in Utica, she felt that she was doomed. He had not rested until he had ruined her before; he would never cease now until he had ruined her for good and all unless, per- haps, she could persuade him that his advantage lay in giving up the attempt. That it might be money now, and not desire for her that urged him on did not enter her mind. The inclination of the feminine mind is not toward the minimizing of personal attraction. In this case the facts of the past supported all that Ruby cared to think. Bantry had stopped at nothing once! It is a vulgar fact that moments of great emotion only leave us, sometimes, with weak stomachs or splitting heads or dry throats. So it was that the beginning of Ruby's realization that she had but exchanged one hell for another only caused a great nausea to rush over her as she saw Bantry descending the steps on Sixtieth Street that day. In her, too, there was a mounting sense of hopelessness, of despair that overwhelmed her physi- ical condition and added the last touch to her hatred of herself it came from her growing comprehension of the 314 THE BALANCE fact that she herself was falling in love with Sammy, in the face of her approaching doom. It evidenced itself to her in those days in her efforts to make herself over to please him. I think she knew instinctively that she was not a lady in his sense of the term, and wondered in her soul if that was why she ap- parently did not attract him in the slightest. It was why she ceased dropping her g's, and modulated her voice, and tried so hard to efface her naturally joyous disposition in an endeavour to appear quiet and refined. Poor Ruby ! She was realizing then, to some extent, the sacrifice Sammy had made for her, and was seeing her own efforts now to keep him from regretting it as the very least that she could do for him in return. She was prepared to spend her life in showing gratitude. If mere desire could have made of her a lady, she would have been one on the spot. Her resolution might not have stood the test so well had it not coincided so per- fectly with her own desires of course; but I must give her the credit for what she did, at least. She tried to make it up to Sammy so far as she could. She was lying on the parlour sofa when he came back to their three Sixtieth Street rooms that afternoon of Bantry's visit, and found her in a dead faint alone. "Just sudden," she said, later, avoiding his eyes as he questioned her about what had made her faint. "My condition, I suppose!" At least she will not tell of Bantry's visit, and give suspicion an opening wedge in Sammy's mind. It was her first mistake of that week. "Just after that gentleman's visit, I guess," the land- lady tells him downstairs, between sweepings of the cats into the dismal backyard. It was characteristic of S. Sydney Tappan, however, that at the time the remark did not interest him in the least. It is another instance of the strange blindness from which people suffer who live much in their minds. He was not even conscious that the sentence registered itself upon his brain along with the tragic statements of THE BALANCE 315 Pudney that evening on West Twenty-ninth Street in the winter. Upstairs, a little later, Ruby checks a "gosh "upon her lips and says quietly: "Let's move, Tappy. It makes me think of the winter, here!" She is clever enough to realize the sympathy her past arouses in him, and not above using it to gain her own ends. There are no fine distinctions in Ruby. It seems to her that she must escape Bantry at all costs. Per- haps it is the fever that she has had since that fainting spell, a fever that seems to come and go in gusts with the phantoms of her brain. Sammy relieves her mind. "We can very easily," he says gently. It seems queer at times to realize that "Doctor Paulding" is making him nearly seven hundred dollars a week, with a steadily rising demand for seats. They are being sold four weeks in advance, now! And it is not two weeks since it was put on. "To-morrow!" she says appealingly. It is the distaste, he thinks, that illness sometimes con- cieves for certain surroundings. "I'll look," he says, "and ask Cromwell in the morn- ing." "I'll pack," she adds, with a little smile at the meagre- ness their belongings still display. The round-topped trunk has not been opened. In the Stradford, however, where he has brought her in a taxicab the next day, her fever does not seem to diminish. "It's not serious partly her condition," the doctor says he is the kindly old doctor again, still blowing his nose "partly mental worry, I think." He glances oddly at Sammy, who catches him at it. "Meaning, I suppose," S. Sydney Tappan says, "that I beat her daily with an umbrella?" The old doctor laughs; then grows grave again. "There are worse things than beatings," he says 316 THE BALANCE seriously. "Though it looks like fever hallucinations, in this case. I'll come again." Quite fine rooms, these rooms of the Stradford apartments where S. Sydney Tappan finds himself these days with this girl whose appellation is that of wife, and for whom he has gotten a maid now. He cannot stay in himself all day, and no one can tell when another fainting spell may come upon her. How fortu- nate for them both that "Dr. Paulding" has succeeded! "It's my head, I'm sure, Tappy," she says just before the doctor comes again. "Get something to make it stop aching." The ache could not be banished, however, about the hours the mailman called and she listened intently for the maid to bring the letters upstairs. She expected a note from Bantry in almost every mail, and lived in hell between the mailman's visits and the rings on the street door down below. In Sammy's mind there was a great pity for her that would not allow him to consider sending her again to Utica and the mean house on the side street unless she expressed the desire herself. She clung to him and all he represented of her old life like some sick animal to the human home which has housed it all its days. She never tired either of trying to find out if he really did not despise her for her mistake. She seemed to revel in the fact that she was no different in his eyes because of it. Perhaps her passionate desire to be absolved was because of the great wrong she had done him of which he was ignorant. He always treated it as lightly as he dared. "Of course you are the same to me," he would say. "Why not? It might happen to any one in your posi- tion. I'm not Mrs. Grundy." It was never a light thing to her, however. "God bless you, Tappy," she would say. "You're the only true gentleman I ever knew." It is no wonder that she fell in love with him. It was different than the love she had felt for Ricorton. She THE BALANCE 317 had always felt with the tall musician that she was upon the verge of great things. Sammy was the hero who had done them. She had a vast respect for him that nothing could ever shake. It was this realization of his quality that made of her life a martyrdom. She had sold herself to her own particular hell because she did not wish to pay for her own mistake in the begin- ning. It is not surprising that when she finally realized all that Sammy had paid for her, her soul could not stand beneath the crushing burden of remorse. Such feelings are not confined to the old melodramas. Her mind, as she lay in bed, was occupied almost solely with her position and its solution. I do not know that she ever hoped to really solve it; it was only that her mind kept turning to it like to some maddening, tragic Pigs in Clover, in which her calculations were always upset by some unlooked-for rush of the pigs! It always stood out clearly to her that Bantry as well as herself would lose all by telling the truth to Sammy. He could only continue to gain so long as he could threaten. And yet she could not escape the grim fact that while he would but lose this one chance of expos- ing her, she would lose everything to find herself perhaps at his mercy again if she survived; an ugly circle in which the truth meant disaster to her as well as relief. There were times when she considered throwing herself upon Sammy's generosity and telling him the whole truth from the beginning, before Bantry should force it upon her; days when she watched anxiously to make sure for the thousandth time that he did not despise her, and so might fall in love with her yet. It was the hope that was always with her that this might happen to-morrow that made her keep putting off the reckoning from day to day putting it off until the day came when she realized that he could never come to love her because he loved already and had saved her just the same. It was the day Carrie rang the bell, and Ruby 318 THE BALANCE strained her ears in the bedroom off the parlour to catch the voices in the hall for the tones of Bantry's baritone. "A lady for you, Mr. Tappan," the maid says doubt- fully from the end of the long hall. "Though she won't give her name." It is Carrie, still hugging to her breast that surprise where she stands out in the hall, her breath coming in little gasps with the excitement of seeing Sammy now so soon. I cannot bear, myself, to see her face again, as she stands there waiting, unaware of the tragedy inside. Before God, Sammy, you should never have let it come to this! "Let her in," he says. He cannot think who it is unless it is some budding actress who wants his support, or perhaps some new solicitor with a new best thing in the world. Sammy could never bear to turn any one away unheard. Carrie is coming down the hall now, however, behind the maid who only stands a moment to show her into the parlour and then retires, unconscious of the drama she has left in the silence of the room; a silence that Ruby in the bedroom raises on elbow to solve. There is no sound because Sammy is seeing a ghost in the sunlight of that front apartment room a ghost with the memory of all his past and once-cherished future written on its face. "Carrie Carrie!" he is saying. It is almost a whis- per; as if a real sound would drive the face into thin air. "It's I, Sammy," Carrie says tremulously. "Really me." Grammar has left her in the exquisite happiness of seeing him again. She can give herself to him at last, in a moment. "You didn't expect to see me here, did you?" The numbness of his brain bursts suddenly into a shooting pain of comprehension at the words. It is no face, but Carrie. "No," he says, half choking. THE BALANCE ;319 She brushes her eyes with her hand and turns away with a little laugh. "I can't help it I couldn't stay away any longer and I saw your play Oh, I'm so glad for you, Sammy!" It is the old Carrie, and the truth will come. "Aren't I silly to weep?" she adds quaintly. In her voice pride, love, and unashamed emotion struggle for predominance, while a sharp sense of the unreality, the impossibility of it all chains Sammy like some modern Prometheus to his place beside his chair. This girl who stands before him with love in every lineament of her face, in every movement of her body, cannot be married must be the same- as on that night long ago when he left her twisting her hands upon the divan in Melchester; only weeping now, quite openly, at seeing him again. "No, you're not silly," he says, half blindly. Good God, what else can he say? A wave of terrible emotion sweeps over him with the desire she lights in him, a desire to take her in his arms blindly, fiercely, passionately, anyway to hold her close to him and crush out the distress in her eyes. There never has been but the one Carrie in the world for him since first his youthful passion awoke at their kiss. I wonder what those critics who called Sammy impersonal would have said could they have seen him in the front drawing-room of the apartment that afternoon ! "I can't believe I am seeing you yet," she says now, half laughing, half crying. He loves her just the same as ever, she knows now she can see it in his eyes, his face she does not care why he has not written to her all these months. There is a good reason. "I came down to the Settlement almost a year ago father and I differed they had to put me out " "Put you out?" Sammy says unsteadily. Who under heaven could have done such a thing to this girl before him? He cannot frame his ideas at all, some- how all life seems concentrated in the present mo- 320 THE BALANCE ment, the future only a kind of frightful nightmare to be delayed, put off. "Yes," she answers. "I upset things with my ideas they interfered with his giving it was better for me to come down here. Do you see ? " She makes these little explanations as a sort of concession to good taste, the inevitable convention which precedes the overpowering reality of the moment precedes without obscuring for an instant the one fact that they are together at last. Beneath her lightness, however, Sammy divines the spirit which has led her to give up her home and choose the East Side of New York instead. "You're fine, Carrie," he says huskily. Inside, he is wondering if he can ever carry this interview to a finish she will not talk of Settlements and Mr. Schroe- der for long! "You don't know what a different feeling your play gave me when I saw it " she says softly. "It was so fine to know that I had you to believe in again. It is everything, Sammy." I think it is utter hopelessness that makes our Sammy exclaim: "Good God!" involuntarily. His grip is slipping. "Why haven't I?" she says quickly. With a tiny inward crash his control vanishes. "Yes," he says fiercely. Before God, she has! Over Carrie there sweeps a presage of disaster. It is something in the way he has said that yes. There is a moment of absolute stillness in the room as he stops speaking, and she gazes at him unwaveringly. "The truth, Sammy," she says quietly then. " Don't you love me now?" It was always the truth she wanted more than anything else; and she could stand the evasion no longer. There will be no thought of blame, of re- proaches if he does not care for her as he used. It will not be his fault. It will only be unhappy for her. Sammy has stood more than he can bear now, how- THE BALANCE 321 ever, and he is swept out of his control upon the tumul- tuous current of his emotions. "Yes," he cries out fiercely, "every moment since I left you, Carrie and now Emotion chokes his utterance as he crosses and crushes her to him, the thrilling charm of her mount- ing to his brain. The youthful passion of that night by the river springs suddenly full grown at the sorcery of their contact in this drawing-room, filling their souls with deathless ecstasy. It is the fulfillment of that ravishing promise passion made to them the night he kissed her out upon the links; fulfilled now in man- hood and womanhood. Neither of them can hear the partial opening of the door that leads to Ruby's room, nor glimpse the face that quivers behind it at their words. They only know that they are in each other's arms again; not that in the bedroom hope has died forever. It is Sammy who remembers. "Good God!" he says sharply. What has he done? Carrie's breath comes quickly as she draws back. "What is it, Sammy?" she asks. "What's hap- pened?" Again there has swept over her that presage of coming disaster in this room disaster in spite of the thrilling happiness of the brief past moment. "Nothing," he says blindly. The impossibility of ever telling all that has happened has rushed over him. Ruby! He cannot sacrifice her now, and undo all that has plunged him into this hell. And yet he can tell nothing but the truth to the girl before him. He will tell her nothing else though all his world is shattered about him. Carrie stares about her. "Mr. Ricorton!" she says. "Where is he?" "Ric's dead," Sammy answers. "Oh!" Carrie is shocked for a moment. Somehow, she has thought of the tall musician as occupying this apartment with Sammy. 322 THE BALANCE But Sammy is striving for his self-possession again, now. "He died five months ago," he says. "Died in hell, I think, the thing I've been through since I saw you the hell of poverty Oh, I've changed changed in every way " What can he say that will sound reasonable to her, he wonders desperately? He should never have seen her, he realizes now. "I knew it," she says quietly. "I saw it all in 'Doc- tor Paulding' "It is why I came to you," she goes on. But it is more than he can stand. "Don't!" he cries in an agony. "I can't bear it Carrie "You don't want me!" she cries swiftly. "God in Heaven, it is that I can't have you!" he sobs, almost in an insanity. "It's untellable, that's all I am married now, married now I tell you I can't have any one " Well, Sammy is paying for you, Ruby, this afternoon I hope that you are listening well; hope, too, that you are seeing the look on Carrie's face as his words strike into her heart. She was stunned, as if by some blow, for a moment. " Married ! " she has said, in a little whisper. "You ! " It is as if it were some foreign word of uncertain mean- ingwhose import she has had to seek out. To his dying day her pitiful face remained graven upon Sammy's memory, as she rose slowly and her hand flew to her throat. "Sammy," she cried in an agony, "why didn't you tell me before!" It was the only reproach she ever uttered. She smiled then, a tiny, pitiful smile that seemed to apolo- gize for her presence there where she could not be wanted. He never remembered afterward what she said, except at the door, where it seemed to him that his mind must crash into madness with the mighty effort his will called for to let her go without a word. THE BALANCE 323 "If you had just told me before," she repeated then. She could seem to think of nothing else. It was only when she had gone and the door closed behind her that Sammy lost his self-control. It made Ruby bury her face in the pillows of the bed in an agony. I think an agony of self-reproach, that sound. It was the sound, from the hall, of S. Sydney Tappan weeping. It was then that she realized fully what he had done for her. His sacrifice had not been all that night in Ricorton's room on West Twenty-ninth Street. CHAPTER XXI IN WHICH BANTRY TELLS THE TRUTH, AND No ONE FINDS IT PALATABLE IT is a terrible thing to sit helplessly by and see events march inexorably to a dreaded conclusion. It was why Ruby could not wait in her bed for the certain day when Bantry and S. Sydney Tappan should clash, but strove with all the means at her command to avert the catas- trophe which threatened. There was no hope any longer in her that happiness could ever emerge from the tangle of their lives. That had died with the closing of the door behind Carrie. Nor was there much expec- tation of success in her striving to postpone the grim moment of reckoning. She strove because inactivity was unbearable. In the afternoons when S. Sydney Tappan took those long walks through the New Jersey hills with John Cromwell as his companion walks which the actor took willingly so that the anguish of his friend might be dulled by the drug of physical weariness it was then that she racked her mind ceaselessly for some solution to the appalling perplexity of her position. She hoped endlessly for some accident which would dispose of Bantry without her knowledge or connivance, and looked in the papers daily for it; an accident she knew, never- theless, which would never take place. The Bantrys of life live to green old ages usually, perhaps the better to appreciate the remorse their actions bring them. Her head seemed to ache almost continually in spite of the acetanelid with which she dosed herself after the doctor had ceased his calls. There was no illness for 324 THE BALANCE 325 which a doctor of medicine could prescribe. Her sick- ness was of the mind. It was intensified, I think, a hundred fold by the grim silence of Sammy. He never mentioned to her that call of Carrie's in any way. I suppose he saw the uselessness of it; the feeling of self-reproach it would bring up in Ruby; the fresh wound her sympathy would make in his own heart; the unfairness of the burden the knowledge would lay upon her through no fault of her own. It was his own cross, and he bore it alone. Not even to John Cromwell did he confide the truth. I think he understood for the first time in those days the loneliness of the great spirits of the world. That Ruby had heard it all in her bedroom did not occur to him. She had been asleep when he went in afterward to see. It was only when Ruby could stand the inaction no longer that she sent for Bantry with a desperate design in her mind. He came one afternoon about an hour after S. Sydney Tappan had left to meet Cromwell at the Fort Lee ferry, came rather triumphantly, except for the cold suspicion in his eyes. She would hardly be likely to send for him if she meant to capitulate. The strain, no doubt, of uncertainty had been bearable no longer. She would be up to something to get around him. She greeted him in the drawing-room in an attractive negligee, though her head swam with the effort of getting up. Bantry could never have guessed it from her face, however. She had spent an hour before her mirror. I think even he was surprised anew at her charm. In her heart she was wondering if she could ever stand having this man touch her again. But his conceit could never have imagined that. She looked at him with a whimsical smile once the maid had left them and their ironical greeting was over. "I've missed you, Jack," she said then a little tragi- cally. She could always act. It is a hard part she has set out to play this afternoon, however. He scoffs. This is a little thick even for his conceit. 326 THE BALANCE "Yes, you have," he says unbelievingly, "like the rent collector!" "All right," she says then, shrugging her shoulders. There is only one way to arouse this Irishman. It is to agree with him. It always turns the trick. He looks at her a moment. "Have you missed me?" he asks then a little tensely. It is odd how the thought that he thrills her still can get his interest so instantly. She looks at him, her eyes flashing slightly. "Why haven't you been to see me?" she asks. He is not deceived as yet, however. "Because you didn't want to see me," he answers easily. She gives a little laugh. "Oh, I see," she says. There is a tiny implication in her tone that fires him. "Have you missed me?" he reiterates, more tensely than before. She looks at him ironically. "Considered as a lover's question, Jack, isn't it a little bit late?" she asks. He feels her evasion now, however, as she intends he shall. "Have you?" he repeats intently. She stares into his eyes a moment, and then looks away. "You always had a fascination for me, Jack," she says in a low tone. To change the next instant "What have you been doing with yourself lately?" lightly. This tantalizing always disturbs Bantry, she knows. He is not to be turned aside now. " Damn ! " he says. " To think you married Tappan ! I'd have seen you through ! " This is a safe thing to say now that there is no danger of being called upon to make good his words. The girl seems more attractive, too, than he had thought possible. She certainly gets to him. "It wasn't necessary," he adds moodily. THE BALANCE 327 "No heroics, Jack." She shakes her head. She must pretend to discourage him at first. In her next words, however, there is a ring of truth* "Anyway, what's the difference?" She turns her head a trifle. "He doesn't love me " His suspicions rise again. Is she going to offer her- self to him? "What is this?" he inquires cynically. "A game?" "A game!*' she counters quickly. She must hurry here. "What for you?" She laughs amusedly. "Why, I could always lead you a chase," she says smilingly. "You're an easy mark for any girl, Jack. I didn't mean anything except oh, what's the dif- ference what I meant? Perhaps I'm just sick of sitting here in this apartment alone! Who knows?" "That's a lie," he says tensely. "You meant what you said, didn't you? Didn't you?" She turns to him passionately. "Mean it! Of course I meant it do you think I like this kind of a life with my nature It is becoming hard for her now. but she forces herself on. "He doesn't even look at me I'm caged, that's all caged!" "By God, I'll smash your cage, then," he says hotly. And he steps forward toward the divan. " Don't ! " she says faintly. " Leave me alone, Jack! " What a modulation it was that she put in her voice just then! I think he could almost feel desire beating through the words desire for him to come on, and yet fear least he should really touch her. Inside, however, she is wondering if she is of the stuff that can make sacrifices. It does not seem possible that she can stand the touch of this man even long enough to go away and leave Sammy free, in spite of the fact that it is the only reparation apparently that she can make for her act. It is a fire, nevertheless, with which she is playing this afternoon in her endeavour to make reparation a fire of unknown strength, that of a sudden leaps up and out 328 THE BALANCE beyond her control. Bantry has suddenly flamed with the nearness of her to him. "You devil! " he says hoarsely; and the next moment has seized her in his arms and kissed her. He did not feel the shrinking of her beneath his embrace or the cold avoidance of his kisses while she sat there, motionless, for a moment. Only for a moment, though, before she cried out in uncontrollable horror. In that moment there had come to her the vision of the impossibility of the course which she had chosen, the frozen horror of the future, a future which she could never live through; all expressed in the horrible nausea the touch of Bantry sent coldly through her, as if some reptile had touched her in the dark. She had changed, too, she realized, and what was possible before, no longer was. "My God!" she cried out, then. "Not yet not yet " And she forced him back from her on the divan. He knew at once. "So it was a game!" he cried furiously. "A game again, to get me " It was wounded conceit as much as anything that put the fury in his voice. She had nearly made a fool of him, this girl! " Not you ! " she responded tensely, then. " It was to save Tappy who cares for you! You can tell all you please if you want to I've told him the truth first, myself!" She has been keeping this in reserve all along, in case her nerve should fail her in her first attempt. She will try bluffing him, as she calls it. His eyes narrow suddenly. "Not the truth as I know it, though," he says vio- lently. She cannot play him like this any longer. "Yes, as you know it," she says coldly. There is not a flicker of an eyelash to betray the lie. For a moment he is stunned. She has beaten him after all! Then a new point of view comes to him. THE BALANCE 329 "All the better then, by God ! " he cries triumphantly. "If that's it, he'll pay me for keeping it dark, just as well as you would have. I don't fear your Tappy ! Or you, either! I've had my fun with you, I'm through!" I think Ruby saw as in a flash that moment that she was lost indeed. Nothing now could prevent the truth from coming to S. Sydney Tappan if this Irishman went on with his threat. He will carry it out, too, she is quite certain. There is a look of hatred in his eyes that she has never seen before. It is because he is thinking that these people in New York who "have things" upon other people squeeze until the last instant or their victims escape and they get nothing from it all. He will not make the mistake of drawing back now. If he wins it will be easy afterward, indeed. The iron hand is wanted now. It was what lent him courage to go on: the knowledge that if he hesitated he was beaten. "You won't find him a woman!" Ruby cries, "whom you can threaten, and browbeat." I do not think either of them heard the opening door or footsteps in the hall until S. Sydney Tappan stood there in the doorway with John Cromwell be- hind him stood listening a moment only and then stepped swiftly forward. "What's this?" he said. What a piercing silence that was to Ruby! Bantry answered first, after a pause. "Ask her," he said coolly. His sudden calm was ominous to Ruby. He was gathering himself together for the struggle, and felt her speechlessness as swords- men feel intuitively the dangerous openings left by their opponents. If she wanted the showdown now, why, by God, she should have it! He did not notice at all the form of John Cromwell in the background, unless I am mistaken. "I am asking you," Sammy said quietly. "What are you doing here?" There was no mistaking the menace of the tone. 330 THE BALANCE "She sent for me," Bantry answered instantly. "I didn't," Ruby cried at once. It was her first mistake that afternoon. Bantry held her note in his hand. She had thought merely to deny everything blindly, completely. "What's that, then?" he asked grimly. He held out the note to Sammy who did not take it. I think S. Sydney Tappan knew that there was something underneath the surface of this meeting that he did not understand, and to which the note would lend no clue. "Did you send for him?" he asked Ruby. "Yes," she said slowly. A little gleam of hope had sprung up in her again. It was that the truth of the past might go unnoticed in the stress of the moment if the issue could be joined at once. It was why she rose so swiftly and addressed herself to Sammy. "It's blackmail, that's why," she said tensely. "He knows!" She pointed at Bantry. I think she was conscious of Cromwell in the background and her lips closed upon any dangerous details. There was a sinking of Bantry 's heart in that second, too. So she had told Tappan after all! In Sammy, however, there was no wish to act until he knew all the facts. He was not sure even then just what the Irishman knew. "Knows what?" he asked coolly. It would come out in a moment, and our Sammy has learned pa- tience. "Our marriage," she answered in her strained voice. If there were no details her answer might save her; and the clash of battle was on now. Sammy knew then, as the image of Ricorton sprang again into his mind. He turned slowly to where Ban- try stood by the curtains near the divan. "You beast!" he said clearly. "Get out!" His voice was steady, but in his eyes there was the flash of an overpowering anger an anger that cooled THE BALANCE 331 Bantry like a dash of ice-cold spring water; yet did not daunt him. The iron hand, now! And the momen- tary gleam of hope which had come into Ruby's eyes as Sammy spoke, died again with his words. "Not yet," the Irishman said hoarsely. "Now!" our Sammy said, his tone like steel. Only Cromwell's touch upon the playwright's arm has saved Bantry thus far. In the Irishman, however, there was the conscious- ness that the thing had gone as far as it could in safety. "You listen to me, Tappan," he said swiftly. "I'm not the one who's out to do you up. The truth's all you want the truth you haven't had that she's trying to keep from you." He will test those asser- tions of Ruby's before conceding his defeat. To Ruby the Irishman's words come as a first presage of defeat, like the sound of Bliicher's men to the First Napoleon on the field of Waterloo. Fate is against her now, as against the Corsican so long ago. She hardly hears Sammy's answer in the defeat she sees coming, although the words do not seem like defeat at all. "I don't get your insinuations, Bantry," he has said deliberately. "Is that all?" For a moment the Irishman saw red at the remark. It was furious temper that spit out at them then. "Do you think I'm a fool?" he sneered furiously. "Do you think I don't know why you married her? Do you think I'm blind? It's you who is the sucker, you poor fool you and your marriage. Why, Ricorton never touched her and she's made you think he did! I knew she'd done you up the day I saw her in Utica, and she told me he'd died. She tried to put it over on me before he was killed, and I wouldn't stand for it that's 'how much he had to do with it he was easy, too!" "It's a lie, I tell you," Ruby cried hoarsely. She could stand it no longer. But Sammy motioned her away. 332 THE BALANCE "I'll deal with this man," he said. There was murder in his face murder that made Ruby quail, and Cromwell tighten his grasp upon his arm. "A lie, is it?" Bantry turned on Ruby. "And Tenth Street, and Ricotti's was a lie " "I never saw Ricotti's with you " she cried. "No, nor the Fontainebleau," he said mercilessly. He would expose the thing now. "Nor Kingslands, or Fourteenth Street. And I suppose I was the only one" he turned to Sammy "she tried to make me think I was the only one who had ever touched her" he laughed, sneered "Good God!" It was unintentional on his part, I think, but the chance remark was Ruby's undoing. He might have said almost anything else than that sneer, and she would not have lost. But the injustice of it flooded her mind, drowning all caution, all sense of danger, all cunning, all pretense, leaving only an overwhelming sense of the shame and bitter wrong of it to her. "You lie!" she cried out, roused to madness. "No one else ever touched me! I'm not that kind!" She did not realize her irretrievable mistake, then, until he seized upon and drove home his advantage. "It's true, then," he said exultantly. "By God deny Ricotti's or the Fontainebleau or Sixtieth Street the time you tried to fix it up with me " "I never saw you at Ricotti's or Sixtieth Street," she cried in a wild haste to deny this thing that seemed about to crush her down into insanity. It was as Sammy faced her, however, a new light in his 'dark eyes for the first time since he had come in it was then that she lost forever. For into his mind had come as if by flashlight the remembrance of the evening when Pudney had told him of Ricotti's and the Irishman, of Ric's strange silence about it all upon the cobblestones of the East Side before he swooned for- ever; of the barber's wife upon Sixtieth Street as she swept out the cats; focussing now upon this admission dragged from her by the Irishman for whom she had THE BALANCE 333 sent in some last effort to keep the secret from him . . . from him, who had. He saw black a second before he opened his lips again. "So it wasn't Ric?" he asked. "No," she said in a low tone. She did not look at him. It was the greatest height S. Sydney Tappan ever achieved in the history of his character, then. His hands clenched slowly until a thin trickle of blood showed on the edge of his palms. But his voice did not even seem to change as he spoke after that silence. "Why?" he asked. It was but the one word; but there was not a person in the room who did not under- stand the question our Sammy was asking in that unwavering voice. God in Heaven, why had she chosen to ruin him! Yet he would not pass judgment until he understood. It was the realization of the stuff of which he was made that compelled Ruby to look at him. "It was that or death for me " she cried passion- ately. "Have you forgotten West Twenty-ninth Street? I'm not bad. He took advantage of me what chance had I ? I didn't know it would ever come to this and you offered offered " Her voice trailed off into silence as she realized the pitiful weakness of her words, these miserably inade- quate excuses. How different it all seemed in this apartment in the sunlight than it had on West Twenty- ninth Street with Ricorton lying dead upon his cot in the dull light. "I didn't realize then, Tappy. Oh, I tried to make you offer I didn't believe there was a man who'd do it I didn't know then I didn't see, as I see now In Sammy's mind, however, there is only the picture of Carrie as she turned away from the door in the hall saying, blindly, "Why didn't you tell me before?" "Good God," he says, "why didn't you tell me the truth when the need for deception was past?" 334 THE BALANCE It almost seems as if he could forgive her anything except the moment when Carrie stood before him in this same room. "I couldn't," Ruby says desperately. "Couldn't, I tell you I didn't know about Melchester " it is the first time she has intimated that she knows of Carrie "I knew you didn't think of me we're not the same kind oh, I know that but that .doesn't stop people from loving why wouldn't I fall in love with you after what you'd done I tried to change myself, my looks, my voice, tried to be a lady oh, I know I'm not one. Why, I didn't know what real love was the night Ric died. Didn't understand what I was doing to you. I was only saving myself, saving myself, don't you see! It was when I realized it all that I tried to make it up to you hoped you might never know it don't you see, Tappy God, don't you see?" She was incoherent in her desire to show him her pitiful justification. I think she knew all along that she had done the unpardonable to him, however; knew, too, that there never could be any real forgive- ness for her. Indeed, I wonder is there for any one? The past is but character in bronze; the future char- acter in flux. Will the elements change? Forgiveness usually is sentiment. I am glad for Sammy that his mind was as if annihilated during those moments when Bantry walked from the room muttering, "I guess that's all!" beneath his breath, in his soul a great cold fear of God; glad that he had no words except a hardly audible "I see," that meant nothing to him at all he would never see; glad, too, that Crom- well went silently out leaving his scribbled card for supper on Seventy-second Street behind on the table; leaving Sammy still standing there, staring at the bed- room door behind which Ruby had vanished like a cur of the streets, the despair of the forsaken of God in her heart. He never knew how long he stood there, afterward. THE BALANCE 335 He was conscious only of the maid coming in response to Ruby's ring and taking out a letter to the mail box; conscious of the passage of time, of the silence in Ruby's room; of the noise in the street; of the afternoon paper beside him with its ironical headlines of "depression lifting"- Depression lifting! Depression lifting. . . . How vaguely his mind seemed to work employment and food now for the poor, the poverty stricken of whom he himself has been one so short a while ago; he and Ric, and the girl behind the door, and that Irishman who has left, he sees now; all beneath that Monster's claws so short a while ago though why, yes, Ric is dead now the Monster killed him. Slowly there rose before S. Sydney Tappan, then, in the gray twilight of the apartment the dark vision of the Monster, seeking out the weaknesses of its victims' characters, preying with hideous cleverness on the frailty of humanity, while all around it throws the deadly acid of its dull material weight, shutting off poor human vision from man's goal; dragging down from pitiful heights the Ricortons of the earth, with their lack of resistant fibre, the Rubys of the world with their passion, yes, even the S. Sydney Tappans with their mock heroic strain ! As in a dream he saw plainly his plight, traceable directly from that never-conquered desire of his to play always the hero's role, his curse his ability to fall in love with an idea, the idea of the hero. He saw it all quite plainly then saw, and even in his agony cast off his weakness forever. That hero of his will be his slave hereafter, not his master. The Monster has won over him, too, because of his weakness. It was a long time before he became aware of the long-continued stillness in Ruby's room; a stillness that seemed to oppress him as if a sinister something might dominate it. 336 THE BALANCE He rose then, standing a moment by the door before he opened it. She lay upon the bed, her mouth showing quite blue in the half light of the room. Even before he saw the empty bottle of acetanelid upon the dresser he knew that she was dead. CHAPTER XXII IN WHICH SAMMY MAKES A PRAYER FOR THE SECOND TIME AND GETS IT THE world moves after all, though whether in a circle or not it is for philosophers to determine. Mr. Schroeder, for instance, was never conscious that there had been any movement of the moral boundaries until he found himself left periodically behind still metaphorically engaged in burning witches in a modern woman suffrage New England. That he could be left behind, however, is proof that movements actually took place. To him each move was always the last. One more, and the country could not be saved. He always viewed the new horizon as Columbus' mariners might be expected to have done; the falling-off place at last! A Christian gentleman, Mr. Schroeder, but born fifty years too late. It was why he viewed with such suspicion, such alarm the entrance of Christianity into the industrial world under the name of the awakening of the social con- science, during those years of Sammy's career. It had never occurred to him before that Christianity could ever put on its hat and coat for any purpose except that daily walk from the church to the home and back again. When it walked into the industrial world some- how he did not recognize it. He saw instead a stranger, an impractical one, whose faults were vaguely familiar, but who, it was plain, would never do in business. Perhaps it was because his wife was a Schroeder only by the grace of marriage that she was capable of a change. By far the greatest number of her prejudices had been contracted at the altar. It was her naturally 337 338 THE BALANCE headstrong nature that led her on then to spend the major portion of her existence calling the objects of those prejudices fools, only to discover in the end that they were not fools at all. It took her a year after Carrie had gone to New York, and she herself had begun peeping through the blinds, to see that her daughter was not really crazy after all. It was characteristic of her, too, that upon the dis- covery she promptly forgot all that she had said till then, and applauded Carrie as splendidly as she had pointed out her insanity before. Perhaps there was in it, also, a touch of triumph over her spouse. He had always been a fool, and would remain so forever, if he persisted in his old attitude toward his daughter. He was the only one she always remained certain of to the end. Mr. Schroeder could never change. And yet it might have been merely that the motive which animated his wife in her new attitude to Carrie could never have appealed to Mr. Schroeder. Most of our good Mrs. Schroeder's change came because she sensed dimly the first beginnings of high society's altered point of view toward the proletariat. In time, she saw of a sudden, this point of view of her daughter's might land them all among the inner circle of the socially elect around which they seemed to merely hover so far, in spite of the distance which they had climbed. A queer, roundabout way, perhaps, but sensible if suc- cessful in the end; an expression of charitable work actually of some use and benefit to everybody! It was why she subscribed so generously to the Hague Street Settlement, when Mrs. Dobbs came to ask her if Carolyn would take over the direction of the plant upon the resignation of Mrs. Lewis; subscribed and avoided deftly the question of Mr. Schroeder's ideas upon the subject. She had decided to relieve her husband of his charitable wo/k, she said. The decision had come al- most instantaneously to her as the little gray lady who led Melchester society now sat in the Schroeder drawing- THE BALANCE 339 room. It had been induced by pictures of dinners where Carrie would sit beside Asa, make little speeches to visiting bishops in the exclusive libraries of Mel- chester's best homes, perhaps hold meetings of the upper circle in the Schroeder drawing-room. Of course Carrie could accept! It was at that moment that Mr. Schroeder lost control over his own charitable gifts. He gave in sulkily, without a struggle. He could always recognize the signs of the weather, and never strove to do anything except prepare for the change. His retirement from the active direction of the store the month before had seemed to take the edge from his fighting blood, too, even where his wife was not con- cerned. I think he had begun to feel old. He said nothing when his wife announced at the table that she herself was going to New York and would carry the Settlement's offer to Carrie. It was his silence that gave the two offspring the cue to applaud weakly the good luck of their sister. They had thought Carrie done for forever. Dull rebellion filled their souls at the thought of her return. She always knew so thoroughly what she thought. The idea of what the Settlement might mean to the poor and Carrie did not enter their heads. It was the social opportunity of which they thought. They knew their sister's gift. She was going to outdistance them after all. Nothing could have been farther from our Carrie's thoughts, however, than the social race in far-off Mel- chester as she sat in the plainly furnished sitting-room of the Settlement upon the East Side that day, and read a letter the postman had just brought her; a strange, jerky, disconnected letter which only seemed to add to the ghastly pain in her heart with its signature at the end. RubyTappan! She put it down with all the old horror of that mo- ment in the apartment in her soul anew, deepening the circles under her eyes, accentuating the paleness of her cheeks. This woman she could not bring herself to call her wife had heard it all then in the bedroom the 340 THE BALANCE day of her call on Sammy! Had heard, and did not. hesitate now to declare her intention of leaving him. What else could these sentences about getting out of the way mean ? It fascinated her, that letter. There was not about it, somehow, the air of anger, of rage the letter of an awakened jealous woman should have. Between the words, the sentences, there seemed to lurk a sense of indefinable tragedy, of hopelessness, of fear and sadness that caught Carrie by the throat and set her to reading again and again the queer, broken phras- ing. How had it happened that Sammy had never And what did she mean by "her fault from the begin- ning?" Her "you would always want each other, and I can't stand between ? " Her "I did not think he would do it ? " And the "he will tell you ? " A queer, mad jumble it seemed to her, like the fever ravings of some of the poor dying in the tenements, hopeless, and strangely without rancour. A week now, too, since she had found herself in the street outside the Stradford, leaning against the post of the awning while the passersby stared curiously at her. A week, and this woman had known it all this time and had not written until now. What had Sammy said, she wondered? She had not been able since to put from her memory that shadow of unreason in Sammy's eyes as he closed the door behind her. Had he been ill? Into her mind there sprang again all the doubts, the tormenting bewilderments, the unbearable perplexities of the past week. Why had he done it ? She was too honest with herself to pretend that she had been deceived. She could feel even yet the sudden ecstasy of tjhe moment when he had held her in his arms and their lips had joined. No need for pretense after that. He loved her still, she knew. It was with a touch of dismay that she admitted to herself that, she, too still loved him as before. I am afraid she knew that she would always love him, no matter what he did, and the knowledge frightened her. That he was married seemed THE BALANCE 341 to make no difference, somehow. Was love always like this? It was only when she realized how she would feel should she ever see him again that she recognized the power her inherited morality had over her. I do not think she would even have stopped to speak to him, so great would her fear have been that her self-control might desert her. It is odd to think now that that morning paper which she felt it such a waste of time to read could have ex- plained most of the mystery of the note to her without a moment's delay; and it lay on the sitting-room table still folded. It was spread wide open on the breakfast table in an apartment on Thirty-fourth Street at that same hour,how- ever, before a charming person in brown, with bronze hair and fine complexion. The small headline had arrested the eye of Sylvia Tremaine before she had yet tasted her first breakfast in New York, after an absence of many months. S. Sydney Tappan's wife! It was with a strange mixture of feelings that she read the paragraph to quell the instant suspicion that it might possibly be her Sammy to whom this thing had come. Still, he could not have married Carrie yet, she was certain he would not have dared without letting her know. Dear old Tappy! It was the details of the Fine Arts that first struck into her heart, however, and told her it was indeed Sammy. He had sent her a telegram the night of the production of "Doctor Paulding" and she had wired the theatre instantly. I think it was pure sympathy that turned her so pale with sudden pity for him then, and made her leave the breakfast there untouched while she ran down the stairs and got into a passing taxicab bareheaded. "The Stradford," she said. If it were so good God, how Tappy would need her! The scene that met her eyes as she brushed past the maid into the drawing-room stayed with her always. She knew Cromwell by the window, and nodded to him. 342 THE BALANCE It was the dark-eyed gaunt man in the chair at whom she stared and stared until she had reconstructed from his changed looks the Sydney she had known and come to help. Good heavens, was this S. Sydney Tappan? I do not suppose either of the men noticed even her moment's hesitation. The instant that she knew Sammy was really S. Sydney Tappan she knew that the paper had told the truth. "My God, Sydney," she said, "how did it happen?" And she fell on her knees beside his chair. I think Cromwell changed the estimate of a lifetime as Sylvia Tremaine looked at Sammy. Sammy told her then, in slow, broken sentences, from the beginning; while that look of infinite pity deepened in her eyes, as he told her of Ricorton's death and she realized gradually the pitiful high tragedy of it all, the useless struggle against fate. It was only when she grasped first Ruby's identity that she cried out. "But Carrie!" she cried then; and knew from Sammy's eyes that she should have kept silent. There came in her mind, too, when he had finished, a feeling of shame. She was thinking of the warning she had given Sammy about Ruby that night in the Thirty- fourth Street apartment, comparing her light judg- ment with the heroism of the girl's final exit. There was in her mind, as there had been in Ruby's, no sense of any moral weakness in the deed which had thus removed the girl from the scene of action when no other way seemed open. Suicide is not a crime to people who have not been brought up to consider it such. To Sylvia as to Ruby it appeared simply as a matter of courage. There had been no ties which the dead actress considered she was in duty bound to con- sider. There had been nothing in her mind except the thought that Sammy had saved her, and she must pay now for the reckoning he had staved off for her at the expense of his happiness. I think all three of those people in the apartment that THE BALANCE 343 morning felt the pitiful tragedy of the dead actress. She had been so far from being a bad person after all. It is a tribute, too, to our Sammy's character that it was not the injury she had done him that stuck in his mind: it was the comprehension he had so plainly of how she had come to do it. It was Sylvia who attended to everything for Sammy in the next days, even to the news items for the Utica papers, with their six lines of overdose of headache medicine to cover the grim facts. Even Mrs. Williams, as she sat by the stove in her black silk and listened to old Doctor Carter who had baptised Ruby deliver the sermon, had no suspicion of the real facts. Her daughter had been a stranger to her for many years. She felt little grief beyond that of the moment. Of all the theatrical world which Ruby had once known only S. Sydney Tappan and Cromwell with Sylvia Tremaine attended the Sunday funeral. The Uticans from the side streets where Ruby had played as a child came in slight wonderment and curiosity, prin- cipally, I think, to gape at S. Sydney Tappan and his companions. Ruby had been dead so far as they were concerned for many years. It was too bad. The Utica papers gave the names of Sammy's two plays. That was all. They gave his residence as New York. Mel- chester was not even mentioned. It was Sylvia, too, who roused Sammy to Carrie's right to the truth. His mind seemed overwhelmed by the tragic events of those weeks. There was a sense of the indecency of his seeking happiness so close upon the heels of this human catastrophe, also that seemed to cry out for delay. He would have written her then, had not Sylvia laughed the idea to scorn. * "You may be a good playwright, Tappy," she said, "but you can't condense a year of hell into a page of letter paper. You'll go!" It was partly because he saw how that devil of a hero had been tying his tongue on the afternoon of Carrie's 344 THE BALANCE visit, that he^put off his visit. He had let her go that day without a word! Surely he could have trusted her with the secret. And yet, somehow, it had seemed im- possible to ever tell it all then, impossible to explain the odd combination of environment and character which had led him to sacrifice himself. He saw plainer and plainer in those afternoons when he turned it all over in his mind that all prophets have part of the truth; saw, too, that for every character the crucible of life turns out ennobled, a dozen emerge ruined whether the fire be that of adversity or success all moral disaster an endless combination of human character and its man-made Monster, Environment. It was only when his mind grew clearer that he saw the great selfishness of his action to Carrie, and listened to Sylvia's upbraidings. It was her constant en- deavour to keep him from dwelling upon the events of the days just past; for with him there always was the shadow of a tiny remorse, bothering him continually. It was the thought that if he had acted differently per- haps Ruby might never have been driven to her final desperate end. It was many years before it ceased to bother him at all. "Such an unbelievable fool as you are, Sydney," Sylvia would say, "to think of such a thing. And then, too, to think that I had all that money, and you didn't let me know!" It always brought two little spots of red into his cheeks, the mention of her help. She knew then each time that she had gotten his mind off himself enough for him to be angry. "Let's not discuss it," he would say stiffly while she mimicked him. "You always were a brick to me, Sylvia but I didn't want your money it would have been just temporary, too " But he could not remain stiff for long. "You're not angry with me now, are you, Sydney?" she would ask gravely, while she clasped her hands melodramatically. THE BALANCE 345 "With you!" he would retort. His tone of voice, al- ways, was the best reward she could have gotten. It was not possible to remain angry with her. She had the satisfaction soon of knowing that at least he did not look any longer like the S. Sydney Tappan she had stared at in the chair in the apartment that day. But it was not until he had gotten back his normal ap- pearance, that she realized how frightfully he had looked before. Beyond a little whimsical despair in her heart, too, I do not think she suffered very much the day he went to the Settlement in search of Carrie, and she gave him up forever. She had had her fight before and won. Carrie in the Settlement sitting-room wondered who the lady with the beautiful quality of voice could be who called her on the telephone and asked if she would be in that morning. It was Sylvia in the Thirty-fourth Street apartment, alone now by her fire, and suddenly grown apprehensive lest Sammy should have gone to the Settlement only to find Carrie flown. She did not wish to say good-bye again. There was the making of a heroine in Sylvia though she would have laughed the idea to scorn. It was one of the shocks of Sammy's life that morning when he saw suddenly again the dirty street where Ri- corton had been struck down, and realized how close it had all been to where Carrie was in her Settlement room. The filth and squalor of the place filled him anew then with a sense of the inexorableness of the Monster while he and the ones like him talked and prated and wrote plays for the Fine Arts. It came partly from that sense of futility which comes to every one who has achieved when they place their tiny handiwork against the vast space yet to be filled. He saw himself as no stepping- stone upon the pathway of the future then but as a tiny piece qf some mosaic filling up a chink in the floor. It was characteristic of him, however, that as he entered the Settlement hall he was laying out, in his mind, un- dismayed, the first dim framework of a new play to sur- 346 THE BALANCE pass "Doctor Paulding" as it, in turn, had surpassed the "Lady in the Lion Skin" in its weight upon the scales. His vision seemed suddenly stronger than ever, brought perhaps to new life by the sight of the Settlement structures of brick, multiplied endlessly by his imagina- tion in the cities of America, the spirit that inhabits their walls striving ceaselessly in this new promised land of the new world for the balance of society. He saw suddenly the uselessness of throwing himself upon the scales unless his weight should remain there forever, growing always greater with the passage of time. Well, he has but started now. He will be always a new voice in the wilderness crying for the Open Mind of humanity! An Open Mind! Without which the bal- ance can never equalize, with which all changes can be distributed evenly forever! An Open Mind before which ignorance, prejudice, apathy cannot stand ! And to which names shall not make appeal, but the spirit be- hind all names shall always make entreaty! An Open Mind. It is his vision, his resolve, as he dis- appears within the brick doorway. Never afterward in his life did Sammy see a Settlement house set in the squalor of the tenements that he did not feel suddenly like some exiled traveller from Palestine come suddenly in an alien garden upon the Cedars of Lebanon. A touch of home! The Cedars of Lebanon in the garden of the Monster. The oval-faced girl with the clear gaze who stood by the fireplace knew instantly why he had come. He would explain now. Sammy never realized until long after- ward the briefness of his explanation that day. "I came to tell you, Carrie," he said, while she nodded by the fireplace and her hand crept to her throat. She could not trust herself to speak. Why had he added the pain of this explanation ? Sammy could never withstand that gesture, however. "I'm free," he said with difficulty. It was as if they were boy and girl together. "And I want you!" She never knew afterward why she did not question THE BALANCE 347 him at all, did not ask for any details, did not doubt the truth of what he said. She did not say anything at all. She nodded. I do not think he saw that her eyes were filled with tears as he took her in his arms. He was praying that this time it would be forever. It was his second prayer. Carrie was thinking of his first, so many years ago on Washington Avenue, in Melchester. He got them both. . . . Well, my hatred for that biography has faded just a little now. I can see better why they always thought Sammy was a hero from the beginning. I could forgive them a great deal, too, for the fine way they have put in all of Sammy's later plays and left the "Lady in the Lion Skin" such light mention. You will search in vain, I fear, however, for the names of the Schroeders. Carrie's name is there. The line reads: "Married Carolyn Schroeder, June 19 . A childhood friend, it says! His second wife! . . . That is all. He has never lost his vision, S. Sydney Tappan. I think he sees sometimes now, when he sits by the fire in Melchester, that mere plays will never bring on the millennium. But he has paved the way for the men of action at least and will still hold that torch of his aloft for them to work by! It is his consolation. It is his great regret that the mould of his own career has set and hardened so that he can never join them himself. The elect! They are always welcome in Melchester along with Cromwell and Sylvia. Sometimes I wonder, too, if the ghosts of Ricorton and Ruby do not warm them- selves by the fire there ? Well, they are welcome, also, doubly welcome. Experience of life brings chanty for all. THE END THE COUNTRY LIFE PRESS GARDEN CITY, N. Y. University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed A 000 041 831 9