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 <r The Honeymooners." As for the backing 
 of the piece, she is philosophical. If it is not a success, 
 she will be left in the lurch anyway so it is up to her 
 to put it over in so far as she is able. No life for weak- 
 lings, this theatrical existence! 
 
 How far away, how almost nebulous seem the sub- 
 stantial houses of Melchester, the stores of Mr. 
 Schroeder, that past world of society to our Sammy, as 
 he sits thus in that lower New York cafe! They might 
 be two spheres with all space in between, as well as two 
 cities and two modes of life. Does Ricorton feel it, he 
 wonders, as he looks at his friend and sees the look of 
 gayety in his blue eyes ? 
 
 It is Bohemia which our Sammy sees in the musician's 
 blue eyes, however. Bohemia! That vision of the 
 future vouchsafed to the poor in pocket and spreading 
 its magic filaments over the sordid present! One 
 must have a vision, and spend one's life blood upon its 
 realization, to properly enter into Bohemia. It is 
 the palette from which the dirty houses are so finely 
 gilded. As an accident can be a jest, so poverty be- 
 comes Bohemia. The immortal point of view! 
 
 This is why Ricorton seems so happy to-night. He 
 is in his element. But our Sammy is realizing that 
 first stab of loneliness for Carrie, which is to grow to 
 such proportions. Our lives are filled with hope. It is 
 what keeps us from realizing the drama of our existence. 
 The edge is taken from our souls, at the dramatic 
 moment, by our everlasting hope, and it is all that keeps 
 the tears from our Sammy's eyes as he sits and sips his 
 wine. It will not be long now, he thinks, before he 
 can return to Carrie as the conquering hero. 
 
 He is not aware that the five hundred dollars, which
 
 THE BALANCE 95 
 
 he is cannily apportioning so that it will last until he 
 has become famous, will be in serious danger soon. 
 How futile most human plans become when the hour 
 for action strikes! That five hundred which he is 
 hoarding is about to take part in a direct assault upon 
 the theatrical battlements. 
 
 It is two weeks later that the blow falls upon the little 
 band of Thespians who are rehearsing in Lyric Hall. 
 Our friend Mr. Thompson has departed upon the night 
 train for Pittsburgh, washing his hands thus finally of 
 "The Honey mooners" ; leaving the act in its third week of 
 rehearsal, with scenery and costumes ready, and even 
 the tryout nights arranged for down on Fourteenth 
 Street, where the audience knows the least, and so is 
 hardest to please. Mr. Thompson has not been able 
 to stand the strain. He has fled while there yet is 
 time. 
 
 Ricorton seizes on the possibilities at once. 
 
 "The girls' shoes on Sixth Avenue are all we have got 
 to get," he says excitedly to Sammy, at the restaurant 
 on Forty-second Street. "The hauling of the scenery, 
 enough extra to pay the losses on the tryout time, and 
 then if we got good booking, we would make some 
 money!" 
 
 In Sammy's mind there is a slight recollection of that 
 magnificent profit he once figured out in plumbing. 
 
 "Yes, if!" he answers gloomily. 
 
 But Ricorton is all enthusiasm now. 
 
 "It is a good show," he replies. "Hagaman and 
 Matson both say so. All it needs is somebody behind 
 it with good nerve and push." 
 
 Nerve and push seem consonant, someway, with the 
 role of hero. 
 
 "We've got that all right!" replies Sammy. He is 
 beginning to get excited, himself, at the prospect of 
 thus breaking into the theatrical game so early. 
 
 "Five hundred dollars will more than see it through," 
 cries Ricorton. 
 
 His lunch is quite untasted. He sees himself, in
 
 96 THE BALANCE 
 
 several years, taking only first nights for himself, and 
 sending out great comic -opera orchestras from New York 
 the balance of the time. Somewhere inside him, too, is 
 a perfect confidence in S. Sydney Tappan's ability to 
 do all the rest that goes to staging and producing big 
 shows. Tappy is a genius, and Ricorton will bank his 
 life upon the statement. 
 
 "I don't need salary," he cries again. "We'll take 
 the thing out just as it stands, and if it makes a hit, 
 we'll send Thompson a check for what he has put in it. 
 It is us or nothing, that's why. Two days and this 
 crowd he has working in it will scatter to a dozen dif- 
 ferent shows." 
 
 His enthusiasm has communicated itself to Sammy, 
 completely, before luncheon is over. The fate of the 
 five hundred dollars is sealed. 
 
 Thus it is that S. Sydney Tappan steps into Lyric 
 Hall the next day, and announces that he has taken 
 over "The Honeymooners" from Mr. Thompson. He 
 has been in the hall almost daily, and the change seems 
 perfectly natural. I do not think that the Thespians 
 ever even gave the thing a thought. They work in acts, 
 but do not purchase them. 
 
 With Hagaman's assistance there is no difficulty 
 with the costumes or scenery, save that the backdrop 
 costs fifty dollars more than was estimated. Our 
 Sammy, however, has learned from Mr. Pike to pay 
 out checks without a quaver, so once he has made up 
 his mind, he does not hesitate. He is started now on 
 this, with the finished plumbing business and an opera 
 complete behind him; and he will carry this thing 
 through. He writes: 
 
 "Carrie, dearest, perhaps you will think that we are crazy " 
 
 He knew, of course, though, that she would not! 
 
 "but we have taken over the operetta complete, now, and I am the 
 producer, and Ric the conductor. It is the chance of a lifetime. We 
 are going to try it out down on Fourteenth Street, and then on the big 
 time. If only it is a success! I am so busy, these days, that I 
 can hardly get time to write you anything but notes there are so
 
 THE BALANCE 97 
 
 many fine edges to be put on the business of the different parts. 
 Hagaman is going to bring Willis of the Fifth Avenue Theatre down 
 to the dress rehearsal. I think the booking will be easy. We have 
 a lead who is very fine. I wish you could meet her. She is dif- 
 ferent from any one I ever knew Ruby Williams is her name. 
 She will stick to the end, even if half salary becomes necessary. I 
 am sorry to have to go I have no time to tell you how much I 
 am always thinking of you but I am! Yours, 
 
 "SAMMY. 
 
 "P.S. I have a chance, also, to write a playlet for Sylvia Tre- 
 maine, the 'Betrayer* star. I have an appointment with her next 
 week. Needless to state, I will have to persuade her that I can 
 do it before it will mean much." 
 
 I think Carrie could wish for a little more of Sammy, a 
 little more of their love in his letter but he is busy, of 
 course perhaps is winning at last. It almost sounds 
 as if he were getting on finely in New York, she thinks, 
 with a little catch in her throat for his success. He ought 
 to have won from the very beginning, he is so much 
 more gifted than the others. He deserves all that he 
 can get. 
 
 She sends him a telegram, also, on the night of "The 
 Honeymooners" tryout at the City Theatre on Four- 
 teenth Street a telegram of love and congratulation. 
 She would have given all she possessed to have been 
 there herself. 
 
 That night at the City Theatre! There were few 
 other nights in S. Sydney Tappan's experience which 
 stood out more vividly. 
 
 To the stolid audience which filled the theatre, I 
 suppose the show was much the same. For Ricorton 
 and our Sammy, however, it was a night of mystery, 
 suspense, and nervousness. 
 
 Our Sammy has just forty-two dollars in the world as 
 he stands back of the wings, talking, with a semblance 
 of lightness, to the chorus girls and men who are crowd- 
 ing around him for their last instructions. No rehear- 
 sal for "The Honeymooners" this morning; there are too 
 many acts on the bill this week, and the pianist and leader 
 is disgruntled. A lightning change lady artist is
 
 98 THE BALANCE 
 
 singing character songs ahead of them, her limited time 
 preventing her from seeking the dressing-room below 
 the stairs. Her last change will be the signal for their 
 act to gather, S. Sydney Tappan is aware; and does not 
 realize that he is staring eagerly at her, as she tears off 
 her Spanish dress, and plunges into black tights. 
 
 "Fresh guy!" she mutters, as she runs out upon the 
 stage again, and starts her last song. 
 
 It is the signal! 
 
 "Honeymooners," calls the red-faced man. "Next!" 
 
 Down in the musicians' room, beneath the stage, 
 Ricorton throws away his cigarette, and unrolls his 
 score, as he walks through the little runway out into 
 the pit, and smiles around upon the orchestra men. 
 They have never read this music before, and he is de- 
 pendent upon their favour. A wrong note by the violin 
 or cornet, and Ruby's best song can be ruined. 
 
 "Regular stuff," he says easily. "Introduction, 
 two four, then till ready, chorus twice then the 
 verse again, and straight through to the end!" It is 
 his first experience, but he is a real musician, and knows 
 that he can keep time. " Watch my head for the cues 
 down she goes, then start." 
 
 They nod wearily. He does not waste time talking, 
 like so many of these dubs from the legit who think 
 they know it all. And he will play the piano, and give 
 them some support, instead of beating with a stick. 
 Enough said it is quarter of ten now, and three acts 
 yet to come. 
 
 It is as the music starts, and Sammy throws the 
 lights, red for the curtain, changing then to yellow 
 overcast by violet from the balcony, until the spotlight 
 comes into play upon the duet it is then that he should 
 be thrilled and his heart stand in his mouth. But he is 
 too occupied with cues, and pushing Jack Bantry on 
 stage, while Ricorton, down in the pit, pounds G sharp 
 a dozen times for his appearance, to feel anything. 
 Almost before he knows it, the final chorus is being 
 sung, while the stage manager rages because the act has
 
 THE BALANCE 99 
 
 run twenty-nine minutes instead of twenty-two al- 
 though the curtain has risen again upon it with actual 
 waves of applause and stamps of approval from the 
 gallery, and the act has gotten across "big!" It has 
 gotten across because it is just cheap enough, and be- 
 cause Ruby's charms have captivated most of the men, 
 while Ricorton has held the thing together from the pit. 
 Those rounds of applause mean bookings. 
 
 Hagaman meets S. Sydney Tappan at the stage door, 
 with Ricorton. 
 
 "Immense!" he says. "Three days at the New 
 York, then Patterson and Brighton Beach, and then 
 Keith or the Orpheum. We'll have the rest of the 
 booking agents over at the New York, including the Big 
 Robber. Boys, she is going to do business ! " 
 
 They will break even for two weeks, Hagaman fig- 
 ures, and then, unless all signs fail, the profit will be 
 about two hundred and fifty dollars a week. 
 
 One hundred and twenty-five dollars apiece, Sammy 
 and Ricorton figure at the Kaiser Hof that night at 
 midnight, with Ruby, flushed with excitement and re- 
 lief, seated opposite. 
 
 "I've got fifty dollars," she says excitedly. "We'll 
 live on that for two weeks, along with what Tappy's 
 got!" 
 
 She means it, does Ruby. She is as glad for their 
 success as they are. I wonder what they would have 
 ever done without her fifty dollars ? 
 
 It is two weeks later that S. Sydney Tappan climbs 
 the stairs to the West Twenty-ninth Street room, to 
 find two letters beneath the door one in the familiar 
 handwriting of Carrie, the other a straight large scroll 
 which dwarfs the violet envelope it covers. 
 
 Who is it from, he wonders, as he looks out over the 
 line of tenements that back up against his window, their 
 outline plain against the night sky, their rear windows 
 lighted here and there, making glowing patches in the 
 inky blackness between the buildings. 
 
 He is alone to-night, and just back from the station
 
 100 THE BALANCE 
 
 where he has said good-bye to Ricorton and Ruby and 
 the honeymooners. They have gone upon the Orph- 
 eum circuit and left him to look after the business end 
 in Long Acre Square. It is very silent in this room, he 
 realizes, as he lights the gas, and the black night and 
 tenements vanish as if by magic, while the cracked 
 mirror and cheap beds spring into view. Nearly as 
 silent as Washington Avenue after midnight, he thinks, 
 when the street lamps shine upon the pavement be- 
 neath the elms; as silent as the campus in Williamstown 
 after the chapel clock has boomed the stroke of one, 
 and the last car to North Adams has gone shrieking 
 down the wooded New England road; as silent as the 
 front room on Hawthorne Street of a Sunday after- 
 noon, with old Mr. Tappan asleep in the morris chair, 
 the old cat upon his knee; as silent as Paris out in 
 Auteuil, overlooking the convent gardens, when the 
 last theatre-goers have come home from the Opera, and 
 the leaves sigh in the night breeze. 
 
 He opens Carrie's letter first. He reads : 
 
 "Sammy, dearest, I am all excited about the wonderful suc- 
 cess of 'The Honeymooners,' excited and so pleased, pleased, 
 pleased! It hardly seems possible that it can be true. And yet I 
 always knew you would succeed, so I am not surprised. I can only 
 say, I told you so and ask, when are you coming home to see me? 
 There are so many things I want to talk to you about and letters 
 are so queer and unsatisfactory. It doesn't seem as if we had had a 
 real talk in ages. I want to see you, and touch you, too, and make 
 sure you are real, again. This is such a lonely way to live, isn't it? 
 Write and tell me when you are coming! 
 
 "You will be grieved to hear that you are no longer an object of 
 interest to the family. They do not know what you are doing, and 
 social work quite has the floor at 1200 Washington, now. If I 
 could only tell you all about it! But I never could, in a letter. 
 Father thinks because I have so much is the best reason why I 
 should not care about doing anything for others. He is very angry 
 at me just now. The latest thing! as mother calls it as if it were 
 some kind of a disease that broke out on me. It is because I sold 
 my electric and sent the money to Mrs. Lewis. I cannot see, 
 however, why they should be so furious when it was really mine. 
 They seem to think that the things they give me are theirs just the 
 same as it they had not been given to me at all. Father says now
 
 THE BALANCE 101 
 
 he will never give me anything again I don't know enough to 
 have things. I would have liked to tell him that I am the one who 
 has to walk, not he! I would suggest it, if I dared 
 
 "You don't know how strange it seems without you here any 
 more. I shall be so glad when we can do everything together. 
 It makes me feel quite mean sometimes, down at the settlement, to 
 realize that I have you and am so happy, when so many people 
 are miserable. I cannot help feeling that life is not fair at all. 
 
 "I cannot wait, now, to have you come home. I cannot tell 
 you how it makes me feel to know that I am sure, at least, of you! 
 There are no dark secrets for us to stumble over, anyway. When 
 are you coming? With all my love, 
 
 "Your own 
 
 "CARRIE" 
 
 A long time he sits with the letter in his hand. 
 Carrie she sounds quite serious, nowadays. And yet, 
 he can still see little traces of that old sense of humour. 
 It has always been like the rest of her rather simple, 
 and straightforward. If only he can go home soon. 
 Melchester yes, it still is home, though he cannot say 
 why. Well, perhaps he can go soon now, as soon as the 
 booking of "The Honeymooners" is more complete. 
 
 But he cannot go home for a few days yet, I fear 
 days which will lengthen into months before he knows 
 it; and when he does, things will not be as they have been 
 till now. Truly, life is a going on, wherefore it is better 
 for those who love to go on together, lest their paths 
 diverge. He will know that he cannot go when he 
 opens the violet letter. 
 
 It is from Miss Sylvia Tremaine, requesting him to 
 call and see her to-morrow, instead of next week. She 
 wants a playlet, and wants it quickly!
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 IN WHICH SAMMY CHANGES His SPOTS, AND GOES 
 HOME TO SHOW THEM 
 
 ENVIRONMENT, so the scientists have been telling us 
 for these many years, controls life to a great extent . 
 The same thing, so the psychologists assure us, affects 
 the growth of human character. Heredity is losing its 
 place as Exhibit A, and environment usurping its po- 
 sition in the catalogue of excuses. 
 
 If this is so, it is no wonder that morality is a good 
 deal a matter of acquaintance with the neighbours. 
 Where all are strangers, morals are at a low ebb. 
 Character runs wild, so to speak, and it is only the un- 
 usual person who can keep his course. This is the 
 danger of our huge cities to the human animal and his 
 character. 
 
 It is also the explanation of that puzzle which has been 
 the cause of so much endless speculation: how could the 
 man who later wrote <( Doctor Paulding" ever have been 
 the author of "The Lady in the Lion Skin?" Well, the 
 mind which has the dramatic quality must necessarily 
 possess the chameleon's ability to change its spots. New 
 York and Sylvia Tremaine first changed Sammy's. 
 
 Let us look in at Sylvia Tremaine's apartment, on 
 Thirty-fourth Street, and see the first faint evidence of 
 the changing colours. 
 
 S. Sydney Tappan looks quite different than when 
 we saw him two months ago, though in just what way 
 it would be difficult to say. Two months of good in- 
 come from ''The Honey mooners," these; two months 
 passed in almost daily expectation of a return to Mel- 
 chester and Carrie, but with that dream still unrealized. 
 
 102
 
 " ' Godfrey! . . . what a part! The Lady in 
 the Lion Skin, eh?' '
 
 THE BALANCE 103 
 
 The business is a risky and uncertain one, and Miss 
 Tremaine's desire for a playlet must be satisfied im- 
 mediately, or she will secure some one else, and the op- 
 portunity will be lost. "The Honeymooners" cannot last 
 forever, and this has been Sammy's first chance to break 
 into the game of playwriting. 
 
 So he has stayed on and written at white heat, so that 
 the dramatic actress of "Betrayer" fame will' take his 
 work. Just enough experience in vaudeville, now, to 
 enable him to do it. Dramatic, and quick! Experience 
 has tempered his talent. And the twenty-minute sketch 
 of the plain young girl whom the devil tempts with his of- 
 fer of beauty his only condition a box of pills from which 
 she must eat one each day, with the knowledge, however, 
 that among the thousands there is a poisoned one has 
 been a great hit. 
 
 The ability of Sylvia Tremaine for character acting 
 is shown at the different stages of the girl's career as a 
 famous beauty; and rises to its climax when, old and 
 beautiful no longer, she has but two pills left and must 
 choose, with the knowledge that one of them is poisoned 
 and means death only to find, when all is done, that 
 there has been no poisoned pill at all! The whole hor- 
 ror of death, which has ruined her outwardly successful 
 life, a grim jest of the devil's. 
 
 Miss Tremaine has scored heavily with it, and as he 
 sits in her drawing-room this morning, our Sammy has 
 been called into consultation regarding a three-act play 
 for her, to be put on when her vaudeville engagement is 
 ended. I think the actress, perhaps, has more than 
 half an idea that she has made a distinct "find" in S. 
 Sydney Tappan. 
 
 Radiant in a negligee which shows ofFher bronze hair, 
 brilliant with health, and emphasizes her clear, fine com- 
 plexion fading into pure white at her throat and arms, 
 Sylvia Tremaine is sitting opposite him, across the 
 hearth, curled up on a sofa, her brown, silken ankles 
 visible above the bronzed slippers which harmonize 
 with her costume.
 
 104 THE BALANCE 
 
 Vaudeville necessitates morning calls, and it is 
 eleven-thirty. 
 
 "A part like like an enchantress," she is saying, put- 
 ting her hands behind her head, the sleeves falling away 
 and revealing the beauty of the arms. "An enchantress 
 who enslaves men, fascinates, bewitches them, makes 
 them lose their souls." 
 
 She is at the age, this woman, when she realizes her 
 charms to the full, and is resolved to take advantage of 
 them in her profession. 
 
 "Why, Elsie Borden has only a back and she is 
 making a fortune out of that in comic opera! I ought 
 to put Elsie in the shade." 
 
 "You should, indeed," agrees Sammy sincerely. 
 She is a beautiful woman, and the world knows it. 
 
 She looks at him a trifle suspiciously, however. 
 
 "No sarcasm, Sydney," she warns him. 
 
 He is a handsome youth, this Sydney Tappan, only 
 about twenty-six, yet she is not always certain that he is 
 not making fun of her. He is not very impressionable 
 to feminine charm, she fears. 
 
 "New York is different from the rest of the country," 
 she says slowly. "New York must be shocked, must 
 have its breath taken away. I want to be daring, oh, 
 not vulgar I want to suggest, well the unutterable, 
 and yet suggest it entrancingly, so that women will be 
 thrilled in spite of themselves and men come to see my 
 play a dozen times. Do you think you can do it?" 
 
 Sammy stares into the fire. He is not quite certain 
 what she means, nor how he can produce this effect for 
 which she is asking. He has never considered the 
 theatre in exactly this light before. 
 
 Sylvia stands upright. 
 
 " See ! " she cries, casting off her negligee, " I am dressed 
 exactly as much as for a ball. Yet how daring the 
 effect of the white lingerie! And not an inch of me 
 showing that a ball dress would not show! Suggestion, 
 Sydney. That is what I mean. That is New York. 
 That is theatrical success here. Take it another way.
 
 THE BALANCE 105 
 
 See my lion skin rug here. Supposing I should pin up 
 my skirt say, fashionable length, and throw this rug 
 on my shoulders!" 
 
 With a little movement she cast the lion skin about 
 her. 
 
 "See the effect !" she says. "Even you would gasp 
 if I should cast away the skin! You can hardly believe 
 that I am quite fully dressed all the while. Get that in 
 literature, Sydney, in a p;ay for me, and you are made in 
 New York/' 
 
 Sammy nods his head rapidly. 
 
 "Yes," he says thoughtfully. "That is New York 
 right enough. I can see it in the streets, in the plays, in 
 the literature for sale." 
 
 " Exactly ! " cries Sylvia. " Get in my play what some 
 of the novelists have gotten in their society novels, and 
 we can storm New York." 
 
 "With an idea in it, however," says Sammy ex- 
 citedly. He sees what she means, now. " Done artisti- 
 cally from the right point of view, with a fine idea back 
 of the drama to excuse it, and make it palatable." 
 
 It is the artist in him struggling. But Sylvia makes 
 a little face. 
 
 "Why, the idea itself it must be why, it must be 
 quite unutterable, so that the cafes can make little faces 
 whenever my play is mentioned!" she cries. 
 
 I think her visualization of fame in the cafes of New 
 York quells that artist of a few seconds before in S. 
 Sydney Tappan. 
 
 "I see, I see!" he admits, tramping up and down the 
 room, then stopping suddenly. "But the rest of the 
 country ? " 
 
 "New York first!" says Sylvia contemptuously. 
 "The provinces as a matter of course!" 
 
 It is while Sammy is thinking that she bursts out 
 again, a moment later. 
 
 "A woman is the devil, Sydney!" she cries. "Think 
 of the trouble she can cause, if she realizes her power 
 over the susceptibility of men. That is New York sex
 
 106 THE BALANCE 
 
 appeal capitalized in a thousand ways! Give me the 
 part of a woman with a devilish desire to flirt, and make 
 monkeys out of the men she meets never seeing, in her 
 conceit, that others can play at the same game, and that 
 each conquest she makes soils her also; until, when she 
 finally falls in love, the man's sense of delicacy call it 
 what you will is revolted, and he goes away and 
 leaves her stranded at the last! Let me gradually be- 
 come less beautiful, more sensual, as I go on, until in the 
 
 last act I am what my soul has always been, a beast of 
 
 i '' 
 prey! 
 
 "Godfrey!" exclaims Sammy, thrilled with the pos- 
 sibilities. "What a part! With a plot thrown in for 
 good measure. The Lady in the Lion Skin, eh?" 
 
 Sylvia's eyes shine. 
 
 "Splendid!" she cries. "I'll help you on her con- 
 quests, Sydney if you find you need any." 
 
 She springs up enthusiastically. 
 
 "A flirt even to my own butler! No one too low for 
 me to stoop to, at the last!'* 
 
 "Magnificently horrible!" shudders Sammy pleas- 
 antly. 
 
 "And yet," she continues, stretching out her arms to 
 him, "on the outside so tender, so appealing, so alluring 
 that no one can resist liking me, no man withstand my 
 advances!" 
 
 I have always thought it was the doorbell which saved 
 our Sammy that morning. He had almost forgotten, 
 by that time, that she was acting, showing him his new 
 heroine, in lingerie. 
 
 "Mrs. Grundy!" she exclaims, scrambling into her 
 neglected negligee. "What a scandal there will be if 
 some one sees me! That I am showing you our heroine 
 not for Dame Scandal!" 
 
 She laughs, as S. Sydney Tappan recovers his control. 
 What a fool he is, he thinks! 
 
 "I wouldn't be Hartmann for a million!" he says 
 humorously. Hartmann is her leading man, usually. 
 "I couldn't stand the strain!"
 
 THE BALANCE 107 
 
 She laughs. 
 
 "It is quite different, with two thousand people look- 
 ing on," she answers. 
 
 Is there a girl at home, she wonders? Probably. 
 There usually is. 
 
 I think she sighs a little as S. Sydney Tappan takes 
 his leave from the apartment on Thirty-fourth Street 
 that noon. A clever woman, Sylvia Tremaine, with 
 eyes to see with and but one God, applause. This 
 young fellow has the ability, she is certain, to construct 
 for her a vehicle which will fit her ability like the paper 
 on the wall. It is her part to see that over the construc- 
 tion is cast the glamour of suggestion, the little trick 
 of double meaning which will make the piece a delicate 
 wisp of diablerie, with always a daring reality be- 
 neath. What a fool she is, to wish, even for a moment, 
 that she herself could be again some one's "girl at 
 home." 
 
 Our Sammy's spots are visibly different as he goes 
 down the street. They are taking on the hue of New 
 York's atmosphere, as interpreted by Sylvia Tremaine 
 interpreted, perhaps, correctly, too. I am quite certain 
 he would never have written a "Lady in the Lion Skin," 
 had his life been confined to Melchester. Perhaps it is 
 only another manifestation, however, of the power of 
 the lodestone of success. He must write plays to make 
 money; that is the prime requisite. If he can make it by 
 poisoning the mind of a nation why, he is not far be- 
 hind a great many of those to whom his world looks up! 
 It is an irony, that, like S. Sydney Tappan, some of 
 the greatest of our varied successes are but handing us 
 the pistol. 
 
 I wonder, however, does our Sammy realize, to-day, 
 that these steps he is taking are leading him, for the 
 first time, a little away from that path which he and 
 Carrie have trod so far together? S. Sydney Tappan 
 is not quite the same as when he first came to New 
 York a few months ago. . . . 
 
 Carrie's letters, too, seemed to be altering during
 
 108 THE BALANCE 
 
 these months, reflecting the changes in her mind. She 
 was growing older. She wrote: 
 
 "Sammy, dearest, I have become a real volunteer worker in 
 the Settlement! It is so much the most important thing that 
 has happened to me in some time that I feel that I must write 
 and tell you about it. It is just a house, of course, but so intensely 
 interesting! It is real life, I think. If I could only be like Mrs. 
 Lewis I should die happy. I cannot imagine why father and mother 
 do not see the romance and bravery of her life. 
 
 "I tried to tell father about it all, but he just laughs at me. He 
 thinks it is all quite silly. I think he only sees the small side of the 
 great work the Settlements are doing. All that he sees is a few 
 girls teaching foreign women our ways of housekeeping, and sew- 
 ing, and dressmaking. I wonder doesn't he realize that they all 
 have children, too? He says they can all live on greens and old 
 bread, and don't need much wages now, but if we fool women keep 
 on we'll get them all dissatisfied. 
 
 "I think I really like it so much because it isn't charity. It seems 
 to me like really helping them. At home, it is just the same as 
 it has always been with everything I have ever wanted to do. I 
 am afraid we will never understand each other. It is one reason 
 why I am so glad that I have you to believe in and to under- 
 stand me. 
 
 "The family are beginning to wonder again if everything is over 
 between you and me, after all. The news of some of your suc- 
 cess has gotten to town, wonderfully mangled and garbled, of 
 course, but still recognizable as success. I do not think, however, 
 they are ever going to say anything more. I am so glad that I 
 could earn my own living in the Settlement if necessary. Mrs. 
 Lewis told me yesterday she would always take me if I would come. 
 You have no idea how differently it makes me, or any girl, feel. 
 It just makes nobodys out of us, to have to sell our characters for 
 food and dress. 
 
 "I am holding my thumbs waiting to hear how you are coming 
 out with the play for Miss Tremame. I wish so much she had 
 
 flayed the devil sketch through here, instead of just in New York, 
 would like so much to have seen it the S. Sydney Tappan, 
 author, on the programme, must have been grand! 
 
 "I realize how much it means for both of us that you stay on 
 in New York until you have made a little place for yourself in the 
 theatrical world. You don't know how thrilling it is to me to know 
 that you are succeeding. If only you could get Miss Tremaine's 
 first night here in Melchester! 
 
 "It seems ages since I have seen you. I know I should be 
 thankful for your success, and yet the future cannot always
 
 THE BALANCE 109 
 
 console us, can it? I wonder will you like me as well as ever when 
 you do come home! Still, there are no frightful changes. I think 
 I have gained a pound! 
 
 "Always your 
 
 "CARRIE." 
 
 A week later she wrote him again: 
 
 "I am so glad you have been put up at the Lambs' Club! That 
 Mr. Hartmann must be very nice. It will be a great help, I sup- 
 pose, knowing all those people. I know there is a great person in 
 you some place, Sammy, and perhaps this is the beginning. I only 
 hope I can be worthy of you, and be the kind of wife a man in your 
 
 Eosition should have. How much depends upon the woman! 
 can see it every day in Melchester. I think, too, I am beginning 
 to hate material things. I can almost see you smile. We will 
 never have much to hate, I suppose! I can't help it. It seems as 
 if it were plainer to me every day that a common ideal, and aspira- 
 tion, is the only thing worth striving for all the rest just a means of 
 rilling up unhappy hours. 
 
 "I am consumed with curiosity to know how father and mother 
 will act when you come to call! A sense of humour they haven't 
 it, I am afraid, and for that reason, I suppose, dread the day. 
 
 "But I don't! 
 
 "Please, it will be very soon now, won't it? 
 
 "CARRIE. 
 
 "P. S. Freddie Halton is still calling on me at impossible hours, 
 though I have told him frankly about you, and what you mean to 
 me. I can't refuse to see him, however can you imagine the fuss 
 if I did! They say Dorothy and Asa are engaged, too, but I am 
 not sure. She has been on the verge with so many! I wonder, 
 am I mean?" 
 
 It is six weeks after the finished draft of the Lady in 
 the Lion Skin has been taken to the apartment on 
 Thirty-fourth Street that S. Sydney Tappan calls for 
 Sylvia Tremaine to take her to luncheon at the Ritz. All 
 the good effect of that lesson in plumbing appears to 
 have been wasted if we can judge by the confidence with 
 which he steps into the elevator this November morning. 
 Has this gentleman in the correct tailor-made suit ever 
 made a mistake? 
 
 There is one good result, however, though it is not 
 visible upon the surface. He has written and finished 
 completely in three months a play in three acts. S.
 
 110 THE BALANCE 
 
 Sydney Tappan has not stepped out of his room during 
 all that time, except to consult Miss Tremaine. He has 
 not even had time in which to move. Ricorton's 
 valises still repose in the far corner of the Twenty-ninth 
 Street room, and the Tappan trunk still hides in the 
 closet. New York calls her favourites in terms that 
 admit of no dallying by the way. 
 
 To-day, however, he knows that the strain is over so 
 far as the actual writing goes. The play has emerged 
 and is good. Rehearsal is going on, and daily lunch at 
 the Lambs' Club is a usual thing. Whatever Sylvia 
 Tremaine chooses her managers know will succeed; so, 
 beyond giving their approval, Mr. Friedman, the work- 
 ing director, has had little to say. He has read all the 
 play in the first draft, and, with the exception of Hart- 
 mann, has chosen the cast. Miss Tremaine will do all 
 the rest. She will open as usual on December ist, at the 
 Players' Theatre, just off Broadway, although the try- 
 outs are not yet arranged. 
 
 This is one of the things on S. Sydney Tappan's mind 
 as he waits for Sylvia to appear. She does not keep him 
 waiting long. 
 
 "Where shall we lunch, Tappy?" she asks gayly, as 
 she comes from her room. She is a radiant vision in 
 dark-blue silk, with two old-fashioned wide stripes down 
 the front of her dress, and on her hair some kind of a 
 velvet creation. 
 
 "The Ritz," says Sammy. She is one of the most 
 ravishing women he has ever seen. 
 
 "Beautiful Tappy!" she cries, clapping her hands. 
 "Your tie is a triumph !" She seems to have preserved, 
 miraculously, the enthusiasm of youth. 
 
 "I should have torn it off in the face of all Fifth 
 Avenue, had it offended," replies Sammy gallantly. 
 
 He is experiencing a certain very pleasurable sensa- 
 tion in thus escorting this beautiful woman to the Ritz, 
 where he knows all eyes will be turned enviously upon 
 him. Sylvia Tremaine is, perhaps, the most widely 
 known woman in New York this season.
 
 THE BALANCE 111 
 
 "Are you prepared to make love to me all through 
 luncheon, Tappy?" she says in the taxi. "You are 
 such a poor victim that I am afraid you won't show it. 
 That is the first rule, when you lunch with me at the 
 Ritz; gaze adoringly into my eyes ! All my playwrights 
 have fallen in love with me, and I know Friedy's press 
 agent isn't disposed to let you off!" 
 
 "I don't care to be let off," replies Sammy lightly. 
 "I look on you as a liberal dramatic education. If it 
 were not for my innate politeness I would keep out my 
 notebook all the time you talk!" 
 
 "Oh, but you can't mean that!" she cries reproach- 
 fully. "I never use my friends." 
 
 "You mean, you don't admit it," he answers. "What 
 emotion, for instance, are you trying out on me just 
 now, with the trembling lip and tragic eye ?" 
 
 "Why, reproach, of course!" she says tragically. 
 " Didn't you ever make faces for amusement, when you 
 were a child?" 
 
 "I have heard," says Sammy cruelly, "that they put 
 lines in your face." 
 
 "Oh, oh!" she cries. "Mean Tappy! I don't look 
 twenty-five." 
 
 He considers her seriously. 
 
 "No," he says, "you don't!" 
 
 "And I am not fat! See my ankle, Tappy! It doesn't 
 bulge." She shudders. "I won't be thirty and podgy!" 
 
 "You will be very thin, really scrawny," answers 
 Sammy slowly. "I can see you now with difficulty, 
 of course playing old maid parts " 
 
 "Now, you are really mean, Sydney," Sylvia says 
 hotly. "I shall never play such parts. When I 
 am fifty I shall do Diving Venus things, and entrance 
 old drummers in clammy bathing suits!" 
 
 "Will the management let drummers in all wet?" 
 Sammy murmurs. 
 
 She looks at him reproachfully. 
 
 "I never thought you would be guilty of that style 
 of humour," she says dismally.
 
 112 THE BALANCE 
 
 "I do it for exercise," answers Sammy. 
 
 "Please reserve it for some other time, then," she 
 says. "They will certainly put you out of the Ritz if 
 they hear you making such remarks." 
 
 "The chauffeur thinks you are crazy," remarks 
 Sammy. "He has turned around twice, already. 
 Once more, and he will dash our brains out on some 
 one's front steps." 
 
 "He thinks I am adorable," she says modestly. 
 "He as good as said so when I got in." 
 
 "They should have lady chauffeurs, anyway," sug- 
 gests Sammy. "Then I, no doubt, would travel 
 free." 
 
 "Your wife at the wheel?" murmurs Sylvia. 
 
 "Perhaps," says Sammy hardily. 
 
 Sylvia claps her hands. 
 
 "And all the babies inside!" 
 
 "It's better than walking!' 
 
 "Promise me, Sydney, you will never come to call on 
 me with the babies!" 
 
 "You will beg for one to talk to when you are sixty," 
 returns Sammy. 
 
 But Sylvia tosses her head. Perhaps she feels he 
 is right. 
 
 "They will cry all through the last act," she says 
 wickedly, "when you come to see me at the Players, 
 and their faces will be very dirty. And you will see 
 me inside Rector's as you drag them home, yelling, in 
 the subway; all the way to the flat." 
 
 Sammy shakes his head. 
 
 "I shall never yell," he says. 
 
 Sylvia disregards him. 
 
 "The babies will." 
 
 "Not mine!" 
 
 "I can hear them," she says cruelly. " Some of them 
 with grand opera lungs." 
 
 "I will bring them every night to the Players then," 
 Sammy counters brightly. "A treat for everybody 
 who does not like your play!"
 
 THE BALANCE 113 
 
 It is as they alight and go into the Ritz that Sylvia 
 refers to the subject again. 
 
 "It's the only place you still show your provincial- 
 ism, Sydney," she says, then, half in earnest. "Those 
 babies!" 
 
 "And it's the only place you have begun to show your 
 worldliness," Sammy replies. 
 
 She looks him over carefully as they sit down. 
 
 "Otherwise, you are a real New Yorker." 
 
 "And you quite human," returns Sammy un- 
 daunted. 
 
 "I would like to see your Carrie," says Sylvia earn- 
 estly. "She must be some one quite unusual. Lasting 
 love isn't found every day, Sydney. I wonder if you 
 realize how lucky you are ?" 
 
 Sammy glances at her keenly. 
 
 " Making fun ? " he queries. 
 
 "Not at all, Sydney oh! Make love to me in- 
 stantly! Here are my gloves a lingering look, yes, 
 that's it!" She leans forward and whispers a little to 
 him. "There he is that is old Calder over there. He 
 is always giving me a little sentimental puff. Million- 
 aire from Spokane leaping from the Brooklyn Bridge 
 at midnight all for love of the beautiful Sylvia Tre- 
 maine! And then a two-page article on famous idiots 
 of history." She sighs. "I think the only way to get a 
 real man, after thirty, is to break up some happy home." 
 
 "Please spare mine," says Sammy gayly. 
 
 He is very sure that he is about to have one. 
 
 "Perhaps I have seen too much of the world," Sylvia 
 says seriously. "And I see only the awful conse- 
 quences. The trouble is there are two parties to the 
 thing, and it always seems as if one does not measure 
 up when the test comes and the test always does come. 
 And then, unhappiness and disaster! Besides, some men 
 and women should never marry. They have no stabil- 
 ity. I might marry you to-day, and run off with Hart- 
 mann to-morrow. You have no idea how nice Hart- 
 mann is at times."
 
 114 THE BALANCE 
 
 She contemplates Hartmann's attractions as they 
 eat. 
 
 "Listen," says Sammy. "Do something for me, 
 will you?" 
 
 "Anything, except those babies!" Sylvia smiles. 
 
 "Have the tryout night up in Melchester!" 
 
 Sylvia's face lights up. 
 
 "Before the girl and her stodgy old family and the 
 old home knockers club! Splendid! We must ar- 
 range it, if possible, Sydney. Why, it will be better 
 than the play." 
 
 She thinks a moment. 
 
 "There is no reason why we can't, unless the date is 
 filled. I always draw in Melchester. And the stage 
 man there is a dear! I love him. He weighs three 
 hundred and ten. It's just like an inspiration to see 
 him move himself around. Such will power and char- 
 acter! Honestly, Sydney, it's just like seeing Mohamet 
 move that mountain." 
 
 Her eyes are sparkling. It appeals to her, this old 
 home drama as she expresses it. It will start the play 
 off in an interesting way. And then, too, the papers 
 should be very kind indeed ! 
 
 On the way back to the theatre, her mood changes. 
 
 "I am getting old, Sydney. I am beginning to play 
 the fairy grandmother or was it godmother? I don't 
 know but it is very sad, anyway." 
 
 "Nonsense," retorts Sammy. "Youth is just a 
 point of view!" 
 
 "But you can't see that in your mirror," she says 
 dolefully. "No, I am old and gray and playing the part 
 of a disagreeable old harpy! Carrie will hate me and 
 then I can't see you any more." 
 
 Then she brightens. 
 
 "At least," she says gayly, "I won't have to see the 
 babies in that case!" 
 
 And she runs into the theatre while Sammy dis- 
 misses the taxi. 
 
 Rehearsals are well along on the "Lady in the Lion
 
 THE BALANCE 115 
 
 Skin," and every one in the cast is quite certain that it 
 will be a success. Engagements with Sylvia Tremaine 
 can almost be considered cash in advance; and, though 
 they have never heard before of this S. Sydney Tappan, 
 they are quite positive that he has caught, somehow, the 
 peculiar touch which spells a Broadway success. There 
 has been a great deal of changing, and some protests 
 from the author, but Miss Tremaine has seemed to 
 carry her point in most cases, so that the show moves 
 along in good style, now. 
 
 To Sammy, it has all had the semblance of a dream, 
 a figment of imagination. There are times when he 
 cannot realize that it is really he who has this "Lady in 
 the Lion Skin" in rehearsal with a sure production, and 
 success ahead. Unless something very unforeseen oc- 
 curs, it can hardly help running for a season, once 
 Friedman and the firm pass on it, and it goes out on the 
 boards. 
 
 In the language of the stage director, it will knock 
 'em dead ! Particularly the scene where the lady in the 
 lion skin meets the man she loves, and after using all her 
 wiles to lure him on, finally casts aside the lion skin 
 amidst the gasps of the audience and steps forth in her 
 Palm Beach bathing suit for a swim in the ocean outside 
 the cottage. S. Sydney Tappan has written it so that 
 the lady picks up the lion skin in full view of the audi- 
 ence, and it is, presumably, only the unfortunate gen- 
 tleman upon the stage who is deceived. 
 
 It is just before the dress rehearsal, however, that 
 Sylvia persuades him to change it, while he is waiting 
 for her in her apartment. 
 
 "Oh, I have a wonderful idea for that lion skin scene, 
 Sydney," she has called to him from her boudoir where 
 she is dressing. 
 
 "What is that?" asks Sammy, idly turning the pages 
 of a magazine, and looking at the pictures of theatrical 
 celebrities. Will he be among them soon, he wonders? 
 
 "Wait," she says. "I will put on that bathing suit, 
 and show you."
 
 116 THE BALANCE 
 
 A moment later she is out, dragging the lion skin be- 
 hind her. 
 
 "These bronze slippers don't add to the effect, do 
 they?" she says, ruefully, gazing down at the slippers 
 she has put on. "I suppose I will have to play it 
 without them, though I hate the dust of the stage " 
 
 "Good heavens!" says Sammy, aghast. "It is 
 really going to be fierce." 
 
 It is the first time she has dressed this scene, and the 
 effect of her low-cut bronze silk bathing suit is startling. 
 
 "This is the idea," she says. "Instead of picking up 
 the skin as Fenwick comes in, and throwing it around 
 me, like this" and she suits the action to the word 
 "supposing we arrange it like this " 
 
 Sammy is really startled. The shock now to an au- 
 dience of this creature in the revealing bathing suit 
 will be quite enough. What will she suggest to heighten 
 it? But Sylvia does not notice, and goes on. 
 
 "Suppose, in the show, I have two of these bathing 
 suits, one on, and the other in my hand. Suppose, too, 
 this screen here is the Japanese screen in the cottage 
 scene. I'll place it here beside the fireplace so that 
 I can get behind it. You see what the inference will 
 be, Sydney, as I come in with the other suit in my hand ? 
 Then, I go to the screen, and when I am behind it, I 
 take the dressing gown like this " 
 
 She walks behind the screen and hangs the morning 
 gown over the top, while she looks out from one side. 
 
 "I am looking out now, on account of the noise of 
 Fenwick at the door, at the same time giving the dress- 
 ing gown enough push to make it fall on the floor out- 
 side, in view of the audience, where I can't get it with- 
 out coming put and the inference, of course, is that 
 I just took it off before putting on my bathing suit, 
 and so have nothing on at all. You see the idea ? Then 
 I reach out, like this '' 
 
 She reaches out toward the lion skin, and draws it 
 slowly behind the screen beside the fireplace. 
 
 "Then Fenwick hears me, and comes slowly toward
 
 THE BALANCE 117 
 
 me saying, hoarsely, 'Mimi!' and I step out, and back 
 a little, with the lion skin wrapped around me, too, like 
 this- 
 
 And Sylvia steps out from behind the screen with the 
 lion skin wrapped around her, the delicate pallor of 
 her smooth young shoulders above, below her slim 
 ankles and feet, and across the lion skin her round 
 white arms. 
 
 "You see, the inference is that I haven't had time 
 to put on the bathing suit at all, and just have the lion 
 skin around me. Then as Fenwick says 'Good God,' 
 and takes a step toward me, I tear away, and fling 
 away the lion skin like this " 
 
 She suits the action to the word. 
 
 "And stand staring haughtily at him, before I walk 
 out to the beach. Won't that be the last word, Syd- 
 ney? See the possibilities! Just one gasp as 1 throw 
 it away and perfectly all right all the time. Isn't 
 that much better?" 
 
 She curls up on the sofa. 
 
 "It will be all right," says Sammy still aghast. "If 
 there is anybody left in the theatre to see it." 
 
 "They'll be crowding in the doors!" says Sylvia 
 calmly. "This is what New York wants. Why, 
 they'll be disappointed because I even have on the 
 bathing suit beneath." 
 
 "Well," says Sammy, "you might pretty near as 
 well not, for all it leaves to the imagination." 
 
 "Now, don't be fussy, Sydney," she answers. "It's 
 the latest thing from Altman's, not one bit altered or 
 different than you'll see at all the beaches next summer. 
 None of them have stockings, and this one is much 
 better than lots of the others. It is your evil mind!" 
 
 Sammy reddens slightly. Sylvia claps her hands. 
 
 "Shall I make love to you, Sydney? In my bathing 
 suit?;' 
 
 "I'll get my hat if you do," retorts Sammy. 
 
 "Well," she answers, "it is time we were going, 
 anyway. That theatre! I am tired of it already, and
 
 118 THE BALANCE 
 
 the season hasn't begun. And I suppose I am selling 
 my privacy for money." 
 
 She stands before him with the dressing gown on 
 her arm, in her eyes an odd look. 
 
 "When two hundred thousand people see me like 
 this, it is no wonder that no one man wants me. But it is 
 success, Sydney, success in New York for me! And 
 for it, I sell them the sight of myself." 
 
 She laughs. 
 
 "Or, rather, the expectation of it. For they are 
 stung, Sydney, stung! And I get success just the 
 same." 
 
 And she goes off to dress. A clever woman, 
 Sylvia Tremame, though without any principle 
 save that of succeeding. Her brains have kept her 
 from sinking into the sensual mass of New York. 
 Her head is level, and she knows enough to exploit 
 her audiences without mercy or conscience. It is 
 only now and then that uneasy doubt makes her con- 
 science stir in its cocoon. A person of genius, Miss 
 Tremaine, bent crooked by civilization since child- 
 hood. For her both Exhibits A and B can be sum- 
 moned. Her parents were actors and she has been 
 left to bring herself up in New York. The catalogue 
 of excuses can be thus called into play. 
 
 There is but one regret in Sammy's mind as he packs 
 his things the next afternoon on West Twenty-ninth 
 Street. But it has nothing to do with Sylvia. It is 
 for Ricorton. 
 
 "If Ric were only here to see the first night," he 
 thinks. Ric! He feels for the absent musician the 
 affection a soldier might have for his comrade of the 
 campfires. Success seems to have crowned their 
 efforts without a struggle so far. It hardly seems 
 possible that so few months have passed; and Ricorton 
 is already directing orchestras, and he himself is about 
 to blossom forth as a playwright. The last rehearsal 
 in New York is over, and the Company is leaving for 
 Melchester on the midnight. Sylvia Tremaine has
 
 THE BALANCE 119 
 
 gone already, so that she will not have to sleep upon a 
 train, but can get her rest in the hotel at Melchester. 
 But Ricorton is far from Melchester and New York. 
 His last letter has been from the Frederick Hotel in 
 St. Paul, and he is leaving for the Coast trip on the 
 Orpheum. He has written: 
 
 "Dear Tappy, have been having the one real time of .my life. 
 The trip, so far, could not have been better. I can see behind me 
 only one long succession of splendid restaurants ahead of me a 
 vista of still more restaurants, all good! I am in my glory. I 
 know you object to letters concerned principally with food, so I 
 shall detail our feasts. I can only recommend to you, when you 
 have made your million, to try that Chop Suey joint across from 
 the hotel in Grand Rapids. When I am famous, I shall buy a hotel 
 and do the cooking myself. It is an art. 
 
 "So far as business goes, things could not be better. Jack 
 Bantry has been playing the gay Lothario a little too often but so 
 far with no serious results. I should hate to lose him. His Irish 
 voice certainly brings down the gallery. My only difficulty has 
 been in keeping the peace between the rival artists that make up 
 our chorus. I have decided more than once that only poisoning 
 you could ever compensate me for the difficulties I have had with 
 them. Do you realize you promised every single one of them the 
 part of understudy to Ruby? I watch every mouthful she eats 
 with the greatest concern. If she should fall ill for one night I 
 verily believe there would be blood shed over who should take 
 her part. You have no idea what a peach she really is. Travelling 
 around the way we do gives you a mighty good measure of what a 
 girl is really made of. 
 
 "I arh prostrated with grief to think I can't see the first night 
 of that play of yours though from the name 1 should probably 
 rush from the theatre, blushing, at the end of the second act. Please 
 invite all that musical committee at the Dutch Reformed for me! 
 If you get a chance, you might kick one or two of them as they go 
 out the lobby. 
 
 " Sylvia Tremaine sounds very attractive. Financially, I guess, 
 she is a sure thing. She will make it go if any one can. Here is 
 hoping, anyhow, for the very best. Give my love to Carrie and 
 don't forget it! You have always been afraid to send it in those 
 dull, midnight letters of yours. I wipe a silent tear just now 
 farewell. Yours, 
 
 "Ric." 
 
 They have gone a long way since they came to New 
 York a bare seven months ago, thinks Sammy, as he
 
 120 THE BALANCE 
 
 gazes around the second-floor room. The mirror is 
 just as cracked as ever, and the carpet as subtly cheer- 
 ful, but somehow he has gotten used to them. The 
 "Lady in the Lion Skin" was written here, and it seems 
 a little bit like home. If it were only in Melchester, 
 its imitation would be complete. 
 
 Melchester! It seems like contemplating a con- 
 tinuation of that old dream, to realize that he is pack- 
 ing at last to return home, and his exile is over. 
 
 I fear, however, that fate has not the heart to give 
 him any inkling of the truth to-night. As he packs 
 the bundle of Carrie's letters, he is seeing Main Street 
 again on Saturday night, looking in at old Mr. Dabney's 
 office in the Preston Block, wondering if the For Rent 
 sign is still in that dusty window that once was Pike, 
 Incorporated, hearing the rustle of the bare branches 
 of the trees on Hawthorne Street, smelling the burning 
 leaves on Washington Avenue, seeing the table set for 
 dinner in at Asa's, looking out over the fading grass 
 of the Country Club links, gazing on the homeward 
 rush of Melchester in the early winter's dusk, cars, 
 wagons, carriages, and motors gray misted as they 
 pass the twinkling street lamps. 
 
 He will keep his trunk here with Ricorton's valises 
 on Twenty-ninth Street. He will have to come back 
 to New York, live here finally, if he and Ric stay in the 
 producing business, and how long he will stay in Mel- 
 chester he does not know. 
 
 The engagement of Sylvia Tremaine is only for two 
 nights before she comes down the Hudson, and opens 
 a week later in the metropolis. So he must be in New 
 York for that. Miss Tremaine will give her usual 
 supper party, afterward, that night on Broadway, 
 and he will be one of the principal guests. 
 
 Melchester must be a trifle agog by now he thinks; 
 the posters are all up, and the advance notices all 
 pleasantly printed in the Democrat Herald. In fact, 
 S. Sydney Tappan has received a pleasant letter from 
 the dramatic editor whose name Hazleton had for-
 
 THE BALANCE 121 
 
 gotten, and whom Sammy cannot now recall. In it, 
 too, he has inquired after the opera! 
 
 The opera! Good gracious, thinks Sammy, with a 
 start. He has nearly forgotten all about it in the rush 
 of these later events. Well, it must have something 
 good in it. He will look it up, and see if possibly 
 it cannot be revised. A true artist, S. Sydney Tappan 
 off with the old love, on with the new! His interest 
 now is all with the ''Lady in the Lion Skin." He will 
 see it before an audience soon. Before an audience, 
 and Carrie! 
 
 Carrie ! 
 
 He closes his travelling bag with a snap. Into his 
 heart there has stolen a queer, little, aching feeling of 
 desire. And his breath comes quicker, and his hands 
 tremble just a trifle. Carrie! 
 
 He has remembered that evening at the Country 
 Club always to stand alone in his memory when he 
 kissed her so blindlyj on the fresh, cool mouth, and 
 slender throat, and crushed her to him until she whis- 
 pered, half in shyness, half in passionate gladness, 
 "Let me kiss you, too!" And he will be in Melchester 
 to-morrow. 
 
 Ah, Carrie!
 
 CHAPTER X 
 
 IN WHICH CARRIE HAS A PLEASANT BREAKFAST WITH 
 
 HER FATHER, AND SYLVIA SPENDS A DISAGREEABLE 
 
 AFTERNOON 
 
 LIVES, like cities, are filled with odd characters 
 and many people; but unlike cities, they seldom present 
 them in crowds. The real dramas of real life are 
 usually played out in tiny groups of scenes with but 
 two or three actors present, and long lapses between 
 the curtains. To be constructed true to life, a play 
 should have many curtains for even the simplest 
 drama of human beings. 
 
 To-day, however, should be bright for our Sammy, 
 whatever the construction. For it is the day, so 
 the biography assures us, of his first, real, smashing 
 triumph. Had they meant the triumph at the 
 Schroeders', I should be inclined to agree with them. 
 But I do not recollect that the house on Washington 
 Avenue is mentioned in that estimable work. 
 
 They know at the Schroeders' this morning, never- 
 theless, that S. Sydney Tappan must be in town. A 
 large bouquet of roses has arrived for Carrie the night 
 before, and his play is scheduled for to-day. There 
 has been no card with the flowers, but Mrs. Schroeder 
 has been too canny to inquire who the sender might 
 be. She does not care to take any chances of bring- 
 ing up the subject of the Tappan boy just at present. 
 It is because she does not exactly see how she can 
 withdraw from the position she has taken. Perhaps 
 that is why she has allotted the job to Mr. Schroeder. 
 
 He relishes it less than ever this morning. Indeed, 
 there is an ominous silence about Carrie, as she eats 
 
 122
 
 THE BALANCE 123 
 
 her breakfast, which does not augur well. These 
 months have seen quite a reversal of form at the 
 Schroeders': pounding on tables has fallen into dis- 
 repute; loud yelling, as a method of driving home an 
 argument, is no longer feasible. Carrie's eternal 
 questions have reduced the Schroeder forces to the 
 minimum. Good heavens, there is no reason for a 
 great many things! 
 
 It is why silence is the potent weapon most in favour 
 now. The Schroeders, including the offspring, dis- 
 approve of Carrie in stern silence. 
 
 "I met a man called John Rouse yesterday," says 
 Carrie, steadily, at last. "Do you know him, father?" 
 
 She will not talk of Sammy, though she is trying 
 hard to be calm at the thrilling prospect before her 
 this evening. 
 
 Mr. Schroeder's face falls. This is a poor beginning. 
 It will take some time to clear up the Tappan affair at 
 such a rate. 
 
 "Yes," he says, with unusual force. "A crook!" 
 
 He is beginning seriously to consider taking his 
 breakfasts out. It seems almost as if every subject 
 they discuss were a most disagreeable one. His wife, 
 however, has set him the task of straightening the 
 Tappan mess, and he must do it. 
 
 Carrie brings him back to John Rouse. 
 
 "I think it is our fault if he is a crook," she says 
 quietly. 
 
 Mr. Schroeder turns quite purple. Is everything his 
 fault? 
 
 "Nonsense," he says, as loudly as he dares. "The 
 man is a crank, a dynamiter, anarchist, socialist I 
 don't know what all. What have we got to do with 
 it?" 
 
 "We have closed our ears to him," answers Carrie. 
 
 "And will continue to," retorts Mr. Schroeder. 
 Is this what they teach the girls at the Settlements? 
 "If I had my way, I'd shoot all such fellows against a 
 stone wall. That would cure them of their ideas."
 
 124 THE BALANCE 
 
 Dimly he recognizes a real enemy when he sees one; 
 and this Rouse, although he does not exactly under- 
 stand why, rouses his last ounce of fighting blood. 
 
 "And make revolutionists of their friends," Carrie 
 remarks, slowly, though her eyes flash a little. She 
 knows how she would feel should some one shoot her 
 friends against a stone wall. "That is the trouble," 
 she goes on. "We won't listen any of us." 
 
 "Who wants to listen to such drivel?" demands 
 Mr. Schroeder angrily. 
 
 This subject drives him mad. All the fools in the 
 world seem to have banded into this group called 
 by all these names he cannot make head or tail of, 
 and so lumps magnificently together. 
 
 Socialists! They can never divide up all the vege- 
 tables is Mr. Schroeder's intelligent view of socialism 
 and socialized industry. There usually rises, too, be- 
 fore his dimly lit vision, a sort of huge soup kitchen 
 where thousands of people sit eating common and 
 communal soup, in a final effort to divide the last drop 
 and he shudders! The only good he has ever been 
 able to see in it is that he himself is a slow eater. 
 
 Somewhere, however, there is a hazy question in his 
 mind. It does not seem reasonable that these people 
 who are so desirous of justly dividing the soup can 
 be the ones who are throwing bombs. Or is it, per- 
 haps, that they object to soup at all, and wish stew? 
 There must be some discrepancy, somewhere; or else 
 they are all fools, anyway, and don't know better! 
 This is an echo from his wife. 
 
 "We are driving them to do the things they do," 
 says Carrie, "by not listening! It is our fault now 
 just as it was, in a different cause, two thousand years 
 ago." 
 
 This, of course, is insanity. Who knows where any 
 of them were two thousand years ago? It is typical 
 of this stuff; nothing on which a practical man can 
 put his hand! 
 
 "These people aren't successful, that's all!" he says
 
 THE BALANCE 125 
 
 angrily. "They want to get what we have. That is all 
 the talk is about. Let 'em work, and save their money 
 as I did, and they won't have time for all this non- 
 sense." 
 
 The nucleus of that first grocery store is quite for- 
 gotten, now. Mr. Schroeder is the heaviest stock- 
 holder in a great many enterprises these days. Let 
 people work, not think; it is much better so. There are 
 fewer disturbances in the labour market. This Rouse, he 
 knows, preaches dynamite and sabotage. Mr. Schroeder 
 becomes quite excited. 
 
 " Foreigners, most of them ! If they don't like Amer- 
 ica, let them go back. We don't ask them over here! 
 The more you do for them, the more they want. Just 
 look around at the factories and towns half again the 
 wages they used to get, fine sanitary factories, and still, 
 by George, they kick!" 
 
 He grunts. He has almost persuaded himself that he 
 and his stockholders gave these people all these im- 
 provements willingly; there were strikes, to be sure, but 
 probably they would have given them the things sooner 
 or later, anyway. There has always been some com- 
 petition. 
 
 Carrie sighs. 
 
 "I don't know, I am sure, father," she says, almost 
 sadly. "The fine factories give just as many lay-offs as 
 before. The better machinery just seems to turn the 
 things out faster, and the better conditions produce more 
 work from each employee and less employment for 
 all." 
 
 "Well," retorts Mr. Schroeder, "we can't give work 
 when there isn't any. We've got to lay them ofF to 
 make a profit." 
 
 "A profit," Carrie says quietly. "While the workers 
 starve." 
 
 "Let 'em go some place else, then,," retorts Mr. 
 Schroeder. "They don't have to work for us." He 
 has been over this a hundred times already. 
 
 " It is the same thing everywhere for them!" she cries.
 
 126 THE BALANCE 
 
 "Where can they go? They've got to work for 
 you!" 
 
 "But I can't help that, can I ?" shouts Mr. Schroeder. 
 What a state of affairs when a man must justify his 
 business affairs to his own daughter! 
 
 "We can all help, if we will," Carrie answers. 
 
 If she were only a man like Sammy now what a 
 God-sent opportunity! 
 
 She has worked a year among the poor now, and the 
 heartrending tragedy of poverty has stirred her soul. 
 There is such plenty here on earth for all. 
 
 It is the first, faint sounding of the new crusaders' call 
 echoing in her heart; that translation of the spirit of the 
 pioneer, who blazed the forest of a new world, and bore 
 liberty to its home in the wilderness translated now 
 into a new spirit of humanity: a spirit which gathers 
 strength day by day for its assault upon the citadel of 
 poverty hopeless, stinging, bestial, degrading poverty 
 and for its new battle for the souls of men and women; 
 a spirit led by a myriad modern Pauls from modern 
 Antiochs; the same spirit that imbued the empire-build- 
 ing West, turned now, in the East, from its conquest of 
 the soil, to the higher conquest of civilizations monster, 
 poverty; a spirit old as Christ, yet so new that the Mr. 
 Schroeders of the world cannot recognize it yet. 
 
 Into her mind, as she sits at the table, there comes 
 then the picture of John Rouse, violent, ignorant, 
 proud, his vision blurred and distorted by the trampling 
 of the monster, yet within him the conviction of his own 
 righteousness making him a fire brand to set alight the 
 dimmed imaginations of the men who toil; men who, as 
 yet, compose the vast mob of unskilled labour, banded 
 into no union, and with no word of hope from all the 
 world save that from the desperate Industrial Workers 
 of the World wolves calling out to wolves with the 
 voice of need and hunger. John Rouse! In spite of his 
 faults she cannot withhold a certain admiration for the 
 fire of the man. Is it, she wonders, but another mani- 
 festation of that spirit of liberty, trampled this time out
 
 THE BALANCE 127 
 
 of all semblance to the original, and shining in the 
 Welshman's face only as defiance and fearlessness in the 
 face of a world of death ? 
 
 It is as she sits opposite her father, and thinks of John 
 Rouse and the man across the table from her, so differ- 
 ent in their ideas, yet so alike in the incompleteness of 
 their vision, their mutual lack of understanding and 
 sympathy, that the deathless words from Palestine echo 
 in her heart: "Forgive them, for they know not what 
 they do." An older generation, these two with no 
 watchwords except "Death But No Surrender!" Will 
 this new one be the same? 
 
 Mrs. Schroeder has come into breakfast now, how- 
 ever, and the vision fades from Carrie's mind as the 
 severe face of her mother looks across the table at her 
 and Mr. Schroeder. Mr. Schroeder, too, is drinking his 
 coffee with unwonted assiduity. The domestic drama 
 once more holds the stage. 
 
 Confound it, Mr. Schroeder is thinking, he has not yet 
 mentioned this Tappan boy. He rebels a little. Why 
 is it that he must always pull the domestic cart out of 
 the mud? He must do it now, however, as they are 
 alone; alone, that is, except for Annie of course, who 
 does not count with Mr. Schroeder. He must fix the 
 thing some way before the meal is over. 
 
 He cannot drink his coffee any longer, so he emerges 
 from his cup. Confound it, why does Annie stay in the 
 room all the time? He has never noticed her before! 
 Does she always hang around the screen like this? 
 
 Mr. Schroeder, I sadly fear, is a trifle self-conscious 
 this morning. 
 
 "What are you going to do to-day, my dear?" he asks 
 Carrie. 
 
 "The Settlement," she answers. She is perverse. 
 The contact of many encounters with these two parents 
 has worn the once almost too soft shyness of her into an 
 uncertain surface. She knows he is referring to the 
 evening and her Sammy, but she will not give him any 
 satisfaction now. He hates the Settlement, so per-
 
 128 THE BALANCE 
 
 haps the conversation will stop there. She would not 
 admit it, but in her heart she no longer believes, either, 
 that Settlements will change the world. To her the 
 Settlement has changed its aspect: It is merely the 
 school where one may learn to see the world as it is a 
 world going on forever around the school, almost uncon- 
 scious of its presence save for the voice of the graduates 
 whom it has educated. Education! another name, per- 
 haps, for the light of the world. As for its being the 
 cure-all 
 
 Mr. Schroeder takes the plunge. 
 
 "I thought," he says playfully, "you might be busy 
 this afternoon with some one!" 
 
 Well, he is a fool, thinks Mrs. Schroeder. What a 
 way to do anything! He is no farther ahead than he 
 was before. 
 
 "What do you mean?" asks Carrie, a little wickedly. 
 She is quite certain just what he means. She knows, 
 however, that these two parents of hers are a very un- 
 certain quantity. They have heard a great deal about 
 S. Sydney Tappan these last six months, but just how 
 coloured she does not know. Are they starting easily on 
 the slide down to the plain of approval of Sammy this 
 morning ? 
 
 In the background, however, another character in 
 this drama has been waiting, all unconsciously, a long 
 time for her cue; so long that I fear most of the other 
 actors have forgotten she was ever meant to have a part. 
 
 They do not know that in Sammy there breathes 
 again for her the bright eyes and gay smile of a vanished 
 policeman, dead now these twenty years; that, as she 
 passes plates and glasses, the sight of Hawthorne Street 
 in summer springs up before her Irish vision at the 
 mention by these alien Schroeders of the name of Tap- 
 pan Hawthorne Street, and Sammy on an ancient 
 horse block, with Asa in the elm-shadowed distance, and 
 down the street the sound of horse's hoofs and buggy 
 wheels telling her that some one is coming to take her 
 driving in the country. And her eyes fill up again with
 
 THE BALANCE 129 
 
 tears as they have these twenty years. She was not al- 
 ways forty and a servant, with a silent role to play. No, 
 by Heaven, Annie ! This is your cue, and I, for one, will 
 stop and listen for your speech. 
 
 "It's Sammy your father means, Colleen," she cries, 
 twisting up her hands. Sammy! Her Sammy! "And 
 the play at the theatre to-night ! We're all going. He's 
 sent us tickets in the kitchen." 
 
 If anything will get you into Heaven, Sammy, it will 
 be those tickets to the kitchen. There were times when 
 you were a man. 
 
 Into the calm of the Schroeder dining-room, however, 
 the remark has fallen like a vast explosion. It is as if 
 the Sphinx had not only spoken, but had yelled. And 
 yelled, perhaps, for woman suffrage. The Schroeders 
 could not have been more startled. Annie has spoken 
 from the heart. It was the only time she ever spoke at 
 table. 
 
 Carrie saves the day. 
 
 "He's taking me, Annie," she answers calmly. 
 
 For all the rest of her life Annie never forgot that 
 Carrie answered her, and let Mr. Schroeder wait. It is 
 of such small things that happiness is made. 
 
 The revelation to Mr. Schroeder and his wife, how- 
 ever, that Annie not only waits, but thinks and worse, 
 sees through them is not more astounding than the 
 clear light her remark has thrown upon the real situa- 
 tion. Somehow, they have never figured her before as 
 a real person. She has faded in with the china cabinet 
 and the walls as an object. Her remark has scattered 
 that idea forever. She has known what it was all about 
 from the beginning and has completely routed Mr. 
 Schroeder's careful strategy at the crucial moment. The 
 bare fact, alone, is left now, that he was offering to cease 
 the war on Sammy. Thank Heaven, however, the 
 thing is done now. They can at least ask some questions 
 and find out what is happening. 
 
 Inside Mrs. Schroeder, meanwhile, a great relief has 
 come, also. She has been taking imaginative glances at
 
 130 THE BALANCE 
 
 the future for some time now with our Sammy in the 
 role of lion of Melchester, dining nightly at the canal 
 driver's descendants' mansion; ever since the success of 
 the vaudeville sketch and the linking of his name with 
 Sylvia Tremaine, in fact. If the young man is going to 
 make some money, why, she can see no objection to him 
 at all. 
 
 The newspapers and the dramatic editor of the Dem- 
 ocrat Herald have been principally responsible for her 
 information; but for once it has been mostly correct. 
 She knows the frightful penchant for distinguished 
 artistic people that the leaders in society seem to have; 
 perhaps on the theory of opposites. What more reason- 
 able than that the once grand name of Tappan blossom 
 forth once more among the best people of Melchester? 
 She knows our Sammy has the added requisite of birth 
 if he comes forth also distinguished she can see the 
 plain results. 
 
 Only one thing really worries her. The business of a 
 playwright seems so very uncertain. Who knows the ex- 
 act future of this "Lady in the Lion Skin," for instance? 
 It may be a failure, and she will have smiled on S. 
 Sydney Tappan all for nothing ! Even her strange sense 
 of humour will not permit the contemplation of still an- 
 other aboutface in such a quandary. If she takes an- 
 other stand, it will be for good. She must take the 
 right one. 
 
 This is the reason why she is going out for dinner to- 
 night, taking Mr. Schroeder with her. She will not risk 
 meeting S. Sydney Tappan until she has seen his play 
 and measured the applause! Her new position can be 
 assumed upon the following day with grace and, all im- 
 portant certitude. A risky, exciting life, this life of 
 the social aspirant; and necessitating great care and 
 study with never a real showdown with one's soul. 
 
 I think it was partly the questions her parents asked 
 her at breakfast that morning that roused in Carrie the 
 great curiosity she had all the rest of the day to see the 
 woman about whom Sammy had written her so much,
 
 THE BALANCE 131 
 
 and on whose magnetism so much depended. Sammy 
 has told her that on Sylvia Tremaine rests the success or 
 failure of his play. What sort of person is this Sylvia? 
 And will she do her part? 
 
 In Carrie's heart is still the conviction that her Sammy 
 is simply modest. This play will succeed because of its 
 inherent worth and dramatic quality though, of 
 course, Sylvia Tremaine will help. It is not that she 
 does not like the idea that another should help S. Sydney 
 Tappan to his pinnacle of fame either: it is that Sammy 
 needs no help, no one with whom to share his honours. 
 He is able to carve his own niche in fame's temple. She 
 can see that Sylvia's part will require character acting 
 of the finest sort, but she is only familiar with the bare 
 outline of the plot, and not its technical working out. 
 There has been no time to send her any copy of the 
 play. 
 
 Sammy has written her from New York that he 
 wishes her for dinner at the hotel alone; and afterward 
 they will see the play from the shelter of a box. But she 
 will not be at liberty till five-thirty, so he is to call for her 
 on Hague Street, as he once used to at the Y. W. C. A. 
 
 Meanwhile, he will have a last talk with Sylvia at tea, 
 before the play. Sylvia does not eat dinner. Four- 
 thirty tea suffices her until the theatre is over. She can 
 get some rest in this way from five until seven-thirty and 
 go to her work refreshed. 
 
 It is just four o'clock as Sammy knocks upon her door, 
 and she calls "Come in!" 
 
 He has been having his qualms of doubt ever since he 
 called Carrie on the telephone at two o'clock, and she 
 seemed so excited about seeing the play. In some subtle 
 way the atmosphere of Melchester impresses him as 
 different from New York. Is it Melchester, though, so 
 much as Carrie? The girls upon the street, now; they 
 are like New York the same indefinable suggestion of 
 conscious sex in the way they dress, and give first aid to 
 their complexion. He can remember, not so many 
 years ago, when no one in Melchester dared use rouge or
 
 132 THE BALANCE 
 
 paint; but now he cannot distinguish between some of 
 his old friends and the demi-monde until they are within 
 speaking distance. 
 
 Why is it, then, that the scene in the last act seems to 
 trouble him this afternoon ? It has taken him some time 
 to find out just what it is that has been bothering him, 
 and he is certain now it is this scene. It means success 
 in the metropolis, he knows, and surely that is all that he 
 is after. He is quite convinced, too, that it will take 
 Melchester by storm. And yet, in spite of that, he is 
 uncomfortable. Is he wondering, perhaps, what Carrie 
 will think of Sylvia Tremaine? Or of his play, and 
 incidentally, himself? 
 
 Sylvia turns from the window as he enters, her eyes 
 lighting up at the sight of him. 
 
 "I'm so glad you have come, Sydney," she says 
 plaintively. She points at the bald, big German in the 
 chair by the window. "Friedy here has been scolding 
 me ever since he came!" 
 
 "He is losing his manners," says Sammy gayly. "He 
 doesn't realize how fortunate he is." 
 
 "Miss Tremaine needs more than a manager to look 
 after her," says Friedman, his watery blue eyes blinking 
 rapidly. "She needs a husband!" 
 
 Sylvia scowls. 
 
 "You won't get the place, old pig!" she says, making 
 a face at him. " You'll be nice to me, anyway, Sydney," 
 she adds, with a complete change of tone. "I have a 
 first night ahead of me in three hours!" 
 
 Friedman rises with a little grunt. 
 
 "I don't see how you ever learn your parts, Sylvia," 
 he says half whimsically. "You're mostly crazy, I 
 think." 
 
 "Go out!" she says threateningly. "Or I'll retire 
 this minute with your old theatre full! Retire with 
 Sydney here, and we'll live the simple life somewhere far 
 from disagreeable managers and fat old pigs." 
 
 As Friedman goes out, Sammy seats himself at the tea 
 table and helps himself to toast.
 
 THE BALANCE 133 
 
 "Is it a good house?" he asks nonchalantly. 
 
 "When it's me!" says Sylvia, stamping her foot. 
 "Of course it's full. If you're going to be disagreeable, 
 too, you can go." 
 
 Sammy turns and looks at her in surprise. 
 
 "What's the trouble?" he asks. 
 
 Sylvia watches him from the bed through half-closed 
 lids. 
 
 "It ; s me, Tappy," she confesses meekly. "I'm a 
 devil on my first nights! I haven't done that little 
 second-act scene, the one Friedy has been making such a 
 fuss about, so he is mad. How do I know how I'm 
 going to do it until the time comes? The stage is all 
 mine." 
 
 Sammy gazes at her meditatively. 
 
 "Consider yourself flattered," he says, after a little 
 pause. 
 
 "Why? "asks Sylvia. 
 
 "I turned down a tea this afternoon at the Dobbs' 
 just for you!" 
 
 "Who are the Dobbs?" she asks indolently. 
 
 "My roommate at college," replies Sammy. 
 
 "All of them?" she murmurs lightly. 
 
 Sammy looks at her reproachfully. 
 
 "Every one of them, of course," he answers sternly. 
 "They used to live next door to us on Hawthorne 
 Street, before they made a fortune in real estate. They 
 wanted me to bring you, of course, until I told them 
 how exclusive you were." 
 
 Sylvia does not answer. She has gotten up by now, 
 and is looking out of the window down upon Main 
 Street, eight stories below. 
 
 "It is a wretched little village, isn't it?" she says, at 
 last. "I shall be glad to get back to New York. I 
 always am. How is Carrie, and when do I see her? 
 And what have you been doing since early morning that 
 you haven't been round to see me before?" 
 
 He laughs. 
 
 "After all, I used to live here, you know," he answers
 
 134 THE BALANCE 
 
 amusedly. "I have been greeting the charter members 
 of your old home Knockers' Club, mostly." He looks at 
 her seriously. "You have got to put this thing across 
 big to-night for my sake if for no one else's. Come in and 
 meet Carrie, for a moment, before you go to the theatre. 
 She will be having dinner here with me." 
 
 Sylvia puts her chin in her hands, and looks at him. 
 
 "Haven't you seen her yet?" she asks curiously. 
 
 Sammy shakes his head. 
 
 "Friedman made me change the first act opening, and 
 I've spent most all day over at the theatre getting the 
 thing right." 
 
 She rises and goes to the table by the windows. 
 
 "Some mail for you," she says, bringing back a few 
 letters. "From the theatre." 
 
 The theatre in Melchester! How strange! Then he 
 remembers. He has written Carrie that a note will reach 
 him there if, for any reason, she will not be home when 
 he calls up. She must have given it as an address for 
 others if they wish to write; and the stage manager has 
 sent them over to Friedman. 
 
 The vertical, bold handwriting of the first one gives 
 him a strange feeling of age in a flash of memory the 
 writer has come back to him. It is Dorothy Alden's 
 temperamental script, four words to the page! He can 
 remember that there was a time when he actually waited 
 for letters like these to come to his post-office box at 
 Williams. 
 
 It is a little intimate note, she writes this time, to ask 
 him out to call at their new house by the Country Club, 
 and for dinner the next night. They will all be there, 
 she says, the Haltons, and Asa and Carrie as he per- 
 haps knows already and some newcomers, too; new, 
 that is, to Melchester since he went away. 
 
 Since Pike, Incorporated, failed, she means, Sydney 
 Tappan thinks a little bitterly, as he tears the note up 
 under Sylvia's queer gaze, and opens the others. He 
 has learned a great deal since that night at the Country 
 Club when Asa and Biff Baker were starting for their
 
 THE BALANCE 135 
 
 transcontinental tour across Montana. Max Stimson, 
 Henry Clark whatever happened to them all, he 
 wonders, now? How suddenly his old life dropped 
 away without a word from any of his former friends! 
 Will all life be like that, he wonders? No, not all. 
 Carrie and Ricorton and Sylvia he can count on till the 
 end. 
 
 The other notes are half formal, half familiar, with a 
 desire through them all to take up S. Sydney Tappan 
 once more, and fete Miss Tremaine. 
 
 He tosses them' over to Sylvia, who reads them curi- 
 ously with a little sniff. She never accepts invitations 
 during her tryout week. 
 
 When she is through, she looks up with a little smile. 
 
 "Do you really consider living here again, Tappy?" 
 she asks, in some concern. 
 
 " I don't know," he answers. " It's home in a way." 
 
 "Home!" says Sylvia musingly. "It's a word I 
 hardly know the meaning of," she sighs. "A stage life 
 seems first brother to a travelling one, doesn't it?" 
 
 "It has its compensations," Sammy replies. 
 
 "See Mr. Emerson, page 26," she laughs. "I would 
 die, though, if home meant Melchester and Main Street, 
 and Washington Avenue to me. I like the excitement 
 of New York, of the theatre, of adventure, romance! 
 Don't you ? Or are you going to settle down to teas and 
 motor cars in Melchester, with an occasional evening at 
 the theatre and regular attacks of whooping cough and 
 measles in the nursery?" 
 
 "It doesn't sound attractive," he admits. 
 
 "And no me around, Sydney, to bother you and make 
 love to you, and say shocking things. I don't believe I 
 am really shocking after all, Tappy. I should blush to 
 let you hold my hand, though I am perfectly willing for 
 you to stay while I take my nap. It is habit, Tappy all 
 that one is accustomed to, that's al!." 
 
 She stretches before the window. 
 
 "I am going to lie down now, Tappy. Stay or go, 
 just as you like."
 
 136 THE BALANCE 
 
 She pats a yawn and goes into her bedroom and un- 
 hooks her tea gown, while Sammy looks at his watch. 
 
 "It's five o'clock now," he says. "I'll be going. I'll 
 come behind with Carrie, if you don't show up at 
 dinner." 
 
 "Pray for us, Tappy," Sylvia says earnestly, coming 
 out and shaking his hand. "We'll win." 
 
 And she closes the door behind him ; to stand a moment 
 in thought, in her face a strange little look of longing. 
 Then she shrugs her white shoulders, ivory in the dusk, 
 and makes a tiny face. 
 
 "Probably I would hate him in a year, like all the 
 rest!" she says whimsically. 
 
 And she wraps her negligee about her, and flings her- 
 self upon the bed, to sleep until Marie, her maid, shall 
 come back from her walk, and wake her for the theatre.
 
 CHAPTER 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 
 
 IN THE winter dusk outside S. Sydney Tappan is 
 walking rapidly down Grand Street, toward its garish 
 junction with Hague, a mile away from the downtown 
 section. Gay with the light of corner saloons, this 
 junction, the only cheerful spot in the desolate, de- 
 pressing stretch of paintless, weather-beaten wooden 
 houses, which have not yet given way to tenements; 
 houses crouching miserably, each in its own sooty 
 yard behind broken picket fences. Built with hope and 
 love once, these houses now gone to decay, even as the 
 souls of their occupants. It is the quarter where the 
 poorer workers live, and the Settlement house is located. 
 
 As our Sammy walks jauntily along, the years seem 
 to slip from his shoulders and vanish in the dying 
 December sunset, and he is again twenty-one, and 
 striding through the damp, wet street to call for Carrie 
 to take her home. New York could be a dream, Ricor- 
 ton and Sylvia and Ruby mere phantoms, half grasped 
 and vanished now. Whatever became of Pike, he 
 wonders, and old Mr. Dabney? He blushes. He has 
 never written the kind old man nor heard from him 
 since the day he left Melchester to enter the show 
 business. It has been partly pride; but the rest, I 
 fear, is selfishness. 
 
 There is no name over the branch Settlement house 
 on Hague Street, and did S. Sydney Tappan not know 
 the number, and detect with it a certain air of brighter 
 cleanliness, he would not know it as a place different 
 
 137
 
 138 THE BALANCE 
 
 from the others. There are more lights here though, 
 not just a dim lamp in the kitchen economically 
 trimmed; and the blinds hang straight, with no broken 
 shutters, and in the yard no rags or broken glass lie 
 along a rotted walk leading to a heart-broken sagging 
 porch. These houses on Hague Street, however, do 
 not constitute poverty, the Democrat Herald will tell 
 you; these are happy homes, a trifle soiled, perhaps 
 reeking filth and disease, but still happy and humble 
 enough for easy editorials. What a setting for a night 
 scene in a play of the submerged tenth! It is our 
 Sammy's thought as he turns in at the gate, and as- 
 cends the steps and knocks. 
 
 It is Carrie who answers his knock; and her hand 
 flies to her throat, and her eyes shine with misty tears 
 at the sight of him in the doorway. He has come at 
 last. 
 
 Let us turn away, however. There is an audience 
 of seven little girls in the room beyond, and surely that 
 is sufficient. Their giggles are good warrant for the 
 fact that he has kissed her, and she has stayed in his 
 arms, oblivious to all the world in the sweetness of 
 being close to him once more. Even the little girls 
 are stilled, however, as she disengages herself, and 
 turns around, the colour flooding her cheeks. They 
 have never seen any one look like that in all their little 
 gray lives, and it silences them. It is time to get 
 supper and their mothers have gone home, and they can 
 only make dolls for a short while longer, but childhood 
 is the same the world over, and the lives of these little 
 folk will not be dull and hopeless until the imagination 
 of childhood is swallowed by the manhood cynicism 
 of the industrial world. They recognize a fairy story 
 when they see one yet; and there is one in Carrie's face. 
 It is why they are silent. 
 
 "What God-forsaken people!" exclaims Sammy, in- 
 voluntarily, a few minutes later. 
 
 They are walking slowly down Hague Street, now, 
 and a bakery window has cast its light upon the painted,
 
 THE BALANCE 139 
 
 drawn face of a woman, her shoulders curiously hunched, 
 her distorted figure poorly covered with black sateen 
 which shines with age or dirt, in her eyes a look of stony 
 hopelessness, all about her a realization of the hideous 
 repulsion of the cast-off, the used-up woman of the 
 streets. She seems to shrink from the passerby like a 
 starved cur of the brutal alleys. 
 
 "Good-evening, Emma," Carrie has said; but the 
 woman has answered nothing as she goes by. 
 
 Good God, was she ever a child, making paper dolls 
 upon the floor? Sammy shivers and draws Carrie 
 closer to his side. He does not even like to think that 
 she has spoken to the creature. 
 
 "I know her," Carrie says, simply, a moment later. 
 She almost wishes she had not been with Sammy. Her 
 happiness must be so plain in her face; and for Emma, 
 she knows, life can hold no promise. 
 
 "Emma Rouse," she says slowly. "John Rouse's 
 mother." 
 
 Some one's mother, thinks Sammy with a shudder. 
 Into his own mind has come for a brief second the pic- 
 ture of his own mother as he remembers her in Paris 
 and on Hawthorne Street. 
 
 "She came from Wales, with her little son," Carrie 
 goes on in her low, full voice. "Went to work in the 
 clothing factories twenty years ago. She couldn't make 
 a living wages, lay-offs, you see not enough to bring 
 up her little boy; so she made it other ways just at 
 first and they discharged her at the factory because 
 of it and she you can see her life in her face." 
 
 She ends up. Sudden comprehension comes to 
 Sammy. 
 
 "That is why she does not speak to you!" he says. 
 
 "Why shouldn't she?" cries Carrie fiercely. 
 
 "Because you are your father's daughter," answers 
 Sammy. "And he means the factories to her." 
 
 Carrie stops still on the sidewalk. 
 
 "Oh!" she cries, a hurt look in her eyes. "When I 
 never harmed her at all!" She is silent a moment.
 
 140 THE BALANCE 
 
 then goes on in a low tone: "I suppose it is because 
 I haven't done the suffering, and she has that she can 
 hate me." 
 
 Sammy is looking at her with new eyes. Experience 
 is rapidly making a woman of this slender girl at his 
 side, the tender lines of youth still evident in her charm- 
 ing figure, not even yet rounded to the full. 
 
 "It isn't fair," she says to him, with little, clenched 
 hands. "When I am doing all I can to help now." 
 
 Sammy is silent. He does not know much about 
 these things. He needs his own efforts to make a for- 
 tune before he can think of anything else. He has 
 learned his lesson, he feels sure. Nowadays, one must 
 have money. The scramble of his generation for suc- 
 cess is on, and he cannot be left behind to live in houses 
 such as he has just left on Hague Street. That is the 
 penalty for thinking of anything else. 
 
 "She might have been that way, anyhow," he says, 
 more to comfort her than anything else. He can see, 
 dimly, that the morality which threw the woman to the 
 wolves looks culpable to her. That he should be dis- 
 cussing morals with Carrie does not seem strange at 
 all. He has become accustomed to the plain speech of 
 the stage, and does not realize the distance Carrie has 
 travelled to have acquired this point of view. 
 
 "If she had a weakness the rest of us should have 
 helped, not hindered!" she cries. "And she had that 
 little boy I don't believe it!" 
 
 "What became of him?" asks Sammy curiously. 
 
 "I know him," answers Carrie. "He's a syndicalist 
 an I. W. W. agitator. Do you wonder?" 
 
 Dimly, Sammy realizes who these people are. These 
 are the dynamiters who believe the socialists will never 
 accomplish their reforms by argument, and so prefer 
 to blow the world in pieces and start over with them- 
 selves on top. Carrie is evidently mixing with the world. 
 
 They have turned into Washington Avenue now, 
 with these thoughts of the I. W. W. still in Sammy's 
 mind.
 
 THE BALANCE 141 
 
 Washington Avenue looks much the same, he thinks, 
 except that the elms are bigger and finer, and the 
 fine new street lamps shine on a smoother pavement, 
 on which horses' hoofs and carriage wheels no longer 
 echo. Instead there sounds the velvet roll of motors 
 and the puff of exhausts, with now and then the harsh 
 honk of horns from the swift -moving procession of lim- 
 ousines and electrics and automobiles that crowds the 
 roadway. 
 
 From whence this mushroom prosperity, this gigantic 
 rubbing of Aladdin's lamp, in these short years? It 
 almost seems as if the wealth of a hundred years of 
 labour had come into view this one decade he thinks. 
 Except, that is, on Hague Street; there is no sign of a 
 hundred years of wealth there. Can it be that the 
 labour of these next hundred years is being capitalized, 
 and put out at interest already? An interest which a 
 labouring world groans to pay, and strives with increas- 
 ing violence to repudiate each day of toil? 
 
 It was the first time that he grasped, lamely, his 
 final conception of the balance of society I think 
 grasped it dimly only to relegate it half understood 
 into the recesses of his mind; one of his first tiny flashes 
 of vision. The scales of society balancing the happi- 
 ness and misery of the world, and the fabric of civiliza- 
 tion the price of keeping the balance! He saw dimly 
 the happiness of Washington Avenue weighing heavier 
 and heavier over against the misery of Hague Street, 
 until for a second he feared lest the day might come 
 when the scales would break, and society fall in pieces, 
 unless the balance could right itself again. It is odd to 
 consider now that he did not see then the only thing 
 that will ever keep the scales balancing correctly for us 
 did not realize, too, the great influence he might one 
 day exert in the right exercise of that dramatic talent 
 God had given him. 
 
 But the vision vanished as quickly as it had come 
 vanished with the pressure of Carrie's hand as they 
 turned in at 1200 Washington Avenue.
 
 142 THE BALANCE 
 
 "The family are out for dinner," she says, laugh- 
 ingly, as they go in the house. And she kisses him as 
 they stand for a moment in the hallway. "I won't 
 be twenty minutes dressing and I think there is some 
 one in the kitchen who might like to see you!" 
 
 And she flies upstairs to her room. She does not 
 care now that there is no picture of Sammy in it. He 
 is downstairs, himself, with his picture soon to come 
 out in the magazines. The play will be a great success, 
 of course ! And she will be seeing it in two hours ! 
 
 "I have been entertaining Annie in the kitchen," 
 Sammy says a half-hour later, as they get into the taxi- 
 cab, and are whirled off to the Mohawk Hotel for dinner. 
 "She is just the same." 
 
 "She has been just waiting for this night to come so 
 that she could see you again," Carrie answers. "It is 
 quite pathetic." 
 
 Well, this is to be the proudest moment of Annie's 
 life to-night, Carrie, so perhaps you had better reserve 
 your sympathy. I only wish I could promise you as 
 much. You are not mentioned, you see, in the 
 biography until the end so you missed the smashing 
 triumph, somehow! 
 
 She and S. Sydney Tapp'an are on edge to-night in 
 the Mohawk Hotel, however on edge with excitement 
 and pride and nervousness. Only an hour and twenty 
 minutes now before the curtain! It is a wonder that 
 Sammy does not wear off all the gold from that watch of 
 his, the way he peers at it every few moments. He has 
 had a telegram of good luck from Ric and Ruby, and 
 many notes from Melchester women whose names he 
 dimly remembers hearing his mother speak. The 
 house, too, is all sold out, and the standing-room-only 
 sign hung up ! How will they take it ? 
 
 "Isn't it so exciting!" cries Carrie. 
 
 She is more wrought up than if she had written this 
 play herself. To-night is to be her Sammy's great 
 triumph, and she is satisfied. How bitterly she has 
 regretted her limitations until now! Limitations of
 
 THE BALANCE 143 
 
 sex and ability, which have forced her to stay at home 
 while her Sammy fought the world. The world-old 
 tragedy of waiting I 
 
 If only she could have shared the room on West 
 Twenty-ninth Street, while her Sammy wrote this 
 play! She does not wish success for which she has not 
 struggled, too. The hand of caste has been heavy on 
 both these young people, and it has never occurred to 
 either of them that anything is possible without a 
 certain amount of money to live on. How sensible! 
 I hear you saying. Well, perhaps. A second-floor 
 back room and poverty require more of the spirit than 
 the conquest of Peru. 
 
 Where to-night, though, I wonder, is that crowd of 
 nodding heads which approved so heartily of the shelv- 
 ing of S. Sydney Tappan a year ago? If we listen at 
 the candle-lit tables in the Hotel Mohawk, I fear we 
 shall be likely to hear only exclamations of approval, 
 with underneath, perhaps, a little undercurrent of envy. 
 In all the approval, too, there will be but the ringing 
 of bells for this boy's success not a voice raised for the 
 real achievement. 
 
 It is not the ability to write a play which may be the 
 equal of Ibsen's that is the object of the adulation. 
 No! He will be very rich! A successful play means 
 money. That is the secret of it all. This same play 
 might be published and acclaimed to the skies by the 
 
 r r IT 
 
 critics 01 nve continents, but it many copies were not 
 sold at the old book store on Ebenezer Street, these 
 same people would pass our Sammy by in the streets 
 without a word. Art must necessarily be low in a 
 commercial democracy; but mark this, it is not the 
 democracy which plays the deuce it is the adjective. 
 
 That Carrie is to see the "Lady in the Lion Skin" and 
 not a new Ibsen born again, she does not know as yet. 
 The world of ideas and emotions has not yet fallen 
 into settled grooves for her, with signboards plainly 
 labelled on each groove. To-night she only realizes 
 that her Sammy has his chance to succeed at last.
 
 144 THE BALANCE 
 
 Just what success is, she has never analyzed. There 
 is no label on the groove. Instinct has great play at 
 twenty-four. 
 
 To S. Sydney Tappan success seems as dream- 
 like as the rehearsals off Broadway did. He cannot 
 realize what it will mean. His mind cannot leap the 
 one vital fact that this girl before him, half child she 
 seems to him still, will be his if the play succeeds 
 his alone, to love and own in passionate surrender. 
 The tinder of her soul has struck fire on his ever since 
 he can remember; her sympathy now transformed to 
 passion at their lightest touch. He cannot gaze at 
 her without feeling a wave of desire for her overwhelm 
 him. Carrie has wakened the sleeping passion of 
 the man in youth, and he will always want her. 
 
 The crowd is streaming past the hotel now, however; 
 late diners are looking anxiously for waiters and their 
 checks, while the downtown clocks are pointing a trifle 
 past the hour. Melchester has an almost metropolitan 
 look, with its brightly lighted stores, its brilliant 
 signs and street cars, its hurrying thousands of human- 
 ity, bound now, the vast majority, for entertainment. 
 
 S. Sydney Tappan gazes at them as he and Carrie 
 walk slowly to the theatre around the corner. These 
 are the hearts he will thrill to-night thrill with those 
 same ideas with which he struggled in that West 
 Twenty-ninth Street room with the cheerful carpet! 
 
 As he looked back on that night afterward, he 
 realized that he was not conscious of the audience at 
 all, after the first curtain slowly rose. He was con- 
 scious only of Carrie; the murmur of the audience and 
 rattling of programmes a background for the symphony 
 of her face a face from which the passion has faded, 
 and which leans forward now absorbed in the mimic 
 world devised by the man beside her. It is the Seventh 
 Day for Sammy. I wonder will he look upon his 
 handiwork and pronounce it good ? 
 
 It does not seem possible to him, however, that he 
 really wrote this play which he is seeing now for the
 
 THE BALANCE 145 
 
 first time. The thing has suddenly sprung to life 
 before his gaze, the breath of existence swept into it 
 by this first audience before which it struts. 
 
 Sylvia, too, seems to have acquired some strange 
 new magnetism which holds the crowd in its seats, 
 and makes it laugh and sigh and weep in tiny gusts, 
 as a wind in fall sweeping through the trees. 
 
 Through it all, too, he can feel, creeping slowly, the 
 sensuousness of its suggestion, barely sensed at first, 
 mounting higher as the play progre'sses until a tiny 
 spot of red flames in the cheek of each self-conscious 
 auditor, and no one moves or touches his neighbour 
 lest the movement seem too self-conscious and a break- 
 ing of the spell a spell woven by this voluptuous 
 creature on the stage, who seems not like a mere woman 
 but some incarnation of amorous passion, feeding upon 
 each new victim, luring on each new dupe, yet pulsing 
 with the life and grace and marvellous attraction of 
 a woman all the while, a new Cleopatra of the Boule- 
 vards, as they call her in the play, her mainspring un- 
 governable passion. Good heavens, is this Sylvia 
 Tremaine? 
 
 In Carrie's soul a chill cloud of horror has come 
 slowly, coldly. Is this the product of her Sammy, 
 these" the ideas with which he lives, this the ideal he 
 would instill into these human beings in the crowd 
 below them ? 
 
 To Sammy, too, there has come a great uneasiness. 
 He feels that something is changing in this girl beside 
 him; yet he cannot take his eyes from the woman on 
 the stage. How she is holding this audience in her 
 hand! Leading them skilfully, artistically, madly to 
 the great climax in the last act! In the next act, he 
 realizes with a sense of blinding fate. Good God, is 
 not the thing too strong? Will the house break loose, 
 or will Sylvia hold them to the end, past the gasping 
 thrill? In his mind fear for his offspring struggles 
 with the deathly apprehension that is creeping on 
 him from the slender girl by his side.
 
 146 THE BALANCE 
 
 "I must see Sylvia!" he says, hoarsely, as the cur- 
 tain falls upon the second act, and the audience begins 
 calling for the author. "I think she is overdoing it. 
 You'll excuse me, won't you, please, Carrie?" 
 
 He might be pleading for a child. 
 
 "Yes, of course, Sammy," she says in answer. 
 
 And he has gone down the little dark hallway to 
 the stage back of their box before she can control the 
 vast sea of emotions which struggle for mastery in her 
 being. Is this Sammy, her Sammy, and she the 
 Carrie she has always known herself to be? What 
 has been set loose to-night in this humdrum theatre 
 in which she has seen a hundred plays before? 
 
 In S. Sydney Tappan's mind there is but one scene 
 as he hurries down the corridor, the sound of applause 
 growing fainter behind him. It is of Sylvia's apart- 
 ment on Thirty-fourth Street, and Sylvia in a bathing 
 suit every line of her showing forth. She has meant 
 nothing to him in the apartment because his mind has 
 been filled with no thought such as is holding this 
 great audience to-night. What will she be upon the 
 stage, in view of what has gone before this evening? 
 Will the shock be too great? I think he is hardly con- 
 scious that this audience of which he thinks really 
 means only Carrie to him. 
 
 He knocks upon the dressing-room door, and Marie 
 lets him in. Sylvia does not appear until some time 
 after the opening of this third act, so he knows she 
 will have time to see him. With a great effort he 
 controls himself. After all, she has been merely acting 
 the part as they planned it. 
 
 "Hello, Tappy," she calls gayly from her mirror. 
 She is dressed in a hideous old green kimono. "Ex- 
 cuse this rag. I wear it to mortify my soul. It kills 
 the star to get too conceited, they say, Sydney, and 
 I have to see myself in the glass this way." 
 
 She is gay, inconsequential, he sees. The thing so 
 far is a success, and she is happy, secure in final victory. 
 
 "How is it going?" she asks.
 
 THE BALANCE 147 
 
 Sammy sits down rather heavily upon her trunk. 
 
 "It is wonderful," he admits. 
 
 "Wonderful, but " she quotes. She turns and 
 
 looks at him questioningly. 
 
 "But rather strong," says Sammy, a little desper- 
 ately. How can he ever convince this woman of 
 what he means? What does he mean anyway? 
 
 She spreads out her hands characteristically. 
 
 "Que voulez vous?" she laughs lightly. "Life isn't 
 for infants, Sydney dear." 
 
 "Can j t we tone down the climax in this act? v he 
 queries, as lightly as is possible. It does not do to be 
 too serious with Sylvia. 
 
 "Never!" she says decisively. "What have I beer 
 leading up to?" 
 
 She looks at him suddenly from under the hair she 
 is brushing. She does not allow Marie to touch her 
 hair for a performance. 
 
 "What's gotten into you, Sydney?" she asks. "Has 
 Melchester's provincialism given you a change of 
 heart? Why, they are waiting for that gasp out there 
 and they won't be pleased unless they get it. As 
 well leave out Svengali's picture from 'Trilby,' or Nora's 
 exit from the 'Doll's House,' or the final result of Jus- 
 tice to poor Calder. They won't get it unless it's 
 driven home!" 
 
 He looks at her hopelessly. Artistically, he knows, 
 she is right. For the first time he realizes that the 
 idea of the play is quite unspeakable that is why he 
 hates to drive home its point ! Yet the thing is cleverly 
 done. He is surprised himself at the deftness with 
 which he has hinted and Sylvia has carried out his 
 hints. It will be a knockout in New York! Even 
 Melchester has been snared, he sees; just why is he 
 here, anyway? 
 
 "The last-act thirigs, Marie," Sylvia is saying. 
 "I'll talk to you in a minute, Sydney. I am never 
 comfortable until I'm ready for my cue." 
 
 How can the thing be altered, he finds himself think-
 
 148 THE BALANCE 
 
 ing as Sylvia adds the last touches to her toilette. 
 Confound it, this scene is just the point! She has 
 snared them all, to fool them! 
 
 "Of course, we will get down the banks from a lot 
 of sappy critics, Tappy," she is saying, now. "But 
 what is the difference? They never give me a good 
 line anyway, and the more they say in this case, the 
 better advertising." 
 
 She takes a lion skin from the trunk beside her. 
 
 "I'm not going to put that skin that I drag off the 
 floor around me. I'll have this clean one behind the 
 screen, and put it on instead. This one will really 
 fit me, too, like a dress." 
 
 She hands her kimono to Marie, and wraps the lion 
 skin about her. 
 
 "Perhaps it will be the next fashion, Tappy!" she 
 exclaims, like a child. 
 
 "God forbid!" replies Tappy, with a laugh. 
 
 In his heart, however, he knows what her appeal 
 will really be to those people in the seats. Physical 
 passion, roused by the sight of her, displayed thus to 
 the last degree of immodesty. There are many such 
 women on the stage, he knows, more perhaps in musical 
 comedy, but he has never known one before and the 
 gulf between the real Sylvia Tremaine and the part 
 she plays before the public is so vast that he is con- 
 founded. He can never tell her. It is success for 
 her, as well as for him, and without it she will starve, 
 or work in a department store. Commercial success 
 in the theatre! 
 
 For a moment, too, he is strangely stirred by her 
 presence so close to him that she seems to charge the 
 air with a vital human electricity which makes him 
 tingle. He has sense enough to know, however, that 
 such a spell is ruin for the man or woman who comes 
 beneath its charm. Passion to most of the world is 
 but an incident of a few passing years; but to its vic- 
 tims, a lifelong servitude defeating all achievement. 
 Sylvia, too, is conscious of this thrill, making her for
 
 THE BALANCE 149 
 
 one brief second wish to throw herself into his arms, 
 and overcome him with her perfumed madness. Then 
 she laughs a tiny, bitter laugh. 
 
 "There is the first bell, Tappy," she says, a little 
 uncertainly. There is a look of stifled emotion in 
 her eyes. Once she could have loved this man, before 
 she knew the world. But success has bought her, 
 and she will give herself again to her God in a few 
 minutes, out before the footlights. "Good-bye," she 
 adds. 
 
 It is when she is alone with her maid once more, 
 that she says to herself, half bitterly, half whimsically: 
 
 "I am five years older than he is, anyway. He 
 wouldn't like me very long!" 
 
 Her God has made her cynical, also, with the ter- 
 rible cynicism which seems to have the backing of ex- 
 perience. The cynicism of success! 
 
 Out in the box meanwhile, a strange new loneliness 
 has been tugging at Carrie's soul. Deep down within 
 her nature she has dimly recognized that this is not 
 her Sammy who has written the "Lady in the Lion 
 Skin," but a new Sammy, a spotted Sammy, to whom 
 she is a stranger, and who is a stranger, too, to her. 
 
 Of a sudden she has felt all alone. A queer lump has 
 risen in her throat. Into her mind has come the vision 
 of her father's house she does not call it home any 
 longer and the road which she has travelled since 
 the night Sammy kissed her on the links out by the 
 river. Can she travel on alone now, into the gray 
 horizon there, without him? 
 
 Sammy, Sammy, I wonder you cannot see, as you 
 come back into the box, that the slender girl there is 
 breaking her heart in the silence she will not shatter 
 though the theatre fall in pieces about her! She has 
 come too far along that road ever to turn back now. 
 She will go on until she dies. Mrs. Schroeder's deter- 
 mination has become character in her daughter. She 
 always finishes everything she starts. And she hates 
 the idea of this play. Ah, if only sometimes, Carrie,
 
 150 THE BALANCE 
 
 you had not been quite so certain you were right! I 
 would like to tell you that, oh, so badly, as S. Sydney 
 Tappan sits down beside you and the curtain rises 
 on the last act. It never pays to be too sure at first. 
 
 As she sits there, however, a rising current of remem- 
 brance is fast becoming a raging stream. Things 
 meaningless of themselves are beginning to coagulate, 
 take form, and at last stand out in startling distinct- 
 ness to her. Through it all, too, there runs the dim 
 acknowledgment of this woman's charm a charm 
 which she herself can never wield, but would scorn 
 to if she could. 
 
 In a flash she sees herself, a girl in a small inland 
 city, slender, hardly pretty ah, Carrie, you do your- 
 self injustice now, for your soul is in your face, and it 
 is beautiful! with a limited knowledge of life, and no 
 great talent or beauty to attract and hold such as this 
 Sylvia Tremaine possesses so abundantly. No wonder 
 Sammy has been attracted. He has seen her con- 
 stantly, been with her week by week; and no doubt 
 she has felt the charm of him, for who can resist him? 
 
 Nearly eight months, now, too, since he went away. 
 Eight months ! And New York is not really far away 
 not so far that a great love or effort would not bridge 
 the gap. In her soul a great loneliness wells up, though 
 she holds back the tears until her throat is aching with 
 the pain. After all, is her mother right? And the world 
 but a place to be lonely in, with each person standing 
 all alone, and the race to the most greedy? 
 
 She gazes on the stage at the entrancing creature 
 there with new eyes, now. How many times this must 
 all have been rehearsed before no eyes but Sammy's! 
 In her heart, too, is a great bewilderment. How could 
 her Sammy have written this? How he has changed! 
 Her Sammy no! In her there has come a great phys- 
 ical revulsion against him, against his ideas, against 
 this Sylvia Tremaine; a revulsion that makes her flesh 
 creep, though she cannot define the reason why in 
 words, any more than her hatred of a snake. It is
 
 THE BALANCE 151 
 
 instinctive, elemental, basic! Through the fine artistic 
 shading, the charmingly tinted texture of this play, 
 there is something that is horrible to her, something 
 she loathes. And it has come from S. Sydney Tappan, 
 the Sammy of her youth. 
 
 For a moment a great hatred for Sylvia Tremaine 
 springs up. It is she who has called forth this monster 
 in Sam Tappan! The feeling lives but a brief mo- 
 ment. Sylvia could never have called forth a thing 
 which had no existence. It is Sammy, after all. Miss 
 Tremaine is only interpreting. Somewhere, somehow, 
 she feels that she herself has lost him, and this sensuous 
 creature on the stage has won. In her mind there is 
 no doubt of her diagnosis. Dramatic chameleons 
 are not in her booth of character exhibits. S. Sydney 
 Tappan has changed, and there is but the one explana- 
 tion. A woman like this Sylvia will stop at nothing; 
 and she has not stopped at Sammy. 
 
 Poor Carrie! You are not skilled at character dis- 
 section, nor the tinsel world of drama, and your warm, 
 impulsive heart has been struck a chilling blow that 
 calls for all your pride and strength to dissimulate. 
 That S. Sydney Tappan has not as yet found his soul, 
 and so wields his pen as in some dramatic mirror, you 
 never will believe until life has forced home to you the 
 conviction that people do not come in moulds, but are 
 poured forth here for the moulding in great or less 
 degrees. Providence is but preparing to-night the 
 moulds you both shall fall in, and Sammy is very soft. 
 
 So soft that he can forget even his fear for a moment 
 as the curtain falls upon the last act and the audience 
 remains still seated, released now from their thralldom 
 but applauding wildly this siren whom the curtain has 
 shut off from their gaze, but whom nothing can erase 
 from their thrilled imaginations. She has risen to her 
 climax, surged past it, and gone steadily, relentlessly 
 to the play's dramatic, frightful end, with Fenwick's 
 dead body across her scorned one, her audience a vast 
 sea of human souls stirred to their very depths.
 
 152 THE BALANCE 
 
 This is success, indeed! In Sammy's mind there is 
 nothing but the flush of victory as he stands bowing 
 from his box, still denying these people the curtain 
 speech of which his blind flight to Sylvia's dressing-room 
 robbed them after the second act. He has no words. 
 The whole thing is more dreamlike than ever, a slight 
 touch of nightmare added now, with this inability of his 
 to utter a word of thanks. It all seems like Melchester 
 gone mad, and he himself leading all the rest with an 
 awakening to come when he turns back into the box. 
 
 Yes, Sammy, your awakening is at hand. 
 
 For it is a strange Carrie who rises from the box and 
 makes her way with S. Sydney Tappan through the 
 crowded theatre aisle upon the side. She is but par- 
 tially conscious that they have met Dorothy Alden 
 in the foyer, and that Dorothy has taken Sammy by 
 both hands and congratulated him upon his play's 
 success. 
 
 "And your Miss Tremaine, Sam! She is perfectly 
 wonderful ! You must bring her out to-morrow night ! " 
 
 The words have conveyed hardly any meaning to 
 Carrie's heedless ears. She only wishes to be out of 
 the building, out in the air, away from this place of 
 sham and sinister make-believe, out where she can 
 think. She hardly notices, either, the others of the 
 eager groups that crowd around S. Sydney Tappan, 
 as they go slowly through the lobby, and wait for their 
 taxicab. There has been no mention of going to see 
 Miss Tremaine. Only as they get in and the starter 
 closes the door behind them does she get a glimpse of a 
 face that she remembers: a heavy face with little, blink- 
 ing eyes, which looks in the lowered window, and 
 says: 
 
 "As sure as shooting, Tappy, wasn't it? She always 
 gets them over!" 
 
 "Mr. Friedman, Sammy says in explanation, and 
 then silence falls between them as they sweep through 
 Main Street, and up the shining stretch of Washington 
 Avenue, wet now with a touch of falling rain.
 
 THE BALANCE 153 
 
 There has been no question of supper at the Hotel 
 Mohawk, ever. Always, they have planned this ride 
 to 1 200 Washington Avenue alone together just they 
 two to taste the success they have waited for so many 
 years. Success! Well, they have it. Even Mrs. 
 Schroeder, at supper in the Mohawk, acknowledges it, 
 and she is the court of last appeal in this particular 
 case. Success is theirs to-night. 
 
 I wonder, though, why they are so silent. Is not 
 Sammy to be praised ? Or are these tears of joy which 
 trickle so slowly from Carrie's eyes, buried in her 
 hands? Her pride has all vanished now; that desire 
 to hurt, which is so strange to her nature, quite gone. 
 Carrie is but a girl, and she has recalled the letter she 
 wrote him not so long ago about their common ideals 
 and aspirations. They are all that make life worth liv- 
 ing to her. 
 
 For a moment Sammy is aghast, as they go into the 
 living-room where he used to call though it seems years 
 ago to-night. She is weeping openly. Does she hate 
 this play of his as much as that ? 
 
 "Don't you see why I care, Sammy?" she cries, 
 clasping and unclasping her hands. "It isn't just the 
 play. It is you. I can't bear to have you do it! Be- 
 cause it isn't you!" 
 
 In Sammy there is an extraordinary mixture of 
 feelings. The successful artist, confused and mystified, 
 is struggling with the heartache which the sight of 
 Carrie's sorrow stirs in him. He cannot stand having 
 his creation criticised thus harshly, and yet he feels 
 dimly, someway, that she is right. 
 
 "It is just a play," he says hoarsely, although it 
 seems like Use majeste to belittle it so. 
 
 He cannot tell now just why he wrote this thing. 
 It has not been entirely for the dollars in it, though 
 he craves success; perhaps has blinded himself to 
 the truth. The idea has appealed to his dramatic 
 imagination, and the thing has unrolled itself from his 
 unconscious pen. These thoughts, which seem to rouse
 
 154 THE BALANCE 
 
 Carrie so mightily, are but the thoughts of this Lady 
 in the Lion Skin inside whose brain he has been these 
 last few months. How can they be called his thoughts ? 
 He realizes, perhaps, that he would never have written 
 it had he not gone to New York, and met Sylvia Tre- 
 maine. He has only realized what the Lady in the 
 Lion Skin's thoughts might be after knowing Sylvia. 
 Yet who will say that Sylvia is such a person? He 
 knows that she is not. It is her imagination on the 
 stage, as his in the manuscript. 
 
 "It is just imagination, Carrie," he says, again. 
 "Don't you understand?" 
 
 But she shakes her head. In her mind is the picture 
 of Sylvia in her loathsomely artistic semi-nakedness. 
 He has had these thoughts from somewhere. Sylvia 
 has been the source. 
 
 "You had to think it before you could write it," she 
 says. It is all quite plain to her. 
 
 In Sammy's mind there is a little tiny feeling of 
 revolt. After all, the play is a success! And she has 
 not had one word for that. His conceit sticks out a 
 little. 
 
 "It isn't every one who could write it, after they 
 had thought it," he cries, nettled. The thing is good, 
 he knows considered as a piece of dramatic construc- 
 tion, almost extraordinary. 
 
 "But it is what you think that matters to me," she 
 answers. 
 
 Sammy is stung to the quick. Why, it is the play 
 that should matter! 
 
 "How do I know what I think?" he cries. "It is 
 my characters who think, not I !" 
 
 "But you have to think for them, first," she says. 
 "So, it must be you!" The thing is too plain to her. 
 It cannot be dodged. 
 
 She is growing quieter now, too, beginning to see this 
 thing for what it is. She does not realize that between 
 her and the truth lies the tortuous forest of the artistic 
 imagination through which no man has ever found a
 
 THE BALANCE 155 
 
 track quite cleared. She can only conceive of a play as 
 of a letter. It must represent what one thinks, or the 
 writer is playing false. 
 
 "It is the idea of the play itself," she says. "Its 
 lesson, its moral, its manner of construction, Sammy, 
 not just what one character or so has said! You are 
 glorifying what is horrible under the guise of presenting 
 a moral." 
 
 In her heart she knows that he never could have 
 gotten this idea from her and it is essentially an idea of 
 woman ! That is what hurts. It is his attitude toward, 
 his thoughts about, women, about her. Her mind, how- 
 ever, is not quite clear yet. She only knows she dis- 
 trusts profoundly the impulse which produced this play. 
 an impulse which must represent his feeling for this 
 Sylvia Tremaine a feeling which has been non-existent 
 until he set eyes upon the woman. 
 
 Well, it is the habit of women to take things per- 
 sonally; and yet, before Heaven, Carrie, I am not so 
 sure but what you are right, as you sit there on the divan 
 trying to be fair, in spite of the waves of feeling which 
 send those tiny drops of water to your eyes. You are 
 trying not to think of yourself, too, in spite of what you 
 know it means; and for one I think you are succeeding. 
 There was a touch of Puritan in her that came to the 
 surface all her life, when it seemed most unpleasant for 
 her, and made her decide honestly. 
 
 In Sammy there is a feeling of desperation. He has 
 done this thing unthinkingly, and must justify it now. 
 Obstinately, too, his mind sticks to the fact that Sylvia 
 is not what she is painted in Carrie's mind by the play. 
 Neither will he admit, for a moment, that the beast of 
 sensuousness has played with him for these past few 
 months, and he has stultified his gift. 
 
 Our Sammy, so quick and keen to dissect things in his 
 plays, will not turn the searchlight on himself to-night. 
 Rather he will defend himself against all comers. Car- 
 rie could have chosen any other thing except this play 
 of his, this child of his, the "Lady in the Lion Skin," and.
 
 156 THE BALANCE 
 
 he would have been amenable to reason. It was an al- 
 most maternal instinct in the man. 
 
 Somewhere in his mind, too, is the feeling of being 
 misunderstood. Only the artistic mind will ever be 
 able to agree with him, he feels. Great heavens, was 
 Wagner a libertine because he wro*te the Venus scene 
 in Tannhauser? The comparison is not the same, 
 he will admit, yet for the mind that produced the thing 
 the comparison holds good. In his soul, as yet, there 
 is no feeling of culpability for the base idea which he is 
 implanting in the nation's heart. To-night, as he 
 argues with Carrie in Mrs. Schroeder's drawing-room, 
 he is the modern, commercial playwright in the first 
 flush of success. 
 
 "Oh, it isn't because I am jealous of Miss Tremaine 
 herself," she cries painfully. "Please, you believe 
 that, Sammy? It is because I see so plainly what she 
 has made of you." 
 
 The intimation that he is not master of his fate does 
 not please S. Sydney Tappan. 
 
 "She hasn't made anything of me!" he retorts. 
 
 "But she has!" cries Carrie. "It isn't you, it can't 
 be you, not the real you, Sammy. She has made you 
 over to suit her and her ideas, made you over along with 
 the play. You can't see the truth because she is so 
 physically attractive. But it is the idea of a savage 
 toward his women, that play of a beast! And it 
 makes me creep, just as it will make every woman 
 creep who has self-respect! And I hate it, hate it, 
 Sammy, even though you did it yes, because you did 
 it!" 
 
 In Sammy's mind, however, is the picture of the 
 applauding thousands. They have not hated it. He 
 falls quiet of a sudden. Dimly, he senses a dramatic 
 moment close at hand. He must be prepared to play a 
 striking part. 
 
 "I am sorry," he says quietly. After all, this is 
 hardly the reception a successful playwright would ex- 
 pect from his fiancee. He feels a little sorry for himself;
 
 THE BALANCE 157 
 
 so sorry that he is almost prepared to sacrifice his play 
 and Miss Tremaine. That would be quite heroic. 
 
 But Carrie stretches out her hand. 
 
 "But not sorry the way I am. Oh, not sorry the 
 way I am!" 
 
 Her real emotion makes him hesitate a moment. 
 
 In Carrie a terrible struggle is going on because there 
 is ever present the fear that she may be fighting with this 
 Sylvia Tremaine for her lover. She does not realize 
 that the power of many people combined could have 
 influenced her Sammy this way, that he is still at the 
 mercy of his environment as truly as any child of the 
 slums. It is why her pride rises up so suddenly, only 
 to be crushed down beneath her desire to do what she 
 can for the Sammy she will always love though he 
 write ten thousand plays she cannot see. 
 
 The clock upon the mantelpiece has struck twelve- 
 thirty now, but neither of them notices the gong. 
 
 "It is my career," he is saying quietly. "And I 
 can write only what comes to me. It is the situation 
 that appeals to me, not these ideas! How can I help 
 what the public wants, Carrie? And this is what 
 they want in New York. If I don't write it, they don't 
 want me. There are plenty more who will write it." 
 
 He cannot bring himself yet to realize that she can 
 be seriously considering asking him to give up this 
 success of his because of her idea. Where has she come 
 by it? 
 
 "But don't you see!" she cries. "It is what it 
 leads to that we must think of, Sammy. We can't 
 get happiness this way. We cannot sell all our ideals 
 and be happy afterward. It isn't money and success 
 that make you and me happy. We know that, Sammy, 
 now. We couldn't be happy doing that. Let them 
 do it if they want to." Every word of this evening 
 seems to make a physical hurt upon her heart. "You 
 have it in you to be great, to tell the truth, I know you 
 have, Sammy, and I can't bear to see you trample it 
 all in the dust."
 
 158 THE BALANCE 
 
 "They don't want sermons on the stage, I tell you!" 
 he replies. 
 
 "But to tell it wonderfully, touchingly, so that 
 people will be moved even to change the world ! It is 
 why God gives each one of us some gift, I think, don't 
 you?" 
 
 "I haven't any gift," he says uncomfortably. 
 
 "The most wonderful gift of all, Sammy, that of 
 influencing other people's minds. You couldn't sell 
 that for success, for money I couldn't bear to see 
 you." 
 
 "I could," says Sammy brutally. "I have seen 
 the world, seen poverty, lived in it, and it is past for 
 me. You have got to have money in this world and 
 age. Let some one else ennoble it. I want success. 
 I've learned my lesson. It's money that counts. 
 And if my plays can get it for me, I'll give them what 
 they want as long as I am able. It's a business just 
 like any other. You've got to please your customers." 
 
 "And you can please them better if you appeal to 
 their better selves! Please them better in the end!" 
 cries Carrie. 
 
 "Not with Sylvia Tremaine!" he cries. "And 
 Sylvia's my chance!" And could have bitten off his 
 tongue a moment later for saying it. It is the truth. 
 
 Carrie draws a deep breath. 
 
 "She may be yours, Sammy," she says quietly. 
 "But she is not mine, and never will be. I think 
 more of myself than that." 
 
 But S. Sydney Tappan has taken the plunge now. 
 
 "I don't," he says calmly. "She's the most suc- 
 cessful actress on the stage." 
 
 " But you see, my measure isn't success," she answers. 
 Her pride has come to her assistance now. She has 
 lost him, but he will never know the heart-stab it has 
 cost her. 
 
 "There isn't any other measure," says Sammy. His 
 call has gone its full length. 
 
 She shakes her head with a little smile in which no
 
 THE BALANCE 159 
 
 humour ever lived. They might better understand 
 one another now. 
 
 She rises and holds out her hand. 
 
 "I think our little dream is over, Sammy," she says 
 bravely. "We've grown up. And the fairy tale has 
 vanished. Aren't you a little bit sorry, too?" 
 
 But into S. Sydney Tappan's eyes, suddenly, little 
 mists of water come. 
 
 "It hasn't vanished!" he cries vehemently. "Not 
 for me it never will." 
 
 "You don't want it to, but it has," Carrie answers. 
 
 There is a little, pitiful look in her eyes that only 
 these four walls that have seen her life since childhood 
 can ever understand. She is about to face the world 
 alone, once more, with her Heaven in lumps of clay 
 around her. 
 
 "It's behind us, and we've grown out of it at dif- 
 ferent ends." 
 
 She has a strange feeling that even these walls 
 about her may not be substantial, now; all her life 
 she has believed heart and soul in this thing which has 
 been taken from her in an evening; and she will not 
 think of the result. 
 
 In Sammy is rising, too, a slow, dull realization of 
 what he has lost; a realization which overwhelms him 
 as he strives to gauge it. Into his mind, in some dim 
 way, has leaped the big front room on Hawthorne Street 
 and the swaying of the curtains in the wind, and his 
 mother lying for the last time on that bed he never will 
 forget until he dies its curved brass head and foot 
 meaning home and the past to him, forever. Some- 
 way, somehow, though he cannot describe it, he knows 
 that he is losing his home again the last home that he 
 knows, in Carrie's heart. 
 
 Ah, Sammy! I could wish to-night that your fear 
 of it would turn you from your path. Turn you while 
 you are picking up your gloves and coat in the old- 
 fashioned hall, and there yet is time. Turn you, to 
 see the heartbreak in Carrie's face, and her tightly
 
 160 THE BALANCE 
 
 twisted hands. It is the cross of Galilee again, to 
 give up all for an idea. And you are hammering the 
 nails. Hammering them, still, as you cross silently 
 and take her hand. 
 
 Yet you hardly heard her faint "Good-bye!" it was 
 so overborne by the loud laughter of the Ironic Gods! 
 
 For the front door has opened now, and in the vesti- 
 bule stands Mrs. Schroeder, with Mr. Schroeder be- 
 hind, as suits the play. It was one of the most awful 
 moments of Mrs. Schroeder's life. But it did not show 
 upon her face. She has made a thousand decisions, 
 this lady, since she started on her climb, and she makes 
 this one with the loud applause of the theatre still 
 ringing in her ears. 
 
 "Good-evening, Sam!" she says quite graciously. 
 "Congratulations." And is gone in search of the 
 fleeing Mr. Schroeder. She has made her decision, 
 chosen her new standpoint, now, forever. She does 
 not know as she hurries upstairs, a faint flush of red 
 yet on her cheek, that downstairs, with the closing 
 of the door, her daughter, her face buried in the pillows 
 of the divan, has upset the world for her once more. 
 
 Well, it is the great, smashing triumph but of the 
 biography alone, I fear. There is no triumph in the 
 strange, set face of S. Sydney Tappan as he strides 
 past the billboards of the darkened theatre. 
 
 The Lady in the Lion Skin! 
 A Play by S. Sydney Tappan. 
 
 Sammy has not won, to-night, after all. It is the 
 Lady in the Lion Skin who has won. She, perhaps, 
 with those ideas of Mr. Schroeder's in the background. 
 Our Sammy will be a success, now, you see.
 
 TOEING a further account of the 
 /~~\ Lady in the Lion Skin, and the pe- 
 culiar flavour of some triumphs 
 Telling, too, of certain letters from a 
 Melchester Settlement and their effect 
 upon our Sammy A closer inspection 
 of our friends Ruby and Bantry than 
 has been allowed us before With a first 
 glimpse on West Twenty-ninth Street 
 of the vision of S. Sydney Tappan as 
 the stage of his career begins to darken 
 a little Some events that produce a 
 strange silence at theSchroeders* A few 
 tragic moments with Sylvia And then 
 the tiny shadows of some unseen catas- 
 trophe casting themselves athwart the 
 pages of Sammy.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 IN WHICH SAMMY BECOMES A SUCCESSFUL PLAYWRIGHT 
 IN GOTHAM, AND NARROWLY MISSES HAVING ATHOUGHT 
 
 IT WAS a raging Sammy who alighted from the late 
 afternoon train in the Metropolis the next day. He 
 has been justifying himself all day, now, ever since the 
 train left Melchester in the morning, and has suc- 
 ceeded at last in getting himself into the proper state 
 of mind. He has not called up Sylvia. A brief 
 note has sufficed. Business of a pressing nature has 
 called him to New York; he is sorry not to see her; 
 she has placed him in her everlasting debt; the rest 
 will be easy now, he is sure; there is no need to fear 
 the verdict of Broadway; and he will see her when she 
 comes down the Hudson at the end of the week, unless 
 she should need him before. A brief note to Dorothy, 
 too, saying he is sorry he cannot attend the promised 
 party; and he has caught the eight-forty-two for 
 New York. 
 
 Our Sammy has had but little sleep this last night. 
 The task of justification has been more difficult than 
 he had supposed. Little waves of emotion have crept 
 in and upset him many times just when he has been 
 sure that at last he is settled in his mind. Somehow, 
 even yet, he cannot erase from his memory the picture 
 of Carrie on the divan, with her twisted hands. 
 
 His state of mind is all that he could ask, however. 
 He is raging with injustice. Not raging enough to 
 withdraw his play, of course. He tells himself that he 
 owes the thing to Sylvia, and must keep it out for 
 her sake even if he were convinced that he should 
 
 100
 
 164 THE BALANCE 
 
 withdraw it. And he is not. The injustice is the 
 thing that hurts. To say that he has sold himself 
 to Mammon, simply because he has written a successful 
 play that a young lady with little experience of life 
 does not care for! It is preposterous! 
 
 The morning papers have not said anything like 
 that. "For sheer genius, we have not seen the like 
 of this first play of S. Sydney Tappan in many a day," 
 the Democrat Herald has said. "The marvellous abil- 
 ity of Sylvia Tremaine," is commented on also. And 
 the "daring art" of the Lion Skin scene, "without one 
 word that could be construed improperly!" Oh, 
 those words! Sammy has pored over them a thousand 
 times for each one they could not be improper. 
 And the Daily Sun: "The majestic lesson of this 
 study in feminine character is profoundly set forth! 
 The truth which daily surrounds us is here bared to 
 our gaze quite mercilessly, with a touch, however, as 
 clear and distinct we were about to say as beautiful 
 as a cut diamond!" And later: "S. Sydney Tap- 
 pan's artistic vision has gone to the root of the matter 
 with almost superhuman insight. Only G. Bernard 
 Shaw, among contemporaries, has pointed a keener 
 moral. Those who saw but a scantily clad lady upon 
 the stage in that final scene which gives the play its 
 name, and which will rank with the best efforts of 
 Brieux, Sardou, or Granville Barker, have indeed but a 
 surface glimpse of things. It is but the outward 
 necessary symbol for the profound though perhaps 
 unpalatable truth which the play drives home the 
 wages of sin, however attractive, is indeed death!" 
 
 The reporter I beg pardon the critic for this Daily 
 Sun is given over a trifle to the deadly platitude I 
 fear; but the applause has been sweet to our Sammy's 
 ear. He is surprised, also, to find these artistic apolo- 
 gists for his Lion Skin scene. He is clever enough to 
 realize that this is all that is necessary to make the 
 thing a complete success. 
 
 All the world will come if the play but have a
 
 THE BALANCE 165 
 
 purpose, and still allows Sylvia to do without her 
 clothes! 
 
 What will Carrie say when she reads these notices 
 this morning, he wonders? 
 
 Well, Carrie has said nothing. She has read them 
 with little quizzical frowns wrinkling her forehead. 
 They but confirm her opinion of the Democrat Herald. 
 The critic for the Sun she knows, and does not care to 
 read what he has said. He has confided in her once 
 that a little vaudeville in Grand Opera would lighten 
 up the gloom; but has had a vaudeville sketch refused 
 since then, and now goes in for higher thought and 
 William Winter when his copy gets behind. So that 
 she does not think his criticism will be worth much. 
 
 She has risen this morning with just the tiniest of lumps 
 in her throat. Will Sammy call her up, perhaps? It 
 has been her only thought as she dresses, and comes to 
 the table to read the criticisms. It has not occurred 
 to her yet what her mother will say when she finds out 
 the truth. 
 
 Mr. Schroeder has been occupied so far with the stock 
 market page, but he puts it down for his coffee, as 
 Carrie comes in, with a vague sense that he is neglecting 
 something. He has slept through a great deal of the 
 play the night before; through most, if the truth be 
 told, except the last-act scene. He recollects now that 
 his daughter here must have been vitally interested in 
 the thing's success. He is a strange father, this Mr. 
 Schroeder. He has been so accustomed all his life to 
 viewing his offspring as incompetents, that he does not 
 always remember now to treat them and their ideas 
 and aspirations with the respect that reality demands. 
 Somehow, he still retains the impression that they are 
 all playing at life. Business is the only real and vital 
 existence there can be. Even stocks are a light re- 
 laxation. 
 
 "Pretty strong, wasn't it?" he volunteers. He is 
 referring to the play. 
 
 Carrie nods her head.
 
 166 THE BALANCE 
 
 "Yes," she answers. 
 
 "Well, it will go, all right enough," he says. His 
 manner is what one might expect of Will Shakespeare 
 to some modern lesser dramatist. "That's what 
 they want. Stuff with a little spice!" 
 
 Suddenly the really interesting side of playwriting 
 occurs to him. 
 
 "How much does young Sam Tappan get out of 
 that a night, do you suppose?" 
 
 It is probably the first time he has ever asked for 
 information from his daughter. Carrie shakes her head. 
 
 *'I don't know," she answers. "I didn't think to ask." 
 
 For a moment Mr. Schroeder cannot believe his ears. 
 Did not think to ask! Where was she all evening? He 
 is saved from complete collapse, however, by his wife, 
 who has entered the dining-room in time to hear the 
 question and its answer. Curiosity has roused her 
 from her bed an hour earlier than usual. 
 
 "You'll learn to ask, quick enough," she says, 
 acidly, "after you are married." 
 
 There is no halfway station in Mrs. Schroeder's mind. 
 Her daughter either does not speak to this Sam Tappan, 
 or else she is about to marry him. 
 
 The humour of the reversal of form does not escape 
 Carrie. She can even smile a little, as she answers, 
 though it is an odd little smile. 
 
 "We aren't going to be married, thank you," she says 
 steadily. At least she will never let them know the 
 depth of her feeling on the subject. 
 
 Her mother stares at her as at some escaped lunatic. 
 
 "Well," she says. "For the Lord's sake, why not?" 
 
 Is there no end to the idiocy of this girl ? That she 
 herself has changed she does not consider at all strange. 
 She has had very good reason. The young man ap- 
 parently will be able to support her daughter now, and 
 give her what she wants; a prime requisite in a husband 
 these days of high prices in the stores. That her 
 daughter may have good reason, too, she does not con- 
 sider for a moment. The first idea which always pre-
 
 THE BALANCE 167 
 
 sented itself to Mrs. Schroeder, in any human affair, was 
 that the person was a fool. 
 
 "We have agreed to differ," Carrie answers quietly. 
 
 "Over what?" her mother cries. 
 
 Mr. Schroeder is looking at his paper again. This 
 sounds like a row to him. He will not be involved. 
 But Carrie does not answer for a moment. This table 
 is the last place in the world where any one will ever 
 understand. 
 
 " Excuse me, mother," she says then, quietly. " We've 
 decided not to discuss it. Do you mind?" 
 
 And she leaves the table and the room, before the 
 tears can come into her eyes and betray her to this 
 family in whom she never can confide. 
 
 In Mrs. Schroeder's eyes, however, despite the mount- 
 ing anger induced by the knowledge of her useless 
 change of ground, there is a strange new light. For the 
 first time she has realized that she is a stranger to her 
 daughter; and the knowledge is not sweet. In spite of 
 her hardness, she is a mother still. And this girl who 
 has just left the room to keep her sorrow to herself was 
 once a child within her arms. Can it be that she herself 
 has failed in her duty? An idea no sooner entertained 
 than shown to the door by Mrs. Schroeder. She has 
 done her best. Carrie has always been a trifle odd! 
 
 But does she mind this calm dismissal of this im- 
 portant subject by her daughter ? Of course she minds ! 
 She is dying with curiosity to know the reason for the 
 sudden catastrophe before Carrie has even reached the 
 stairs. 
 
 Well, you had best prepare yourself for resignation, 
 Mrs. Schroeder, because you will never understand; 
 would not, indeed, if the explanation were to be given 
 you this morning which it is not. 
 
 In only one mind in the house is there unquestioned 
 loyalty for Carrie. Annie will never question this action 
 of hers, even though it is directed against Sammy. 
 Annie has lived these five years with the Schroeders 
 now, and it has been sufficient to form her opinions.
 
 168 THE BALANCE 
 
 Whatever Carrie does is right. This disagreement is 
 only temporary; there can be no one like Sammy; and 
 there is but one Carrie. What a strange world if ser- 
 vants told every one the truth ! Annie is the only one 
 who will ever know the real reason for this disagreement, 
 though even to her it will always be a hazy and strange 
 affair. 
 
 In the upstairs hall, now, Carrie is sitting by the tele- 
 phone, a little queer look in her eyes. She has just 
 called the Hotel Mohawk, and they have informed her 
 there that S. Sydney Tappan has checked out, and left 
 his New York forwarding address. He has gone! 
 
 For a moment she could wish she had not called. It 
 has been a comfort to feel that he was still within call, 
 in the same city, and that if she would she could still 
 take back all that she has said. Take it back! She 
 realizes, with a tiny shiver, that it is not a thing one can 
 take back, any more than one can change the colour of 
 one's hair or eyes. These are basic convictions which 
 she and S. Sydney Tappan have been expressing for the 
 first time; and there is no change possible. Is this what 
 they mean by incompatibility of temperament? She 
 has always conceived of that, somehow, as meaning 
 throwing things! Perhaps, after all, there are worse 
 missiles than ornaments to hurl. 
 
 Of a sudden, the list of entertainments to which she 
 has been looking forward shrink again to that dull gray 
 which has been for her the prevailing colour of society 
 since Sammy went away. Will this be the colour al- 
 ways now; her life a monochrome in streaked drab? 
 She realizes with a renewed force how out of place she is: 
 these things of wealth, with which she is surrounded, 
 mean nothing to her, never have, in fact; in spite of her 
 ability, as phrased by her mother, to always pick the 
 most expensive thing they are without shape or sem- 
 blance to her. What a pity some one else could not 
 have had her place in the world! When her one en- 
 deavour seems to be only a ceaseless effort to escape the 
 good things which fortune has heaped up for her; to
 
 THE BALANCE 169 
 
 escape, not because she does not appreciate how favoured 
 she must be in comparison to most of humanity, but be- 
 cause she resents trie world they create around her a 
 world of things with but one inspiration, the gathering 
 of more. 
 
 It is not the first time that she has rebelled against this 
 wall of dead, intangible materialism, feeling her very 
 spirit overborne by this weight of things, mere things; 
 all chance of sharing in the real soul of the world denied 
 her by a mass of shoddy in which the only splendour is 
 the price tag, the only strength the price. Things! 
 Or is it, after all, the narrow spirit behind the things 
 against which she is moved so to rebel? And could 
 these same things be glorious, shining with the promise 
 of a great splendour to come? Things! The fruit, in 
 this age, not of real achievement, but of greatly, mag- 
 nificently calculated selfishness, the mainspring of the 
 modern world. If of real achievement, would she feel 
 the same ? There can be no inherent wrong in the piled- 
 up labour of the centuries; it is not dulling to the spirit 
 to ride in motor cars, all mighty advocates of the healing 
 balm of poverty to the contrary. And yet, this girl on 
 Washington Avenue knows that her family has achieved 
 what modern society calls a dazzling success; and the 
 success has ruined them. Is there, indeed, any one 
 who knows more? 
 
 In New York, Sammy is tasting this morning the first 
 little fruits of his victory, and in spite of certain mem- 
 ories they are sweet. He does not know yet that there 
 is but one kind of success whose fruit will not turn bitter 
 in the mouth, although the tree is hard of cultivation. 
 He only sees himself lifted from the ruck of mediocrity, 
 the hard rut of poverty, which seemingly runs on for- 
 ever on the road of industry; sees himself out at last, and 
 up where he can breathe the balmy airs of the woods and 
 flowers of pleasure. And he is glad. 
 
 It is four days later, while he is still sulking over that 
 interview with Carrie, that a letter from Ric comes to 
 the West Twenty-ninth Street room. He will move
 
 170 THE BALANCE 
 
 from here soon now, he is thinking, as he opens the en- 
 velope, in the willow chair beside the bureau with the 
 cracked glass. How long ago all that first part of his 
 existence here seems! And yet he is the same, and in 
 the same room where once he and Ric bargained for the 
 weekly rental, while his five hundred dollars buoyed 
 them up. You are not to leave this room just yet, 
 however, Sammy. It is to be the most important spot 
 in all your life. So keep it this morning, a little longer, 
 just for old times' sake if nothing else. You will need 
 it in the future, the not very distant future, either! Ric 
 has written: 
 
 "Dear Old Tappy, your telegram has put great joy into the camp 
 of 'The Honeymooners' meaning Ruby and yours truly. 
 
 "You lucky dog! I always knew you had it in you even back 
 in the days of the Dutch Reformed Church God bless their narrow 
 souls! I would have given up all my feasts on this trip to have 
 been in Melchester with you and slapped old Schroeder on the 
 back. Good God, do you suppose we are really pulling out of 
 poverty, after lo, these many years ? 
 
 "It seems a year since I was on Broadway; and had crossed the 
 world since. At least wait until I return before you are married. 
 I can't see now what there is to stop you. 'Your Lady in the Lion 
 Skin' ought to be a sure thing from now on, and this old devil of 
 an act seems destined to go on forever. We're striking through to 
 Denver to-morrow, and I certainly am glad. I have a great longing 
 to see old New York and you again. Oh, for some of those Ricotti 
 evenings, Tappy! We didn't have enough of them, by far! I could 
 almost find it in me to shed a silent tear for Lyric Hall to-night. 
 
 "I have been thinking over some stuff lately, and I wish you 
 would turn over in your mind a libretto for a musical act to run 
 about twenty-five minutes. I think we could get it on the big 
 time as easily as this one. A real bang-up tabloid light opera. 
 I have a real opera in the back of my head, too, that is going to 
 come out one of these days if I have to go to Vienna, and become 
 a foreigner to put it over. Your industry appals me! You must 
 have been burning the midnight oil these last few months. 
 
 " Does that poor opera of ours ever stir in its shroud ? I won- 
 der, would Kane give me a musical show now? Good-bye, and 
 be careful of your Sylvia Tremaine! Her picture shows a roguish 
 eye! Oh, ho! What says Carrie and her honourable parents, 
 now? 
 
 "Yours, 
 
 "Ric.
 
 THE BALANCE 171 
 
 "P. S. Ruby and I are not engaged yet. It isn't however I 
 whisper this it isn't my fault. Semper Mutabile Femina Est! 
 or better, La Donna e mobile! Oh, what an educated man that 
 Ricorton is! And so tall and handsome. Farewell. 
 
 "Ric." 
 
 Sammy puts down the letter with a little smile at the 
 gayety of Ricorton. In his heart, however, there is a 
 little pain called forth by these happy-go-lucky remarks 
 of the once sad-faced musician. Bohemia agrees with 
 Ric. Somehow, he feels, he himself has lost Bohemia. 
 Is it that the future has lost its promise because he has 
 succeeded? Or that Ricotti's and Bohemian dinners 
 are good accompaniments of struggling ambition, but 
 not its substitute? He cannot live and write plays 
 simply to dine better and more often. What is it, ne 
 wonders, that he wants from life? In some way, the 
 sense of achievement to which he has always looked for- 
 ward to satisfy his soul seems to have lost its flavour. 
 Must achievement always be in the future to really 
 satisfy? Or is it that there are different kinds of 
 achievement and this kind is not just what he wants? 
 Has Carrie spoiled this success for him or is all success as 
 hollow indeed, is there any such thing as success ? 
 
 He will have quite a fair income now, of course. Well, 
 he will not forget Ricorton. If it had not been for 
 Ricorton and his encouragement in Melchester, he 
 might never have come to New York at all; never have 
 met Matson and through him Sylvia Tremaine. Ric's 
 ability to read at sight has changed the lives of them 
 both. All that he can do for Ric he will do gladly. 
 Poverty has tested his friends, and Ric and Carrie alone 
 have stood the test. 
 
 Carrie! He rises abruptly from his chair and makes 
 ready to go out. He does not care to think of her and 
 their relations. Why, he thought that was all settled! 
 And a chance letter, a chance thought has brought it all 
 back raging in his soul. Will she write to him at all, he 
 wonders? Or is it all to end just like this, while they 
 drift apart in silence? Of a sudden he realizes that he
 
 172 THE BALANCE 
 
 cannot put her from his life; she has been part of it too 
 long; will remain of it until he dies. Well, he must fol- 
 low his own path notwithstanding. There is no other 
 way for him. And he goes out quickly to the Lambs' 
 Club as if a shadow were at his heels. 
 
 It is the next day that Sylvia greets him at her apart- 
 ment. 
 
 "You're in disgrace, Sydney," she says, half humour- 
 ously, half in earnest, as he comes in. "You write a 
 play for me, and I put it on before the old home Knockers' 
 Club, and you rush back of the curtain and say, ' Don't 
 you think they're going to blush ?' and rush out again, 
 and I don't see or hear from you again for five days ex- 
 cept a perky little note about some fishy, transparent 
 business in New York. For shame, Sydney! I am 
 angry. Your Carrie could spare you for one second, I 
 should think!" 
 
 She looks at him quite steadily. She is not accus- 
 tomed to being neglected, and the experience is novel 
 besides not highly flattering to her vanity. 
 
 "I haven't seen Carrie, either," Sammy retorts, sitting 
 down before the fire. He is thinking, perhaps, too ex- 
 clusively of himself. 
 
 Sylvia makes a little face. 
 
 "I'm not in love with you, Conceit," she says. "It is 
 Carrie's business whether you see her or not. That 
 doesn't interest me. You haven't been to see me! or 
 congratulate me, or say anything! I like being patted 
 
 on the back as well as any one. You're a pig, Sydney 
 
 T>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
 
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