BARRY GORDON They spent enchanted hours on that far flat roof in Beni Aloo [Page 190] BARRY GORDON BY WILLIAM FARQUHAR PAYSON AUTHOR OF JOHN VYTAL, THE TRIUMPH OF LIFE, DEBONNAIRE, ETC. ILLUSTRATIONS BY HARRY TOWNSEND NEW YORK THE McCLURE COMPANY MCMVIII Copyright, 1908 , by The McClure Company Copyright, 1907, by William Farquhar Payson TO EDMUND ROBERTS MARVIN 2229033 CONTENTS BOOK I THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER I PAGE A Day to be Remembered. The Game. The Face in the Crowd. Barry Turns the Enemy's Flank. A Telegram. 3 CHAPTER II How Colonel Gordon Came a Cropper. He Consults Dr. Burke, and Receives Monstrous Advice. 11 CHAPTER HI The Drive in the Dark. And of How Barry is Gazed at by His Father. 20 CHAPTER IV The Colonel's Plans for Barry's Future. Ghostly Por- traits. Father and Son and the Blood in their Veins. 29 [vii] CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE Storm and Wreckage. The Devil's Toast. Barry Alone. 42 BOOK II THE RAINBOW CHAPTER I Evil Memories. The Spree. What Barry Saw in Meade's Left Hand. A Double Exposure. How Barry and Tom Hurried into their Clothes. 51 CHAPTER H The Refugees. Barry Makes Friends with a Watchdog and Keeps a Midnight Vigil. Dawn and a Girl. 59 CHAPTER HI Their First Meeting. Barry Sees a Metaphorical Rain- bow and Strives to Grasp it, but Breakfast Intervenes also Tom. 68 CHAPTER IV Concerning Mr. Beekman, and how the Part in his Hair Fascinated Barry. A Pointed Interview. Life is Evidently a Serious Business, but there Goes Muriel with Tom! 79 CHAPTER V Barry and Tom in the Same Boat. Their Earliest Fires. Muriel Alternates. Her Little Song. 86 [viii] CONTENTS BOOK III THE FALL CHAPTER I PAQB College in a Nutshell. Barry Grows Restless. Love and the Wanderlust. He Obeys Heaven but Not the Faculty and There's the Devil to Pay. 99 CHAPTER II A Divorcee Dresses a Debutante. 105 CHAPTER m The Duel of the Flowers. Muriel's Song Re-echoes, and Barry Tears Aside a Veil. 112 CHAPTER IV The World Enters. The Way an Artist Felt About Muriel. How Barry Felt, too. Meade's Revenge. 123 CHAPTER V Bunidge Draws the Portieres. 188 CHAPTER VI Kitty to the Rescue. A Crisis in Barry's Career. The Call of the Sphinx. 141 CHAPTER Vn An Anxious Evening. Mr. Beekman Plays Patience. A Letter from Nowhere. 154 [ix] CONTENTS BOOK IV THE ROLLING STONE CHAPTER I PAGE Paris, the World's Half-way House. The Man in the Champs Elysees. A Toy Balloon Vanishes, and an Old Friend Appears. 165 CHAPTER II Duck and Burgundy. Platonics in Paris. Kitty Tact- fully Pumps Her Captive. 175 CHAPTER III Barry's Amazing Adventures. The Cab Race. A Voyage to the Stars. African Nights. Naomi the Fawn. 183 CHAPTER IV Barry Buys an Evening Paper. The News on the Front Page. The Course of His Life is Suddenly Changed. 194 BOOK V NEMESIS CHAPTER I Time and Propinquity Smooth the Way, but Mrs. Beekman Blocks It, and Barry has Secret Misgiv- ings. Kitty Again to the Rescue. 303 [*] CONTENTS CHAPTER II PAGE Barry and Muriel. The Man in the Train. The Fates Spin Fast. 214 CHAPTER III Flight and Pursuit. Their Wedding Night. The Har- mony of the Spheres, and the Jangle of a Door-bell. 225 BOOK VI THE TREE OF LIFE CHAPTER I A Human Stew, and of Certain Travellers who Sought a Man Named Barry Gordon. 239 CHAPTER II Barry Gropes Toward the Light. The Spirit of the Sword and the Spirit of the Market-place. How a Woman Hid in a Booth and Listened. 246 CHAPTER HI "At the South of the Market-place at Sundown." God Pity Women! The Call to Prayer. 268 CHAPTER IV The Ride. Cassim and Achmet. Night on the Edge of a Continent. A Mocking Voice. 284 [xi] CONTENTS CHAPTER V PAGE The Cave and its Occupant. "Greater Love Hath no Man than This " 297 CHAPTER VI The Spell of Barry's Sacrifice. The African Garden. Muriel and Tom. Black Magic. 314 CHAPTER VH The Death of Naomi, and the Jew's Vengeance. The Agony in the Garden. Dawn. 327 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS They spent enchanted hours on that far flat roof in Beni Aloo Frontispiece PACING PAGE He saw the body of his old friend lifeless near the table 46 "O Barry! How could you do it? You've killed me," she said 120 "One thing I ask: Let me see my brother face to face" 262 Barry played on their pet weaknesses until the deal was closed 294 His voice fell to a whisper like a sigh 340 BOOK I THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE CHAPTER I A DAY TO BE REMEMBERED. THE GAME. THE FACE IN THE CROWD. BARRY TURNS THE ENEMY*S FLANK. A TELEGRAM BACK in the eighties, at St. Clement's School, there was a boy named Barry Gordon. Tradi- tion says he was the life of the school and had more chivalry and deviltry in his little finger than all the rest of the pupils, body and soul. Be that as it may, he was doubtless a fine young cub, with plenty of brain, some brawn, and at times good looks. His popularity, they say, was more concentrated than general, the rank and file never knowing quite how to take him, he was so variable sometimes so old for his age, sometimes so young. But the elect worshipped him, and guided the others to a wondering admiration. When he chose, the fellow could outstudy the lot, or at least outdo them by a sort of quick and random acquirement of learning. Yet for the most part he was given over to outdoor games and adventures, or clan- destine browsings through fields of literature con- demned by the masters as uninstructive. In a village shop he bought wonderful second-hand [3] BARRY GORDON books, and, smuggling them into school, tucked them away between the mattresses of his bed. The indulgent matron, too, who never could withstand his eyes and voice, would covertly convey to him other treasures from her private library; and he, with the forbidden fruit carefully sandwiched between geometries and algebras, would hie him forth to some nook in the woods to study, not angles and equations, but all the colours and rhythms of life. By this secret means he came to know a mixed and interesting company. English knights were there, American pioneers, crusaders and cowboys, courtesans, queens, and saintly nuns. His taste, to say the least, was catholic. Much as he loved the virtuous, his hatred of all the villainous was quite as ardent. Much as he revered exalted heroes, his love for the poor comical wretches was no less warm. Deep in this forest library they were all on a footing, all enchanters without caste. Yet if he had any leanings, they were toward the old and the foreign. Born in Virginia of cavalier stock, his veins were ready channels for the Old-World fire, his soul a ready mirror for the Old-World glamour and glow. Above all he loved yarns of far voyages. In his last year at school he took to books that diffused atmos- pheres, books that breathed out the breath of distant races and places, till at last he had a vision of the world. [4] BARRY GORDON His mother was dead, but his father still lived in the South as remarkable a father, he thought, as ever a fellow had. Back and forth between Virginia and the school in New England went streams of letters. Ques- tions of life flowed from Barry to his father in the South, like a tidal river ebbing to the parental sea. Then back to Barry in the North came a swelling tide, flooding him with brilliancy and obscurity, reckless imagery and poetic humour. But in the end all this was changed by a sudden harsh reality. When, later, he looked back on that day the memory was blurred, save for a few sharp details. It came in his last year. His younger brother, Tom, was in quarantine with measles. It was an autumn after- noon, the air cool, the sky clear. The great football game of the season St. Clement's versus Strickland's Academy was nearing its last moment; and here worse luck! lay the captain, Barry Gordon, on the ground, winded and helpless, while the teams waited. He was stretched out on the side line. Some one sponged his forehead, and his staunch friend Hicks, the quarter- back, kept working his arms up and down to pump air into his lungs. Dimly he heard the strident cheering, as if from miles away; and when he turned his head auto- matically for a sponging over the temple, he saw across the field innumerable little waving flags spots of colour dancing before his dazed eyes. [5] BARRY GORDON There seemed to be nobody near him save the two who pumped and sponged, till gradually he became aware that two others were not far off. Evidently they thought him senseless, but he was not. Though a knock- out tackle had nearly finished him, and he could not think much, he could hear their words and recognise their voices. One was the sugary voice of Pierce, the principal, the other that of a friendlier master. " Too bad," said Pierce lightly ; " too bad ! " " How unfortunate his brother's ill and can't go with him ! " said the other. " That might help him to bear it Barry's so fond of Tom." " Yes," said Pierce, sweet and unmoved, " but per- haps it will develop his character." Despite this promising outlook, the under-master seemed to feel pretty bad about it. " Poor Barry ! " he muttered. " Shall we tell him? " Pierce, as usual, was cold as a fish. " Dear, dear, no ! " he said. " The fellow's our last hope. Break it to him now, and the game's lost he's so high-strung. Southerner, you know." Mr. Pierce's voice fell, but was still audible. " We must win this game. If we do, St. Clement's booms. We don't want old Strick- land to pocket all the pupils ! " Then, seeing that he was recovering, they moved off, Pierce saying nervously: " After the game, after the game." [6] BARRY GORDON To Barry, half conscious on the ground, the matter had seemed queer, but not serious. Pierce probably thought of expelling him. Some scrape had come to light that was all. There were plenty of them lying around half buried. Pierce wasn't only a fish; he was a ghoul, a prowler. Very well, let Pierce bounce him! The subject rolled from his mind like a vapour. Then, as his strength grew, he was gripped again by the lust of the game. Most of his ancestors, history said, had been fighting men. Perhaps that explained the fever in him, the blind impatience to be up and again at it ; and though Pierce's mercenary motives were not inspiring, something else was. Barry had turned his other temple to the reviving sponge. This brought within range of his sight the crowd at the nearer side of the field. Hundreds of faces were there, but he had a dim sense of one especially the face of a girl he had never before seen. Stretched out as he was and still half dazed, he did not see her clearly. She seemed to be looking at him, her eyes full of tenderness, her cheeks flushed, her lips parted, her whole expression eloquent of anxious waiting and ex- cited admiration. His impression of her face, though brief and dreamy, was none the less moving. With a sudden effort he stag- gered to his feet, keen for the game. As he stood a moment leaning on Hicks, silently planning the attack, m BARRY GORDON Mr. Pierce's vaporous mystery crossed his mind. But the fact that something apparently unpleasant hung over him only stimulated him to combat its unnerving effect. Somehow he began to associate his father with the game, wishing that he was at hand with all his resource and inspiriting encouragement. Then, suddenly, the wish in a way was granted. Barry remembered a tactic which people said his father had once used in the Civil War. Gordon's Raiders, in a certain battle, had played a dashing trick and won. If the strategy had worked once, why not again? Barry spoke hurriedly to Hicks. "Jim," he said, "listen!" Then he whispered the main point of the move. Luck- ily it depended on these two only. The rest of the team did not need to know. In fact, their very guilelessness would make the intended feint look real. Barry hastened out on the field. The crowd cheered, the colours danced, but he was careless now of every- thing save the next play. That play was old in warfare, but new then in foot- ball, though at the start it looked usual. The signal Hicks gave was familiar to Barry's men. The team obeyed in vigorous good faith. There was a 'dash against the enemy's right. Under cover of this, Hicks made a secret pass to Barry. Then, while the melee thickened, came a swift, strange darting to the left, [8] and the spectators were nonplussed, till suddenly from the edge of the scrimmage broke a figure, every inch a born runner, fleet as a hare. In a moment, with the pack on his heels, Barry had crossed the line; a goal was kicked, time was called, and the game won. What happened to him then was confused and mad. He felt himself lifted and borne along high above a swarm of St. Clement's enthusiasts, all blinding him with their flags and deafening him with their cheers. The face of the girl he did not again see. From his perch he searched for it, but in vain. Yet he felt happy and healthily fagged, and healthily proud of his father and himself. Then the blow fell, and it was worse far worse than he had thought. As he was lowered to the ground, Mr. Pierce stood waiting for him with a pained smile. " My boy," he said impassively, " I am pleased. How did you manage it ? What did you do ? " Barry wiped the sweat from his brow with the grimy sleeve of his jersey. His black hair was tangled and caked with mud, his face soiled and scarred by the struggle. Yet he looked a fine, upstanding fellow, and, despite his general dishevelment, bore himself with a graceful confidence and pride. " I remembered how my father did it in a battle," he [9] BARRY GORDON said offhand ; then, with a lift of his head and an absent brightening of his dark eyes : " My father, Colonel Gordon, who commanded Gordon's Raiders in the Civil War." Mr. Pierce shifted uncomfortably and cleared his throat. " This is indeed a sad coincidence," he said with sickly pity. He drew from his pocket a sheet of yellow paper. " I have just had a telegram from your father's doctor." He handed the yellow slip to Barry, adding in a voice of stilted sentiment, " Be brave, Barry, be brave!" Dazed, the boy read the following terse message: STEPHEN PIERCE, ESQ., Principal St. Clement's School. Colonel Gordon critically ill. Tell Barry come home at once - LUKE BURKE. As Barry stood staring at the yellow sheet, Pierce drew a smug sigh and closed his little eyes as if prayer- fully. " Verily, in the midst of life," he murmured, " we are in death ! " [10] CHAPTER II HOW COLONEL GORDON CAME A CROPPER. HE CONSULTS DR. BURKE, AND RECEIVES MONSTROUS ADVICE COLONEL GORDON sat alone at his dinner- table a tall, massive, white-haired gentleman, with an air of loose kingliness about him. There was nothing in his appearance to suggest ill health, save perhaps a bandage around his leonine head, and even this, to a friend familiar with his habits, would have implied nothing new or serious. Often before now he had worn swathed over his aching brow the rakish chaplet of & son of Bacchus; but that was usually of a morning following excesses, whereas the present bandage decked him day and night. Stirring his coffee in a ruminative way, the colonel spoke to a shadow behind him. " Joshua ! " An old negro glided forward. " Bring me a box of Henry Clays." Joshua bowed respectfully. "Yassah. Mild, sah?" " No dark and two or three bottles of the forty- seven Madeira. When Dr. Burke comes, show him in here." [11] BARRY GORDON Joshua bowed again, cast an anxious sidelong glance at his master, and left the room. For once Colonel Gordon felt very uncomfortable in the solitude. For once the silence, broken only by the creaking of the cellar stairs under Joshua's tread, op- pressed him ; and even the subsequent popping of corks in the pantry failed to enliven his mood. For once even the dim Gordon portraits on the walls were poor com- pany. Joshua returned to the dining-room with the box of Havanas and several cobwebby bottles. Setting these and one of the glasses before his master, he was ab- sently placing a second glass at the opposite end of the table when the colonel stopped him. " Not there ! " he muttered irascibly. " Will you never remember? " He motioned to a position at his right. " Put it here." The negro backed away from the empty armchair at the table's head as if from a ghost, and placed the glass as directed. For a moment he lingered in the sur- rounding shadows of the large dining-room as though to guard his beloved master. But Colonel Gordon, pouring his wine, resented the felt vigil, and said testily: " When I need you I will ring." Then Joshua, with his ever ready bow, left the colonel again alone. The solitude was not unusual far from it; but to- night the room seemed darker and emptier than ever [12] BARRY GORDON before; to-night he smoked his Henry Clay and drank his Madeira without that slow preliminary puff and sip with which a connoisseur tests, as it were, the indi- viduality of each cigar and bottle. He was a fiery man, this Virginia colonel, and now that his doctor would have him dying the fire kept flar- ing up. " Confound it ! " he finally muttered, out of all patience with this new gloom so foreign to him. " Burke be damned ! " Nevertheless, when at last the doctor's short bulk darkened the doorway, Colonel Gordon at once relaxed as if he felt relieved and somehow safer. " Come in, Burke. Surprised to see me dressed and down, eh? Draw up a chair." Burke obeyed, frowning. " Gordon, I told you to stay in bed." " Bed be damned ! " said the colonel. " Do you think I want that she-devil laughing at me in her stall? " He scowled humorously. " It's the first joke old Mes- salina's ever played on me though Lord knows she's often tried. That comes of larking in cold blood. I tell you, Burke, if I'd had the pack out she'd never have done it. Think how I've hunted that mare. Gad, man, give her company and she'll clear the moon ! " He pushed forward the Madeira and the cigar-box. "Here, old sober- sides, take a cigar ; have a glass of the forty-seven." [13] BARRY GORDON Burke glowered under his beetle brows at the array of bottles. " Suicide ! " he ejaculated indignantly. " Out and out suicide, Gordon ! I implored you not to drink." " H'm yes, but you're always preaching." The colonel made a quick gesture to forbid reply. " I know I know. You want to say this is different. You want to tell me all over again. No need, Burke; no need. I understand perfectly, sir, perfectly. I came a cropper and landed on my head. I was larking, Burke, across country, and Messalina was larking too oh, no doubt of it. But do you know I believe, Burke, she's get- ting stiff in the hocks that's what I believe. It really wasn't her fault, bless her soul, now was it? Hang it, man, she came down herself, I tell you struck the fence with her knees. Doesn't that prove she's weak on the take-off gone in the hocks? Eh? Now I ask you as a doctor, you old veterinary owl!" Burke grunted silently and fumbled for a cigar. " I wish you'd send that mare to the knacker. She's a murderess. How are your own legs? That's the ques- tion." " Oh, they'll do." " And your head? " Colonel Gordon cautiously pressed the bandage where it crossed one of his temples. [14] BARRY GORDON " Splitting," he admitted. " You see the top rail went crashing in front. I must have landed on it." Burke leaned forward across the corner of the table and reached out a gnarled hand. " Let me feel your pulse." "No, I'll be shot if I wilH" said the colonel firmly. " I know what you fear. You fear a cerebral haemor- rhage. Bah ! I dislike the sound of that ! " Eluding the doctor's hand, he reached for and filled both glasses, then smiled at Burke with all his old magnetic hospital- ity and graciousness. " Come," he said, in a voice rich in feeling. " You're not only my physician ; you're my friend. Then help me pass these hours as I like. If I'm going, I'm going. At first, Burke, I rebelled. The thing was insufferable. Gad, sir, it made my gorge rise! I could have damned Death roundly. But that's bad taste, Burke bad taste not the way of a Southern gentle- man ! " He paused a moment, twirling his long military moustache, and looking off dreamily with a gaze full of courage and vague humour. " Here in the South even uninvited guests are welcomed courteously." He lifted his glass. " Here's to his very good health, Burke ! " "Whose good health? " asked Burke obtusely. " Death's," said Gordon, smiling. " Do me the favour, please." Burke, though a coarse-grained man, felt unnerved [15] BARRY GORDON by this graceful courage. With an awkward grunt of refusal he pushed away his glass. " No, Gordon, no ! " he exclaimed hoarsely. The colonel regarded him with amused indulgence. " Don't blink, Burke, don't blink ! And I wish you would smoke your cigar instead of eating it." Dr. Burke sat mute, staring at the table. For more than twenty years, ever since serving as a surgeon with Gordon's Raiders, he had known this man and loved him. It was he who had dragged Gordon from the field at Chancellorsville more dead than alive; he who had probed Gordon's wound for the fragment of shell and extracted it; he who years later had ushered Gordon's sons into the world; he who had attended Gordon's wife in her last illness; and since then ever since that burst of wild grief at her passing had set the torch to Gordon's tendencies it was he who had fought against death for Gordon's body, and against hell for Gordon's soul. And now the fight was about finished. Gordon would not obey him and keep in bed. Gordon persisted in dining and wining as though nothing had happened. Both as doctor and friend he felt angry, helpless, and anxious. " God, Gordon ! " he broke out suddenly, " what is it about you that turns men into women? You've affected that thick-skinned nigger of yours just the same. When he opened the door for me he fairly blubbered. It was so [16] BARRY GORDON in the war, too. When I had you in hospital, every man jack got chicken-hearted with anxiety. Not one but wouldn't have died for you. In fact a lot did." Gordon idly blew a cloud of cigar-smoke up toward the lofty ceiling. Watching its ascent, he recalled far greater smoke-clouds old war scenes. He remembered moments when a laugh had rallied the men ; when a cry in a charge had driven them mad with the battle fever. But he derived little pleasure from the remembrance. It was not altogether satisfying to look back on a life whose only triumphs had been triumphs of personality and impulsive dash a life perhaps without a single victory of character. He shrugged irresponsibly. At least he had been kind-hearted. He remembered that now and then, after a battle, his presence out there in the night with the prone figures had somehow eased their dying. Again he took up his wine. " A toast you will not refuse, Burke the dead Raiders!" Burke nodded and reached for his neglected glass. Simultaneously they both rose and drank in silence, then, as Gordon reseated himself, he asked quietly : "How long do you give me, Burke, before I join them?" The doctor leaned forward and lighted his cigar over the silver candelabrum in the middle of the table. As he [17] BARRY GORDON did so his blunt, expressive face came into the light. Gordon saw his grizzled brows gathered in distress, the cigar trembling in his hand. " Not long, I see," said the colonel dryly, and again refilled his glass. A shadow crossed his eyes. " I hope I shan't go before Barry gets here." Burke, reseating himself, cleared his throat. " If you want to see the boy, for God's sake stop drinking! The wine sends the blood to your head." " Not another drop, then ! " said Gordon harshly. Thrusting the cork into the bottle, he hammered it down with a smart rap of his fist. Burke blew forth a gust of smoke and watched it drift heavily over the candles. " By the way, I want to speak to you about Barry." Colonel Gordon shifted uncomfortably. "What now?" " No offence," said the doctor, " but, Gordon Bar- ry's already shown he's got a lot of you in him a lot of your recklessness; and it seems to me you'd better let him know what's in his blood. Start him with a warn- ing. To forewarn him is to forearm him." Colonel Gordon raised an eyebrow ironically. " What do you mean, Burke ? How ? By telling him a thing or two about his father and " he made a ges- ture toward the surrounding portraits " and the rest of his ancestors ? " [18] BARRY GORDON Burke nodded, gnawing his cigar. " H'm ! A pretty way to die," said Gordon. " Blacken my name to the son who holds it dear, then shuffle off and leave him stranded with nothing but the wreckage of his illusions." The colonel paled. He was staring re- sentfully at Burke. " My dear man, I think you must be mad. Barry idolizes me, and not me only, but our whole line. If there was ever ancestor-worship in a Christian country, it's in that boy's heart." " I know it," said Burke dully. " I'm suggesting heroic treatment. Now, Gordon, I beseech you, go to bed." " Heroic treatment," said Gordon heedlessly. " Mon- strous treatment, I call it! Think how I have kept it from him ! When he and Tom come home, every bottle's locked up until late at night when they're asleep. Lord, man, Barry hasn't an inkling. Your plan's hideous ! " Burke shrugged and rose. " I'll call again in the morning. Think it over." Gordon had slowly sunk down in his chair, his eyes haunted by the suggested duty. " You damned old saw-bones," he muttered, " you're advising the most dangerous experiment ever tried an experiment on a boy's soul." Again the surgeon nodded. " Nevertheless," he said, " my advice is operate! " [19] CHAPTER III THE DRIVE IN THE DARK. AND OF HOW BARRY IS GAZED AT BY HIS FATHER THE last train from Richmond was due at seven o'clock. At half past six Dr. Burke, who had driven to the station alone in his buggy, al- ready sat waiting. The doctor's heart was heavy, his mood bitter. For once he sourly regarded this environ- ment in which he must soon outlive his usefulness. The village was dead. He glanced down the road at the two or three ill-lighted shops, whose dingy and paper-patched windows but half concealed their shoddy wares. He could see the shopkeepers in the dim interiors as if in huge cobwebs ghosts that had come to look like the spiders with whom they dwelt. Near him, at the station platform, several mule- waggons were drawn up, the waggons dilapidated, the mules skeletons. On boxes, crates, and express trucks along the platforms sprawled the drivers " white trash " and negroes. He shut his ears to the gossip of these phantoms the croak of the whites, the drone of the blacks. If the dead ever spoke, these were their voices. [20] BARRY GORDON Through the doorway he could see the interior of the squalid little station, from which poured forth a mingled odour of kerosene oil, foul tobacco, and cheap rum. Under a grimy lamp at an inner window the white face of the station-agent looked out lifelessly, as if from a prison cell. Now and then a ticket purchaser came to his window, coins clinked, hands moved, and the trav- eller, passing on, seated himself in the line of waiting shadows on a bench against the wall. Ghosts all ghosts bound from one limbo to an- other in the dark under-region of death! Yes, far worse than death. Graveyards are peopled with dead bodies, but these villages of the South, ravaged by war, seemed to be peopled with dead souls. He had doctored their anatomies and cured their physical ills, but he could not save dying ambitions with hypodermics nor remove griefs with a surgeon's knife. Only time could work reconstruction. Like many another Southerner of his day, Dr. Burke in thought that evening yielded the South to posterity as a trust. With this vision of the rising generation his frown passed. The look in his eyes was like fallen embers the look of all old men when they dream such dreams. He was gazing past the drooping head of his old mare, his own head drooping too, and the reins loose in his hand. Then life, new life, rushed to him suddenly. The whistle of a locomotive tore through the silence. He [21] BARRY GORDON peered out of the buggy. The engine's headlight, a huge eye, loomed large, far up the track. The rails gleamed into his consciousness. He glanced at his watch. The train was five minutes ahead of time. With brakes creak- ing and lamps lighting up the countryside, it came rumbling toward the station. The station lantern lit up the face of the engineer and another face a boy's immediately behind it in the window of the engine- cab. The doctor blinked to focus his eyes. For an instant the youthful face flashed toward him under hatless, flying hair. Was he dreaming? No; the impression of a face brilliant with a love of danger, speed, and excite- ment, was too vivid to be unreal. The face vanished. The locomotive, panting heavily, slowed to a stop behind the station. In another moment Barry, panting too, stood beside the buggy. The doctor frowned. " How did you manage that? " " I asked the engineer." " Do you always get what you want for the mere asking ? " The question slid from Barry like water from the proverbial duck. " We broke the record," he exclaimed, " from Rich- mond here. How's father? " " Messalina threw him." [22] BARRY GORDON ** Plague take her ! " cried Barry. " I'll ride the life out of her. Won't he get well? Won't he get well? " The doctor averted his eyes. Suddenly, as the truth went home, he heard a low moan, then the buggy gave as Barry sprang in, the reins were caught from his hand, the whip seemed to leap from its socket, and the old mare, terrified by the sudden swish of it in her ears, shot forward into the air. In a minute they were racing like mad along the Gordon turnpike, the buggy swaying from side to side, the mare running in the dark as if driven by the furies. With an oath the doctor grabbed reins and whip. " Whoa, girl ; whoa, little one ! " He spoke to his old mare with a note of sympathy reserved for her alone of all his friends, and gradually quieted her to a walk. Then he turned on Barry. " You young firebrand, how did you dare do that with my horse? " " I wasn't thinking of your horse. I was thinking of my father. Is he in bed? " Barry's tone was full of awe. He had never seen his father laid low, and the picture preyed on his mind. " No," said Dr. Burke, " but he ought to be." Barry, breathing easier, sat forward on the edge of his seat, as if trying to urge the mare to a trot by mere will-power. [23] BARRY GORDON " Doctor, will you please send her along ? " " No," was the gruff reply. " It's a wonder you didn't kill her." "You're not going to let her jog the whole way?" " Perhaps I am." Dr. Burke felt a hand slip through his arm. That was all not a word; yet the ingratiating appeal al- most prevailed. Before he knew it he had clapped the rein on the mare's flank. Then a revulsion of feeling, a dogged defiance of all these spoiled Gordons, with their winning charm, broke the spell. He reined the animal in again roughly. At once he felt the springs rock, and heard a sound in the grass at the roadside. Then a shadow slightly blacker than the night darted on ahead of him along the pike. He called in vain. The figure melted into the darkness. He started up the mare in pursuit. The sound of her hoof-beats proved more effective than his call. Barry waited. " Get in ! " commanded the doctor, overtaking him. " Will you send her along ? " " Yes, you whirlwind. Get in ! " Barry did so, and the doctor, with the inconsistency of wrath, whipped up his steed savagely. They drove to the old manor, speaking seldom. Dr. [24] BARRY GORDON Burke was so dour with a queer mixture of grief and spleen that Barry, now doubly awe-struck, kept mute. The drive was like re-dreaming his vividest dream. It brought back the few short holidays he had been allowed to spend at home. The black shapes of the oaks speeding by, the low lying lights of negroes' cabins, the occasional twang of a banjo, the crooning of songs, the joggle of the wheels, even the smell of the soil the mother-soil filled him with a love of home. But to- night his home-coming was overhung by a great shad- ow; all the old happiness was swallowed up in awe and sorrow. Colonel Gordon, waiting at a window, heard the sound of wheels. He went out, and, leaning on his malacca cane, paced painfully up and down the col- umned porch. As the wheels drew nearer he straightened up, set his cane against the door- jamb, and, continu- ing his march without its aid, strove to regain his former stride, or at least a firm tread anything but this new shuffle. Annoyed by failure, he halted at the steps, and, gazing down the faintly lighted avenue, waited there erect, his bandaged head held high, his moustache pulled sternly straight, his brows con- tracted. That was the figure Barry saw as he alighted from the buggy the splendid, heroic, martial figure of his [25] BARRY GORDON idol. His surprise was so dazing that he could scarcely speak. The colonel smiled, evidently tickled by his son's astonishment. " One moment, Barry,'" said Dr. Burke, pushing back the impatient boy. He drew the colonel aside and put some question to him. The reply was almost indignant. "What? Am I well? Of course I'm well perfectly well, you old quack." The colonel's voice fell, but was still vibrant. " No ; not a drop ! " The doctor hesitated. He saw pain in the man's eyes vital pain. " For God's sake," he exclaimed in a low voice, " keep to your bed, Gordon ! This is madness. I wash my hands of you ! " " Bed your grandmother ! " said the colonel, and laughed. As Burke drove off, Colonel Gordon's look softened. A great light filled his eyes, and his whole frame seemed to relax. He started toward Barry with arms out- stretched. The boy's face glowed. He, too, started for- ward. " Father," he said, quickly reassured by the colonel's assumption of health, " thank God, Burke's an old quack ! " But he was not embraced. Colonel Gordon, nodding, restrained himself. He receded a step, and, fumbling [26] BARRY GORDON for his cane, planted it before him as a prop and leaned on it with both hands. " Let me look at you. It seems years." Barry stood abashed, his lips parted, his eyes bewil- dered. With one of the massive columns behind him and the light from the window full across him, he presented a striking picture. The boy was well made, lithe, tall for his age, and full of grace the grace of animals, not of women. He was not handsome, but an air of mas- culine reserve beyond his years would have held the eye of even a casual observer. He was the sort of boy to prompt prophecies as to the man. His father studied him as if for the first time. A poet? That was the most obvious prediction. But the body was too athletic, the chin too practical. They contradicted his eyes'. A scholar ? No ; the brow was be- lied by the lips. A soldier? Now and then, perhaps, but not by profession. He was already leaning back, re- lieved and indolent, against the column. A man of busi- ness ? Never. The look of the idler was part of his grace. A lawyer? A clergyman? Never. He had not said a word. The colonel smiled, then sighed. Oh, the feeling in this boy ; the spirit in him ! To the father's eyes in that brief scrutiny there was something eternal about him something indescribable the Gordon fire the Gor- don soul-stuff. Though he was motionless, he suggested [27] BARRY GORDON motion. Though he was silent, he spoke. That was it. He was a paradox a paradox born of a long line of paradoxes in short, a fatally human boy. What then? The colonel turned brusquely. " Come, Barry, get ready. Dinner's waiting." Yes, there was no doubt of it Barry's eyes, though dreamy, were full of the Old Nick. [28] CHAPTER IV THE COLONEL'S PLANS FOR BARRY'S FUTURE. GHOSTLY PORTRAITS. FATHER AND SON AND THE BLOOD IN THEIR VEINS THE great shadow seemed to have drawn away. The colonel, if dying, was dying hard, dis- guising the fact with his mask of health. And Barry was still young enough to be entirely reassured by appearances. At dinner, Colonel Gordon put questions as to Barry's life during the autumn term. The answers were ready and honest. :Barry told not only of triumphs in studies and athletics, but of numerous scrapes as well. He made his confessions neither with penitence nor yet with bravado, but off-hand. When it came to the last game, however, and the Raiders' winning attack, there was pride in his voice, in his eyes open admiration as he looked at his father. The colonel smiled. " Licked 'em, eh ? Licked Strickland's, did you ? Good! I congratulate you." " Oh, it was mostly you," said Barry. " I'll bet you were the greatest soldier in the Confederate army ! That [29] BARRY GORDON bandage makes you look like a soldier now just wounded. Do you know, father, I think there's nothing like a fight a good, round, open fight, I mean like war and football." Dinner over and Joshua gone, they both fell silent for a time. Then at last Colonel Gordon observed lightly : " The truth is, Barry, you're a pretty wild lot ; now, aren't you? " With his gaze on the table, Barry appeared to con- sider this question seriously. '* I suppose I am," he replied at length. " And what you need is taming? " " I suppose I do. They all say that." " Then why don't they do it? " " They try to, but they preach too much." "Preach? How?" " Oh, every way. They say I ought to try and be like you, but I know I never can." The boy shook his head hopelessly, comparing himself with his ideal. A shadow crossed the colonel's face, but he kept his voice even. " What do they know about me ? " Barry raised his eyes to his father, and they were full of light. " I've told them you're Colonel Gordon, who com- manded Gordon's Raiders in the Civil War." [30] BARRY GORDON The colonel rose and walked to the window. The thing was even harder than he had expected. Hard? Yes, impossible, with the rats of thirst gnawing at his vitals, the sick weakness of sudden abstinence turning his very bones soft. His head was nothing but an ache. Must he break Barry's heart? Burke was a brute. Was it not better to let things take their natural course, to let life have its way, do its work; better to let the laws that govern men's souls govern Barry's ; better not to meddle with eternal affairs ; better to let Barry find himself gradually? But how? By experi- ence? Too late? Prove hell to him the earth-hell by letting him sound its depths unwarned? God forbid! The colonel stood feebly at the window, looking out. The night was calm -and silent, serene with stars. Oh, if men's hearts could attain to this tranquillity ! His eyes, staring at the sky, had a lost look. Returning to the table, he reseated himself, and for some time kept silence. His bandaged head was bowed, his large shoulders were rounded, his chin touched his chest. He was staring at the empty chair opposite to him. " Barry," he said at length, " do you remember your mother? Eh, Barry, do you remember her?" Barry shook his head. " No, I'm afraid not. I wish I could." [31] BARRY GORDON " So do I," said the colonel. " She might help you. I gave you her picture. Keep it and try to image her to yourself a woman with hair as much like daytime as yours is like night a woman with eyes," he mused, " that had the sky in them clear blue." He drew himself up with an effort. " Barry, my boy, my chair, too, will soon be vacant." He glanced down at the table his used napkin, his emptied coffee-cup, his plate with a few raisin stems and fragments of walnut-shells. " It seems to me my life has been almost as brief as our dinner, and now the feast is over and only the debris remains." He sighed, and looked up at Barry with forced calm. " Barry, my boy," he went on, " when I die whether it's to-morrow or not for years you and Tom will have a good income. The principal will remain in trust until you're thirty, for reasons I hope you'll some day appreciate. Do you remember my old friend, Frank Beekman? He used to come here when you were a child. Eh, Barry, d'you remember him ? " Barry did not; but his mind was too clouded, his heart too heavy, to admit of a steady answer. The colonel looked away. " Frank Beekman," said he, " is the best type of Northerner, and my oldest friend. In winter he lives in New York; in summer, in Massachusetts. I don't [32] BARRY GORDON know his wife, but I've seen his daughter Muriel. She's about your age, Barry, and a little thoroughbred. I think you'll like her. I think she'll be a help to you." The colonel cleared his throat. " I've appointed Mr. Beekman my executor and trustee. I've also made him guardian of you and Tom. I've left your income en- tirely under his control." The colonel puffed at his cigar and, breathing out a prodigious cloud of smoke, said quietly : " Thus, Barry, my boy, when your father goes gal- loping off into eternity, you also will be transplanted from your birthplace, though not yet awhile to another planet. Barry, my son, this particular planet on which at present you and I are madly whirling through space as though on a colossal merry-go-round, is not half bad, believe me. At_ all events, by gad ! sir, it's the best we've got. So stick to it, Barry, and ride close to the saddle, nicely balanced, firmly gripping; and even if you're riding hell-fire, don't let your mount chuck you. For God's sake, Barry, don't get spilled as I have ! " His voice caught, but he mastered it. " Then in your own good time, when the run's done, you can dismount decently and in order." Again he puffed energetically and again blew forth a voluminous cloud of smoke. " So, Barry, my boy, you'll be transplanted," he pursued. " You'll be permanently transplanted a wise [88]' BARRY GORDON move, say I, for the descendants of all old families, and especially ours." He smiled, frowned, and hesitated, twirling his long, white, military moustache. He had come, so to speak, to the stiff est jump, and felt, as he would have put it, a bit weak on the take-off. But he was in the saddle now, nicely balanced and firmly gripping, and the chase was not a fox hunt but a devil hunt ; and his sudden, righteous impulses, straining to be in at the death, gave tongue like a pack in full cry. It was best, it was best! It was no false scent. It was the trail of truth. Burke was the whip and knew, and all the voices said so. Now, then, for the rise; and though Messalina had chucked him, he swore hell-fire could not! " I've remarked, Barry, that transplanting is excel- lent for old families, especially for ours; and if I ever know what I am talking about, I do now." With a wave of his hand, he indicated the portraits all about them on the walls faces vague and at first glance in- scrutable in the candle-light. " Have a look at your ancestors, Barry, my boy. You've seen them often be- fore through rose-coloured glasses, but now, I fear, I've got to take those magic spectacles off your nose.'* He scowled at the portraits. " What do you think of them all?" Barry, perplexed at the new and somewhat discordant irony in his father's rich voice, surveyed the file of [34] BARRY GORDON gilt-framed personages on the opposite wall. Hereto- fore, when the colonel had seen his son gazing up at these worthies, he had said to himself that so much ardour and reverence in a descendant must surely tickle their vanity. But to-night, as Barry looked up, the boy's face was clouded with bewilderment. " What do you think of them ? " repeated the colo- nel gently. Still looking up and still, puzzled, but now just a shade dogged, Barry replied: " I think what I have always thought. Of course, they are dingy and dressed like guys, some of them; but as you say yourself, clothes don't always count." He shook his head, sat back more easily, and bright- ened. " I don't see anything wrong with them, and I'll be shot if I want to ! " Colonel Gordon "shifted uncomfortably. " That's not the point, Barry. The point is, you've got to, whether you want to or not, and whether or not I want you to. That's the point, Barry you've got to ! " He singled out a portrait at the left of the line facing Barry. The picture was that of the colonel's grandfather, an old man with iron-gray hair, a beak- like nose, a strong chin in a long white stock, and a general look of calm dominance, save for a pair of feverish eyes. [35] BARRY GORDON " Now, look at him," said the colonel. " A shrewd statesman, I've often told you one of Andrew Jack- son's ablest supporters. Good! But look at his eyes; look at the unrestraint in his telltale eyes. Now, here is what you don't know about him. He got lust- ing so for power that he tried to come it over the President and Congress. Result a breach, and igno- miny." With the same mechanical wave the colonel passed on to a larger portrait, just opposite Barry. The man was the colonel's great-grandfather, and one of Barry's favourites. He was mounted on a war-horse, splendidly rearing, and looked very military and Washingtonian ; but somehow this patriot was marred by a lurking folly in his eyes. " A great gadabout," said the colonel, " and a great fighter. Revolutionary history, as you know, is full of him. But look at the prodigality in his eyes. Now, Barry, here is a tradition not in history. He loved a number of women, not wisely but decidedly too well you understand." Thus to one and another Colonel Gordon drew his son's attention, showing them up, as he put it, in their true light. Finally he nodded toward the end of the room, a far and gloomy wall on which hung but one picture. This was a life-sized portrait, and for many reasons meant [36] BARRY GORDON more to Barry than all the rest. It was now so un- certainly lighted by the candles that by a slight stretch of fancy one might have thought some ancient Gordon ghost stood there, meeting the gaze of his two de- scendants with a lofty, irresponsible stare. According to certain memoirs, this portrait represented General Nicholas Gordon the first of their branch in Amer- ica. The picture was obscure and shadowy. The figure seemed to be standing in a gloomy interior, lit from one side by a weird glare as if from a torch. The man wore the military garb of a cavalier, and the light gleamed on a steel corselet and sword. The whole figure and face bespoke virile masculinity. " Another gadabout," said Barry's father, " but very different. Went all over the world, you know, for- ever restless and wandering, and hungry for adven- ture. A wolf of a man, Barry a wolf ! " As Barry had turned away his chair and sat gazing at the distant portrait, the colonel could not see his face, but when he spoke his voice sounded dry and unnatural. " I thought General Gordon was one of the found- ers of Virginia," he said. " Yes, Barry, boy ; but now that you've looked the lot over again, listen. Outwardly, I confess, there is glamour about them and inwardly, too, no doubt. [37] BARRY GORDON Bless you, boy, they were full of pluck and what-not, and even virtue, possibly good and bad, like the rest of humanity, only somehow wilder than most, more self- indulgent, more unbridled and reckless. The trouble with us is, Barry, we've got the Gordon fire. Do you want to know what that is? I'll tell you. It is not a well-behaved, plebeian little fire to cook your dinner on; it isn't a respectable middle-class blaze, useful in the furnaces of industry. No; it's the electric fluid called blue blood haphazard and destructive as light- ning." The colonel fumbled with his bandage. His head felt queer. The pain was not so sharp now, but the ban- dage seemed tighter. He was beginning to feel nervous, restless, and his facial muscles twitched. Burke was a fool! Fancy knocking off a man's tipple so abruptly, just when it was most needed! Suddenly he was struck by the absurd incongruity of his role of preacher, and smiled bitterly. But still he hung to the sermon, and spoke in a hoarse voice to Barry's back. " Barry, that man you're looking at was the worst of the whole crew. He died with a drinking song on his lips a toast, if you please, to the devil. No death could have been more consistent. General Nicholas Gor- don, though splendid enough in war and public affairs, was quite the reverse privately. In fact, he was the [38] BARRY GORDON- namesake of the devil he toasted. They called him, for short, the Old Nick.' " Barry did not move. If he flinched, it was almost unnoticeable. He was still inscrutably staring at the equally inscrutable ghost. " You can read it," said the colonel uneasily, ** in Laidlaw's * History of Virginia.' That will tell you the truth about the head of our family in America the story of how General Nicholas Gordon lived and died. And in a foot-note you will find his toast to the devil. The toast has a peculiar history. Our family, you know, traces back to the time of the Crusades. The first Gordon of whom there is any record died fight- ing for the tomb of Christ. But in the second Crusade there's mention of a Gordon who fell in love with a Saracen woman, and went to the bad. Then there's Adam Gordon, of outlaw fame, who calmly waylaid his king. At about that time the song crept in. Perhaps he made it. Who knows? Soon there was a superstition afloat with it. * Pledge the devil in wine, he responds in brimstone.' In other words, drink to the devil and you die. They say this superstition was revived by Nicholas Gordon's death. He died, you see, singing the song." The colonel frowned. " Queer coincidence, eh, Barry ? deuced queer ! " He blew a great cloud of smoke. [39] BARRY GORDON " Fatal song, that ! Let me see if I can remember it. The music's lost. Let me think the words go like this : "Up, friends, up; To-night we sup. Tho' to-morrow we die of the revel!'" Barry shifted. " Don't ! " he interrupted lifelessly, without turning. " Don't! What's the use? " The colonel smiled. "You're not afraid, are you? It's only a supersti- tion. * Drink to the devil and you die ' is merely a romantic way of saying ' the wages of sin is death.' But I'll give you a prettier motto eh, Barry? to offset all this. Somewhere in an old ballad I think I've read of a Sir Something-or-Other Gordon, who went about the world tilting at windmills ' in the name,' quoth he, ' of Amelotte.' That line, I remember, ended every stanza "'In the name,' quoth he, 'of Amelotte.* " For the life of me, I can't remember anything more about the gentleman, but I dare swear his Ame- lotte was a fine, fair girl no fly-by-night Saracen woman Lord, no ! the man's ideal, Barry, the man's ideal! God send you a woman, Barry, my boy, like Amelotte. The general knew one, but she didn't love [40] BARRY GORDON him. I married one, but she died ; and so " Colonel Gordon hesitated a moment to nerve himself for the last stab " and so I, too, have gone to the devil ! " His cigar was out now, and he had sunk down again in his chair. " My son," said he, " I've noticed the Old Nick in your eyes, too, so I tell you this to forewarn you and forearm you. I can preach all the better because I haven't practised. Barry, I'm drinking myself to death." He paused, staring at Barry's back. How was the boy taking it? There seemed to be little change in him. His head was slightly bowed, and his broad shoulders had sunk a little that was all; but his immobility and dumbness, and this new and subtle droop, sug- gested a mind stunned. Evidently the boy's soul was rocking; evidently a great darkness swept across it. He had suddenly been fed full of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, and the burning taste was on his tongue like corrosive poison. [41] CHAPTER V STORM AND WRECKAGE. THE DEVII/S TOAST. BARRY ALONE WHEN at last Barry moved, he only half turned, and throwing out his arms across the table, buried his face in them, not pas- sionately, but merely as if longing to fall asleep. With a flood of tenderness the colonel leaned toward him, but restrained himself and drew back. Now that the thing was done, a mortal weakness began to possess him; he had not enough strength to console his son as a man should. Moment after moment he waited, till it seemed that he had waited hours, and he could endure it no longer. The candles were down to their sockets now and flicker- ing fitfully. Outside a November night-wind had risen and was moaning about the house. The loneliness grew intolerably oppressive. The colonel tried to say something, but was appalled to find that he could not do so. His tongue clove to the roof of his mouth, and, when he tried to speak, released itself with a clicking sound that sickened him. He felt parched to the core; the blood and marrow in him [42] BARRY GORDON seemed to have turned to hot dust; he felt as If his heart pumped ashes, as if his head must burst; and his whole body seemed filled with needles. He started to rise, but suddenly a tremor ran through him, and in another moment he realised that from head to foot one side of him had lost sensation. Long he sat there helpless, and in some queer way his whole life unwound before him. He did not seem to be remembering it, but actually re-living it. At first the phenomenon pleased him, and he lent himself to it drowsily; but as the years rolled by and he re-en- tered the later gloom, he desperately struggled to forget. The effort must have been physical as well as mental. He had shifted in his chair. He found that his limbs on the side seemingly paralysed had become movable again. Stretching himself to make sure, he rose shakily, and, conscious now of nothing save his desires, shuffled to the massive mahogany sideboard. Opening a deep drawer, he took out a bottle of Bourbon whiskey and filled a small goblet to the brim. The gurgle of the pouring aroused Barry. He started up suddenly, one hand catching at the back of his chair, the other biting into his palm. Still dumb, still dazed, he stared at his father and at the glass with blind indignation. " Barry," muttered the colonel without looking at [43] BARRY GORDON him, " fight while you're young. Fight like the dickens while you're young. If you don't you'll " Filled by an ungovernable impulse, he caught up the glass and drained it at a swallow. Petrified with horror Barry recoiled, pallid and breathless as death. The tragedy, though not real to him, was worse than any nightmare. He had no thoughts, no immediate resources merely an impres- sion of being a prisoner in a great gloomy room a prisoner alone with dribbling candles, a lot of weird faces, and a massive, loose-limbed ghost with a ban- daged head and a shaking hand and a glass of fire a ghost as ghostly as all the others in the gilt frames a ghost who seemed to be his father, but was not. Colonel Gordon refilled his glass and again tossed down its fire. The draught seemed to produce no ill result. On the contrary, as it took effect, he stood straighter and looked to Barry younger and more natural. The old smile returned to his eyes, the military air to his carriage. Good-humour and that love of life which had always made him so companionable to the boy returned and began to bubble from him. " Cheer up, Barry," he said, smiling. " Gad, boy, your soul is being saved to-night! You'll be the man I might have been. You'll put an end to this deviltry for- ever ! " His voice was real now, and had a firm ring. It [44] BARRY GORDON echoed through Barry and started his reason. He began to think. The colonel swayed, and leaned against the side- board. " Barry, boy," he said quietly, " forgive me." He turned unsteadily, refilled his glass, and was about to raise it to his lips again, but this time Barry was seized by a wild impulse. Quickly stepping forward, he struck the goblet from his father's hand. As it fell, it crashed against the sideboard and broke into frag- ments. Colonel Gordon laughed without displeasure. " Capital! " he said. " Excellent! If you fight it that way you'll win." He took another glass, and, smiling, filled it. " But as for me, I'm too far gone." Barry hesitated. He could not struggle physically with his father. His breeding and sonship forbade such an encounter. He thought of calling Joshua, but shame kept him silent. He thought of running for Dr. Burke, but feared to leave his father alone in this Condition. He could only plead from the depths of his waking soul. " Father, I beg of you, not another drop ! You're killing yourself. Stop now, and I swear before God I'll never touch it as long as I live ! " But the colonel had lost the chance to seize and bind that vow. If he saw his opportunity at all, it was [45] BARRY GORDON too elusive to be grasped. He had spoken truly he was too far gone. His brain was succumbing; insanity began to flare in his eyes. His glass half raised, he smiled at the portraits with a trace of his old-time gracious hospitality, and cried genially: "Up, friends, up! To-night we sup, Tho' to-morrow we die of the revel!" Again Barry interrupted him. " No, father," he faltered, shuddering. " Think what you're saying ! Think what you're doing ! " But the colonel seemed to have forgotten his pres- ence. Dementedly he waved his good-will to the ghostly company : "Up, friends, up! To-night we sup, Tho' to-morrow we die of the revel!" He had wandered now to the end of the dining-room, and stood smiling at the dark, vague portrait of Gen- eral Nicholas Gordon. To Barry, paralysed with awe, that sinister figure seemed to control the tragedy. He conceived a deadly hatred for the man in the frame. The general was his father's enemy the devil that possessed him. Turned to stone, Barry stood and watched the two men who were now face to face, each as much a ghost as the other. [46] He saw the body of his old friend lifeless near ike table BARRY GORDON The colonel's voice, as he raised his glass, came thick but hearty: "Up, friends, up! To-night we sup, Tho' to-morrow we die of the revel! Rise for a toast Tho' to-morrow we roast! A health to his lordship the devil!" Colonel Gordon drank, and stood motionless a mo- ment. Then, suddenly, as if he had seen something terrifying in the portrait some subtle stir or respon- sive shifting of the figure he cried out in fear, and the glass fell from his hand. With a last effort, he controlled himself, drew himself up, and, putting his arms to his side, soldier-wise, stood tensely at atten- tion. He raised his hand to his bandaged forehead in a dazed military salute to the soldier in the frame, as though to a superior officer. This done, he suddenly relaxed, reeled, and would have fallen save for Barry's quick support. Tenderly, but with all his strength, the boy held his father up, and tried to get him to a chair. He could not do it. Heavy and limp, Colonel Gordon, now unconscious, sank to the floor and collapsed utterly. Barry, heart-broken, kneeled beside him, imploring him to speak; but the beloved eyes were closed now, [47] BARRY GORDON the mobile face had a fixed, vacuous look, and presently the breath, at first laboured, stopped entirely. With a groan, Barry rose and stood staring at the dark, inscrutable portrait, his eyes filled with hate. When Dr. Burke, summoned by Joshua, came in haste, the candles had burned out. The great dining- room was in darkness, and still as a tomb. The doctor went and fetched his carriage lantern. By its light he saw, near the dinner-table, the body of his old friend lying dead. Between the body and the end wall, which was now blank, the life-sized portrait of General Nicholas Gordon lay flat on the floor, face upward. Near it the blade of a table-knife glimmered faintly. The canvas was gashed through and through. In a chair pulled out from the table, Barry sat, blindly staring down at the wrecked portrait. [48] BOOK II THE RAINBOW CHAPTER I EVIL MEMOEIES. THE SPREE. WHAT BARRY SAW IN MEADE'S LEFT HAND. A DOUBLE EXPOSURE. HOW BARRY AND TOM HURRIED INTO THEIR CLOTHES A GAS-JET was lighted at one end of the dormitory. Above the door from the hall a table-cover had been hung, to darken the transom. Under the light, and between two beds, stood a table, littered with biscuits, beer-bottles, and cards. About the table sat a group of youths indulg- ing in a foretaste of college. Four or five, some new at it, some comparatively expert, were deep in a game of poker. The rest watched them, fascinated, excepting one or two, who had sunk back on the beds, where, in order to conceal a sickening dizziness caused by their first fling with alcohol and tobacco, they pretended to be lounging comfortably. At the other end of the room Barry Gordon lay in bed, craving sleep a sleep without dreams. Till re- cently he had never known this wakefulness. Sleep had come to his healthy brain as naturally as hunger to his stomach, air to his lungs, laughter to his lips ; but now, like laughter, it came only fitfully, and with bitterness. [51] BARRY GORDON What phantasms ! Time and again he saw portraits throngs of flat-painted ghosts hopping about him tipsily on the corners of their gilded frames, laughing and winking at him, till he, in the centre of that demoniac dance, seemed to reel and fall. Then he would wake, damp and shivering. It was almost better to lie staring awake, as he lay now. But he felt very tired. His brain was being worn, as if by a ceaseless drip of thoughts, always the same. Behind him he saw an endless, hideous past; before him an endless, inscrutable future. He was cast away in the middle of an evil ocean, and was sinking. He felt tired trying to grasp something safe and solid. He stared listlessly at the poker-players. A few months ago he would have been sitting there with them, spreeing it with a gusto, but now he was no longer one of them. His months of brooding had turned them against him. Others had lost fathers, but they had not moped as he had. With brutal candour, they called him a " wet blanket." The loss of their companionship made him very lonely, but he couldn't have enjoyed the game. He had eaten of the fruit of the tree, and now recognised even incipient evil. In his heart he began to loathe the ring-leaders of that group at the other end of the long bedroom. Their whispered jokes, inane and smutty, mortified him. Their precocity disgusted him. The fellows were [52] BARRY GORDON aping men. He saw the sham, the pose. The beer sick- ened them ; the smoke choked them ; the game flushed their faces. He wondered if the spree would always have looked this way had his eyes been earlier opened. No, he thought not. There was a change in them as well as in him. They were under the leadership of a newcomer at St. Clement's. Like himself, the fellow was a Virginian, but un- wholesome and hard. Meade mimicked maturity better than the rest, and wore a vicious air naturally. He was evidently the evil genius of the game. When Meade shuffled, he shuffled with a manner; when he dealt, he dealt fast; when he swore, he swore vilely, glib with the lowest slang of the game. His hands were dexter- ous, his lips thin, his eyes slits. He drank less than the others and won more. Barry wished he had not allowed himself to take a back seat and let Meade rule. The school would go from bad to worse. He had been wild, but Meade was low. The sight of the fellow sitting there under the gaslight, his eyes so avid, his fingers so nimble, kindled Barry's wrath, but he restrained himself. He was out of this for good and all. No! He sat up in bed. Meade, who was dealing, had made a queer, quick motion across the bottom of the [53] BARRY GORDON pack. The others, picking up their cards, failed to notice it. The motion was deft, dishonest. Impetuously, Barry sprang out of bed and crossed the room. Suddenly he felt strong, active. There was something to do besides mere thinking. What happened then he remembered later as the sec- ond great storm in his life. It was all mad, swift, dark. As he came to the table the players looked up drowsily. One of them was Hicks, hi? red hair mussed, his honest eyes sleepy. Another was Barry's brother a fair boy, who was new at this, and showed it. Hicks shifted to make room for his friend. Barry, in his night-shirt, seated himself opposite Meade. He rested an arm about his brother's shoulders. Tom did not look up. His blue eyes, impatient for the deal, were ashamed and bashful. Meade counted out a handful of beans and shoved them toward Barry. " There's fifty," he whispered. " Limit's ten. Want to raise it? " " No." Barry looked at his brother. " Lost much, Tom?" Tom nodded in silence. " Why don't you drop out ? " asked Barry. " I wanted to, but Meade said it would break up the game." [54] BARRY GORDON " Well, it won't now." He nudged Tom, and Tom took the hint. He rose as inconspicuously as possible, and stood in his night-shirt, watching them. " Deal," said Barry, and Meade, sullen at being robbed of his prey, dealt, muttering. One of the boys shoved a bottle of beer toward Barry. Barry hid a shudder and pushed it back. In an offhand way he was watching Meade. " Wait ! " he suddenly said, rising. Meade had his left hand under the table. " What have you got in that hand ? " The other players, with eyes and mouths wide, stared at the dealer. Those sick on the beds sat up stu- pidly. " I dare you to show it ! " said Barry. "What you talking about, Gordon? Sit down! What's the matter ? " Meade's eyes were more slitty than ever. " Squealing, eh, 'cause your brother's cleaned out? Better be careful, Gordon. I can get even with you ! " Barry winced, hesitated. The threat was sickening to contemplate. Meade came from the South. If he knew anything and told it, life would be unbearable here. Barry mustered up his new strength. " I dare you to put your left hand on the table," he said doggedly. Meade did so, and the hand was empty. Hicks, now wide awake, stooped under the table, and they heard a scuffle. Hicks, bobbing up, said angrily: [55] BARRY GORDON " He had his foot on it ! " He threw an ace on the table. Barry's eyes blazed. " Cheat ! " he said. " You get them drunk, and then rob them. You're a cad ! " The boys stared up mutely some at Barry, some at Meade, who had also risen. The situation was at first beyond them, the trick too mature even for their precocity. It was the height of delicious wickedness to play poker at all. The depths of wickedness they had not yet fathomed. Meade came out from behind the table. His face was indescribably ugly, his manner full of sneering revenge. " Drunk, eh ? You're a fine one to talk, you damned stuck-up ! Your father, Colonel Gordon, eh, who com- manded Gordon's Raiders in the Civil War? Hell! I know things! So does every one in the South. Your father drank himself to death. He " Meade staggered backward and fell to the floor, hit full in the face by Barry's fist. Barry, at once relaxing, stood limp and stupefied, staring into vacancy. Tom, awed, came and slipped a hand through his arm. Others, badly scared, tried to revive Meade. They got a pitcher and towel from a washstand and bathed his forehead. Hicks was guarding the door. [56] BARRY CORDON " Barry," he said desperately, " quick ! What are you going to do? " Barry passed a hand across his eyes, nerved himself, and got his brain working. " Do you think I'd stay here another minute after what's been said ? " he exclaimed. " No ; we'll get out." He went and glanced down at Meade, to make sure he was recovering, then turned to Tom. " Hurry, Tom ! Dress ! " He was nearly crazed now by his passionate desire to escape to escape, not from the consequences of his act, but from the shame Meade had brought on him and on his brother. Anything but this he could have stood anything but the consciousness that people knew. He and Tom hastened to the chairs beside their beds, scrambled into their clothes, and caught up their shoes under their arms. Hicks pulled the door ajar. " Good-bye, Barry ! Quick ! " The brothers slipped out. Along the dark corridor they stole in their stockinged feet, then down the rear stairway and out into the night. They paused, and, hopping each on one foot, pulled on their shoes. " Where shall we go ? " asked Tom. " To Mr. Beekman's," said Barry, without hesita- tion. " Is he home yet? " [57] BARRY GORDON " He may be." "What if the train's gone?" " Then we'll beg a ride on a freight. Come along ! " They made a bee-line for the station, running head- long through the dark. " What if Pierce gets there first ? " said Tom, as they ran. " Then it's all up," said Barry, and set a killing pace. They plunged across country, stumbling through ploughed fields, vaulting over stone walls. " Barry," said Tom, panting, " father was really a good man, wasn't he? " Barry, too, breathed hard as he ran. " Yes," he said with difficulty, " the best man that ever lived." But Barry's heart was like lead. The weight of it seemed to impede his speed. Though Tom would never believe the truth, others would. As they stumbled on through the dark, a dead singsong in him kept re- peating the refrain: " People know, people know ! " [58] CHAPTER II THE REFUGEES. BARRY MAKES FRIENDS WITH A WATCH- DOG AND KEEPS A MIDNIGHT VIGIL. DAWN AND A GIRL A3LOW train, and afterward a long, tiresome walk, at last brought Barry and Tom to their destination a farm in the heart of the country. But by now half the night had slipped away, and they were too late. The house was dark and shut against them. They stood on a driveway at the edge of a moon- lit lawn, gazing across at it blankly. " Do you think they've come yet ? " asked Tom. "Yes. The windows are open. Shall we climb in? " " No. We might get shot. Lord, I'm tired ! " Tom was too much disappointed to risk further speech. Barry tried to laugh contagiously. To him the dis- appointment meant less and more. Though by birth only a year older than his brother, he felt a life-time older in experience. Tom wanted any hole in which to hide, curl up and sleep ; Barry wanted friends. Tom wanted a bed, Barry a home. Tom wanted shelter, [59] BARRY GORDON Barry sanctuary. Tom's body was disappointed, Bar- ry's soul. And so, while Tom felt a lump in his throat and swallowed in secret, Barry felt a weight on his heart and tried to laugh. Suddenly a clock far off in the little Massachusetts village struck two. The runaways shifted uneasily. That meant that if Mr. Pierce had driven from the school, he might arrive at any moment. Barry's eyes bade the house a reluctant good-bye. " I suppose," said he, " we'll have to keep on go- ing." Tom frowned. " Where to? " he managed to ask. Barry laughed. The question was very practical and sensible. They had no friends in the world except Dr. Burke down in Virginia, and Barry felt that the South was forever a closed country to him. Moreover, they had no money. Wherever they went, they must go on foot. For a moment this thought revived Barry's earlier romantic mood. They would wander like tramps. He put it to Tom, who shook his head dumbly. Though plucky enough and hardy enough, Tom lacked the spirit. Unlike his brother, he had never known the rare delight with which youth pictures itself vagabond. His mind's eye was blind to the nomadic joys now conjured [60] BARRY GORDON up by Barry camp-fires, a lean-to in the woods, the open road. And so, while Barry stood there roving over the world, Tom, fagged and sleepy, shook his head. " There must be some hotel in the village," said he. " Let's go back there. Mr. Beekman will pay for us in the morning." " Then Pierce will see him first," objected Barry. " Let him ! Come on ! There's nothing else to do." Barry hung back. The phrase nettled him. He had always rebelled against that inevitable conclusion " there's nothing else to do." It invariably meant a tame climax. He peered about, far and wide, frowning. Suddenly his eyes lighted up with resource. " Wait ! " He was gazing at a distant barn that loomed big in the moonlight. The building lured him. It looked hugely hospitable. He loved barns the cattle, the horses, the sweet smell of hay, the very cobwebs and rafters. The boy in him, which of late was so often overshadowed by the man, rose to the surface. " If we can get in there," he whispered, " we're all right. Come, let's try it ! " " No," said Tom. " Listen ! " They hesitated. The deep baying of a dog boomed forth ominously from the direction of the barn. Barry chuckled. The danger tickled him. The barn appealed to him now more than ever. [61] BARRY GORDON " Come ahead ! " he commanded recklessly. They started, Barry spiriting Tom along. Stealing from tree to tree to dodge the moonshine, they skirted the lawn and followed the drive to the farmyard. Here at a gate they paused. Peering through the shadows, they saw a big St. Bernard and heard a clanking. "Pooh!" said Barry. "Chained!" He opened the gate and they passed through into the barnyard. The dog growled, crouched, sprang at them. The chain held, and the sudden clutch of his collar choked him. Its grip doubled his gorge. He tugged at the chain and barked barked so loud that his voice seemed to flood the night with alarms. In the distance other dogs from all directions began to an- swer, till the whole countryside rang with a wild bark- ing, and the two intruders stood stock-still, scared. Tom felt sick, and Barry tingled with anxiety. The dogs would wake the world. Men would come running. There would be lanterns, guns, a hubbub, questions, wrathy Beekmans and Tom and he the guilty cause, the storm-centre of the worst bother ever known. A fine way to introduce themselves to their guardian! Impetuously he started for the dog. "Don't," cried Tom, "don't be a fool! He'll eat you alive ! " He tried to catch Barry's coat, but missed it. As Barry approached the dog he spoke low, calling [62] BARRY GORDON him " good old boy " with a note so at one with animal nature that it sounded almost brotherly. His voice was like his father's full of tone and magnetism, full of creature sympathy. " Good old boy, what's the matter ? " Instantly the dog relaxed, settled to all fours, and waited. Barry went to him open-hearted, stroked his majestic head, and clapped him on the ribs in a rough hail- fellow way. The touch won. The dog quieted, and began to wag his tail with a sort of tentative dignity. Gradually the other dogs, lacking incentive, ceased their din, and the night was still again. The brothers looked up at the barn. The main doors, wide and double, ^were closed. Barry tried them. They held. He led the way around a corner. Above an old stone wall the glass of a window reflected the moon. He mounted the wall and reached up. As luck would have it, the window gave. In another moment he was sprawling across the sill, straining his gaze into a great void. Save where the moon rays slanted across a whitewashed wall and shad- owy farm machinery, he could see nothing. But he heard a stirring in straw and the breathing of many cattle. He straddled the sill, and, dropping in, landed on [63] BARRY GORDON a mound of hay. Righting himself, he went to the big doors, shot back the bolt, parted them, and whistled. Tom came around into the barn. Pulling the doors nearly shut, Barry stood at the crack and looked toward the dwelling-house. His gaze was on the main gateway. " We'll have to take turns keeping an eye out for Pierce," he said. He consulted a large gold-faced watch, which had been his father's. " You're tuckered, Tom, so you go to sleep first. I'll wake you at three; then you keep guard till daylight. Whichever sees Pierce coming lets the other know. There's a pile of hay under the window." " All right," said Tom, and started for bed. Half- way he hesitated. " Barry ! " "What?" Tom returned to him. " Barry, you're a brick, and I'm not. I'm no good at this kind of thing." Barry smiled. That was like Tom. He had faults, but he acknowledged them. He had a sort of courage that seemed to Barry greater than his own. He was open, transparent, white, without shadows, without mysteries of nature and experience. Barry turned and looked at his brother affection- ately in silence. Tom's hair shone in the moonlight like pale gold. It suggested their mother the image of her [64] BARRY GORDON graven on Barry's mind by his father. He remembered the description " with hair as much like daytime as yours is like night." He turned away again. " You needn't be sorry," he said, gazing off wist- fully. " You're worth dozens of me." Too sleepy to protest in words, Tom shook his head, sought the hay, and in a moment lay asleep. Barry stood long at the crack, then paced to and fro in the darkness, with only the breathing and stir- ring and cud-chewing of the unseen herd to break the silence of his vigil. In moments of waiting his thoughts had a way of roving far afield, even while he stuck alertly to his post. It was as if he were split into two selves the under self keen and ready, the upper self tossing on a sea of dreams. So it was to-night. While he watched he dreamed, imagined himself a sentinel in war, peo- pled the night with opposing forces, dotted the lawn with friendly bivouacs, and filled the outlying dark- ness with hostile ambuscades. The dreams were fluid. Shrubs and bushes stole nearer, and the shadows length- ened toward him as the moon sank. Then action. The camp seemed to awake. He heard bugles call, horses stampede, musketry rattle, shells ex- plode. And now the old terrors, mixing with these, began to riot in his brain. The imaginary battle took [65] BARRY GORDON on a more terrible significance. It became historic, a battle in the Civil War; and the friendly troops were Gordon's Raiders, and there in the thick of it all, towering on a charger and fighting gloriously, rode his father. Then suddenly the scene dissolved. He saw a man with a glass, drunkenly confronting a vicious portrait on the wall. Sick at heart, he tried to regain his first phantasm. He had a swift, fierce desire to see the battle- horse rear, as in paintings, and his father fall mor- tally wounded a martyred hero of the Civil War. How much better! How much better than this orgy of portraits, capering monkey-like around the crazed figure he had once worshipped and still loved ! He staggered against the door and clinched his fist. As he did so, the bite of his nails on his palm seemed to awake him. Though his eyes had not once been closed, he thought he must have been asleep he, a sentinel! He deserved to be drummed out of camp, his sword broken. What a way to start on his life struggle ! At three he woke Tom, and, throwing himself down on the hay, sank into a troubled sleep. Tom kept guard methodically, reliably. Discovering a bag of meal, he dragged it to the door, and, seating himself at the crack, pinched himself at regular in- tervals to keep awake. He thought about nothing but [66] BARRY GORDON breakfast, and cocked an eye now and then at the main gateway. When finally the gray light rose and spread across the lawn, he went and touched Barry, who sat up and muttered inaudibly. Believing him awake, Tom lay down beside him, famished for forty winks, and again slept. Barry, slightly disturbed as if in a dream, also lay back again and slept slept till at last he heard a sound, and a gradual light stole across his eyes. He woke slowly and looked up. The doors were wide open, admitting a flood of sunshine to the barn. Outside stood a young girl, gazing in at him as though from the heart of the dawn. [67] CHAPTER III THEIR FIRST MEETING. BARRY SEES A METAPHORICAL RAINBOW AND STRIVES TO GRASP IT, BUT BREAK- FAST INTERVENES ALSO TOM BARRY sat up, noticed that Tom was still asleep, and rose, dazed. He had dimly seen her somewhere before. They stood awkwardly silent a moment, the girl wondering, Barry apologetic and shy. Then he in- stinctively began to feel that though he must have seemed little better than a tramp who had stolen a night's lodging, she was neither afraid nor unfriendly. He raised his eyes and looked, and while he looked self-consciousness fell utterly away. He lost himself in a dumb gaze. The impression she made on him came swiftly and struck deep. It was not a definable im- pression he was too young for that but even then in his early youth, blind instinct made him hers. It seemed to suggest that if she only would, she could supply some need within him. She possessed him as the sight of a clear stream might possess a boy parched with thirst, or fire a boy chilled, or light a boy long shut in the dark. . [68] BARRY GORDON Through the black months since his father's death, crying needs like these, but far more poignant because spiritual, had tortured Barry, awake and asleep, up to this very moment. And now came the dawn of a spring day, not vaguely encouraging like all spring days, but embodied in a girl a girl of his own age a girl who, he felt, was somehow in accord with him. As for her looks, he could not have described them definitely. Her image merely floated on his retina. He was not yet old enough to be conscious of the details of this impression either; but later on, when again and again he recalled their first meeting, he interpreted it so vividly that the moment never died. This is the picture his memory painted in after years : She stood in a^ lake of sunshine, her figure against the sky. He saw that she was small and slender, and knew vaguely that the sunlight was in her black hair, shining there with a dark, cool lustre as he had seen it in pools in the woods. Her features were irregular, but so delicately drawn, or rather sketched, and in such harmony with the piquant littleness of her person, that her face had a rare magic as of adding to all beauty a new touch, light as air, poignant as pain. Her skin was very fair, and fine as rose-leaves ; her lips were red as a cardinal flower; her little tip-tilted nose was the perfect symbol of a whim. [69] BARRY GORDON Yet her piquancy was not conscious, but natural ; not of body only, but of spirit more; not a pose, but a poise. In the girls he had known among the sisters of his schoolmates, this sort of thing had hinted of high-heeled shoes, but in her it suggested wings. This elusive quality in her seemed to strike the very keynote of his nature. He had a feeling as of rising from a pit into infinity ; as of an actual winged ascent into an ether of cool light. Shame and horror were fall- ing away, and all ugliness. He was being drawn up into sheer purity. He did not seem to live. He saw nothing save her eyes ; knew nothing save that they drew him to her. They were not large eyes and not very dark, but their slight almond shape, long lashes, and finely etched brows imbued them with an elusive mystery. What their colour was he did not know, did not wonder. They were transfused, perhaps, with gray and green and hazel lights, but he knew only that they were looking at him. After a long moment of silence he saw them brighten, and she spoke. " I know who you are," she declared with sudden de- light. " You're Barry Gordon ! " Her glance sparkled at the bundle on the hay. " And there's Tom ! " Her voice was so like her gaze that Barry felt as if the light in her eyes had welled into speech. He heard [70] BARRY GORDON in it the spirit of this April morning laughter bright as tears. " How did you know? " he asked faintly. " I've seen you before," she said. His eyes were perplexed. He moved nearer to her across the threshold into the sunshine. " So have I seen you," he told her. Then suddenly his face cleared. " Ah, now I know at the game ! Jove, that's queer ! Are you Muriel Beekman ? " She nodded, and lightly held out her hand to him. Coming close to her he clasped it shyly, and the friendly contact sent so warm a balm through his veins that he forgot to release it. As their recognition deepened he became bolder. His grasp grew so fervent that at last he hurt her, and felt her little hand flutter- ing in his palm like a caught bird. Shame-struck, he let it slip away and stood so forlornly downcast that Muriel laughed. " You funny fellow ! " Hurt, he raised his eyes. "Why am I funny?" " Because you're so sorry." Her face fell serious, but was still kind and natural. " If you weren't sorry, it wouldn't be funny at all." Her lashes did not droop; she looked at him with a quiet candour more tantalising than any coquetry. Barry suddenly felt a new power in him something [71] BARRY GORDON dynamic and amazing something capable of conquer- ing the world. " I'm not sorry," he said deliberately ; " I'm glad ! " He did not quite know what Muriel did then, but it seemed like the closing of a flower's petals or the flicker- ing of a light. " Muriel," he said, as if calling. Then again she laughed, and her laugh made every- thing happy and real. " How long have you been here ? " she asked simply. " All night," said Barry. " Why didn't you come to the house? " " We arrived too late." " Poor Barry, you must be hungry." Now that everything was so enchantingly practical, her voice, which had before dissolved him into vaporous soul-stuff, suddenly gave him a huge appetite. " I am ! " he exclaimed ardently. " Come," said Muriel, " let's wake Tom." Barry demurred. It was nice to be entranced by these cheery prosaics, far better than to risk losing her in air; but he balked at waking Tom. Tom, much as he loved him, would be one mere fact too many. Wake him, and the idyll would collapse. " I think," said he, " Tom really needs sleep." Once more Muriel laughed at him. She looked down at Tom and affectionately spoke his name. [72] BARRY GORDON " Don't ! " Barry besought her. But his plea seemed only to spur her on. She was now determined to wake Tom. Barry turned away chagrined, too inexperienced to know that femininity should be read backwards, like Yiddish. " Tom, wake up ! " said Muriel with exasperating in- terest. " It's time for breakfast, Tom. Wake up ! " Barry felt that she was bending over and gently touching the bright fair boy in the hay. He turned forlornly to look. As Tom sat up and rose, wondering, those two seemed a pair to him, both made of the sun- light and the spring day and he a superfluous shadow. He stepped out into the farmyard trying to assume a strolling air, an interest in the trees and in a small far cloud that drifted like a puff of smoke across his vision. But this painful excursion, robbing him of their words, filled him with imaginings still more unhappy. Their voices and laughter were eloquent of greetings so mutually pleasant. And when they came from the barn into the farmyard, talking intimately, and he saw her hand resting on Tom's shoulder, he felt lonelier still. Nevertheless he kept a calm front, joined them as if he had forgotten them, and politely asked Tom how he had slept. Tom, conscious of nothing but the hand on his shoulder, was not even puzzled by this punctiliousness. [73] BARRY GORDON He replied affably that he had slept well, and they started for the house, Muriel sandwiched between them. " Are you very hungry? " she asked Tom. " You bet I am ! " he exclaimed, carefully keeping step with her so as not to lose her hand from his shoulder. " It's very early," she said, " but we'll have breakfast right off. It doesn't matter as long as father's away." " Away ! " exclaimed Barry, taken aback, and Tom whistled. Muriel looked perplexed and was about to ask lead- ing questions ; but Barry began talking volubly. " What a bully old house ! How long have you been here? You live in New York in winter, don't you? It must be fine in New York so many theatres and people and things to do." His words were racing with the thoughts he imagined she was thinking. " I've decided to live there myself some day." For a moment she made no reply to this loquacity, but when she did she caught him up into the seventh heaven of delight. " Yes," she said bashfully, "you are going to live there with us" His eyes brightened. Suddenly across the inscrutable future there stretched a rainbow. In the few minutes of their walk to the house Muriel [74] BARRY GORDON afforded the two brothers quick glimpses into the present condition of her little world. They learned that her father, who was the president of a railroad and a man of affairs, had returned from abroad the week be- fore. Since then he had been kept in New York on business, and she had come to the country ahead of him to open the house. Her mother, who seemed to be a scholarly woman, very unusual and independent, was still in Europe and might stay there for months or even years. This was all elicited and conveyed almost without con- versation, without a single completed sentence. The in- tercourse of bees could scarcely have been more im- palpable. It was all in the gossamer language of youth. Muriel darted from fact to fact as lightly as a humming bird touches flowers, though so vividly that Barry and Tom already felt at home. When they came to the quaint old house, Muriel went ahead into a long low-studded hall, rang for a servant and told her to show them to certain guest-rooms. Tom, impatient for breakfast, hurried up-stairs, but Barry hung back on the porch. Muriel looked down at him inquiringly from the door- step. " Aren't you coming, Barry? What's the matter? " " I don't know. I don't think I have any right to. If your father was here it would be different ; but you see, [75] BARRY GORDON if Pierce comes, you won't know what to do. It will be an awful bother for you." " Who's Pierce ? " she asked, with a pretty frown of bewilderment. " Pierce is a fish ! He's the principal of St. Clement's." He hesitated. " I say, Muriel don't go back on us, will you ? " Then the whole story burst from him honestly. 4k The fact is we had to cut and run. A fellow said some- thing I couldn't stand, so I knocked him out ; but it wasn't the fight that made me leave. It was the thing he said. I couldn't bear to stay there another minute." As he looked up at her his dark face, not handsome but very striking, was strained with appeal; his dark variable eyes seemed to crave her good will. " Muriel," he said, " I don't care a bit about Pierce if only you won't go back on me I mean on us. Or if you do go back on me, I hope you won't on Tom. Tom didn't do anything." She looked at him with more interest then than she had shown at all, and her eyes though bashful were kind. From her father she had learned that Barry and Tom were slightly older than she; but her summers alone with him here, while her mother restlessly travelled abroad, had developed her beyond her years. In New York, where she went to a fashionable day-school, it was all very different ; but here she lived a life within her- self a life of dreams and books and thoughts that [76] BARRY GORDON seemed to her very deep and wonderful. So she felt both younger and older than these bewildering new- comers. She spoke at last with a clear sweet earnestness, a wave of colour rising from her neck even to the tips of her little ears. " Barry," she said, " I don't like many people. I think I'm too reserved. I never talk to any one in the world about my true self, or the things I dream about, or anything very serious, because oh, I suppose it's just because I am /. But I do want to tell you that my father loved yours very dearly. The other day when he spoke of his death, his voice was unlike any voice I had ever heard. When he spoke of you and Tom, he said, ' Muriel, those boys are left to me as a sacred trust. I appoint you co-trustee.' " She smiled. " Father, you see, is a business man and talks like that. I didn't know at first what he meant, but he said he meant " she paused, her colour deepening " he meant that he and I must take care of you as we do of each other." Barry's heart rose to his eyes and seemed to outpour to her. She timidly drew back. He stepped up to the threshold as if longing to sur- render himself to her, soul and body. Now she felt as if she had suddenly become much younger than he, and she was vaguely disturbed. But she had a light and [77] BARRY GORDON casual way with her that seemed to Barry a sort of impalpable armour. She turned away from him toward the dining-room. " Barry," she said, " if you don't hurry, you won't be ready for breakfast ! " [78] CHAPTER IV CONCERNING MR. BEEKMAN, AND HOW THE PART IN HIS HAIR FASCINATED BARRY. A POINTED INTERVIEW. LIFE IS EVIDENTLY A SERIOUS BUSINESS, BUT THERE GOES MURIEL WITH TOM! SOON after breakfast, Peter Best, the English gardener, brought in an armful of flowers. Muriel was arranging them in bowls and vases, and Barry and Tom were helping her with awkward eagerness, when wheels crunched on the gravelled drive. Muriel flew to the door. Through the window, the two boys saw a groom jump from the rear of a dog-cart and go to the horse's 4iead, then a tall gentleman, dropping the reins, stepped down to the porch, and Muriel on tip- toe threw her arms about his neck. They saw her whisper in his ear, saw him nod and pat her, and heard him laugh. As Mr. Beekman entered the room, he wore a frown, with a smile playing under it. Tom saw only the frown and lost his sturdy look. Barry felt the inner smile, and quickly returned it. Mr. Beekman frowned the more at this. He shook hands in silence, first with Tom. Then he drew back a step and studied him. [79] BARRY GORDON " Your mother's son," he said at length, half to him- self, and his strong, impressive face seemed to soften as Barry had seen his father's face soften under the spell of some gentle memory. " If looks count," he said slowly, " you're a safe risk." Tom smiled up at him, reassured. He did not quite understand, but the remark seemed encouraging. Barry was lost in admiration of Muriel's father. Peculiarly enough, the first thing he noticed about him was the part in his hair. It looked so exactly straight that Barry thought he must have been at great pains to contrive it. From that admirable part over one temple his iron-gray hair lay like a sword-blade across his fore- head. What with this and his autocratic eyes and erect carriage, his good clothes looked so much a part of him that the fact that he dressed well seemed to go without saying. Altogether Mr. Beekman had a strong fine finish about him, like a model dynamo or well-made rifle. And when he talked, his vibrant voice seemed not only to be speaking but recording truths as little to be dis- puted as the Ten Commandments. Each word seemed to speed through his mind and come out like minted gold, stamped with authority and ringing true. Turning from Tom, Mr. Beekman waited, and when Barry came forward, he bent an ironical gaze on the [80] BARRY GORDON boy as if challenging him to show in a look what stuff he was made of. The challenge was accepted unflinchingly. Barry's eyes narrowed and gave back as good as they got. Then Mr. Beekman smiled and Barry smiled, and they seemed to warm to each other. " A chip of the old block," said Mr. Beekman to him- self ; " a magnificent gamble ! " He turned immediately and led the way to another room. " Come, Barry, we'll talk business in the library." The interview was short and pointed. Mr. Beekman did not even seat himself. He stood with an impenetrable look, facing his ward. This made it incumbent on Barry to speak first a necessity that seemed cruel but soon began to stimulate his courage. " Mr. Beekman, I'm in a mess." Mr. Beekman nodded, as if in recognition of a per- fectly self-evident fact. " Then you've heard ? " asked Barry. " Yes." " I suppose Muriel told you. What did she want you to do send me back? If she did, I'll go like a shot." Mr. Beekman slowly lifted his eyebrows. " What if 7 want you to go back ? " " Then I'll have to." " Yes. You understand your position perfectly. And [81] BARRY GORDON whatever Muriel's immature views may be, they are overbalanced by those of Mr. Pierce." Barry started. " Then you've heard from him? " " Yes. I found a telegram waiting for me at the station." " I'll bet he's hot." " Yes, he advises stern measures." " Hang old Pierce! How about the cad I struck? Did I hurt him much? " Mr. Beekman kept evasively silent, knitting his straight iron-gray brows. He was lost in thought so long that Barry, with sudden impatience, dropped the whole troublesome matter from his mind. As this left him care-free and more observant of externals, his glance again lit on Mr. Beekman's head. Mr. Beekman frowned uneasily. " What are you thinking about ? " The question caught Barry back into the whirlpool. " Nothing. At least I'd rather not tell. It might seem rude " " Out with it ! I've got to fathom you." When Barry confessed, he did so whole-heartedly. " I was thinking," said he, " that I wished to good- ness my hair would lie down as flat as yours." Without the slightest change of expression Mr. Beek- man gazed at him. Finally he said : [82] BARRY GORDON " Barry, you're as hard to guess on as the wheat crop. I suppose all wild-oat crops are, but I'm bullish on you. I'm going long of wild oats. The yield may not be large, and the price is always high. You'll find that out when you have to pay it." Barry looked puzzled but somewhat encouraged, and replied to these vague oracles specifically and to the point. " Then I didn't hurt him much? " " No," said Mr. Beekman. " And you're not going to send me back? " Mr. Beekman drew from his breast-pocket a silver case, took out a cigarette, neatly went through a like process with a match-box and match, and was soon ex- haling films of smoke. These films greatly exasperated Barry by veiling his fate. At last he desperately cried out : "Mr. Beekman what are you going to do? I own up I've raised Cain at school ever since I've been there." Mr. Beekman heaved a short sigh of relief, as if he had been waiting and hoping for this. Then he re- sponded quietly: " Let me congratulate you on this confession." " Yes, but just the same," said Barry with a last flash, " Pierce is a fish ! " Mr. Beekman smiled indulgently, as though nothing [83] BARRY GORDON mattered now that he had accomplished some hidden end. " Why did you hit that fellow? " he asked. Barry hesitated. Deep reserve and the remembrance of Meade's soul-stinging exposure kept him silent. " What had he done? " urged Mr. Beekman. Barry's face flushed. When he answered, he spoke low and bitterly. " He said things about my father." Mr. Beekman started, looked as if he had inwardly sworn, and tossing his cigarette into the fireplace, put his hands on Barry's shoulders. " Then I don't blame you ! I don't blame you ! Barry, you defended the memory of my best friend." Then, with a sudden change to briskness, he said : " You go to college next autumn, don't you ? That was your father's plan, I believe. I understand you took your preliminaries last year and go up for your finals next month. Can you pass them ? " " I usually slide through my exams." " Then I shall write to Mr. Pierce and say you will not return to school. For the next few months we want you and Tom here with us. We want to absorb you into the family." Barry moved closer, full of gratitude; but all he could say was: " Thank you, Mr. Beekman, we want to be here." [84] BARRY GORDON " Remember two or three things," said his guardian, seeking refuge from the moment's embarrassment by gliding into generalities. " Life's a business, and we're all employees of the Owner of this business. At the end He wants a clean balance-sheet. Your duty may be to work. If it is, work hard. If it's to play, play virtuously. Your wages may be high, they may be low; but what- ever you do, don't join the ranks of the unemployed cynics. Don't complain and send the business to the demnition bow-wows. In other words, don't go out on strike ! " He paused. To his surprise, his homily seemed to have fallen on deaf ears. Barry's gaze had drifted past him to the window and was now held by something in the outer day. Puzzled by the look of loneliness in his eyes, Mr. Beekman turned to the window. Far in a meadow Muriel was wandering with Tom. Mr. Beekman turned back to Barry. " Go out to them," he said kindly. " You and Tom are now Muriel's brothers." [85] CHAPTER V BARRY AND TOM IN THE SAME BOAT. THEIR EARLIEST FIRES. MURIEL, ALTERNATES. HER LITTLE SONG A first, Barry and Tom were content to share Muriel's comradeship. From morning to night, walking or driving or picnicking in the woods, both were with her. On stormy days the three often foraged through the book-shelves, and for hours Muriel, curled up in a big armchair, read aloud. Those were happy days for all of them half lived, half dreamed. But then the pent-up life of spring burst into summer, and the world blazed, and sparks from the conflagration lit on the two brothers and started their earliest fires. They began to chafe in their double harness. Getting wilfully out of step they strained away from each other like fractious colts, until Muriel was at her wits' end for a way to manage them. At last there was nothing for it but to take them singly, which she tried. Near the house stood a grove of pine-trees, their lower boughs lopped off to the height of a room. The grove was carpeted with the trees' aromatic needles and [86] BARRY GORDON roofed by the branches patched with sky. On warm nights this was their favourite haunt. One evening Muriel was lying in the hammock, idly gazing up between two pines whose peaks, like tall, black spires, pierced the heavens. For a long time she had not spoken, but when at last she did speak it was like the kindling of a little light in the dark grove. " What stars ! " she mused. " What stars ! They are hanging on the pines just like candles on a Christmas- tree." Tom, starting up, was plainly baffled. " I don't see what you mean," said he. " They're so far away." Muriel smiled dreamily. " No, they're not. We could shake them off the tree like fruit, and piok them up and eat them. How do you think they'd taste?" " Sour," gloomily replied Barry, whose stars were still unripe. " No," said Muriel, " sweet; wouldn't they, Tom? " Tom's brows were puckered. " What are you both driving at ? " " I don't know," she responded idly. " What do you think they seem like guardian spirits ? " Tom glanced up for a trial flight. " More like like diamonds," he concluded helplessly, with dragging wings. [87] BARRY GORDON " Oh, no ; did you ever see diamonds look at you?" Drawing closer to her, Tom crooked his neck to gaze at them from her view-point. His attitude was so full of awkward eagerness to understand her whimsical fancy that Muriel laughed at him. Tom rose and withdrew to a distance, much hurt. Then, for the first time since the beginning of this star-gazing, Barry made a show of studying the heavens. " I know what they're like," he said, " just because sometimes they do seem to look at me." " What are they like ? " asked Muriel with hushed daring. " Eyes," he declared in a voice tremendously im- personal. " Of course eyes," she replied lightly. " Look up there. Do you see those two close together? " He had moved his chair nearer to the hammock, and was gazing down at her. " Yes," he said almost inaudibly. " I see them." Her lashes fluttered, and she set the hammock swing- ing gently. " Oh, Muriel " "Well?" " Won't you be kinder to me? " " Yes, Barry, if you'll be good." [88] BARRY GORDON " If you were kind, Muriel, I couldn't help being good." " Oh, I don't mean that," said Muriel, still swinging. " I mean you must be less " her voice was very low " less frightening. To tell the truth," she added quickly, " I think you're a spoiled boy." " If I am, it isn't you who've spoiled me. Besides, I'm not a boy." " Oh, aren't you? " This with a note of supreme in- difference that exasperated him, as she meant it should. Before he knew it he had grasped the edge of the hammock to stop her airy swinging. " No, Muriel, I'm not. You don't know all I've been through. And, Muriel, you don't know how desperately I long " What he longed for, he had no chance to name. As it came to the tip of his tongue she tried to swing, but he gripped the hammock, holding it motionless, and this so angered her that she jumped up and flitted past him, calling to Tom: " Tom, I can name more stars than you can ! " Tom was instantly hers again. He saw she was making for the wide lawn, and jumped hastily to his cue. " I'll bet you can't ! " he exclaimed, his voice respon- sively eager; and together they strolled out into the evening. [89] BARRY GORDON As the two drifted away from him, Barry rose and went heartsick to bed. After that there was a change. Barry, unselfish, sen- sitive, and passionately considerate of those dear to him, began to efface himself for her sake and Tom's. She was happier alone with Tom, he felt, and Tom alone with her. Down deep he loved Tom with an elder brother's love, and as for Muriel already her happiness was his first law. Then, to his surprise, she suddenly seemed to like him better than before; seemed even to take pleasure in his companionship. When he wandered off by himself into the woods, she sometimes sent Tom to search for him. Next she and Tom came together; and finally one day she came alone, and when she found him laughed at him, calling him an owl, an old hermit. Then again, just when she seemed to feel fonder of him, and he took heart and showed his feelings, she be- came as indifferent as before. And so it went. Though with Tom she was always equable and grew constantly more dependent upon his staunch good spirits, with the impetuous Barry her moods were so variable that in the end he was like a flame played on by all the winds of heaven. He was not blind. He saw that she had vanity and inwardly delighted in his worship. He saw that she was [90] BARRY GORDON nervously sensitive and timid, although when the case demanded she came to the scratch with a pluck which made him feel a coward by comparison. He saw, too, that she was not always pretty, and he wondered why her magic worked why he was always, always irresistibly drawn close to her. At times she was without a ray of beauty. When she was tired or the day very dull, or some village caller bored her with stupid gossip, Muriel looked almost plain. And yet this very changeableness, even this fleeting plainness, somehow fascinated his soul more than her most radiant moments. Muriel, however, did not consciously play with him. Her nature played with him. She always treated him on the impulse of the moment, as her nature prompted. At least she thought so, and she was not without a certain autocratic belief Jn the divine right of Muriel. The things she said and did she thought she said and did because she was Muriel Beekman, not because she was merely a girl blossoming into womanhood, and still less because he was Barry Gordon. She was the individual, he merely man in the making at first. But there came times when this relationship seemed to be reversed and she felt merely girlish, while he seemed staggeringly in- dividual the most compelling personality in the world, not even excepting herself. At these moments she treated him outrageously, and knew it and was not sorry. But Barry was, and some- [91] BARRY GORDON times almost hated her for the wounds she dealt him. He suffered not only from her preference for Tom and reliance on Tom's quieter devotion, but because she was so sufficient unto herself. Although at times companion- able, there were other times when she would slip away from both of them and go to walk alone, entirely in- dependent of the world in general and of him in par- ticular. In these moods she was perfectly happy in her own society, and he began to be jealous of her thoughts her inner life. Even when with him she was often detached and im- personal, far more interested in little abstract questions than in him. The discussion of these matters began to form his philosophy and develop his imagination ; but he was not conscious of this and kept trying to sound the personal note, no matter how far-fetched it seemed. One evening their last at the old place that summer she shyly unfolded to him some of her quaint imagin- ings. This showed, although neither realised it, how in- timately she included him in her inner life her natural reserve was so intense. Never before had she shared with any one her sweet, foolish, girlish philosophising. But on this last night her nature partly opened to him, and, though their talk was too vague and youthfully evan- escent to be recorded in cold print, something of its shimmer may be caught at random. [92] BARRY GORDON She indulged in all manner of preposterous fancies situations fraught with perplexity and pain. Life with its sorrows was as yet a mere figment of her imagina- tion. Little could she foresee the actual ordeals hidden deep in her future. Yet her problems seemed real. Deeply troubled, she told him she feared that, if she had been an early Christian, she would never have had courage to die a martyr to the faith. She confessed that this ap- palling question often worried her at night. Barry knew she was yielding him a glimpse of her secret heart ; and this rare moment, which to Tom would have been incomprehensible and to older people amusing, was to him sacred. Dear wonderful Muriel! What could he say ? It seemed useless to try to reassure her, she took this martyr question so seriously. He said, as a matter of fact, that he did not believe the occasion would ever have arisen. They would never have persecuted her. She would merely have looked at them and they would have all turned Christian even Nero. She said he evidently didn't know Nero. He admitted as much, but ardently observed that he knew Muriel Beekman. This she questioned, pointing out how impossible it was since she did not know herself. Then she returned to her imaginary tests of character, little dreaming of the actual tests to come. Take the French Revolution, for example. Would she have died, she wondered, with [93] BARRY GORDON the nonchalant air of her fellow aristocrats? On the whole, she considered the Paris mob and guillotine more horrible than the Roman arena. Could he think of any worse fate? Barry told her she was the most extraordinary girl he had ever known. He said yes, he could imagine a fate far crueler and he frowned at her significantly. Thereupon she shied off to a species of spiritual tor- ment. With a genuinely deep, even troubled feeling peculiar to her in all her imaginings, she asked wist- fully: " Suppose there are two men and each loves the same girl with all his soul, and the girl loves one of the men with all hers, then if love is eternal and life in heaven perfectly happy, how can the man the girl doesn't love ever get there? " She put this tragic problem quite impersonally ; but Barry replied that he wished she wouldn't suggest such an awful thing, because he himself might some day be the man who Then he looked at her so sorrowfully that she darted away to another favourite question a question that evidently bothered her. She wanted to know if he thought a man who had once been wicked could ever be better than a man who had always been good? Whether certain of the Saints, of whom she had hazy notions that somehow they hadn't been exemplary in youth, were [9*3 BARRY GORDON better than untempted angels? Take, for instance, St. Augustine and Gabriel. To this ethical poser Barry, remembering his father's discourse, pointedly answered that he supposed it de- pended entirely on the girl. And he leaned toward her so fervently, so beseechingly, that she skimmed off into some vague observation about feeling terribly guilty when she thought to herself if she had been a man in- stead of a woman what a bad man she might have been ! Pie responded to this that if she had been a man, he, Barry, would have committed suicide. Then he grew gloomy, depressed by thoughts of the long months of separation already at hand. " Muriel," he began, " to go back to love " " Don't let's," said Muriel. " To go back to love," he persisted, " what do you think about it? " Muriel rose and wandered away from him singing to herself a little song in a haunting way, half airy, half sad: "How do I know what love may be? Heigh-ho! Saw you a fire-fly in the dark? Saw you a moonbeam on the sea? Heard you the singing of a lark? No less or more is love to me. Heigh-ho!" [95] BOOK III THE FALL CHAPTER I COLLEGE IN A NUTSHELL. BARRY GROWS RESTLESS. LOVE AND THE WANDERLUST. HE OBEYS HEAVEN BUT NOT THE FACULTY AND THERE'S THE DEVIL TO PAY THE years immediately following that first sum- mer passed like a light sleep, and the morning of life broadened. At college, Tom, inspired by Mr. Beekman, had taken a course in civil engineering. The future lay bright before him. He was to serve his apprenticeship in the West, on one of Mr. Beekman's roads. Later, if he proved competent, and if certain plans ma- tured, there might be an excellent opportunity for him abroad. A syndicate of French and American capitalists, headed by Mr. Beekman, hoped to ob- tain certain large concessions in Africa, and Tom was to take part in the surveys and construction- work. " When a railroad first goes to a place," Mr. Beek- man had said to him, " go there ahead of it, and if you're awake your fortune's made." Barry's career at college seemed less promising. He made a name in athletics, but in studies, as he himself [99] BARRY GORDON put it, he only slid through. Yet the classical course he took was not without results. Though it did not appear to prepare him for any definite pursuit, it vastly broadened his outlook on life. Under the influence of all he read, he began to grow restless. The wandering and adventurous spirit of his ancestors slowly but surely awoke in him, and he longed to see the world. Often he would surround himself with books of travel and maps, ancient and modern, and go roaming in fancy over all the earth. His enthusiasm was so warm and contagious that even Jim Hicks, the least imaginative of his classmates, caught the fever. Jim's father was a congressman, and might be able to get him a post at some consulate or embassy. " Barry, you're right," said Hicks one night, fired by the wanderlust. " No coop of an office here will do ! " Barry nodded. " Hum-drum money-getting," he said, " is all rot. If you've got to add two and two all your life, what's the use of being born? I'd rather subtract one," he added whimsically. They sat and smoked their pipes with slow, rumi- native puffs. At last Hicks said : " By thunder, Barry, I wish we could cut loose to- gether!" Barry nodded. He was too kind-hearted to suggest [100] BARRY GORDON that all his hopes centred on a travelling companion even more desirable than Hicks. In every imagined journey he included Muriel. When the time came if by any chance she should choose him instead of Tom or some one else he would take her far away with him to all the Old-World cities he had dreamed of. He and she would go down to tideless seas and classic shores. They would wander into distances as yet unmarred by railroads. He had built the dream so graphically that it almost seemed reality. Yet of late his visits to the Beekmans* winter home in New York had been less and less fre- quent. He believed Muriel preferred his brother. Tom's unimportunate devotion seemed more acceptable to her. She was not so much disturbed by it. She was at an age that demanded enjoyment as its right. Her mother had returned from abroad, and Muriel was soon to come out into society. This kept her busy with milliners and dressmakers, wholly engrossed in a perfectly natural and healthy interest in the coming gaieties of her first season. So Barry's love had little to feed on save the dream. Yet Muriel unconsciously influenced him in many ways. His maturing love for her inspired not only dreams, but a very practical code of living. And the memory of his father's confession and death gave him strength to live up to this code rigidly. [101] BARRY GORDON That memory was no longer bitter and distracting. As time went on it fell into true perspective, and he knew in his heart that his father had done him as good a turn as ever a father did a son. They say nearly every one in college loved Barry Gordon a fellow in mind and spirit older than most, but in buoyancy, dash, and innocent recklessness as young as any. He had many moods, and was sometimes very reserved ; but when after a game or race, his youth surged to the surface, they knew he did not keep straight merely because he was tame by nature. And so they forgave him his virtue, and though he was steady he was popular. But this code of his was limited more or less to ques- tions of morals. He kept the Ten Commandments, and several others into the bargain, but there were some commandments he did not keep. He had an impetuous disregard for the mandates of the faculty. As Hicks put it, a man like Barry had to let off steam somehow. In his final year a breach of the lesser law got him into trouble, and a ready observance of the higher law left him there. Meade, after repeated attempts, had at last entered college. Meade was a cad and a ready mark for energetic Sophomores. There were stories of certain shady prac- tices. He had welched on a bet and dealt queerly in a game of poker. [102] BARRY GORDON One night there came a secret but hot fracas. The Freshman class was the target of the Sophomore class, and Meade, so to speak, the bull's-eye. To the aid of the Freshmen came many Juniors, to the aid of the Sopho- mores many Seniors among them Hicks and Barry. The next day Meade was a sorry sight not seriously hurt but soundly punished. The thing caused a great commotion. The president was up in arms. He had but just put a ban on hazing. Who had done this outrageous thing? Who were the ringleaders? Meade said he was not sure, and that was true. It had been too dark, the affair too whirling and quick. He said he had recognised no one except a Senior named Barry Gordon, and that was not true; but the random shot hit the mark. Barry was summoned at once before the president and several members of the faculty. Had he been in the row of the night before? Yes, more or less. Who else in his class? That was telling. Yes, and he must tell. Not by a long sight ! What did they take him for ? They took him for a student subject to the rules of the college and the expedient dictates of the moment. The president was determined to stamp out hazing. If Mr. Gordon did not name his fellow-hazers, he would [103] BARRY GORDON lose his degree; he would be expelled. That would also mean his exclusion from other colleges. They gave him his choice and he took it without question. Very well, then, he would lose his degree and be ex- pelled and black-listed. That morning Barry left college, never to return. [104] CHAPTER II A DIVORCEE DRESSES A DEBUTANTE SEVERAL intimate friends had come to see Muriel dressed for her debut. First at one mirror, then at another, in her white bedroom, she watched the process with dreamy interest, while her French maid hooked, pinned, and deftly pecked at her and the critics made feverish suggestions. Two of these ladies-in-waiting were the Morrison twins a pair of fair-haired worshippers at Muriel's shrine. Drooping girls, rather anaemic, and quietly adoring, they looked like a couple of pre-Raphaelite angels, and few save Muriel could tell them apart. Another of Muriel's attendants was Kitty Van Ness, a cousin, who from the first had assumed undisputed command. Between her and the rest lay the immeasur- able years of wisdom-getting that stretch between the late teens and the early twenties. Practice had made her perfect at the feminine game. Experience bitter ex- perience had taught her many things. Marriage and divorce had doubled for her the ordinary schooling of a young woman. And yet nothing really objectionable in the way of scandal clung to her. She had merely been [105] BARRY GORDON unlucky in the choosing of a husband too buoyantly sanguine of the male sex. So she held up her head and laughed at life and, backed by a free conscience, made herself out far worse than she was merely to appall the gossips. Her twenty-five years fitted her as becomingly as her clothes without the trace of an undesirable line or a worn look. It was, in fact, as if she had just put on the years like her dress, and, by the innate art that goes with a dashing carriage, had hidden the seamy places under an air as bright as her ribbons. This air was in full play while Kitty directed the dressing of Muriel. It was nice, for once, to have a chance to be enthusiastic and see taste show. She would present to society a prize bud, a perfect debutante. No jealousy clouded this ambition. She loved Muriel and a bud's a bud but once. Then let her have her little radiant day! Only the meanest of woman-kind would deny it to her. Moreover, Kitty was a past master at the art of dress- ing, and the artist at the moment transcended the woman in her. She was working at the thing she loved best a serious, nerve-racking business. Her chatter rippled incessantly. " Suzette, the scissors ! Here ! Let me do that ! You're too French. You Parisians have none of the bud in- stinct." Suzette lifted her eyebrows cynically, shrugged, [106] BARRY GORDON and handed over the scissors. " You will suggest coquetry," said Kitty, snipping the air with her scis- sors preparatory to attacking Muriel. " Coquetry comes later. To-day dreams, an atmosphere of dreams and Mile. Muriel stepping out of them into the world. Here, throw these away ! " She ripped off a tiny butterfly bow from each of Muriel's shoulders and tossed them aside impatiently. " They're too piquant," she declared. " You have enough piquancy, Muriel, without them. That's not the key-note of to-day. The key-note is vague simplicity. The dreams are still clinging to you, Muriel. Here, Suzette, help me with this gauze." Kitty kneeled and smoothed down and stroked into place the filmy material that lay like a white mist over the skirt. As she rose she stepped back and viewed the picture. Her eyes lighted up and she smiled. " Halloa, Psyche ! " she said. Muriel blushed. " Psyche to the life," observed Kitty. " That's what you are Psyche with clothes on, the modern inter- pretation. Given a Cupid, he would fly to you through the air and bend over you, and well, after that," she said, " you would no longer be Psyche. That's the modern interpretation." Muriel seemed preoccupied, as if by something re- mote. [107] BARRY GORDON " Then you think I'll do ? " she asked, as unaffectedly as if speaking of another person. The Morrison twins stood side by side devouring her with their eyes. " Muriel, you're a love ! " murmured one. " You're a dream ! " murmured the other. Kitty pursed her lips and arched her brows. She had a way of salting insipid compliments. " And yet," said she, " yesterday you were quite un- noticeable, and to-morrow you may be even plain. I never saw such variableness in all my life." Muriel laughed unconcernedly and taking up a hand- mirror gazed at her back in the cheval glass. " Suzette," she said, " I'm not all hooked." Her maid, hastening behind her, fell to completing the intricate puzzle of hooks and eyes. At this moment in came Muriel's mother, a tall, high- bred woman, angular and sharp-featured. On the crown of her head Mrs. Beekman's silvery hair was reared in a majestic pile; but despite the glacial severity of this coiffure, and the lines of care on the brow beneath it, her skin was still soft, and her thin, hard lips suggested the merest ghost of a Cupid's bow. Kitty, who until now had not seen Mrs. Beekman since that wandering lady's long absence, went non- chalantly to her and welcomed her back from Europe. Mrs. Beekman responded with a polite kiss. [108] BARRY GORDON Kitty stood off and surveyed her admiringly. " Perfect ! " she exclaimed. " I always think of you in brocade, and maroon is certainly your colour." Mrs. Beekman began to melt, but at the sight of Su- zette's pained puzzling with Muriel's dress, she frowned. " Muriel," said she, " I wish you would wear clothes made according to more advanced standards. Your mother, Muriel, dresses herself entirely. My hooks, you see, are in front." " Yes, I see," said Kitty, with the faintest lift of her eye-brows. " After this, Muriel, I want your gowns cut like my own." " But, my dear Mrs. Beekman," protested Kitty, " the snugness of the fit, you know the bust the curves ; She tightened in her figure with her hands at the waist to show how much better the front of a woman appears with the line of hooks relegated to the spinal column. " Immodest ! " declared Mrs. Beekman. " A young girl like Muriel should have no curves, and yours, so to speak, should be expurgated." Kitty laughed, blushed, and with another expressive shrug turned her back on the family censor. Drifting to the window, she looked out across Fifth Avenue and Central Park. [109] BARRY GORDON It was an afternoon late in November, and the trees had already lost their leaves. The fretwork of the branches looked like the scribbling of a giant pencil. Just beyond the wall was a pond where in summer children sailed toy boats. To-day the water was chill and gray. Kitty glanced up at the sky. " Too bad," she said. " It's clouding over." As she lowered her glance and looked down the avenue, she suddenly brightened. Barry and Tom were approaching the house. She turned to Muriel. " Here come the rivals," she said; and Muriel joined her at the window. " Tom's a dear," declared Kitty, looking down fondly at her favourite. " He walks like a soldier on the march." " And Barry," said Muriel, " like a soldier on a holiday." " Yes ; but they both look pretty serious," Kitty ob- served with meaning. " They have a determined air. Muriel, which is it to be? " Muriel, without answering, gazed off wistfully over the park through the complex tracery of branches. Her mother uttered an exclamation of annoyance. " Kitty," she said, " please don't put silly ideas into my daughter's head ! " Muriel, smiling, turned from the window. [110] BARRY GORDON " I wish I could wake up ! " she mused aloud. " I know just what a caterpillar feels like when it is turning into a butterfly." Then the front-door bell rang, and they saw her flush and quiver like a spray of sweet-peas in a breath of air. Turning she moved slowly from the room, with her eyes down. [Ill] CHAPTER III THE DUEL OF THE FLOWERS. MURIEL'S SONG RE- ECHOES, AND BARRY TEARS ASIDE A VEIL BELOW, on the ground floor, the large ballroom had been made ready for the reception. From their ormolu sconces scores of electric candles, backed by small mirrors and softly shaded, diffused a faint radiance over the white and gold wood-work and old rose damask of the walls. At the centre hung an im- mense cluster of starry bulbs and crystal prisms, spread- ing abroad a sort of magical effulgence like icicles in moonlight. Against the wall, at the edge of this en- chanted circle a gilt-framed French mirror, festooned with roses and flanked with palms, reflected the light and the soft colouring as if in deep vistas through which one might drift endlessly. As Muriel entered the room from the main doorway opposite this great looking-glass, she saw coming to- ward her out of the long vistas a figure which, though it was herself and strikingly vivid, seemed so unfamiliar that she stopped a minute to consider it. Within an hour she would be standing there, quailing under the gaze, as it seemed, of the whole world. [112] BARRY GORDON For a moment she had impulses positively cloistral. Girl-like, she had before this passed through the nun- phase of feminine youth ; and now she reverted to it. To abjure the world and all the vanities thereof man and his unknown powers; to yield one's self to spiritual things the higher life a vague transcendental seclu- sion ! Why all this dressing up, this show, this palatial room, and the crowd that would fill it? Why this almost public debut ? She had a wistful little longing for a nook she knew near a stream in the woods on the old Massachusetts farm. She gazed into the mirror as if into dim distances through which her image floated impalpably. It was as though the future lay hid there a mystery that lured her. But gradually she became conscious of a second image and then of a third, both of which drew near to her out of the far vistas of the looking-glass. Turning she saw Barry and Tom waiting, as if in touch with the spell. Immediately the mystical mood left her. She threw off the imaginary grim garb of the convent, and became in a moment as full of life as a bud bursting into flower. As she greeted them, Tom's honest face fairly beamed with admiration. She heard him exclaim in a bluntly complimentary way that delighted her. But Barry, avoiding her eyes, turned off to the window and looked out dumbly at the distant park. [113] BARRY GORDON The moment would have been awkward but for an im- mediate interruption. The bell again rang, and presently Burridge, the butler, passed the doorway carrying two white boxes, one very long, the other square and smaller. Tom impetuously went out into the hall, captured the boxes, and brought them back. " That Burridge," said he, " is too high-handed. He was told to bring these direct to you." Muriel's pulses quickened. She glanced at Barry. He was still at the window, looking out into the November grayness. For lack of a table in the bare ballroom, Tom crossed to the grand piano in a corner, and set down the boxes on it. As Muriel joined him, he pulled off the strings. She opened the larger first. " I hope you will like them," said Tom humbly. As she looked into the box her eyes shone. It was filled with American Beauty roses bursting buds and regal, full-blown flowers the conventional big gift of a con- ventional big boy. She regarded them with sparkling admiration. " Tom," she said, " you're a dear ! What wonderful roses ! They are almost as tall as I am." " I suppose," said Tom, " they ought to be arranged with all the rest ; but, Muriel " his voice fell lower " won't you wear one or two ? " BARRY GORDON She was still looking at the roses. " It seems too bad," she said tactfully, " to cut the stems." With eager haste, Tom took a bud from the box and broke the stem off short. Then he held the bud out to her, ready and wearable. But she was looking at Barry's back. " Barry," she said gently, " why are you unsociable? What's the matter? There's a box of flowers here I haven't opened." Barry, turning from the window, came over to her. Tom, hurt, drew away a little with his rose. " Forgive me ! " Barry said ; then in a tone for her ears only : " Your beauty seemed so exquisite I could hardly bear it." Muriel breathed quicker and opened his box of flowers. They were white violets, not in a bunch, but strewn loose on a bed of maiden-hair fern. Catching up the box, Muriel buried her face in the frail blooms and drank deep draughts of their fra- grance. When at last she looked up at Barry her face was as pale as the violets, and something akin to their delicate moisture trembled in her eyes. Barry took out a few of the little flowers and fingered them tentatively. Then Tom, his honest soul troubled, came forward again with his rose and said quite openly : [115] BARRY GORDON " Muriel, which will you wear ? " At this moment, as luck would have it, Kitty Van Ness appeared in the doorway. Pausing, she smiled at the tableau. " What a picture ! " she cried vivaciously. " The maiden's choice ! What symbolism ! A red, red rose versus a bunch of white violets ! " They looked at her and laughed awkwardly, Muriel colouring to the tips of her ears. Kitty came forward with a manner more serious. " Not the rose, Muriel. The rose is too vivid. Not yet the rose. To-day the ethereal white violets." " Why? " demanded Tom, chagrined. " Come and arrange the flowers with me and I'll tell you," she said, putting an arm affectionately through his. " There's a vase in the drawing-room." Kitty had a way with her that could not be gainsaid, so Tom reluctantly followed her with the boxes. In the drawing-room, while they were arranging the flowers, he asked her why his roses were prohibited. " They are buds," he said, " and so is Muriel a bud." " Obviously," she replied. " That's the trouble it is too obvious. Besides, there are buds and buds. White violets, dear Tom, are more truly bud-like than any big rose-bud can hope to be. In the same way I've seen many a debutante a full blown rose, and many a dear little [116] BARRY GORDON old lady still not unlike a bud. Now, Tom, if you had given these American Beauties to a woman instead of a mere girl " instinctively she drew in her breath, slightly expanding her beautifully modelled breast " well, Tom, that would have been different." She picked up a rose, fondled it in her hand, sighed, and looked at him a moment with true womanly tender- ness, thinking him the fairest, most honest boy she had ever known a young angel in a world of old men. " I say, Kitty," he suddenly exclaimed enthusias- tically, " won't you wear that rose? " She shook her head, laughing. " Tom, you are so crude ! " she said. " If you had only done it better, you might have fooled me into wear- ing it. But on the whole I'm glad you didn't. The crude is very refreshing^ Tom. I've lived on caviare several years, and I'm simply famished for bread ! " She arranged the roses in a slender Venetian vase. " There, Tom," she said, " we'll entomb it your memory of her. Behold a love that blossomed into a red, red rose, and was entombed in a Venetian vase ! " Tom disliked this funereal symbolism. " No," he protested stoutly ; " it is not entombed, and never shall be ! " Muriel sat at the piano, the white violets on her breast, her fingers lightly dreaming over the keys. [117] BARRY GORDON It was the last half-hour of her girlhood. Before long the crowd would begin to come. Barry leaned on the piano, his eyes drinking deep of her beauty. She was playing very low in a minor key, and the wistful music, stealing through him, reawakened memories of their earliest companionship in the country. The spirit of the woods was in it, and of the meadows. He seemed to hear the faint stir of leaves and hidden streams, and the whisper of nature on summer evenings. " Muriel," he said, " I loved you that first summer, and I love you now." She did not look up. Gradually the music, though even softer than before, grew more coherent, and out of the memory of leaves and streams and summer evenings stole the memory of a song. Though she did not sing, he seemed to hear her voice. " How do I know what love may be ? Heigh-ho! Saw you a fire-fly in the dark? Saw you a moonbeam on the sea? Heard you the singing of a lark? No less or more is love to me. Heigh-ho!" " Muriel," said Barry, " that time is past. We were both children then, living in a mist, but now we're face to face with reality." [118] BARRY GORDON The music died. Muriel rose restlessly, and together they crossed the hall to a conservatory where they had often sat. There in a deep alcove, screened by tropical plants, he poured out his heart to her. " Muriel," he repeated, " I loved you then and I love you now and I shall always love you ! " They were standing close to each other, Muriel gazing into his eyes at last unflinchingly, he into hers with strained quiet. " I hope I'm not selfish to speak now. I hope it won't spoil your pleasure. There is no reason it should. You've always known it. I couldn't wait because it seemed to me that after the crowd came somehow you would be taken away from me." His voice was full of restrained strength and the calm of hopes long cherished against all misgivings. " Muriel," he suggested, smil- ing, " let's go out into life together ! " Slowly she shook her head. " I'm sorry, Barry, but it can't be. I don't know myself yet. You see, I've never lived. I've only dreamed; and the dreams have come to mean so much to me that I'm half afraid to prove them." Her lashes fluttered and drooped. " I confess love is no longer a mere moonbeam to me. I wish it were ! The trouble is that nowadays love seems everything worth having in life." Again she looked up at him, but now she had the troubled, wondering expression that had so often disheartened him. " But suppose," she said, [119] BARRY GORDON " it passes me by and I never know it, never have it ! I'm sure I'm not in love with you now so what can I say? What can I do?" She smiled helplessly, and he saw that she was still a child. He frowned, bewildered. He was not contending against a mere rival, but against Muriel herself her cloistral youth her veil. To tear this veil aside, to open these closed petals, would seem a profanation. He felt hopeless and could not answer. She looked up at him sympathetically. " Don't think I am silly, Barry, or unnatural. It's just my bringing up, you know, and my queer nature. Can't you understand? Don't you ever feel this way yourself? " Barry shook his head. " No ; I have dreams, but they are different they are vivid day-dreams, Muriel, real as life. When my father died, the vague dreams you speak of were brushed aside. I had a sudden awakening an awakening I can never tell you about. And ever since then the things I've been sure of I've been sure of and, Muriel, my love for you is the surest thing of all ! " His voice began to vibrate, her close presence to tell on him more than ever before. His blood ran warmer and warmer, his pulses hammered in him. Her loveliness was so pervasive and yet so intangible, her lips and eyes so near to him and so essential yet so far away ! [120] O Barry! How could you do it? Youve killed me," sJie said BARRY GORDON " I love you ! " he exclaimed. " I love you ! I know it as well as I know I'm living. You can't realise how I love you. Oh, if I could only tell you ! From that first moment when I saw your face in the crowd and won that game you have inspired me. My family, Muriel, has always been unrestrained and self-indulgent, but for your sake I have kept straight. At night, Muriel, whether I'm awake or asleep, I always see you see your eyes and hear your voice." His striking dark face was lit up for a moment. " And sometimes," he said, " we wander all over the world, you and I, and together we see its wonders, and together we explore its secret places and oh, Muriel, we are very happy ! " She looked off past him as if trying to see the vision, too ; and as she looked he thought a light came into her eyes, but quickly it went and she shook her head as if forced to confess herself blind. " Muriel," he said, " if your spirit's wearing a veil, if you're still living in a mist, then I'll wait, if need be, forever, until it has drawn away. But I must ask you one question before the crowd comes and monopolises you." His voice faltered and fell. " Tell me, Muriel, do you care for any one else? " The doubts of his youth had gathered once more to the surface. He thought of her and Tom, and was sud- denly possessed by despair. The warm coursing of his blood seemed to stop. It was as if the whole of him [181] BARRY GORDON waited. She saw a shadow cross his face, followed by a light which long afterwards she had cause to remember. Then he added: " If you do, and if you're sure you do I believe I love you enough even to be glad for your sake ! " Muriel's eyes filled with tears. " Barry," she said, " you almost make me see what love is and yet not quite. No, Barry, I am not in love with any one in the world." She saw as it were a great inflow of life return to him. " Thanks, Muriel," he said hoarsely. Then suddenly his pent-up blood broke free again, hot and throbbing and riotous. What he did he scarcely knew. His arms folded her to him, his lips found hers; yet it was not he himself that seemed to hold and kiss her. She was under the control of some inner fire bursting from his heart. The kiss was passionate. In it there were all the accumulated longings of his curbed youth. He gave himself to her all in a moment, soul and body. Then he was conscious that Muriel receded from his arms; and as he looked at her and saw her pallid face and the crushed white violets on her panting breast, he had an impression as of a light going out as of a song dying into silence. Her voice seemed to come from infinite distances. " Oh, Barry ! " she said. " Oh, Barry, how could you do it? You've killed me!" [122] CHAPTER IV THE WORLD ENTERS. THE WAY AN ARTIST FELT ABOUT MURIEL. HOW BARRY FELT, TOO. MEADfi's REVENGE KITTY VAN NESS found Muriel in her room stretched on the bed in a passion of tears. Gently Kitty soothed her and drew her up from the bed. " Poor Muriel ! " she said, regarding her with sym- pathy. " Oh, dear, your gauze skirt is all rumpled ; your white violets are withered. I understand. You were too lovely, to go unscathed that's all." Muriel plucked the flowers from her breast and tossed them away. " Shall I send," asked Kitty, " for a couple of Tom's red roses? " " Yes," said Muriel vehemently, " Tom's ! " Kitty saw the rising tide of crimson in Muriel's cheeks, and smiled. " No, you're wearing red roses already," she said, / " and the right one gave you these. Come, I must re- arrange you. At any minute the people will begin to arrive." She kneeled and smoothed the disordered gauze. [123] BARRY GORDON Muriel made her bow to the world gracefully and without affectation. Her look that day was memorable. At first as the footman announced the guests, many could not help pausing in the wide doorway, opposite Mrs. Beekman and her daughter, struck by the young girl's subtle and yet startling beauty. Then the room filled, and in the packed, shifting crowd the debutante was visible only to the nearest, like a picture on the open- ing day of an exhibition. Then again, as the throng moved toward the dining-room and the champagne punch, the bright figure was occasionally revealed in perspective. At length, as friends found friends, the crowd split into close groups. In one of these Pierre Loew, a fashion- able portrait painter, sufficiently far from Muriel to study her without discourtesy, observed in an undertone that the picture was by all odds the most effective ar- rangement in white he had ever seen. This painter never hesitated to define people in dar- ing terms of art if he could do so favourably. For topics conducive to clever comment he selected only the beautiful in life at least in the houses of the rich. What a chance, then, when real loveliness presented itself, and praise was no pretence! The true artist in him felt a thrill. At first he spoke flippantly, his eye caught by effects which, had he obtained them, would have been mere BARRY GORDON tricks. He said it was merely the mirror behind Miss Beekman. Thanks to the mirror, Miss Beekman was a statue as well as a painting. Wonderful subject, that! The sort to have a try at. He took in at a glance the reflection of her piquant back, the delicate symmetry of her lace-clad shoulders and neck, the dainty and spirited set of her head, the upward curve of her dark hair, and the shadows that seemed to escape from it. Then he lightly observed that the mirror " modelled her." But when Loew looked at Muriel herself, apart from her accidental reflection in the looking-glass, his slum- bering artist's soul really awoke, stirred by the impres- sion. He fell silent, grew moody, and let the others talk. She seemed to him one of those rare studies without definite outline. Where her outline ended and the sur- rounding air began he could not determine. As her hair gave out shadows, so her face and white form gave out radiance. The same effect, he knew, attached to any- thing vivid. A cardinal flower, for instance, is sur- rounded by a sort of blur. Its colour is so intense that the eye cannot define its edge. But Muriel Beekman was more like an impression of light a fragrance made visible. A mercenary friend drew Loew aside and whispered: " Strike Mrs. Beekman for a commission. She loves technicalities. Talk shop, and she'll let you paint her [125] BARRY GORDON daughter. It's worth five thousand at the least. They're rolling!" Loew's reply was impolite. " Go to the deuce ! " he muttered ; then he smiled. " No, come with me to Mrs. Beekman." Together they approached that glacial lady. " Mrs. Beekman," said the painter simply, " I want to ask a favour. Let me try a portrait of your daughter. I will attempt it on one condition that you grant me the pleasure of doing so merely for the work's sake." The room was now a babel of confusion, the crowd so closely packed that people could barely move. In another group Kitty, had she been less generous and whole-souled, might have wished that she had not dressed Muriel so successfully. For once the compliments of the men about her were not for her alone. " Jove ! " exclaimed the youngest of these satellites, half to himself. " Muriel's stunning enough to drive a man to drink ! " They caught the words and another muttered: " Yes, and then to suicide with remorse ! " " No," said a third, " worse yet. A man would be hor- ribly tempted to swear off forever ! " The crowd was now divided into two streams those forging ahead to the dining-room, those trying to re- turn and say good-bye. At another corner of the room a ripe old club-man [126] congratulated Mr. Beekman. He was blinking across at Muriel with open satisfaction. Evidently her blushing cheeks and crimson baby lips appealed to him magically. " I'd pay down a cool million," he exclaimed, " to be forty years younger ! " He frowned. " Deuce take it ! There goes a fellow up to her who's forty years younger without paying a penny ! " The object of his envy was Barry Gordon. Through a seeming eternity Barry had been waiting, and now came the first moment when Muriel stood alone. In one hand she held a glass of punch untasted, in the other a white feather fan with which she was cooling her flushed cheeks. Barry went straight to her and said in a low voice: " I implore you, Muriel forgive me ! " She met his eyes coldly, as if without the slightest recognition. Then, not deigning to reply, she looked past him, and he saw her smile at some one approaching behind him. To his surprise and disgust, they were joined by the only person in the world who had ever been his enemy the cad who years ago had caused his flight from school and now his dismissal from college. How Meade had happened to be invited Barry could not guess. Probably Mr. Beekman in his visits to Virginia had known Meade's family and for their sake was receiving their son in the North. It was merely one of those ugly [127] BARRY GORDON chances that seemed to crop up at crucial moments in Barry's life. Meade was bringing two glasses of punch. When he found Muriel already supplied, he turned to Barry and with smooth effrontery offered him the extra glass. Her presence he knew protected him from insult, and he fairly basked in his security. As he held out the glass, his narrow eyes and mouth were touched with an iron- ical smile. " I propose a toast," he said, " to Miss Beekman, on the day of her coming out." Barry paled. How could he refuse? If Meade had suggested this on purpose to disarm him, it was a clever piece of trickery, a subtle revenge. Had the surroundings been different, had Muriel not been there, Barry knew he would have struck the glass from Meade's hand. Even now, nothing but the words with which Meade offered it could have made him take it. A toast to Muriel on the day of her coming out ! Bitterly against his will, he accepted the glass. He was a Southerner and a gentleman by birth and nature. Courtesy to women was in his blood and in his heart. Yet he hesitated, looking down a moment into the am- ber fluid. Since his father's tragic death he had not drunk a drop of any intoxicant. His father had given him warning; the hopes of going through college and bringing to Muriel a stainless record had given him [ 128] BARRY GORDON heart. But now, after all his struggle to keep straight, he found himself expelled from college and forsaken by Muriel, and his heart was like lead. And here stood Meade at the critical juncture, once again controlling his destiny! A toast to Muriel on the day of her coming out ! While he hesitated Barry felt that his apparent rude- ness shocked and froze her. Yet she was not to blame. Little could she imagine how he dreaded the devil in this glass. Little she knew how the yellow lights in its depths already began to fascinate him. Doubtless she thought him merely piqued because she had not forgiven him the kiss. A toast to Muriel on the day of her coming out ! Barry felt heavy and sick. He was dazed by the iron- ical fatefulness of the moment. He looked at Muriel again. She lifted her head haughtily and turned to Meade. That was all a perfectly natural and innocent lift of her head. Yet the motion unsettled his future. He looked down into his glass as if his soul were drowning in it. Then again he raised his eyes to Muriel's averted face, and they were like the eyes of a lost dog. Meade smiled. " To the ideal bud ! " he proposed, and sipped his punch, watching Barry out of the tail of his eye. Barry bowed to her in a courtly way worthy every [129] BARRY GORDON tradition of his race, and then, with a breaking heart, said evenly: " Your happiness, Muriel ! " He took a sip from the glass, and said something to her in a low voice. She did not seem to hear. She began talking vivaciously to Meade. Again Barry drank, and again murmured some plea in her ear. Still deaf to him, she seemed to grow yet more interested in Meade. Barry drank again, draining the glass; and Muriel, utterly unconscious of the seeds of tragedy she was sowing, lightly ignored a third desperate overture. She seemed to be fascinated by Meade. Barry drifted away toward the dining-room. Here, at a large, glass-littered side-table, stood Burridge, the pompous butler, liberally ladling out his concoction from an enormous silver punch-bowl, which a footman now and again replenished from magnums of cham- pagne. There was something inspiring in the sight, some- thing prodigal, something suggestive of the liberties of man's estate. Burridge was ladling out streams of for- bidden joy reckless pleasure. Men who drank were happy. Barry had seen defeated football players weep with disappointment, then break training and go rois- tering through Cambridge like victors. He had seen a grind, just flunked, cross the campus crushed; yet that [130] BARRY GORDON very night, thanks to wine, the fellow had joked as though he had graduated with honours. If you drank, it made no difference whether you won or lost. The taste of the brew was in Barry's mouth, its fire already in his veins. Nevertheless, for a time he held off. Lonely in the crowd, he wandered back to catch a glimpse of Muriel from a distance. She seemed to be living joyously in the moment, with not a thought of him, not a shadow in her laughing eyes. She was surrounded by a flock of adorers, and Tom had deposed Meade. As Barry watched her she turned from the rest and looked up at Tom as if with dependence on him as if with love. Barry grew desperate. The affair seemed worse than ever. Meade was only an enemy ; Tom was a brother. Standing gazing at Muriel in open despair, he grad- ually became conscious that people were watching him with amusement. Quivering under their smiles, he turned back to the dining-room. Here stood Burridge still ladling out streams of artificial sunshine from the boun- tiful punch-bowl. He would take very little. That would show more courage than taking none at all. He would never drink immoderately. He would drink like a man of the world, and gain a man of the world's ease. Experienced men showed no emotion, probably felt none. Why should he? How childish to have so much feeling! What folly ever [131] BARRY GORDON to have opened his heart to Muriel! How undignified to have revealed his despair to the world! Muriel had stabbed him; the world had mocked him. Never again the stab and mockery. He would drink and be light- hearted. The great barrier flung up so desperately by his father went down. His blood caught fire. The prodigal- ity of his race leapt up in him in a sudden moment. He threw restraint to the four winds. With a swinging recklessness he went over to Bur- ridge and asked for a glass of punch. In a few minutes he had tossed down several more, and the room swam. [132] CHAPTER V BURRIDGE DRAWS THE PORTIERES A Barry moved through the now diminishing crowd, he grew talkative, entertaining, witty, not betraying the fact that the acquaintances to whom he spoke seemed to be mere blurs diverting phantoms. He paid another visit to the unsuspecting Burridge ; and now he began to feel as if he were walk- ing the deck of a ship in a storm. He was conscious that several guests turned and stared as he passed them. When he spoke to Kitty, her laugh had a sorry note in it that disturbed him. He wondered if Mr. and Mrs. Beekman would suspect, or, worst of all, Muriel. Soon, however, he saw Muriel's father who cared little for so- ciety slip from the crush and retreat upstairs to the library. As for Mrs. Beekman, she did not seem to take much notice of Barry, or of anything else. In a crowd this stately lady always became hopelessly vague. Every faculty, save her natural good breeding, deserted her. At times like these her remarks were almost vacuous, her answers irrelevant, her absent-mindedness pathetic. Barry smiled, greatly amused. Mrs. Beekman would not [133] BARRY GORDON have been surprised, thought he, had an elephant sud- denly ambled into the room and stood on its head before her. With her, at least, he was safe. As for Muriel, she was surrounded by so many ad- mirers that he seemed to be entirely cut off from her view. After another cruise to the prodigious punch-bowl, he grew quite talkative. He began to feel he was the life of the occasion. One thing bothered him ludicrously. He kept meeting the lily-like Morrison twins, and, try as he would, he could not tell them apart. Time and again he went careening up to one of them, cock-sure she was Kate, and the girl, much embarrassed, would shyly remon- strate that she was not Kate, but Emily. Then the same comedy over again, vice versa. This inflamed Barry's sense of the absurd. He began to tell people about it loquaciously. " Funniest thing ! Each Miss Morrison," he would say, uttering the esses with great deliberation, " is al- ways the other Miss Morrison. Most 'straordinary ! " In the end he decided there was only one Miss Morri- son, and this clear-sighted conclusion proved to him that he was not nearly as tipsy as people supposed. The crowd was now thinning out, and Barry, catching the general spirit of departure, fell amiably into line. He thought he would go and knock about town. Ahead [134] BARRY GORDON of him the guests were bidding farewell to their hostess ; and their hostess, vaguer than ever, was mechan- ically inclining her stately head. Every time she bowed, thought Barry, it was as if Mont Blanc should suddenly begin nodding to people. In fact Mrs. Beekman's absent- minded dignity so impressed him that when at last he stood before her he felt quite overcome. Two or three times he bowed, backing away speech- lessly. Every one stared. His bows were full of the most exaggerated and grotesque deference. Those who saw were scandalised ; but as for Mrs. Beekman herself, she was only mildly bewildered. She returned his salutations with polite and imperturbable gravity. As the guests left, they smiled. They understood, and were not surprised. Mrs. Beekman's absent-mindedness was a by-word. Nor was Barry surprised. He would not have been surprised had she salaamed to him. Every- thing ludicrous was a matter of course, and highly re- spectable. He decided not to leave just yet, however. The last guests were shaking hands with Muriel. That was an obstacle to his exit which he had not considered. It seemed wiser not to risk it. He retreated toward the dining-room. On his way he made open fun of every one he met, chaffing them out- rageously, till he noticed that as others approached, in- tent on departing, they shied off and avoided him. [135] BARRY GORDON He saw them looking back at him as they left the house. Then, as his last cruise ended, and he hove to in the now deserted dining-room, he passed through a new phase. Burridge had dared to refuse him another glass of punch. He began to berate the pompous butler. " Burridge," he mumbled, " Burridge, you're a fool- ish old balloon, and, by Jove, I'm thinking of pricking you ! " Then he tried persuasion. " Burridge," said he, "I take it back. D'you know who you are, Burridge? You're the great god Pan. No, you're not. You're Bacchus himself. That's who you are ! Ladle it out, Bur- ridge ; ladle it out ! " Unluckily for Barry, Mrs. Beekman, her mental powers restored by the departure of her guests, glanced through the doorway and became aware of the wrangle. Her consciousness at once returned with piercing acute- ness. She recalled his bows, and now, for the first time, took account of them. She hurried from the ballroom in search of her husband. Meanwhile Muriel felt that her heart was breaking. Before now her quick eye had detected Barry's condi- tion, and had seen that every one was aware of it ; and though her friends had now left, she still smarted under the memory of the sympathetic glances with which they had bade her good-bye. Every detail of the unhappy scene had branded itself [136] BARRY GORDON on her consciousness. She had noticed his changed looks and heard his unnatural laugh. If ever a girl was filled with shame she was. She had indeed made her debut into the world a world of evil and unhappiness ! The last guest had gone. The ballroom was empty and desolate, with all the desolate emptiness of a large room recently crowded. She was standing in a wilderness alone with Tom. All through the reception Tom's back had been to the crowd, his attention centred on Muriel. Thus he knew nothing of Barry's condition; and Muriel's face had not betrayed her feelings. Her look and manner, in- stead of being dulled by the shame of it all, had been feverishly quickened. She now led the way to the window and stood looking out with Tom. It was dark, and the last carriages were leaving. The pavements were wet with rain, and the vague patches of light from the moving carriages trailed in reflected streaks on the asphalt. Beyond lay the park, wrapped in a black haze. Muriel at first felt indescribably lonely and tired, but gradually Tom's influence began to comfort and rest her. His quiet, steady manliness seemed more what she needed at this moment than anything in the world. She had a saving sense of his never-failing care of her, his tender thoughtfulness and staunch simplicity. He stood close to her, looking over her shoulder at [137] BARRY GORDON the desolate park. After a long silence he found voice and asked awkwardly : " Muriel, will you let me love you? " She hardly knew what she answered, she felt so worn and unreal. She thought she meant to be merely friendly. When she spoke she was still looking out into the No- vember evening. " Yes, Tom, if you can. Yes, I want you to love me. I need your love ! " This barely satisfied him. " Muriel," he said, " I don't know how to express what I mean, but I don't think I mean that. You see I'm fonder of you than I am of any one else in the world. At college I've been a grind for your sake. You know I'm a year ahead of my class and graduate this spring. Then I start life in earnest, and for your sake I mean to work hard and try to become the kind of man your father is." His voice fell and was quietly earnest; his words were as simple as his heart. " Then, Muriel, do you think perhaps some day there may be a chance for me? That is what I mean. Now at last I have told you. And now at last I am asking you if you think you can ever care for me." Muriel turned from the window and looked longingly into his eyes. Quiet and content and safety seemed essen- tial to her. She longed to regain her peaceful girlhood, and only Tom could restore it to her. [138] BARRY GORDON As she looked at him, her eyes did not refuse him. Instantly he was beaming with hope, but no less quickly a shadow crossed his face. " Muriel, I don't want to be unfair to Barry. I want to give him every chance." She smiled a wan little smile. " No, Tom," she said shivering, " don't give him any chance. Hold me to this, and some day make me " Tom could scarcely believe in his good fortune. " Muriel ! " he exclaimed bewildered, " then do you really mean will you call it an engagement ? " Trying to realise it, he glanced past her into the night, which now to him was like day. At this moment her quick ear caught a sound in the dining-room a low jingling of disturbed glasses. In spite of herself she looked in that direction as if casually. The sight she saw she never forgot. Barry had tripped, lost his balance, and fallen to the floor. Tom, blinded by his hopes, still gazed into vacancy and did not see her face. Had he seen it his hopes might have died. Her expression, instead of hardening, was filled with sorrow and a shuddering compassion. On the instant some quality of womanhood hitherto unguessed and all but nonexistent sprang up in Muriel's heart. Though outwardly calm, she felt herself possessed by a sudden desire to dash to the dining-room, slip down [139] BARRY GORDON beside Barry, take his head in her lap, smooth his fore- head, and plead with him to come back to her. Burridge politely assisted Barry to his feet and drew the portieres between the rooms. Muriel stood motionless, dazed. Frightened by her wild impulse, she grew lifelessly cold. She felt bewil- dered, awed, rebellious against herself and against life. There were traits in her she had not dreamed of, dangers of great outbursts of emotion which in her immaculate pride of yesterday she would have scorned as weak or evil. Tom's words still echoed through her a gentle, com- forting refrain. "Muriel, will you call it an engagement?" With a quick impulse of self-defence against the world, she answered him: " Yes, an engagement." [140] CHAPTER VI KITTY TO THE RESCUE. A CRISIS IN BARRY'S CAREER. THE CALL OF THE SPHINX KITTY came to the door, intent on carrying off the poor crushed bud to console her. When she saw Muriel's face she was shocked. It was pallid, and scarcely had a ray of beauty. The girl's bearing was heavy. Her eyes lacked lustre, and shadows lay under them. Her face, instead of looking ethereal, looked pinched. But Tom appeared so blissful and satisfied that Kitty, whose intuition seldom failed her, laughingly backed out. In the hall her laugh died, her smooth cheeks flushed hotly, her lip trembled a little, and she shrugged. Her pet of a boy, her young angel in a world of old men, had taken wing like many another bright vision. A sudden impulse possessed her the fighting in- stinct of a young but experienced campaigner. She hastened to the dining-room by a side door. Burridge had left for a moment; and the punch-bowl, together with the plates, glasses, and debris of the collation, had [141] BARRY GORDON been removed. Barry sat alone, his arms thrown out on the bare table, his face buried in them. Kitty sympathetically felt that his present condition was due more to the suddenness of his breach of long abstinence than to the actual amount he had drunk. Moreover, the excitement of his scene with Muriel had doubtless contributed to his fall. Kitty touched one of his broad shoulders. Failing to rouse him, she shook him impatiently. " Barry, Barry ! " she said in a voice of practised severity. " Brace up ! " He rose unsteadily and stood smiling at her, and she saw that his sleep, though brief, had helped him. " Barry, can you pull yourself to- gether? " " What's the use? " he asked thickly. " If you don't," said Kitty, " you've lost her. Barry, you're a fool ! She loved you, and she loves you still ; but she's so down-hearted that she's letting another fel- low take her away from you right under your nose." He seemed but vaguely disturbed. " Too bad ! " she heard him mumble. " Great shame ! " Then he smiled weakly. " Thanks, Kitty. You're a brick. Better wait, though. Lots of time. Couldn't now possibly. Everything's too too swimmy." She came closer to him, grasped his arms in a gen- tle, steadying grip, and fixed him with a bright frown, to penetrate the vapours in his brain. [142] BARRY GORDON " She's engaged," she said incisively, and released him. He staggered as if struck, caught himself against the table, and uttered some inaudible word that sounded like a moan. The shock sobered him as only a great shock could. With a remarkable effort of will, he suc- ceeded in accomplishing an almost phenomenal change. A tremor ran through him, and every muscle seemed to be strained. Kitty saw him as if in the throes of some overwhelming transition. After this he relaxed, passed a hand across his brow, paled, and stood weak- ened, but almost himself. Kitty's eyes shone with admiration. " Barry ! " she exclaimed, " never do that again, or you'll make me fall in love with you myself. Muriel's a fool if she doesn't gamble on you! Come! no, wait! You must see her alone." She slipped between the portieres and made for the couple in the window. " Tom just a minute ! I want to speak to you. Forgive me, Muriel a secret ! " She carried it off so quickly, so high handedly, that Tom meekly followed her to the conservatory. " Tom, you're an interloper," she began to ripple. " You're a meddler. You're interfering with destiny, with the stars in their courses. You have no intuitions, Tom none whatever. Can't you see that Muriel and [143] BARRY GORDON Barry were born for each other? Can't you see that you can never win her soul ? " " No, I can't see that," said Tom stoutly. " I'll be shot if I can ! " " Then you're a blind bat," said Kitty, and garru- lously continued to kill time. Barry went slowly to Muriel. When he saw her he was stricken with remorse. Her eyes, as he came to her, were so rebuking, so piteous, that he could have wept. He felt as if sinking down through some abyss. Drowning, he grasped at straws. " Muriel," he said, " I won't believe you have prom- ised. Is it Tom?" She nodded, trying to smile through a mist of tears. " Then what can I say, Muriel ? Tom's worth thou- sands of me." Barry tried to smile, too, though his mind was dazed and his soul in torment. " I can only hope you'll be happy. If I ever again pray, that will be my prayer." He turned away, leaving her alone at the window looking out into the darkness. In the hall he met Mr. Beekman, who was evidently coming for him. Mr. Beekman started to help him up- stairs, but Barry quietly protested that he needed no assistance. Standing off and scrutinising him, Mr. Beekman saw that, though his eyes were feverishly [144] BARRY GORDON lighted, he was sober enough to be called to account at once. This was Mr. Beekman's way immediate con- viction, and be done with it. " Barry," he said coldly, " I've just been told that you drank too much and insulted our guests. Barry, you've disgraced us all." He turned away, too indig- nant to say more. " Mr. Beekman ! " A calm but alarming intensity in Barry's tone made Mr. Beekman turn back to him. "What, Barry?" Barry lowered his voice. " Mr. Beekman," said he, " I've been dropped from college." To his surprise Mr. Beekman nodded. " I've heard the facts," he said, " and congratulate you." Barry shrugged. " Don't, please ! Everything white in life is soiled now and blackened and the worst of it is I've done it myself." He was speaking slowly, to dispel the thick- ness of his utterance. " I've spoiled Muriel's day a day she's looked forward to so long. I've been rude to Mrs. Beekman and insulting to your guests. In short, I've behaved like an ass ; and so I've decided " He paused, nerving himself, and his eyes had a lost look. [145] BARRY GORDON "What have you decided? " asked Mr. Beekman un- easily. " The truth is, Mr. Beekman, I've decided to light out." Mr. Beekman started a little, but almost instantly recovered his composure. " Light out for where? " " The world," said Barry. Mr. Beekman looked amused. " The world's fairly wide, you know." " The wider the better. I've always dreamed about this. Ever since my father's death I've been growing more restless." Barry began pacing back and forth in the great, square hall. Mr. Beekman, taking up a stand on a huge tiger-skin rug with his back to an imposing fireplace devoid of fire, studied him carefully. " Sometimes at college," persisted Barry, " I went almost mad with this desire to drop it all and start out for nowhere for everywhere. I got maps and planned trips all over the world. I've read bushels of books of travel in half a dozen languages. There are thousands of things and places I've dreamed about." His eyes were lit up and his cheeks flushed. " And now I swear I'm going to see them ! " Mr. Beekman frowned, bewildered by this outburst. "See what?" he asked. [146] BARRY GORDON Barry paused in his restless march, and, gazing through the doorway into the large, dim mirror, began to smile as if seeing in its depths far visions, one after another appearing and dissolving before him. He came and faced Mr. Beekman. The two, as usual in their duels, stood through the whole interview, Barry too impatient to. sit, Mr. Beekman too alert. Barry spoke more and more fluently, his voice reso- nant and low, his brain nearly sober, but his soul half intoxicated with a sudden power of talk. He began, as it were, to list his visions : " I want to see," he said swiftly, " the Taj Mahal at Agra, the Generalife and Court of the Lions at Gra- nada. I want to see the ruins of Carthage and the Greek theatre at Taormina with the moon fading above Etna as the sun rises over the Calabrian hills. I want to look up at the Matterhorn, Fujiyama, the great pyramid of Cheops. And I want to put a riddle to the Sphinx." Mr. Beekman shifted, much disturbed. "What riddle?" Barry shrugged. "I shall simply ask her: 'Why?' the eternal 'why?'" " And she, being the eternal feminine," said Mr. Beekman with a forced smile, " will answer : ' Just be- cause.' ' [147] BARRY GORDON Barry laughed inconsequently, and made a wry gri- mace. " Then I'll scratch her neck," said he, " and make her purr." " Barry," said Mr. Beekman, " you're a case." " Yes, and the Sphinx is a cat." " There's no need of your consulting her," protested Mr. Beekman. " Put your problems to me, and I'll try to help you work them out." Barry shook his head sadly. " No one can help me, Mr. Beekman. My father talked to me before he died in a way that ought to have kept me from drinking." A deep shadow crossed Barry's eyes. " As a matter of fact, it did keep me straight a while, but sometimes I nearly went crazy with restless- ness." Again he shrugged carelessly and laughed. " And to-day I dropped the whole thing and fairly dived into the punch-bowl ! " His manner again grew serious, mood following mood with every impulse of his volatile nature. " Mr. Beekman, if my own father couldn't help me, how can you? No; what I need is life the world art ! Oh, you don't know how I long to see all the paintings and statues all the masterpieces ! " He moved away, walked to and fro again, then paused and once more gazed at the visions appearing and dissolving in the distant mirror. [148] BARRY GORDON " I want to see Guide Reni's * Beatrice Cenci,' " he meditated, " but I don't want her eyes to look at me ! " He paused, shivered slightly, and lowered his lids, as if under the gaze of some rebuking spirit. Then he laughed away this haunted expression and floated off again on the current of his dreams. " I want to see Titian's * Flora ' she is much pleasanter than Beatrice. Beatrice freezes you with her eyes; Flora warms you with her hair. And then the statues the Hermes of Praxiteles, and the Medici Venus, and all the Bacchuses and drunken Fauns ! " " Barry," said Mr. Beekman, " you're incorrigible ! " Barry nodded. The current seemed to be carrying him forth like a wild, sunny river on which he was already drifting out into the ocean of the world. " I want to drink beer in Heidelberg, sake in Tokio, vodka in Moscow. I want to eat olives in Tuscany, figs in Smyrna, honey in Malta. I want to read Thucydides, not in the Harvard library, but on the Ionian shore. I want to read Hackluyt, not cooped in a room, but on the ocean. I want to read Hafiz in a Persian garden, "Rarahu" in the South Seas, "La Vie de Boheme " in the Quarter, " Arria Marcella " at Pompeii. I want to search for the buried poems of Sappho in Hercu- laneum and for happiness all over the world. I want to hear bagpipes in the Scottish Highlands, shepherds' pipes in the Pyrenees, violins in Hungary, the organ [149] BARRY GORDON in Notre Dame, guitars in Naples, and tom-toms in Timbuctoo." He laughed again with whimsical, irre- sponsible mirth. " Yes, I really must hear tom-toms in Timbuctoo ! " He paused and suddenly changed. His face clouded and paled; his muscles relaxed; his humour and fiery vehemence left him. He looked inert and helpless. Crossing the hearth, he lifted his arms to the mantel shelf and buried his face in them. After all his mental pictures, all the glory and beauty and comedy of his visions, there came a crushing sense of loneliness. Till now he had always wandered over the world hand in hand, as it were, with Muriel. In every dream she had been the moving spirit, the inspiration, the deeper lure ; but now the visions were without a soul, and, much as he had made of them in this impetuous talk, he saw at last, with a sickening disillusion, that all their colour, rhythm, and beauty were gone. He turned from the mantel with a new and grim sort of recklessness ; and Mr. Beekman was reminded of the portrait of General Nicholas Gordon a wolf of a man. Barry glanced down at the tiger-skin before the fire- place. " I'd like to bag a few of these chaps ! " he said, frowning into the glass eyes. Then he looked up and tensely faced Mr. Beekman. " I want to go into the [150] BARRY GORDON wilds. Where the map is blank and no man's been, I want to go." He flung back his head and squared his powerful shoulders. " And wherever there's fighting," he cried recklessly, his blood leaping with the words, " by God, I want to fight ! " Mr. Beekman smiled, not without admiration, and laid a strong white hand on Barry's arm. " My boy, you're too fiery for these times. Curb yourself. Train yourself. Harness your energy. If you do, I can use you in business, in politics. You need pow- erful influences to hammer you into shape. With this nature of yours properly equipped and confined to steel rails like a locomotive, I can do a lot with you." Barry laughed. " You can't run a horse on rails like a locomotive. He goes on hoofs, not wheels. So do I go on hoofs like the devil ! " Mr. Beekman ignored this levity. " Tom's learning the technical part engineering. I can start you on the human part the upper stratum from which men of imagination and potential force play the game and move the pawns." Barry shook his head. " I'd get impatient, send the chessboard flying, and break up the game. No, Mr. Beekman, I've got to get out into wide expanses the Western plains or Eastern deserts. I want to be free; I need to be free [151] BARRY GORDON free ! " he cried passionately. " The only powerful in- fluences that can hammer me into shape are the four winds of heaven ! " Mr. Beekman felt utterly at a loss. In the bringing up of male youth he was inexperienced; he had never had a son. All his life he had managed men in the mass, built railroads, guided political parties, but the fine steel of his character had never been pitted against any quality of human nature as large and hot as this. To try and harness Barry seemed like trying to put hand- cuffs on a flame. Nevertheless, he did not outwardly betray his disad- vantage. " Barry," he said impassively, " under the terms of your father's will even your income is in my control until you're thirty years old. Well and good ! You Gor- dons have always been spoiled by money and the indul- gent weakness of your family and friends. We'll see what several years of poverty will do several years on rock bottom." He spoke as if to himself, his eyes nar- rowing. " That might work well. You might find your- self. You might come out of it a man of character, a man of mark." He looked up at Barry with swift deci- sion. " If you go," he said, " you go without a penny ! " Barry started, frowned, and bit his lip. " Do you mean that? " " I mean it." [152] BARRY GORDON Mr. Beekman's face cleared and he smiled. He had put Barry's wanderlust to the severest test, and proved it harmless. Fine talk that, about making the Sphinx purr and hearing tom-toms in Timbuctoo! Fine talk, but money had talked more to the point. The Sphinx doesn't purr for nothing. It costs to get to her. Money makes the mare go and the Sphinx purr and the tom- toms raise a racket in Timbuctoo. Barry's look of dazed defeat greatly relieved him. He considered the matter settled. " Never mind, Barry," he said kindly, " some day perhaps we'll all go there and hear those tom-toms; but at present we've got to be practical." He started up-stairs, impatient for a cigarette. " Come up to the library as soon as you feel like it," he said, looking down over the banisters, " and we'll talk business." Left alone in the great hall, Barry smiled bitterly. The mention of business at such a moment seemed a cruel, incongruous absurdity. A cry to Mr. Beekman rose in his heart, but he stifled it. He drew himself up in a soldierly way, took his hat and gloves from the rack in the hall, and drifted out aimlessly into the night. [153] CHAPTER VII AN ANXIOUS EVENING. MR. BEEKMAN PLAYS PATIENCE. A LETTER FROM NOWHERE SHADOWS of anxiety brooded that night over the Beekman family. Barry without a word had gone out just after the reception, and though it was long past midnight, he had not returned. The house was profoundly silent. Nothing recalled Muriel's debut save a faint odour of massed flowers, as- cending from down-stairs. " Tom," said Mrs. Beekman, sniffing the air, " please shut the door. That odour's like a funeral ! " In the library, where they sat, the gloom lay even deeper than in the other empty rooms. As a rule, this library seemed a sanctuary with many influences. In its rich atmosphere there was personality ; in its well-bound books that lined the walls from floor to ceiling spirit and intellect ; in its wide wood fire a big heart. Here and there huge leather lounging chairs offered com- forting arms and prodigious laps like great mothers. Tables with books, magazines, and the photographs of friends gave evidence of the conventional everyday life of a rich and yet contented family. But to-night there [154] BARRY GORDON was no ease in the room's quiet. The silence was rest- less. They were all waiting. Muriel glanced wearily at her father. He was try- ing to read his Evening Post\ but she could tell by his absent look that to-night the quotations in the financial columns were as meaningless to him as hiero- glyphs. She glanced dully at her mother. Mrs. Beekman, as usual, sat rigid in a straight-backed chair under an electric light with a plain green shade. This corner sternly proclaimed itself hers. In an alcove, far from the fire, it afforded her a sort of office where, on a desk, numerous ethical and sociological pamphlets were neatly piled, her correspondence neatly pigeonholed. In a chair opposite her lay a green chintz workbag. She was nerv- ously knitting washrags for the poor. Muriel restlessly looked away. The mechanical dance of the steel needles was as irritating as the ticking of the clock. She sat curled up in one of the big armchairs by the fire, not even pretending to read, not orice glancing at Tom, who sat near, watching over her with a new moodiness foreign to his nature. To him she seemed so ethereally aloof that, though he longed to try to com- fort her, he did not dare. For this forbearance Muriel felt grateful to him. Talk would have driven her mad. She was lost in a great [155] BARRY GORDON void. She felt numb and unreal and very lonely. Her father and mother and Tom were no more than ghosts. What was Tom's guarding love to her now? What were her father's tenderness, her mother's stern care of her? In all her small troubles these had upheld and strength- ened her. Her high-strung temperament, instead of making her independent, had made her lean yieldingly in trivial matters on people who loved her. But to-night there was no one in the world who could bring her out of her great loneliness and make her happy. No one? Waves of hot colour surged up suddenly to her tem- ples. She thought of the moment when Barry had held her in his arms. She closed her eyes. It was as if she felt his lips on hers again but now her heart responded. The kiss was like a red flower in the great void. But the flower had died. Tom heard a sharp catch in her breath and was trou- bled. "Muriel," he said, "what's the matter? Don't you feel well?" Mrs. Beekman, glancing at the two, compressed her thin lips. Tom was tiring Muriel. The girl's nerves were unstrung. Oh, the vanity of these debuts ! The folly of these love affairs! " Tom," said Mrs. Beekman suddenly, " I'm really [156] BARRY GORDON disappointed in you. I'm afraid you're going to be a ' sentimentalist." ' Tom looked up, wondering if she guessed. " What makes you think so ? " he asked uneasily. " Because you belong to the male sex, and the male sex is the sentimental sex." She frowned at her dancing needles. " I saw you in the conservatory with Kitty Van Ness. She was making love to you." Tom felt immensely relieved. For all his obtuse- ness, he saw that Mrs. Beekman was intent on di- verting Muriel by rousing her to the defence of her friend. "Making love to me? Never!" he exclaimed. "Kit- ty's a good fellow, that's all one in a thousand ! " Mrs. Beekman's nostrils flared. " Fellow, indeed ! Not she ! That's her favourite role. I've never known such a consummate actress." " I wish you wouldn't say that," protested Tom, with loyal warmth. " Kitty's the salt of the earth honest as the day is long." Mrs. Beekman smiled cynically. " I confess Kitty feels the part she acts. That's the worst of it. She's acting and she isn't acting. She's in , love and she isn't in love all at the same moment with the same man." Mrs. Beekman glanced piercingly across at Muriel. " I cannot but pity," said she, " these over- feminine women." [157] BARRY GORDON She sighed, and resumed her work. The attempt had failed. Muriel did not stir or open her eyes. She had not even heard what her mother had said. Tom gazed down at her forlornly, dumbly wonder- ing what her thoughts were. As a matter of fact, Muriel had forgotten his presence. She was utterly alone in the gray void. Slowly a rising tide of tears over- brimmed her eyes, and one drop stole out under her lowered lashes. Tom, woe-begone, bent closer to her. " Muriel," he whispered, " don't ! What's the mat- ter? " He longed to console her, but the fact that Barry's non-appearance seemed to be the cause of her despondency deterred him. Exactly what Barry had done he could not make out evidently something which none of them cared to discuss. He felt bewildered and helpless. As a rule, she had leaned on him, confided in him. He had blindly believed that he understood her. But to-night she was wrapped in a sad reserve which he did not dare to penetrate. Yet something must be done. He could bear it no longer. With an instinctive appeal he crossed to Mrs. Beekman, and said in an undertone: " Muriel's crying." He had a way that went to people's hearts. Mrs. Beekman looked very uncomfortable. Rolling up her washrag, she poked the needles through it and dropped [158] BARRY GORDON it into the chintz bag. As she looked over at Muriel her bleak face softened. She rose and went to her. " Dear child," she said, " you're tired. It's all the excitement the crowd. Come to bed." Muriel lightly sprang up, dashed away her tears and smiled. " No, I'm not tired not a bit," she said, her pride stinging her into self-defence. " Come, let's do some- thing. Tom, you're an owl ! " She turned away and drifted idly about the room, taking up a magazine here and glancing at its pictures, a book there and tossing it aside unopened. Mrs. Beekman could stand the strain no longer. She went to her husband and confronted him. " Frank, why don't we speak out ? All the evening we've been thinking of one thing only, and yet we haven't dared to mention it. We're moral cowards. We're afraid to face facts our thoughts our fears." Her pale blue eyes were wide with anxiety. " Where's Barry ? " Muriel glanced up from a magazine. Tom looked at Mr. Beekman. The dropping of a pin would have been audible. The ticking of the clock was appalling. Mr. Beekman, the picture of discomfort, shifted in his chair, shrugged, and forced a smile. " My dear, how should I know ? Are you worried ? " " Yes ; and so are you." He tried to look surprised. [159] BARRY GORDON "I worried? Why should I be? Nonsense!" " I can't understand it," persisted Mrs. Beekman. " He so rarely stays away from dinner without telling us. After all that happened to-day, you must confess it looks serious." She suddenly shot a glance at Muriel. "Where is he?" Muriel shook her head in silence. Mrs. Beekman turned to Tom. "Where is he?" Tom saw that Muriel waited breathless for his answer. " I don't know," he said doggedly ; then in spite of his growing jealousy his kind heart prevailed. For Mu- riel's sake he made light of it. " I call it much ado about nothing," he said. " He's gone to the theatre, of course, and to supper afterwards. He told me he was going every blessed night when he came to New York." Mrs. Beekman frowned. " He's too fond of pleasure," she muttered. " He wastes his money and his time." Nevertheless, she looked reassured, and Muriel, too, brightened. One and all they were warmed by the ray of hope, dim and artificial though it was. Mr. Beekman rose, fetched his card-table from the corner, unfolded it, and reseated himself comfortably in his armchair. Then he lit a cigarette and fell to shuf- fling the pack for a game of patience. " A game," said he, " very appropriate at present." [160] BARRY GORDON Tom, now heart and soul in his task of cheering them, drew up chairs with bustling enthusiasm, as if there could be nothing pleasanter than to watch Mr. Beek- man's intricate pastime. But his efforts were doomed to failure. Mr. Beek- man had but just begun the game, had but just set out the cards, and glimpsed their obscure combinations, when the silence was broken by the entrance of Bur- ridge, bringing a note. " Messenger, sir. No answer," the butler said, and withdrew in heavy gloom. As Mr. Beekman opened the envelope, they gathered behind him and read over his shoulders: DEAR MR. BEEKMAN: I've thought it out and decided to go. If others have worked their way around the world, why can't I ? In every way it seems best. It will relieve you all of constant bother. If anything in me pans out worth while, well and good. You will be glad I went away to find myself. If not then good riddance to bad rubbish. I talked big to you about traveling, but it's hard to go. I think I can understand the feelings of a ghost when just after death it starts out into nothingness. But don't worry and don't try to trace me. This is the one favor I ask. Leave me to the world, and myself, and God if there is a God. With more love for you all than you will ever know, Yours, BABRY. [161] BOOK IV THE ROLLING STONE CHAPTER I PARIS, THE WORLD'S HALF-WAY HOUSE. THE MAN IN THE CHAMPS ELYSEES. A TOY BALLOON VANISHES, AND AN OLD FRIEND APPEARS EFFING on a chair in the Champs Elysees, he let the full impression of this sparkling Sun- day afternoon in early spring saturate his mind and senses. It was not half bad to be here again. In fact, after years of roving, it seemed only natural, almost neces- sary. Any wanderer, as a matter of course, returns again and again to Paris. On the great eastern high- road between America and Asia this was the traveller's half-way house, the world's tavern this Paris. You might work your way far and see much in the immense spherical desert bounded by the poles and the sunrise and the sunset, but this was the only oasis this Paris. You might climb the Alps and have a look at the kingdoms of the earth ; you might lie on a shore in the South Seas and let your fancy meander among the kingdoms of the stars ; you might find yourself cling- ing to a reef in the Antarctic Ocean, and begin to won- [165] BARRY GORDON der about the kingdoms of the deep ; or, wrecked more hopelessly in the streets of London, you might stand and listen to a preacher on a barrel, and be warned in strident cockney of a kingdom deeper yet the old bib- lical hell; or in any cathedral of an Easter Sunday morning you might fancy yourself floating on the wings of the music to the old biblical heaven ; but if you wanted pleasure, sheer pleasure, this was the only place for it this Paris. If you were willing to wait until you died, you could obtain promises of ultimate satisfaction almost any- where. Christian priests, Buddhist priests, Shinto priests, Voodoo priests all would promise you some sort of paradise or Nirvana. Even the strident evan- gelist fished with a baited hook. But if you took your satisfaction now, they would one and all consign you to their favourite hells or else to nothingness except this arch-priestess of pleasure, this wanton queen of the cities of the world this Paris. Where else could you live life? Where else could you forget the past, laugh at the future, and clasp the pres- ent in your arms in unashamed abandonment? Here at least the devil was no hypocrite. And where else could you gratify every mood, innocent as well as dangerous? Here were the delights of company art talk, literary talk, society talk; here were the delights of solitude, meditation, and work; and here were the delights of [166] BARRY GORDON the out-of-doors the sight of this holiday Paris crowd, with its streams of carriages, its brilliant women, driving out to be seen women alone till night; its bourgeoisie thin husbands and fat wives, five or six in one con- veyance, the women giggling at the tight fit ; its nonde- script, well-dressed pairs, with their subtle preliminary flirtations, the sparkle of the women's eyes, the vivacious gestures of their hands, the irony of their mouths, the chatter and laughter as they drove by ; and then its chil- dren the pale Paris children, now and again pausing in their play and watching it all from the curb, solemnly. As he glanced at the children, one of them particu- larly attracted his attention. She was a dainty, thin, fashionable little girl dressed in starchy white, with bare legs, white socks, and fluttering light blue ribbons. He wondered what the child was thinking of, she looked so grave as she watched the pageant. One small hand hung passive at her side, in the other she absently held captive by a long thread a bright red toy balloon, which, bobbing back and forth high over her head, seemed very incongruous above so serious a youngster. The little balloon held his gaze fascinated. He looked at it musingly, reminiscently, and smiled. But evidently the child had forgotten its existence. Her thoughts or unthinking wonderment seemed at last wholly to withdraw her from the material world. [167] BARRY GORDON At all events her fingers relaxed, the thread slipped, and the balloon jumped upwards. The little girl, at once all child, jumped after it, but the lost thread was already beyond her reach. The spectator on the chair sprang across the path and clutched at it. " Monsieur ! Monsieur ! " cried the little Parisian, standing on tip-toe and reaching up a futile hand. " Vite ! Ah, mon pauvre ballon ! " Too late! The balloon, caught by the breeze, went sailing over the woods high into the sky a tiny touch of crimson. The centre of an amused group, they stood and watched it, he with a queer reminiscent smile, the child at first too bewildered and fascinated by its fading as- cent to cry. But as it vanished beyond the trees she began to sob silently. He felt uncomfortable and took her hand, looking about for her nurse. " Never mind," he said half to himself. " It always happens. What else can you expect ? " He spoke in English, and the child, not understand- ing, grew frightened. She drew away her hand. Then fortunately her fat bonne, all gingham and cap and streaming ribbons, came billowing to her and took her in her arms. " Telle est la vie," said the man, smiling, " and the ultimate great comforting nurse is death." [168] BARRY GORDON He suddenly heard a laugh behind him. A carriage had stopped at the sidewalk. " Thank Heaven ! " said a woman's voice. " Barry Gordon at last ! " He turned and saw Kitty Van Ness, bright as the spring day, fashionable beyond the dreams of dressmak- ers. She was leaning forward in a victoria, smiling at him delightedly. She had evidently noticed the balloon episode and heard his last comment. " You say that's life, Barry ? Nonsense ! I say it isn't," she contradicted, greeting him with her clear blue eyes. " At least not always. You were the balloon that blew away, and now you're caught ! " She laughed with open pleasure, and, drawing off a suede fawn-coloured glove, offered him a bare hand. She did it so naturally, with such an air of comradeship, that the fetching little breach of custom would have won any man. He smiled affectionately, and, clasping the warm soft hand a moment without the conventional shake, released it. Then a shadow crossed his face. " Seven years ! " he said. " It seems ages." " Not to me," she replied, drawing on her glove again. " It did ten minutes ago before I saw you, but now it's only a day or two." A puzzled expression crossed her face. " What made you look so queer as you watched that balloon go sailing off? " [169] BARRY GORDON The look she mentioned stole again into his face. " I was remembering," he said, " a certain very large and riotous balloon, a crazy adventure I once had." Kitty, sparkling with interest, rested her hand invit- ingly on the seat beside her. " Come and drive with me and tell me about it." He stood hesitant a moment, one foot on the carriage step, and Kitty tactfully waited without urging him. Judging by his well-cut English travelling suit, he was comfortably off. Since she knew he could not have yet drawn on his inheritance, his work, as they had all supposed, must have yielded him a fair income. But though he was barely twenty-seven he looked well over thirty. Instead of the mercurial, imaginative, impulsive youth she had once known, she saw before her a man whose dark eyes seemed deeper set and colder; a man with a bronzed weather-beaten skin, clean-shaven save for a brown moustache, which was rather coarse and not heavy enough to hide a grim look about his sensitive mouth; a man, in fact, somewhat hardened by experi- ence. Yet Kitty noticed that, despite this hardness and the shadows that kept crossing his face, he had the grace of the born wanderer, the ease of an acquired fatalism. He seemed, in short, one of the rarest of human anomalies a lovable Stoic. " You've looked life in the face," she said, " and so have I." [170] BARRY GORDON The words were spoken so gently, with so much com- prehension, and yet implied such a careful considera- tion of his feelings because she had feelings, too, that he smiled gratefully, stepped into the carriage, and seated himself beside her. Kitty flushed with pleasure. " Where shall we drive ? " " Anywhere," he answered. " Around the world, if you like." " But that," laughed Kitty, with the faintest hint of a sidelong look at him, " would necessitate crossing the Atlantic." " Oh, all right," he said, with a trace of his old reck- lessness that delighted her. " Let's ! " She looked up at the coachman. " A 1'Amerique," she ordered whimsically. The coachman leaned still further sideways and back- wards, doubting his ears. " Oh, anywhere," laughed Kitty with a gesture. " Up and down." Though in her haste to make off with her captive she had lapsed to her mother tongue, this proved more intelligible to the coachman, and Kitty's triumphant drive began. In one sense she already regarded it in this light. Aside from her friendly pleasure at seeing Barry, she derived a very feminine satisfaction at being, even for [171] BARRY GORDON an hour, the companion of a man about whose name so much curiosity, gossip, and mystery had centred at home. Others might conjecture and repeat hearsay, but she would speak with authority. " Barry Gordon ? Oh, yes, I saw him myself took a long drive with him in Paris." At first it looked as if this would be her only reward. Long they drifted up and down, till the streams of car- riages and pedestrians floated away from them into the heart of Paris, and the green-gold light under the trees in the Bois faded into purple shadows, and the skeleton tower and the Arc de Triomphe were dream structures built of the dusk, and along the Champs Elysces the lights of houses kindled one by one, like eyes opening and watching them. Yet they talked the trivial talk of the town, their topics the long black gloves of Yvette Guilbert, the beauty of Cavalieri, the drooping hair of Cleo de Merode, the current plays and songs, the races at Long- champs, the latest international marriage. Kitty felt disheartened. There was nothing for it, she finally de- cided, but a gentle appeal. After a long silence she said : " Barry, why should we fritter away this drive? I shall never forgive myself ! " He patted her hand. " Never mind, Kitty. I'll forgive you. In fact, I couldn't have forgiven you if you hadn't frittered it [172] BARRY GORDON away. Do you know," he observed with mock gravity, " you're the first person who has satisfactorily inter- preted the psychology of Yvette's wail and Cleo's fes- toons of hair." Kitty pouted. " Do you think Yvette's wail adequately expresses the situation ? " "Why not?" he said, shrugging. "It's ironical enough." He felt for his cigarette-case. " It's getting dark. Do you mind? " She shook her head. Then, while he lighted his cigar- ette, she stole a sidelong glance at him. As the match flared before his face, she caught the tense, hard look of a Spartan secretly suffering torments. " Barry ! " " Kitty." " Let's dine together. No, I won't take any excuse. Please do, you dear old Barry. Here's a chance. Let's make the most of it." She hesitated a moment, then spoke her thoughts impulsively and with genuine feel- ing. " In our love-affairs we've both been losers. We've both been beaten by life. We've both got the worst of it. We're both in the same boat the same wrecked boat. Then suppose we try something else. Suppose we try friendship, you and I. Let's Barry let's! If it fails, we can't be much worse off than we are now. And at least we shall have tested another of life's so-called [173] BARRY GORDON privileges. On the other hand if it succeeds well half a loaf's better than no bread. Come and dine with me and talk to me not confidentially, if you don't feel like it, and no more personally than you want to. Come; we'll talk things over as man and man ! " Her plea succeeded because, for all her real and almost pathetic sincerity, she tactfully used the old Platonic appeal, the indescribably telling appeal of a woman offering to a man a man's companionship. " All right, Kitty. Where shall we break our half loaf? I must dress." She demurred at this, fearing she might lose him. " Then dine with me," he suggested, already growing gayer. " We'll go across the river to the older Paris. The Cafe de la Paix isn't the place to wear clothes like these and break half loaves. Instead of champagne and pates I vote for Burgundy and roast duck. That's a better beginning for a solid friendship." Kitty nodded in radiant consent. Though she was not altogether fond of the dingy Quarter, full-bodied wines and raw game, she would have even tackled a beef at a barbecue had a beef been the necessary symbol of their new friendship's solidity. "Where, Barry?" He leaned forward to the coachman. " Au Cafe Colombert ! " he ordered with an eager- ness that warmed her. [174] CHAPTER II DUCK AND BURGUNDY. PLATONICS IN PARIS. KITTY TACTFULLY PUMPS HER CAPTIVE THE Cafe Colombert was almost empty. Too ex- pensive for the average student, and too dingy for rich Americans, it was patronised only by those willing to dispense with mere glitter for the sake of real masterpieces in the culinary art. The proprietor, his serious face mellowing when he saw Barry, led them, with an air hospitably gracious, to a corner table. This fine old host was a benevolent- looking man, with a kindly dignity by no means unim- pressive ; a man with deep, dreamy blue eyes and a great mane of silvery hair. He had a slight stoop, caused perhaps by years of invention and countless crucial moments when, bending over the concoctions of his chef, he himself tasted and subtly seasoned them, in- fusing into them the personal touch that had won him fame. He received Barry's suggestions with grave interest and finally with the pleased nod of the born restaurant- keeper who recognises nice discrimination in a guest. As he left them Barry smiled. [175] BARRY GORDON " Frai^ois knows," he said, " that in true art simpli- city is the highest achievement." They sociably began nibbling bread, calling it their half loaf. " But Fra^ois is very versatile," pursued Barry. " He can cook eggs two hundred and nineteen different ways. He names them after his notable guests. On the list you'll find royalty, artists, musicians, authors, all more or less well known." " How about Barry Gordon ? " casually asked Kitty, drawing off her fawn-coloured gloves. " Has Fra^ois included Barry Gordon on his roll of fame? " She shot a quick glance at him. " Ah, he has ! " she exclaimed. " You should twirl your moustache downwards instead of straight. The corners of your mouth betray you." " How do you like it? " he asked smiling. "What your moustache? I love it!" " No," he laughed; " my book." " Oh, you mean * The Adventures of a Rolling Stone'?" " Yes ; that's the only one I've written or ever shall, probably." " I love that, too," she answered. " How thrilling it is! What a sale it's having! I didn't dare mention it, though, because I thought it might " She hesitated. " You thought it might be a sore subject," he con- cluded for her. " The criticisms were so harsh." She shrugged carelessly. [176] BARRY GORDON " Your book offends the heavy respectables. You must admit your adventures have been decidedly racy. The chapter on hasheesh-eating and kief-smoking was bad enough, but that was a Sunday-school lesson compared to the chapter on Moorish harems ! " She laughingly shook her head at him. " Barry, you're a case ! " The waiter, enough of an adept to seem almost non- existent, had served the consomme. " You seem to forget," said Barry, after two or three spoonfuls, " the rolling stone was a man by the name of Bob Galloway." " B. G.," she nodded. *' The initials were significant." Then again she plunged into deep waters. " But Mr. Beekman does maintain that the story is imaginary, only the background real. He calls it a remarkable book." " And Mrs. ? "" asked Barry. " Oh, she insists it bears the stamp of reality. She calls it the most outrageous book she has ever read." Kitty lowered her glance, and drew back a little as the waiter removed her plate and unobtrusively replaced it with another on which lay a plump red mullet. She glanced up at Barry under her lashes. " Which of them is right ? " she asked gently. " Is it fiction or fact ? " He absently brushed aside the crumbs to leave a free white space for his plate, and as the waiter slipped it [177] BARRY GORDON before him he looked off with wandering thoughts. Kitty, covertly studying him, saw lights and shadows cross his eyes. His reminiscences were evidently filled with the spirit of an adventurous liberty somewhat marred by regret. " Both," he answered at last. They spent a moment extricating the mullets' backbones. Then he suddenly looked up, his face grew tense, and a question forced itself from him against his will. " How do other people take it? How does " Kitty's pulses quickened. " One can only conjecture," she replied without meeting his gaze ; " but the very day after your book appeared, her long engagement to Tom, which I fancy had been only a sort of private understanding, was sud- denly announced ! " Barry turned quietly to the waiter. " Bring the wine," he said. As he turned again to Kitty he tried to smile. " She's happy, isn't she? " Kitty raised her eyebrows, shrugging. " She seems passively so not very." Kitty thought that the truth the " not very " would please him, but evidently it did not. A look so helpless and lost dark- ened his intense face, as he glanced impatiently for the waiter, that Kitty, without understanding her sym- pathy, added quickly : " Tom's away, you know. Per- haps that's it." [178] BARRY GORDON The waiter filled their glasses with the rich red wine. Barry slightly inclined his head towards her before they drank. Then, as he sipped the Burgundy, he asked quietly : " Where has he gone? " His voice fell. " Dear old Tom ! " " To Morocco." " To Morocco ! " he exclaimed in surprise. "Yes. You remember Mr. Beekman's railroad project? Surely you've read in the newspapers about the Beekman-Roche Syndicate ? " Barry set down his glass, but kept the stem be- tween his fingers, and still glanced into the wine's red depths. " I think I did see something, but I'm not interested in ruining the wonderful expanses of Africa with rail- roads. Tom's surveying, I suppose? " " Yes. After he graduated," said Kitty, " Mr. Beek- man gave him a chance at construction-work in the West. He made great headway. But probably you al- ready know all this from letters ? " The old lost look crept into Barry's eyes. " No ; I've no permanent address, you see." He drank again. " Tell me." " I don't know much about it," she resumed, butter- ing a morsel of crust. " I believe the Sultan has granted railroad concessions to a French and American syndicate [179] BARRY GORDON of which Mr. Beekman is the ruling spirit. About a month ago he sent Tom out there with a party of en- gineers." Barry frowned. " Morocco's not very safe at present." " No ; but this may mean a lot to Tom, if the plan proves practicable. They are surveying the proposed route, which is quite long. I'm not exactly sure where it is. It runs all the way from somewhere to somewhere else along the south coast of the Mediterranean." Barry emptied his glass, and nodded as he refilled it. " Yes ; from Cape Spartel to Oran." He laughed bit- terly, and she saw that a slight change, so subtle as to be almost unnoticeable, had come over him. She could not define it except that perhaps his dark eyes were, if possible, more expressive than before. Perhaps it was the wine; perhaps it was the deepening of their com- panionship. " Yes," he repeated bitterly, " from Cape Spartel to Oran and the country will be ruined by American tourists and French criminals ! Mr. Beekman means well. Like Cecil Rhodes, he thinks in continents. But he isn't personal; he isn't human. My father would never have planned a railroad in Morocco. He would have done as I've done. He would have lived there with the natives. He would have ridden their horses and gone pig-sticking, and roved through the country, making [180] BARRY GORDON friends." He shook his head hopelessly, repeating once more as if he knew the route and loved it: "A railroad from Cape Spartel to Oran ! Yes ; and the pirate boats of the Rifs, and the mules of the ancient Berbers, and the thoroughbred barbs of the sheiks, and their camels their rocking * ships of the desert ' that cruise up there from the south what about them? And the cara- vans of the wandering families, and the splendid health, and the delicate craftsmanship, and the weird music, and the sensuous kief, and the lazy day-dreams of all the people along that wonderful coast what about them? Gradually most of it all will be brushed aside, and what isn't brushed aside will decay ! " His voice was earnest even feverish. " Civilisation ? I've seen it come, Kitty, to other places, and I tell you there's no curse that falls on the. child- races like the curse of the shriek- ing civilisation of locomotives ! " Kitty saw new depths in him, vaster and more tragic than she had seen before. " Then, Barry, do you mean to proclaim yourself an out-and-out barbarian? I'm not. I'm hopelessly civ- ilised." He saw Fra^ois and the waiter appearing in the doorway. " There's no doubt about one thing," he exclaimed, regaining his friendly smile. " Civilisation bags the game. Here come's the duck ! " [181] BARRY GORDON Throughout the rest of their repast they talked more freely and intimately. Drawn out by her comradeship, his tongue loosened by the strong wine, Barry not only answered her tactfully put questions, but soon began to vouchsafe information and confidences. By the time the salad had been disposed of and an excellent Camem- bert cheese lingeringly eaten, Kitty had learned much. Piecing together this and that with the adventures so racily sketched in his book, she obtained a vivid bird's- eye impression of the seven years. The scroll was rapidly unrolled. He told his story with such a light touch, such a gay whimsicality, that Kitty only now and then had a glimpse of the black despair that had dogged him through the world as in- evitably as his own shadow. One thing only he withheld his memories of his incessant grinding battles with himself; his repeated conflicts against drink and other temptations; and all his dire failures in these struggles. He told everything else as impersonally as if speaking of another man; yet the mirage he conjured up was even more vivid than present realities. His talk was even racier than his book; and Kitty, breathlessly listening to it, followed him from land to land with intense in- terest, her imaginative faculty feverishly stimulated. Never had she heard so enthralling a narrative. [182] CHAPTER III BARRY'S AMAZING ADVENTURES. THE CAB BACE. A VOYAGE TO THE STAKS. AFRICAN NIGHTS. NAOMI THE FAWN A the outset Barry had worked his way across the Atlantic on a cattle-ship, and had spent a month on the Liverpool wharves. Then to London, where he arrived, as luck would have it, on Derby Day. He drifted with the thousands to the great race. Characteristically, he staked his all on a horse that pleased his eye. The horse won. That gave him cash and a breathing spell. One night, in a public-house, he fell in with a kindred spirit one Richard Dashwood, a younger son with a shilling in his pocket and a flash of inspiration in his eye. Suddenly this devil of a fellow had decided on an astounding move. He was going to try and make a living. He thought it would be " ripping to rag around London " driving a hansom cab. Barry took to the plan at once, and split up his Derby money into halves. In less than a week they were London cabbies. His book contained sketches of these adventures the story of the eloping couple, the mys- [183] BARRY GORDON tery of the fugitive from the Russian Embassy, the mystery of the foundling left in his cab. Then came comedy and calamity. His account of the disgraceful and exciting climax of his career as cabby had made two continents laugh. One night Dashwood and he were cruising along the Victoria Embankment on their hansoms, and again in Dashwood's eye there was inspiration. Their purses were fat that night, and their humour roistering. " To the tune of a sovereign," said Richard, " from here to Charing Cross at a gallop ! " said he. " No American trotting race for me ! " " Done ! " cried Barry, catching fire at once. Pitching like ships at sea, the hansoms went bumping and rumbling through the dark. On the one hand the river, with its yellow lights and black barges, trailed by ; on the other the big hotels and houses hurtled past like mountains on the run. The night was full of flying horse-foam, the beat of hoofs, the crack of whips; and each driver, tipsier yet with the motion, kept seeing out of the tail of his eye the light of the other's cab jigging horribly. At Waterloo Bridge they were neck and neck, and the crowd was running after them, hooting and cheering. Ahead, under the Charing Cross railway bridge, the Embankment was black with people, waiting for them to come. [184] BARRY GORDON But they never got there. The police, with great val- our but a lamentable lack of sportsmanship, interfered. The distance from start to finish was about a mile, but they never timed it in minutes. The official time was ten days, and England won the money. This adventure gave Barry a cue. He took to the race track and steeple-chasing, finally riding for a cer- tain Lord B , whose name he withheld for excellent reasons. Wearing Lord B 's colours, he came in second in the Grand National. The Rajah was the pick of the stable a great horse at hurdles and water- jumps. But Lord B , it seemed, was in a bad way finan- cially. Like the Rajah, he went it fast. Through his trainer the nobleman gently " ap- proached " Barry Gordon. If on a coming day at Ascot Barry Gordon would pull the Rajah and throw the race, there was money in it. Barry's reply was impulsive, but none the less posi- tive for that. "Tell his lordship," said he, "to go to the devil! Tell him the Rajah and I are gentlemen ! " That ended Barry's racing career in England. The trainer spread it about that he had discharged him, and gave a reason full of truth with a twist in it. He said Gordon wasn't to be trusted. The scene then changed to Paris, where Barry in a week flung away the savings of a year. [185] BARRY GORDON He now decided to have a try at art. By teaching the son of a French baker good English, and the daughter of an American bartender poor French, he managed to pay for a dingy room in the Latin Quarter. When he had a little money he lived like a fighting-cock and loafed; when he had none he worked. But his painting had never amounted to much. He never applied himself and never took pains; so his life in the Quarter ended ingloriously. One day, in a portrait-class, they were painting a model made up as Coquelin in " Cyrano de Bergerac." The others produced portraits of varying excellence or mediocrity; but Barry, again inconsequent, thanks to numerous potations, caught only one impression the nose. He began with the nose and finished with the nose. Without the slightest suggestion of the figure or the other features, he projected from the dark back- ground an enormous, bodiless, faceless nose that almost filled the canvas. Fouchet, in whose studio he was working, inspected his masterpiece gravely. " Is that all you see? " Barry nodded. " And you painted this gigantic thing seriously? " " As seriously," said Barry, " as Cyrano wore it." " Then is this a nose? " asked Fouchet in mild sur- prise. [186] BARRY GORDON " What else did you think ? " demanded Barry, hotly. " I took it," replied Fouchet without a smile, " for an imaginary sketch of Popocatepetl." Then the master laid his hand on Barry's shoulder. " Life is short," he said, " and art is long, but this nose is even longer ! " " You can't judge me by this," protested the student. " This is a mood ; that's all." " A mood? I thought you called it a nose! " " Look here, Monsieur Fouchet," said Barry exas- perated, " tell me what you think of me. You know my work. Shall I keep on? " Fouchet stroked his pointed beard and frowned med- itatively at the canvas. Finally, a smile played across the corners of his mouth. " If you spend about ten years," said he, " trim- ming down this moody nose, by no more, say, than one millimetre each year, and then twenty years more, filling in the face and figure, you may prove yourself willing to approach art with the serious perseverance it de- mands." " Then adieu, Monsieur Fouchet ! " said Barry, im- pulsively. The following morning Barry had strayed from the Quarter, aimless and vagrant. Now came the adven- ture so vividly recalled to his mind by the little Parisian girl's loss of her aerial toy. [187] BARRY GORDON As he wandered out over the environs of Paris, he came by chance on three Frenchmen in a bad way. They were surrounded by a small crowd. Two of them sat near a gas-tank and a huge balloon ready filled. On the ground lay the third, just recovering from partial as- phyxiation, due to a leak in the inflating-pipe. The man was too weak to start. His friends were in a great fluster of impatience. There was talk of a wager and lack of ballast. They sadly needed a substitute. Barry stepped forward out of the crowd. " Where are you going? " he asked. They waved vaguely toward the south. The indefiniteness of the gesture appealed to him. He put his suggestion in a way tactfully French and ingratiating. " The earth." said he, " is a poor place. Take me with you to the stars ! " The aeronauts looked him over, and hastily whispered together. In the end they accepted his offer. They in- vited him into the car with them, and carried him along as ballast. Never was a madder voyage. They got caught that day in a northeast storm, and something went wrong with a valve. They could not descend. They shot up incredible distances. They were swallowed in oceans of cloud. Night closed around them and they tore through a black infinity, the car trailing out sideways after the [188] BARRY GORDON gas-bag. Save where they raced past cloud-rifts, there was no earth and no sky. The danger looked desperate. " To the parachutes ! " cried one of the Frenchmen. " That's better than bumping into the moon ! " Unluckily there were but two parachutes, the third having been carelessly left on the earth with the disabled aeronaut. " We'll draw lots," said the Frenchman generously. "Not a bit of it!" protested Barry. "Take the parachutes, please, and jump. The loss of your weight will shoot me up but a mile or two, and what's a mile or two in the universe ? I came with you to go to the stars. Gentlemen, I insist ! " The two Frenchmen, overjoyed by his refusal, em- braced him with such demonstrative gratitude that they all nearly toppled into space. Then abruptly precipitant and businesslike, they disembarked. He saw them drop straight down for an instant ; then their parachutes opened, and they went sailing earth- wards as if beneath prodigious umbrellas. He knew nothing more. The balloon's rise must have been terrific. In the rarefied air his heart gave out, and he sank to the bottom of the basket in a swoon. Barry's awakening was, to say the least, sensational. As he woke he instinctively kicked his feet and waved his arms. He had a feeling that he did not want to drop, [189] BARRY GORDON but to rise. The motion saved him. In a moment he was breathing again, and now became a creature made of nothing but lungs and arms and legs. Then slowly his wits returned and he knew he was in water. Swimming high, he looked about him. Not a sign of the balloon. On the one hand, as far as the eye could see, there was nothing but a calm blue surface, on the other a dense forest. When at last he gained the shore he lay down on the ground in the sunlight, and as life slowly flowed into him out of the vast warmth only one thing troubled his mind. He wondered how many miles he was from a cigarette. Of course he knew nothing then of dates or places, but later he learned this : He had gone to sleep probably somewhere over Spain, and now he had awakened in Lake Tchad, in the heart of Africa! That ended the adventure. Never again did he see the balloon. The great gas-bag, semi-collapsed, had probably dragged itself off into the forest. After that Barry had wandered through Africa for years, his long nomadic idleness broken once by a mad raid on Somaliland with the Abyssinians, and termi- nated by a somewhat scandalous and romantic ad- venture the adventure, in fact, which had perhaps impelled Muriel to announce her engagement to Tom. One night, disguised as a Berber peasant woman, he [190] BARRY GORDON ventured into the forbidden city of Beni Aloo, high in the Rif Mountains on the north coast. The disguise proved effective. He was really half Arab by this time, and knew the ways and lingos of many peoples. The pilgrimage to this forbidden city, whence no white man had ever returned alive, was not without aim. Outside the walls he had seen a vision beautiful as a June evening. They said she was a Tangier Jewess married to a mountain sheik whose name he did not learn. The called her Naomi the Fawn. Her veiled eyes and her fleeting whisper were full of a light allure- ment. On that summer night the beggar-woman at Naomi's door did not beg in vain. Naomi led up Barry to the house-top and there unveiled. Near at hand, in a tree, a nightingale sang, and Naomi drew weird, faint music from the strings of a gimbri. The air was laden with intoxicating odours, and Naomi's soft, large eyes were like forest lakes at midnight. The spell of the African evening, secret and magical, stole through his senses. Naomi, too, was lost in it. They spent enchanted hours on that far flat roof in Beni Aloo. But there came a terrible moment. The two shadows were softly approached by a third shadow, and sud- denly, in the dark, there was a glimmer of steel. Barry and Naomi saw it and sprang up. Then began a wild dance of daggers a flight through the house [191] BARRY GORDON and streets to the open country; then a ride, both on one horse, and the town after them in full cry. Luckily for Naomi, he got her safe to Tangier. They parted within sight of it, she assuring him that here she could find refuge with her family. That seemed to be the end of the adventure in Beni Aloo. But Barry to this day had forebodings, and did not feel sure. Leaving Morocco, he had taken steamer to Gibraltar and thence to Naples. At Naples he had fallen low, morally and physically. In his earlier youth he had talked of searching in Herculaneum for the lost poems of Sappho, but his excavations were very different from the dream. He got down to the rock bottom of life, and his find was not the expected poems. He found only sin and pain. In the end he came near to dying of a fever, and spent weeks in hospital, raving and hot as Vesuvius. When at last he regained his senses, there at his bed- side sat Hicks. This old friend, it seemed, had obtained through his father a modest position in the diplomatic service. He was a sort of special agent, or messenger, constantly employed on foreign errands. Happening now to be at Naples, he had heard of Barry in the hos- pital. Hicks, dogged and staunch as ever, was immediately for cabling home. [192] BARRY GORDON " If you do," said Barry, " I'll leave this bed this very minute ! " which meant death. So Hicks, sadly surrendering, sent no word. Day and night he sat by his friend's bedside and pulled him through. And that was the end of the seven years. [193] CHAPTER IV BARRY BUYS AN EVENING PAPER. THE NEWS ON THE FRONT PAGE. THE COURSE OF HIS LIFE IS SUDDENLY CHANGED BARRY looked across at Kitty. They were linger- ing late over their cognac. " So here I am," he said lightly, raising his tiny glass and toasting her. " There's nothing more to tell." " What do you think of it all, Barry? " He blew several rings of cigar-smoke and watched them ascend. Then he indicated the dissolving rings with a gesture, and bitterly smiled. " Kitty," he said, " that's what I think of it. That's all it amounts to in the end." As he looked across at her the bitterness left him, and his eyes filled with a soft light. " Kitty, this is the pleasantest evening I've spent in the seven years." She smiled at him in a comradely way. " I think I can say the same, Barry, and yet A mist gathered in her eyes and she found hjerself blinking in spite of herself. She felt inexpressibly weary at thought of his wanderings, sad at thought of his [194] BARRY GORDON separation from Muriel. He caught her look, and said with a touch of loneliness : " Forgive me, Kitty ! It was such a relief to tell it all to unburden myself. I hope I haven't kept you too late." " No, no," she said nervously, pulling on her gloves. " It isn't that. I was only thinking that if Muriel " He rose abruptly. " Let me help you with your coat, Kitty." This was the first time she had actually mentioned Muriel's name, and the tone in which he spoke warned her not to do so again. The night being clear, they decided to walk to her apartment. As they strolled homewards Barry was very silent, and she began to fear that at the last she had openly overstepped the bounds of a mascu- line companionship. She tried to redeem herself by keeping to safer talk. As they passed a kiosk near the Pont Neuf, she asked him to buy her an evening paper. " I made a bet," she said, " that the Cid would win to-day at Longchamps a Paquin dress with Catherine de Lorinville. You remember she was one of the Mor- rison twins used to be a pallid lily. Now she's an arti- ficial orchid. Poor Kate! Monsieur le comte, her hus- band, seems to prefer rose-buds." Barry remembered the day when the Morrison twins [195] BARRY GORDON had assisted in mixing up his brain, and laughed mirth- lessly. " What became of the other ? " he asked. " Oh, she was luckier," replied Kitty in a quieter tone. " She died." " And what became of Meade? " " Had to leave town," said Kitty tersely. " New York got too hot for him. Played a shady game of bridge." "And what about Pierre Loew?" asked Barry in a strained voice. " Did he try that portrait? " " Yes, but he failed utterly. She can't be put on can- vas. He said he could no more paint her than he could paint a strain of music." Barry tossed a coin to the news-vender and picked up an evening paper. " Let's see if there's going to be fighting anywhere," he said abruptly. He glanced through the main columns by the light from the kiosk. Kitty slipped a hand through his arm. " You savage ! " she laughed. " Look for the races. A Paquin dress is more important than all the wars in Christendom ! " He did not smile. She saw his face, under the kiosk lamp, go white as death. He was staring at a cable- despatch on the front page. " My God ! " he ejaculated. [196] BARRY GORDON She bent forward over the paper, straining her eyes. The cable was from Tangier. Translated it read as follows : Mr. Thomas Gordon, one of the engineers sent from New York to Morocco by the Beekman-Roche Syndicate, has been mur- dered. Mr. Gordon had been missing for several days, a fact until now withheld for international reasons. Many details are lacking. It is said that the young American had ridden out alone to prospect for a proposed bridge across a ravine beyond Ceuta. When days went by and he did not report his companions grew anxious and, after searching parties had returned without news, appealed to the Sultan. It was feared Mr. Gordon had been taken captive by Ali Hamed, the Moorish Pretender, either to be held for ransom or because of Ali's fanatical antagonism to the railroad pro- ject. But this was not the case. This morning Mr. Gordon's body, shot through the heart, was found in the mountains by the Sultan's troops. The soldiers at once buried the body where they found it. An hour later the murderer, a common bandit, who confessed to having shot and robbed the foreigner, was caught by the Moorish soldiers. He has already been executed. There is not a little feeling against the native troops because they did not bring back Mr. Gordon's remains to his friends in Tangier. Their excuse is the distance, the difficulties of trans- portation through the mountain fastnesses, and the defilement of carrying a Christian body. While they read the despatch Kitty felt Barry's arm [197] BARRY GORDON grow rigid. He was vaguely conscious that she kept gripping it with spasmodic contractions of her fingers. Then, as they finished the cable, his arm and her hand relaxed and parted. Mechanically he folded the paper and stuck it in his pocket. They crossed the bridge without speaking. Once or twice she heard him groan almost inaudibly, evi- dently in profound grief. As they came again into the bright crowded streets he seemed suddenly to take heart. His step, which at first had been heavy and slow, became lighter and quicker. " Details are lacking ; details are lacking," he kept repeating dazedly to himself. " That's a significant fact. Details are lacking and the details that are not lack- ing don't ring true ! " He suddenly turned and stood facing her, deeply ex- cited. " I don't believe it ! " he exclaimed. " I don't I won't believe Tom's dead ! I know those people know them well. They hate foreigners, and yet they fear them. Somehow they're lying! I know they're lying! That re- port they brought to Tangier about the burial the ap- prehension of the criminal within an hour, the execution at once it's all a blind. Somehow it's all a blind. I won't believe Tom's dead ! " Kitty was sobbing silently, heart-brokenly, and for a [198] BARRY GORDON moment could not answer. As they walked on again she said at last : " Barry, I loved him ! " Barry was too preoccupied to notice the fall in her voice. He thought she meant as a friend. " Yes," he said, " everyone loved Tom." Suddenly she saw him straighten up with a look of activity and resolve. " I shall take the first Madrid express," he said, " and keep straight on to Gibraltar. A few hours after that I shall be in Tangier." At the door of her apartment she turned to him and firmly, eloquently grasped his hand. " God give you luck, Barry." That night he sat till daylight alone in the corner of a cafe, reading and re-reading the despatch from Tangier. His search in Morocco was one of the darkest chap- ters of Barry's life. In spite of him, old hopes re-awoke, and he could not crush them out. Because of these hopes he felt so disloyal to his brother, so ashamed of thinking of anything but the loss of Tom, that his inherited curse came back upon him. Just when he should have set forth with every faculty alert he succumbed again to the old temptation. He drank hard. [199] BARRY GORDON Yet he sought for the truth about Tom with grim perseverance. Desperately he tried to get at detailed facts and prove Tom's death a lie, but in vain. At last he was forced to accept the story which all the world believed. The fact seemed so very plain, so indisputably plain. A month later, worn out, he returned to New York and drifted into the Beekman house one evening as casually as if he had never been away. [200] BOOK V NEMESIS CHAPTER I TIME AND PROPINQUITY SMOOTH THE WAY, BUT MKS. BEEKMAN BLOCKS IT, AND BARRY HAS SECRET MIS- GIVINGS. KITTY AGAIN TO THE RESCUE MRS. BEEKMAN, seated at her desk, looked across at her husband with troubled eyes. He sat in his armchair trying to lose himself in a complicated game of patience. She noticed that he was dealing very slowly, building very carefully on the proper cards, considering each play with a forced attention which suggested an attempt to rivet his thoughts on this idle recreation and save himself from the far more serious problem that now disturbed their lives. Mrs. Beekman frowned and shifted restlessly. His shallow pastime vexed her soul. " I really think," she said at last, " your game of solitaire is almost a sin especially in the morning." Her voice was querulous, solicitous. " You're not grow- ing old, are you? " The lines on his forehead deepened. He drew himself up more alertly in his chair. " To-day is a holiday," he replied impassively. " It [203] BARRY GORDON seems to me that as long as a man is capable of enjoy- ing his holidays irresponsibly he's still young." Mrs. Beekman sighed, and resumed the staving off of age in her own peculiar way. In this defensive process the newer the fad the better. As long as theories came thick and fast why should her mind deteriorate? With the acquired hard eagerness of a woman seek- ing a barren refuge, she drew out from under her desk a tall, cylindrical brass instrument which she placed before her and impatiently adjusted. Presently she took from one of her desk drawers a number of slides, and, fitting one after another into place, bent close to the instrument. Closing one eye, she peered through the cyl- inder with the other. As this extraordinary investigation progressed, she grew more and more fascinated and hor- rified. At last she began muttering to herself, " Awful ! Frightful! Hideous!" and other ejaculations indicative of pleased disgust. Mr. Beekman, his game spoiled by these disturbing exclamations, leaned back in his chair and stared at her. " What on earth are you doing ? " he asked in be- wilderment. " What is that thing? " She looked up at him with feverish enthusiasm. " I've joined a society for promoting the use of the microscope. Our object is to make the masses familiar with germs to educate their pathologic sense. We [204] BARRY GORDON hope to popularise the microscope to have one in every home in every tenement. Then, before the poor pay for their food, they will investigate it. Thus the dealers, even in the slums, will be forced to supply their cus- tomers with purer meat, milk, and vegetables." Mr. Beekman smiled and gathered up his cards. " Once a Bostonian, always a Bostonian," he said dryly, and, bored by his game, put the pack in the box. Regretfully he looked across at his wife. It was sad to think how steadily they had drifted apart ; how he had let business take him from her; how she had sought refuge in these fads. " Sometimes," he said at last, " I deplore the very existence of money, science, and everything else that tends to harden the human heart ! " Mrs. Beekman bit her lip. " If the human heart stays soft," she said bitterly, " it finds itself at the mercy of every cruelty in life ! " Suddenly all her recent anxieties crowded in on her. She rose, crossed the library, and confronted him. " Speaking of the human heart," she said, " how about Muriel and Barry ? " Her face assumed a look al- most virulently maternal. " This is a question," she said, " we have got to deal with. Day after day, week after week, month after month, we've put it off, till now the time has come when, if we put it off any longer, we shall be too late to save her. It is certainly your place [205] BARRY GORDON to take a stand, because if she loves him it's your fault. For the past two years, contrary to my wishes, you've permitted him to come here. Ever since he returned from abroad you have let him see her almost every day and every evening. They're always together. Of course you know the inevitable result ! " Mr. Beekman nodded dumbly. " But I won't believe it ! " she exclaimed in vehement protest. " I will not believe she loves him! Muriel loved Tom. If Tom had lived she would have married him." As she spoke of Tom, her cold blue eyes grew moist. They looked like ice slowly melting on the surface. " How I wish that might have been ! " Mr. Beekman's keen glance, fixed on the bare green baize of the card-table, seemed to be piercing the past. " No," he interposed ; " she admired Tom, but she never really loved him. In the end I believe she would have asked him to let her break it. I believe she was beginning to realise her mistake." Mrs. Beekman made a gesture of impatience. " I wish she would realise this mistake. If she marries Barry she'll have to divorce him before the year's out. Do we want to see our daughter a divorced woman like your cousin, Kitty Van Ness ? " Mr. Beekman was still scrutinising the past, as if he had neatly set it out like his cards on the baize-covered table. [206] BARRY GORDON " Do you know," he said, " I believe Kitty loved Tom." " Yes ; but he was far too good for her. He was almost good enough for Muriel. Barry isn't, though. What is he? Nothing but a man about town, an idler, a spend- thrift. What does he do? Nothing. He lives at the club, wastes his money on his friends, his pleasure, his wine." Mr. Beekman's reply to this was sharp and severe. "You are utterly unjust!" he said. "Barry is gen- erous to a fault that's all. As to the wine, ever since he came back to us, he has not touched a single drop of anything intoxicating. Under Muriel's influence Barry is a different man." Mrs. Beekman lifted her eyebrows and regarded him with frigid indignation. " Then are you going to let them marry ? " He shifted uneasily and frowned. " It is not a question of letting them," he said. " They are not boy and girl ; they are man and woman. If they decide to marry they will do so. Barry has candidly told me this. He says there are reasons why he cannot ask Muriel. I suppose he means his tendencies. But, aside from that, he said if Muriel would have him noth- ing could stand between them. As politely as possible he implied that no one but Muriel would be consulted. He even said outright, ' If Mrs. Beekman goes too far [207] BARRY GOUDON in her opposition she may regret it. If I have to, I'll carry Muriel off ! ' Mrs. Beekman's face was pallid with anger. " As long as there's a drop of blood in my body," she exclaimed, " he shan't do that ! " She drifted to the window, and stared out across the avenue. It was a day late in the spring, and the park was like a green oasis in the barren town. But Mrs. Beekman's eyes were unseeing. Long she stood there in blind, mute rebellion. At this juncture, as luck would have it, Kitty Van Ness dropped in from her morning stroll, and, always breezily informal with her cousins, appeared unan- nounced in the library. As Mr. Beekman rose and greeted Kitty, his wife turned from the window. She bowed, frowning. She was in no mood for pleasantries. To her, Kitty's costume, parasol and gloves all of a delicate ecru shade, in tune with her flaxen hair and the spring morning instead of conveying a satisfying impression, seemed merely a vague blur. Kitty felt the strain of the moment. " I'm afraid I'm intruding," she said artlessly. " Per- haps I'd better go." Mrs. Beekman was too abstracted even to object to her presence. " No, Kitty ; it's nothing private. What I have to [208] BARRY GORDON say I would say to all the world." She turned at once to her husband. " I've made up my mind," she declared harshly. " If you intend to let things go from bad to worse, I don't! I shall take Muriel abroad with me on the earliest possible steamer. I shall take her this very week. I shall not leave Barry Gordon the slightest trace of us the slightest clue to our whereabouts. If need be, I shall keep Muriel away from him for years ! " Mr. Beekman nodded calmly, without surprise or dis- sent. His thoughts had been as quick as her words. " For my part, I've always had faith in Barry," he said. " I believe if Muriel married him he would never go wrong. He would develop splendidly. If there's any saving power at all in a great love, I see little risk in this match. But do as you say, by all means. Put them to the test by a Igng separation. If you succeed in break- ing it off so easily, well and good. You'll prove their love weak, and I shall be the first to thank you for res- cuing them from it." Mrs. Beekman bowed coldly. " Then come at once, please, and tell Muriel. At any moment Barry will be here. She's dressing to go out to lunch with him. Before she sees him I wish to tell her my decision." Mr. Beekman smiled with polite irony. " By all means do so ; but the decision is yours, not mine. So I fear you'll have to shoulder the responsibility [209] BARRY GORDON alone." He went to the door. " I have an engagement at the club this morning," he said quietly. He bowed to Kitty Van Ness. " If you'll forgive me, Kitty." As he left them, Mrs. Beekman drew a deep sigh and turned to Kitty wearily. " It seems rude for us both to leave you," she said ; " but as you're one of the family you'll understand. I feel it's my duty to tell Muriel without delay. Won't you wait ? " Kitty, swinging her parasol, sauntered to the win- dow. "Yes, perhaps I will," she said lightly. "Don't bother about me." Left alone, Kitty stood there many minutes looking out. The park was full of holiday-makers from meaner quarters of the town. Out in the sunshine children were busy with games, and over the clear blue water of the pond toy sailboats gaily voyaged. In the shade of the trees the parents idled the day away, glad of rest and air. Kitty kept glancing watchfully down the avenue. Suddenly she turned, crossed the library, and has- tened down-stairs. She met Barry outside in the vestibule, before he had rung. As she greeted him, her brightness was unusually clouded; there was honest, affectionate trouble in her warm blue eyes. She closed the door behind her. [210] BARRY GORDON " Barry," she said in a low voice, " if you hope ever to be happy, grasp happiness now ! " A shadow crossed his face, but he was little disturbed. She had urged him similarly many times. He shook his head. " No, Kitty ; even if Muriel's willing I can't do - it. I've often told you why." " Yes ; but that possibility," she replied sadly, " is too remote, I'm afraid, to be considered." " No, it is not. I tell you I've never been wholly con- vinced. I've a feeling that even now " " A mere feeling," broke in Kitty, " that preys on you and makes you dwell on it. Unfortunately there's nothing to warrant it. The facts are all too clear." He shook his head. " Those people can make black look like white." " But you went 1;here," she persisted uneasily. " You found his drawing-instruments, his clothes, even his grave. You did all you could." She saw him flinch and bite his lip. " Yes, that's true. I did ! I tried hard to get at the facts. God knows I tried hard! But the ungovernable hopes I had seemed so unworthy of me that I drank." He passed a hand wearily across his eyes. " The less said about that search the better, Kitty. The fact re- mains, I can't in honour ask her unless I tell her of my doubts and give her a chance to wait for Tom." [211] BARRY GORDON Kitty smiled at him ironically. " It's queer how you black sheep baa about honour ! What's the use of telling her? It will only make her un- happy. Besides, there's nothing to tell, except a lot of vague imaginings." He shrugged helplessly. " Vague? Yes, but you're a woman and should ap- preciate the disquieting effect of a strong presentiment. I admit my feeling is unreasonable, but it is so insistent that what do you think I've done? I've actually written to Hicks at the State Department in Washington, ask- ing him to keep in constant touch with affairs in Mo- rocco. If anything suspicious comes to light, he's prom- ised to let me know at once." Barry's eyes narrowed. His voice fell lower. It sound- ed strained and unnatural. " Suppose that happens, Kitty ! Suppose Tom rises from the dead. And suppose her dead love for him rises, too, and she finds herself tied to me." A spasm of pain crossed his face, a tremor ran through him. Then again he shook his head. " No, Kitty, no ! You see I can't do it. Muriel's happiness means more to me than anything in life." Kitty had withheld the needed stab until he had had his say. Now suddenly she delivered it with swift force. " Barry, here's news. Muriel goes abroad this very week. Her mother has decided to take her away from BARRY GORDON you. They will stay for years. No address ! No clue ! " Kitty laughed. " Now how do you feel about it? " Barry stood stunned. It was hard to believe at first. For two whole years the course of life had run so smooth. He could have lived a long time as he had been living. Muriel's regained companionship had meant so much to him that merely to be with her had seemed to be enough. But now, if they were going to take her away, he would be again alone, utterly alone. Once more the world would turn to a desert, bounded only by the sun- rise and the sunset. Once more he would be a vagrant, a moving shadow on the face of it, a ghost lost in the void. Suddenly Kitty saw the blood rush to his temples, saw the fire of reckless impulse flare in his eyes. Then she knew her stab had told. She gave him her hand in parting. " What will you do ? " she asked. " I don't know," he replied feverishly. " Kitty, I don't know ! " She pressed his hand. " Good luck, Barry," she said wistfully. Then with a curt little nod of farewell, she opened her parasol and strolled away from him down the avenue. Blind with impatience, he rang the bell. CHAPTER II BARRY AND MURIEL. THE MAN IN THE TRAIN. THE FATES SPIN FAST BARRY, waiting for Muriel in the library, paced restlessly back and forth. Would she have him? The question set his thoughts at work for a clue to her feeling, but in vain. She was not the mere will-o'-the-wisp of old. On his return two years back he had at once found her more tangible. The bright haze of dream-stuff had dissolved, revealing to him a vivid, sunlit woman. Yet she was still slender and strikingly piquant, her foot- step light, her moods variable. Sometimes her changeful eyes seemed sad, and in her voice there lingered a quality as of shadows. But he could not tell if this outer wistfulness hid a deeper mourning, or if she really felt no greater grief, and, being so true, could not exaggerate by a single tear the depth of her sorrow. They spoke freely of Tom, but with less and less fre- quency. Both healthy, and with the long reaches of the future still before them, their companionship filled their [214] BARRY GORDON lives. But he feared she granted him this companionship so generously merely because she relied on him to un- derstand that beyond it there could be no tie between them. In a word, perhaps she gave him so much because she had so little to give him. The old shadows passed across his face. What dif- ference did it make? Even if she did love him, he could not ask her. As he paced to and fro his eye was caught by the shining brass microscope on Mrs. Beekman's desk. The thing looked so out of place amid the large com- fort of this library that he stopped and glanced at it, glad of anything external on which to focus his mind. He smiled with bitter irony. The thing started an unpleasant train of thought. It suggested bacilli and disease and all things loathsome to a man with his splendid constitution. And disease suggested evil. Even in crucial moments Barry had a way of think- ing of life in the large. He did so now with a pessimism focussed on the microscope. In the old days men' had been men, now they were doctors' patients. Once they had been healthy, now they were hygienic. Once they had gazed with rapture at Raphael's Madonnas, now they peered with curiosity at microbes. Once they had been inspired by faith, hope, and charity, now they were debased by agnosticism, [215] BARRY GORDON pathology, and philanthropy. The smaller the age the bigger the words. Barry shuddered as he stared at Mrs. Beekman's sinister toy. He would have liked to throw the thing out of the window. But he only smiled cynically. That would have been sacrilege. In the old days sacrilege meant the abuse of something sacred for example, a crucifix. But the microscope was the crucifix of to-day a symbol of men's sublime faith! He passed a hand over the cold smooth tube and his pessimism deepened. Oh, it meant a lot, this neat instrument! Could its lenses be made powerful enough one might look through it and find out the truth about a man see the ancestral germ in a drop of his blood the germ of evil the devil himself! Barry drew a short harsh laugh. His thoughts were fantastic and ironical. Yes; the devil was a microbe; nothing more nor less! He bent forward and held an eye to the instrument. As he saw one of Mrs. Beekman's specimens he made a wry face. Yes, the Bible was right after all. The devil had horns and a tail, but the horns were like a snail's and the tail was like a tadpole's ! As Barry straightened up, his sardonic humour left him. Could a man be beaten by one of these specks of [216] BARRY GORDON matter? Yes, the specks of matter had killed every man that had lived on this earth! He paced back and forth again restlessly. From the seamy side of life only one influence could save him Muriel's. If only he could ask her! As Muriel entered the room this thought was in his mind, this hunger in his heart. She came in slowly, and he saw in her eyes the after- light of shed tears, and, half hidden in the clear loveli- ness of her face, shadows of trouble. Midway to him she paused, burned by his mere look. She felt a sudden great throb of her heart, felt the colour flame in her cheeks. In all the two years they had not once spoken the words, but he was speaking them now in silence. On his dumb lips, in his dark eyes, in his whole person at this moment, she saw his love. Yet he was in the throes of some struggle, every mus- cle tense, his face scarred with sudden lines, his look the look of a man drowning. " Muriel," he asked brokenly, " are you going to let them take you away from me? " She averted her eyes and moved over to the empty fire-place, as if the mere memory of its winter warmth could dispel the chill of her mother's plan. She turned at the hearth and faced him, with the room between them. But even then her glance fell before his. [217] BARRY GORDON As Barry, awaiting her answer, stood gazing at her, his look grew almost resentful. Why did he repeatedly have fresh impressions of her impressions so frequent and vivid that it seemed as if every day he saw her for the first time? This was the rare magic of Muriel she was always new ! Here at this very moment, all unconsciously, she was branding on his heart a new image. Even her clothes were part of it, her dress was so much a part of her inner self. She wore a cloth walking suit of a pale turquoise blue, and a piquant hat of the same colour. One hand pressed her heart to quiet it, the other drooped over the mantel-shelf, the fingers toying with a pair of long white gloves that hung down loosely. Her head, too, drooped, and her lashes. Her grace tortured him. " Muriel," he repeated desperately, " are you going to let them take you away from me? " She raised her eyes, smiling, and the smile was a faint challenge. " Are you? " Dazed, he started slowly toward her, hesitant and still struggling. " No," he replied in a strained voice, " I am not ! " Something in his tone made her shiver unaccount- ably. Her face lost colour. The challenging smile faded. [218] BARRY GORDON " Wait, Barry," she implored him quickly. " I didn't know what I was saying. Perhaps it is best to go." Her words were instinctive, unreasoning; her voice had the quality of shadows in it and gave him pause. But his blood ran hot now and set him on fire. " No ! " he cried, " I can't let you go. If you leave me alone again if I've got to live in this world without you Muriel, I can't that's all! I tried a long time to forget you, tried for seven years to kill my love for you ; but I couldn't." His tone softened. " Always your voice spoke to me, your eyes looked at me." He drew himself up quietly. " Muriel, I am my love for you. That is all there is to me." Again he started toward her, but his intensity fright- ened her. " Barry, not yet," she repeated f alteringly. " Ah wait!" "No," he said. "Now!" She swayed like a flower in a gale, but he was grow- ing reckless. Little he knew the gathering force of this wind of destiny. Little he imagined the invisible threads already extending outwards to other people and other places. But the gray Fates, spinning and winding and clip- ping those threads, surely looked down with shrouded triumph at the tangle they had spread around him. [219] BARRY GORDON In a train from Washington a man sat alone in the smoking compartment consumed with impatience for his journey's end. He had a nervous look. He was sitting forward on the edge of his seat. He was frowning at the flying landscape. He was gnawing and fumbling his cigar. He seemed to feel that by mere energy of will he could make the train go faster. Time and again he passed a hand across his red hair, rumpling it till it looked like a fire in a wind. Time and again he con- sulted a railway and steamship guide, his brown, frec- kled face wrinkled as the shell of a walnut. Time and again he took from his breast-pocket a large letter-case and reread the numerous papers it contained. As the train rumbled into the station at Jersey City he clapped his hat on, caught up his bag, jumped off, and made hastily for the ferry. When at last he set foot in New York he hailed a cab, gave the name of a club on Fifth Avenue, and dived in. " Muriel," said Barry, " I need you as much as I need breath in my lungs. I've got to have you ! " His voice broke. " And yet " As he moved toward her, intent only on taking her in his arms, it suddenly seemed to him that a shadow fell between them, impossible to cross the shadow of Tom. With a great effort he curbed himself, and stopped. [220] BARRY GORDON " I can't forget that you were engaged to Tom," he said. " You loved him then, and perhaps you love him now I mean his memory." She turned and looked down silently into the fireless grate. " You would have married him," he faltered, wouldn't you?" He paused, but not long enough to permit her to reply. " No, don't answer," he said quick- ly ; " let me believe your feelings might have changed." He stood staring at her back, intoxicated by her lithe, flexible figure, the gentle curves from her waist upwards under her arms. He came close to her, but the shadow came closer yet and intercepted him the shadow of Tom. He was mute a moment, then he asked with deadly calm: " Muriel, if Tom were here now, which of us would you choose? This is a vital question." She turned silently and smiled at him with a queer look, half wounded, half indulgent. " Barry," she said, " why should you ask ? Can't you understand a woman's loyalty? He gave me his love. If Tom were living, if Tom were a rival, you might ask me; but Tom is dead." Her look was almost maternal, as if she longed to soothe him and pour out happiness on him. The shadow between them seemed to creep away. [221] BARRY GORDON " Muriel, forgive me ! " he said. Then he came even nearer to her, so close that her fragrance stole through his senses. Suddenly all the fire of his race leapt up in him, but his manner was intensely quiet, his voice low. " Muriel, marry me to-day ! That's the way out of it. Then they can't take you away from me. I've a feeling it's now or never. I won't let you wait. No, not even to see your father and mother. If you did there would be no end of talk and trouble. Come! It is not unfair to them. I warned them I'd ask you to do this if your mother drove me to it and she has ! Come, Muriel!" Her eyes were melting, warming. Her whole person seemed to give out light. It was as if the long darkness of his life steadily lifted and all around him spread a wide and gradual daytime. He lowered his gaze from her eyes to her lips, and, as for a fleeting instant he watched them part to speak, he remembered a single perfect poppy he had once plucked near an eastern sea. " If I do," she asked, " will you go on fighting your old failing with all your strength? " " Yes, Muriel, with all my strength." Her eyes met his trustfully, her answer was simple as a child's: " Barry, I love you ! " BARRY GORDON Then for a moment neither of them thought or spoke. He knew only that he made her his, she that his arms crushed her. And this time her lips, instead of turning to ice as they had when he had kissed her years ago, faintly responded. The ethereal sweetness of this response touched his finest fibres. After the one passionate kiss he took her hand quietly and bent down to it, as if in the practice of some ritual long familiar to him in spirit. There was a moment of deep silence. Then she breathed shyly: " Let's go to the old farm, Barry." As he raised his head his face was transfigured. " Yes," he said, " to the old farm." " I'll leave them good-bye," she said, and, hastening to the desk, scribbled a note: DEAR FATHER: Barry and I have decided to get married im- mediately. It seems best. Once it is fore ver settled, mother, I'm sure, will become resigned and try to know the real Barry as you and I know him. We are going to the old farm for our honey- moon. Do write to us. Your devoted and happy daughter, MURIEL. Ask mother to write too forgiving us. Love to you both. " Let me add a line," said Barry, and did so on the same sheet: DEAR MR. BEEKMAN: You have been my father's best friend [223 ] BARRY GORDON and mine. I ask for a test of your friendship now your trust. Thanks to Muriel, I shall be worthy of it. Yours, BARRY. While they wrote this brief farewell the Fates were spinning and winding and clipping their threads with ever-increasing alacrity. The red-headed man in the cab, after hastening frantically from club to club on his way uptown, had at last cried Mr. Beekman's address to the phlegmatic driver and was coming hurriedly up the avenue. As Muriel and Barry went out into the spring morn- ing they were as light-hearted as the children making holiday in the opposite park. Turning into a side street, they failed to notice a cab that stopped at the house they had just left. CHAPTER III FLIGHT AND PUESUIT. THEIR WEDDING NIGHT. THE HARMONY OF THE SPHERES, AND THE JANGLE OF A DOOR-BELL THEIR journey on an express train seemed to both of them scarcely actual. It was merely a speeding through space in a brief half-con- scious dream. As the landscape flew by they now and then silently watched it from the car window the brick stations and dully busy streets of Connecticut towns; the old wooden stations of dingy villages ; the gray-haired, pipe-smoking flagmen at lonely crossings; flashes of rivers and wide stretches of meadow-land, green and gold in the sunshine. Then came Rhode Island with its wilder look old orchards, rambling stone walls, isolated farms, woods and swamps. Then at last they gained the Massachusetts country, less unkempt, more park-like the old white farmhouses, simple and neat, like the en- chanted house at the end of this unthinking journey. As dusk fell like a curtain behind the car window, the landscape was shut out and each saw the other's face vaguely imaged in the glass. [225] BARRY GORDON Barry drew closer and spoke in a low voice to Muriel's reflection. " That's the way I used to see you," he said. " The world flew by. Scenes changed. I knocked about for years, but I always saw you, Muriel, in the heart of it all." He turned to her as if almost fearing to test the reality of her companionship. Then he smiled. " Now it's different, isn't it, Muriel? " The two had had lunch on the train, a memorable and dilatory repast. Their talk for the most part had been light. They agreed that the clergyman who had just married them was the most lovable old soul on earth. They rejoiced in the fact that no house servants were yet at the farm. They agreed that they preferred camp- ing out there by themselves. She had sent a telegram to Peter Best, the gardener, and they laughed as they pic- tured his surprise at sight of her new signature, " Mu- riel Gordon." They talked, too, of places they would visit, sights they would see, the intimate roving life they would live together. Afterwards Muriel remembered almost word for word this low-voiced happy conversation. But the memory was haunting. As she looked back on their wedding journey she could see Nemesis following them. Though they felt so free, they were fettered by the Fates' threads. Pursuing them in a train that had left New York [226] BARRY GORDON two hours after theirs, sat the red-headed, walnut-faced man and Mrs. Beekman. Now and again Mrs. Beekman would draw from her bag her daughter's farewell missive and read it, through bitter tears. " Poor Muriel ! What madness ! " she kept muttering to herself. " She's out of her head. There's no insanity like infatuation ! " Once Mrs. Beekman turned to her fellow pursuer and asked if they might not catch the runaway couple sooner by sending a telegram to some station ahead; but he said they had perhaps gone by another route, and that anyway the matter could not be explained by telegraph. Mrs. Beekman bent closer to him and asked queru- lously : " Mr. Hicks, can't you at least give me some ink- ling?" He shook his head. " My orders are very positive. I can say nothing except to Barry himself." With a deep sigh Mrs. Beekman turned her back on him, pulled down the window-shade, and sat long with her eyes closed, the very picture of acid woe. The unsuspecting fugitives were now at the end of their journey. On arriving at Boston they had caught [227] BARRY GORDON a train just leaving for the village near the Beekman farm. At the station they were met by Peter Best, whose get-up would have made them laugh had it not been assumed in their honour. The coachman had not yet come from New York for the summer, so Peter had donned a discarded suit of livery, a choking collar, and starched cravat. Stiffly trussed yet proud of the occa- sion, he sat bolt upright in the station-carriage, and touched a finger to the coachman's uncomfortable top- hat. He was so overwhelmed by their sudden arrival that he could only stammer some unintelligible greeting. At the house his wife, a marvel of respectability and neatness, was even more impressive. To Muriel's delight she dropped them a curtsey, doubtless practised years ago in the old country and now grown quaintly unpliant through long disuse. This painful rite per- formed, Mrs. Best seemed much relieved and grew even talkative. Dinner? Yes, all prepared leastways not dinner exactly. A sort of supper or 'igh tea. Nothing fancy to be sure, but all from the farm. She had broiled a spring chicken, " weighing full two pound " ; she'd cooked some fat green " sparrowgrass " ; she'd set a couple of tumblers of the morning's milk; she'd made a cake and picked a bowlful of Peter's prize straw- berries. This was the delectable meal they ate on their wed- [228] BARRY GORDON ding evening. But the attentions of the faithful gar- dener and his wife did not stop here. Muriel and Barry had but just withdrawn to the li- brary when Mr. and Mrs. Best, coughing to herald their approach, appeared side by side in the wide doorway. Between them they bore an astonishing testimonial. The thing was about four feet high, shaped more or less like a horse-shoe, and composed of innumerable white bride roses set in a wire form. At the top the flowers were stiffly studded with a crude design of violets, stuck in with crushing care, and blazoning forth in startling purple the hyphenated initials of the bride and groom. In every way this enormous gift conformed to the species of monstrosity known as a " floral offering." But Muriel and Barry were quick to respond. " Peter ! Mrs. Best ! " said Muriel. " How nice of you ! What a wonderful surprise ! " " Superb ! " declared Barry. " What a lot of time it must have taken ! " Greatly pleased, Mrs. Best beamed at Muriel. " I always 'oped Mr. Barry'd win you." " Me too," said Peter, standing their wedding-present conspicuously against the empty fire-place. Barry laughed and thanked them. But after Peter and his wife had bowed good night and withdrawn, Muriel and Barry stood staring at their gift uncomfortably. Despite the loud symbolism of its 1 J BARRY GORDON shape which fairly shouted good luck at them, the thing was unpleasantly suggestive. There was something fu- nereal in the purple initials on the white background, something almost unbearable in the heavy fragrance of the massed flowers. Muriel shuddered, reminded of a similar odour whicK had stolen upstairs that night after her debut years before. With a mutual instinct of escape, they drifted out into the open night and wandered over the old farm. And soon the soft warm air, the deep serenity of the starlight* the mystery of the evening and their love, re- stored the enchantment. Along familiar paths they wandered, renewing their intimacy with every landmark. They passed the barn with its munching cattle and sweet hay. " This is where we first met," he said, " that April morning." " Yes, Barry ; this was the birth-place of our love." But not far off the sight of the empty dog-kennel reminded them for a moment of the big St. Bernard now long dead; and Barry, remembering the night when that old watch-dog had barked alarms, remembered Tom. He recalled how manfully Tom had come to him and apol- ogised for his lack of spirit. " Barry," he had said simply, " you're a brick, and I'm not." [230] BARRY GORDON It was as if Tom's boyish, affectionate voice had spoken the words but yesterday. Barry fell silent. Muriel, who hung on his arm, felt his muscles contract mechanically. She drew him away. Then the evening and their love once more claimed them. Returning to the house, they paused at the familiar grove walled by pines that pierced the sky and seemed to drain it of the liquid starlight filtering through the branches. Into this magic interior they passed and for a long moment here they stood, first looking up, then at each other. " Muriel," Barry said at last, " this earth and sky, these trees and stars, are all nothing but dust under the feet of love ! " Once more his- eyes met hers and their gaze mingled. Then like a sudden flame surrounding her, he clasped her and kissed her yielding lips again and again. The aromatic scent of the pine needles rose all around them. " Barry, I'm faint," she whispered. With an arm about her he led her from the grove into the house. Peter and Mrs. Best had now gone to their cottage for the night, and the house was empty. Barry waited alone down-stairs to blow out the lamps. This done, he remembered that he had neglected to lock the windows and doors. Striking a match, he saw a can- [231] BARRY GORDON die on the dining-room mantel shelf, and, lighting it, went the rounds, then, candle in hand, started to go up. But at the moment of his setting foot on the stairway he heard a quick rumble of wheels on the front drive. Hesitating, he listened. The rumble ceased and he heard footsteps on the porch. Then somewhere, deep in the bowels of the house, an old-fashioned bell jangled and jangled. While he stood there in surprise, Muriel came to the top of the stairs. She was in a wrapper, and her dark hair hung loose about her shoulders. " Barry, who do you suppose it is? " " I can't imagine," he said. " I'd come down," she whispered, " but I ' As she stepped back she called in a timid voice : " Be very careful, Barry ; it may be a burglar." " Burglars don't ring the bell," he laughed ; and Muriel went back to her bedroom. Returning through the hall, he unbolted the door, opened it, and, holding up his candle, stared out. The candle-flame flickered in the draught. He saw two fig- ures a man and a woman but failed to recognise them in the uncertain light. "Who is it?" he asked quietly. The invaders bore down on him and entered the hall, Mrs. Beekman in the lead, Hicks turning to close the door. [232] BARRY GORDON As the candle-light fell across Mrs. Beekman's face, Barry smiled. Her intrusion seemed so petty, so futile. But as Hicks emerged from Mrs. Beekman's shadow and the candle lit up his familiar, weather-beaten face and red hair, Barry started back as if stabbed. Mrs. Beekman was the first to speak. " Mr. Hicks wishes to see you on a matter of the ut- most urgency. Where's Muriel?" Anxiously she went to the stairs and was about to call. " She can't come down," said Barry in a strained voice. Then he shot a glance at Hicks piercing, question- ing, agonised. Hicks, his brown face drawn and lips pallidly com- pressed, nodded in silence. Barry stifled a moan. "My God!" Mrs. Beekman> turning from the stairs, saw him catch Hicks by the arm almost savagely. The candle, which he still mechanically heldj lit up their profiles, the one blunt, short, and rugged as a rock, the other chiseled as if by the sweep of a sword the profile of a soul in fixed torment. " Are you certain ? " " Yes, and every minute counts ! " said Hicks. " He's still a prisoner ! " Barry staggered, and the candle flared. He passed a hand across his forehead. [233] BARRY GORDON Suddenly Muriel, again at the head of the stairs, called : " What is it, Barry? Shall I come down? " He controlled himself and managed to call back lightly: " No ; just a minute, Muriel." " If you go," said Hicks in a low voice, " I go with you. Those are my orders. There's a fast steamer from New York at ten to-morrow morning. I told them at the club to pack your clothes. We can take the mid- night train to-night from Boston." Barry stared at him defiantly, almost with hatred. " Do you know what you are asking? " " Yes," said Hicks hoarsely ; " but I promised you I'd come and I have ! " Barry laughed a low bitter laugh, then his face dark- ened again and he flung away toward the stairs. " Get some one else ! " " Barry ! " Hicks followed him close and said some- thing which Mrs. Beekman could not hear, but which Barry heard so plainly that every word seemed like the thrust of a knife. " The State Department says you are the only man who knows the ropes over there in Mo- rocco well enough to undertake the rescue. Open force won't work. It would only add to Tom's danger." Barry stood staring at him sullenly. " Well," said Hicks, " what are you going to do ? " [234] BARRY GORDON He took out his watch and consulted it. " We've got to leave here immediately." His dry voice cracked. " Barry, for God's sake, come ! " Then Muriel, once more at the top of the stairs, called down: " Barry, what are you doing? Who's down there? " Mastering his voice he again called back mechan- ically : "Just a minute, Muriel; just a minute!" and they heard her slowly returning to her room. Suddenly something unpleasant to see went out of Barry's face and left it purified. " Is the carriage still here ? " " Yes," said Hicks. " Then one moment." Hicks understood. " Warn them to keep it dark," he cautioned him. " If this became public, there might be war." He with- drew to the porch. Barry turned quickly to Mrs. Beekman and said in a low voice : " Not a word of this, please, to any one but the family. I go to New York to-night and start for Mo- rocco to morrow morning. Tom's alive ! " Mrs. Beekman stared at him vaguely. " He's still a prisoner," said Barry, " and we've got to try to save him." [235] BARRY GORDON Mrs. Beekman was utterly benumbed. Her mind re- fused to reason. Barry had eloped with her daughter and she had pursued in blind anger. But now that he was threatening to forsake Muriel on the very day of their marriage, her maternal love with all its virile in- consistency made her quite as bitter against him for this mad desertion. What the cause was she could not take in. His talk of Tom coming to life again seemed a mere fantastic nightmare. " Barry, you're not going away ? " she said feebly. " Yes." He caught up his hat. " Not without seeing Muriel ! " she protested in amazement. " Yes ! " He gave her the candle, which she took with- out knowing that she took it. " Go up, please, and tell her." His voice trembled ; his face was haggard. " Tell her I had doubts all along. Then she will understand." Mrs. Beekman was distracted. " Barry, it's monstrous to leave like this ! " "No; I must! Can't you realise? If I see her, I'm lost ! " She turned quickly to call Muriel. " No ! " he exclaimed. " I forbid it ! My God, it's too much to ask of any man ! " He gazed up the stairs a moment, agonised. His lips moved in a dumb good-bye. Then, turning, he left the house. [236] BOOK VI THE TREE OF LIFE CHAPTER I A HUMAN STEW, AND OF CERTAIN TRAVELLERS WHO SOUGHT A MAN NAMED BARRY GORDON UNDER a cloudless summer sky and burning sun, Tangier's market-place teemed with life. Ever since early morning the crowd had grown. From their outlying homes whole families had journeyed hither with produce for the town. Mile on mile, hour on hour, the sluggish streams had wound their way hither, the patriarchs leading files of lusty sons and weary daughters, the men on camels, mules, horses, the women freighted with burdens and trudging barefoot through the scorching dust. For to-day was market-day, and the great sok a second Mecca, and Mammon outrivalled Mahomet in their hearts. Hither to this lustrous white city, set on a hill between sea and desert, they had come for years each week and thronged the market. Hither for centuries on centuries their ancestors had come before them in just the same way the patriarchs leading hale youths and tired girls, the youths mounted and the girls afoot. This was their world, this crowded sok, the world they craved after the [239] BARRY GORDON loneliness of their zereebas, the turbulent intercourse they hungered for after the quiet of homes safely dis- tant from highways where thieves rode. But the arrivals were not all produce-sellers. Water- carriers were abroad with filled goat-skins and jingling cups. Artisans had come, and migratory tradesmen. Desert Arabs had ridden in from far oases, and others were here to whom the most fertile soil was human na- ture, the best of weapons wit. Jugglers had come and snake-charmers, glass-eaters, scorpion-eaters and all manner of self-torturers. Saints had come and holy doctors; outlaws had come, and minstrels, and tell- ers of tales vagrants whose only marketable stuff lay hid in the brains behind their humorous dark eyes. And now under a low, hot, cobalt sky that overhung the sok like a canopy shutting out higher air, these peo- ple haggled, whispered, shrieked, jostled, joked and cursed, till as motley a crew as the world holds had set pandemonium loose. Everywhere rose the cry of the sweet-meat venders, the thunder of powder-play, the clamour of the t'bal or drum. It was as if the African sun had energised a vast hodge-podge of noises, smells, colours; as though it had set boiling and bubbling an immense stew of humanity. But the general movement was very slow. It lacked the hurry of younger races. The place was free of [240] BARRY GORDON the infidel pest at this season. There was not a foreigner at the market this summer afternoon save two women. These two were Mrs. Beekman and Kitty Van Ness. Mrs. Beekman felt hopelessly bewildered. Suddenly the regularity of her life had been broken, her mental processes jumbled into a scatter-brained whirl, her phi- losophy ruined. " Kitty," she wailed, " I fear I shall go mad." She looked about her with a vague and helpless glance, and thrust a hand in Kitty's arm as if in need of protection. All about them swarmed the natives Moors, Arabs, Berbers, Rifs, Jews, negroes; men, women, and children of every shade from black to white, and clad in every hue of the rainbow. Somehow this orgy of colour vexed Mrs. Beekman's New England soul and blinded her cold eyes. But the orgy of sound was even worse. This roar of trade, this babel of tongues, unintelligible and deafening, terrified her. " Kitty," she moaned, " why, oh, why did we come ? Why did we follow Barry? I knew we couldn't find him. Two everlasting days in this dreadful place and not a sign of him! We were fools. It was unreasonable of Muriel to demand it." "She didn't demand it," retorted Kitty. "Would you have let her come alone ? " She laughed, bright with [841] BARRY GORDON excitement, as she drank in the scene. " It's like a gigan- tic kaleidoscope," she mused, " a kaleidoscope in a storm. No wonder Barry loves it ! " Kitty, alone of all the family, was not wholly un- happy. There was a bare chance that Tom might come back into her life Tom, the one boy in a world of men, old in years or evil; Tom who stood for youth and bright innocence and everything else out of which she had been cheated by others. Long ago she had warmed to him, and ever since had idolised him in mem- ory. And now she had hopes of seeing him again in flesh and blood, and no longer the property of another woman. Two natives came elbowing their way through the crowd. " Hire a guide ! " they cried importunately. " Take a guide!" One was a small man, keen-featured, gray-eyed, and almost white. He wore European dress save for a blue- tasselled fez cocked on his coarse black hair. " My name is Abdul," said he with a jerky bow. " I am the best of guides." His companion superciliously smiled down on him, then bowed with a grand air to Kitty and Mrs. Beek- man. " I am Hassan," he announced loftily, " the most re- nowned of all guides in Morocco. I take travellers into [242] BARRY GORDON the desert. I engage mules, camels, soldiers. I am like a wind that blows everywhere into the secret places." Abdul uttered a clicking sound with his tongue. " A wind ? No ; he is like a trumpet that blows too loud. He is a Tunisian; I am an Egyptian, a scholar, an interpreter." Mrs. Beekman turned gravely to Kitty. " The question is whether to engage a Tunisian or an Egyptian." Kitty thought it best to hire them both. They might be of aid in the present search. She glanced across the market toward a large white house surrounded by gardens. " We're going over there to the British Embassy," she told the guides, " to ask about a friend. Help us through the crowd, please." They had but just started when they were overtaken by Mr. Beekman. "Not a trace!" he said. "Muriel's heart-broken." Turning to Abdul he asked in a low voice : " Have you seen an American here named Gordon Mr. Barry Gor- don? He came on a secret mission." The question, put at random that day to scores of natives, at last seemed to hit the mark. It was so un- expected that, though the guide locked his lips, his eye-lids fluttered. [243] BARRY GORDON Mr. Beekman's keen scrutiny did not lose the tell- tale look. He turned to his wife and Kitty. " Your other guide," he said, " will take you to the embassy. I want to speak to this one." As they left him, he led Abdul aside to the outskirts of the market-place. " You have seen Mr. Gordon," he said positively. " Where is he? " Abdul narrowed his small blue eyes. " Those who come to Morocco on secret missions," he replied, " are never seen. They blind our eyes with the glitter of their gold, and with its magic cast spells upon our tongues." " Ah ! " said Mr. Beekman, with a slight lift of his fine gray eyebrows. " Mr. Gordon has feed you to keep dark about him." He touched the breast of his coat significantly. " I'll fee you double to tell me." Abdul's face was knotted with cupidity. " The magic of the rich," said he, " is subject to the magic of the richer. There's a saying that a little money is as powerful as a pasha ; much money as powerful as the Sultan." He blinked, but then he opened his eyes to a wider, honester gaze, drew himself up, and shook his little head with such emphatic refusal that the tassel on his fez danced. Mr. Beekman, perplexed and disappointed, said wearily : [244] BARRY GORDON " This is a righteous bribe. My daughter has come all the way from America to see him." " Who has come? " said Abdul, cocking his head on one side till the tassel dangled over his narrow shoulder. " Your daughter? " " Yes, his wife." Again Abdul shook his head jerkily. " His purpose is noble, his heart brave, but the ways of a woman are like an enchantment. They melt the steel of a man's will. Besides, I love him, and he would think me a traitor." Mr. Beekman felt surprised at finding such integrity and masculine feeling in this monkey-like little guide. Evidently Abdul read his thoughts. Once more the clicking sound from Abdul's tongue. " Hassan," said he, " is large and splendid as the setting sun. Yet if he knew this thing he would tell you for money. But I am small and dry as a dead twig, yet will I not tell you." Mr. Beekman turned away and sighed, searching his brain for some telling argument with which to break through Abdul's silence. His anxiety would have been even more acute had he known that in a near-by street stood the object of his quest, preparing to plunge straight into mortal danger. [245] CHAPTER II BARRY GROPES TOWARD THE LIGHT. THE SPIRIT OF THE SWORD AND THE SPIRIT OF THE MARKET-PLACE. HOW A WOMAN HID IN A BOOTH AND LISTENED A WEEK in Morocco, and no real clue until to-day. Visits to the Sultan's ministers in Tangier, conferences with the pasha, in- terminable interviews with the foreign consuls, hard rides into the country, flattering gifts to kaids and sheiks, hours spent in idle but inquisitive good-fellow- ship with all sorts and degrees of natives yet nothing definite until this afternoon. The first and only news of Tom was that which had been cabled from Morocco to Washington. One night a native from the Rif Mountains had come to the American Consulate. The man appeared to be a secret agent of the Kabyles or of other hill tribesmen. He disclosed the fact that Tom, though still a prisoner somewhere in the wild fastnesses that faced Gibraltar, was alive. The proof a scrap of paper torn from a carnet or book bore merely the date and Tom's signa- ture, hastily scribbled. Unluckily the native guard at the consulate had per- [246] BARRY GORDON mitted this man to escape before Barry's arrival, and there was no tracing him. But his news had established in a general way the locality of Tom's prison. More- over, it had suggested the identity of his captors. This suggestion coincided with the earliest theory of the crime. It accorded, too, with the suspicion Barry had expressed so vehemently to Kitty Van Ness that night two years ago in Paris. The mountain country was the stronghold of Ali Hamed, the pretender to the throne. Ali Hamed was beyond doubt the man who had captured Tom. Yet this daring Berber chieftain was not a bandit of the usual type. Though an outlaw, cruel even to torture, he had never stooped to common crimes. Moreover, he was not a strategist. His was the true Mohammedan spirit the spirit of the drawn sword. He could not have planned the clever hoax that had hidden the abduction Tom's death, his grave, the execution of his murderer. No ; he had some wily accomplice with enough money and power to control secretly certain of the native troops. Thanks to Hicks, many facts had been gleaned as to political conditions ; and, thanks to Barry's vivid imagination, these facts had been gradually vitalised with meaning. Ali's accomplice was probably also his financial backer. Three years ago money had been secretly loaned to the pretender. This he had spent on an immediate uprising. [247] BARRY GORDON But the uprising failed, and he found himself unable to repay the man who had backed him. That secret cred- itor had probably then suggested that Ali should cap- ture some agent of the rich Beekman-Roche Syndicate and try for a ransom to clear the debt. The capture was made, but the wide publicity had necessitated patience. To embroil Morocco with foreign powers would ruin their chances. Their only hope was to wait till the clamour subsided and then begin cautious negotiations. With this in view, the principal of the partnership who supplied the brains and money had planned the death hoax and bribed the Sultan's troops to carry it through. That had allayed all suspicion. But the loan was still unpaid. They waited two years kept Tom in captivity two whole years not daring to act. But now at last they had covertly made a move. They had sent that man to the consulate with secret news, relying on the consul's good sense to keep it private. In this they were not disappointed. To the world at large the affair was still a closed tragedy. This was the story pieced together by Barry and Hicks. But they were still hopelessly in the dark. As yet there had been no mention of a ransom. At present the conspirators were doubtless biding their time, too cau- tious to move further. [248] BARRY GORDON The case was full of torment. To know that Tom was alive and perhaps suffering, yet to wait inactive, was more than Barry could endure. Desperately he bent all his energies toward the discovery of the power behind Ali Hamed. Ali himself could not be reached. As well seek an eagle in the Andes. But the other was probably a townsman, nearer to the centre of things. This supposition proved true. At last the darkness lifted. Two days ago Barry had come upon an old ac- quaintance who seemed to know much. The man was Um- lai ben Mohammed, a silversmith living in a village near Tetuan. In the earlier days he and Barry had been kin- dred spirits, Barry often spending hours with him, idly philosophising. He was hospitable, benign and comfort- ably off, his silver r work more a pastime than a business. Amongst the natives he was known as churfa an adjec- tive of esteem applied to the venerable. He was invested, too, with sanctity, being one of the prophet's sons. When he walked abroad the faithful made obeisance to him, catching at the hem of his robes. Soon after they had renewed their acquaintance, Barry had come cautiously to the matter in hand. "It is reported," he said in a gossipy way, " that Ali Hamed is in need of money." They were conversing in Arabic, in which Barry had become proficient years before. Umlai was seated cross- [249] BARRY GORDON legged on the threshold of his door, indolently over-lay- ing on a little hollow gourd a delicate tracery of silver. The thing when finished was to be a kief-box. It would hang by silver chains like a chatelaine purse, have a silver stopper, and contain several pipefuls of the small intoxicating granules. Probably for weeks or even months Umlai had been working on it, applying dream- ily the exquisite silver tracery and fitting together the infinitesimal links in the little chains. Barry, leaning idly against the door-post, looked down on the large white turban and voluminous white burnous that clothed his friend. Both were as snowy as his long beard, and seemed to symbolise the purity of his nature. " Yes," he answered at last ; " but Ali's ancestors were once rich. His family still holds the great key to a palace in Granada. I have seen pictures of the key em- broidered in gold on the head-gear of their women. They lived there centuries before the Spaniards." He set down his work. The day was balmy and full of sunlight. Beside him on the ground stood a little vase of Andalusian pottery containing a single crimson rose. He took the rose and, holding it to his nostrils, gazed off dreamily across the blue and tranquil waters of the Mediterranean. After a moment he replaced the rose in the vase and resumed his work on the kief-box. [250] BARRY GORDON Barry filled an old brier-root pipe with tobacco and began smoking to ease his impatience. " It is reported," he said casually, " that only two or three years ago Ali Hamed was well supplied with funds." Umlai tapped the silver tracery on the gourd with his small hammer and said nothing. Understanding the ways of this slow-speaking, quick- thinking old descendant of the prophet, Barry waited and smoked in silence. Those were long, almost unbear- able moments. There was no hurrying these people, no forcing them. Once their lives had attained this sensuous rhythm, anything sudden would have seemed imperti- nent. Umlai, forgetting Barry's presence, once more set aside his work. This time he took up a small stringed instrument called a gimbri. On this he began to play to himself while gazing off again over the sea. The music was faint and monotonous, the three strings weav- ing as it were the mere shadow of a tune. Yet there was a low wild plaint in it that echoed in Barry. At last Umlai ben Mohammed laid aside his gimbri and again resumed his indolent tapping on the kief-box. Then he finally answered; and his answer, though it at first seemed vague, diplomatically conveyed a world of intelligence. " At Tangier," he said in a low voice, " there is in [251] BARRY GORDON the Ciagreen, which you call the Street of the Silver- smiths, a certain booth close to the mosque. It is owned by a rich Jew named Ibrahim. Doubtless you have seen him and talked with him." Barry nodded, wondering. " Yes, frequently ; but he knows nothing." Umlai smiled. " He may be an admirable man, but he skilfully avoids purchasing my kief-boxes. Recently I have found out why." Barry bent closer, and Umlai lowered his voice still more. " It is because he fears I am a spy. He has heard that you and I are friends." Barry looked puzzled a moment, then gradually his face cleared. So there in the main street of Tangier, a whole week under his very eyes, was the man at the bot- tom of all their suffering ! " Umlai ben Mohammed," he said, " I thank you out of my heart ! " He rode back to Tangier with all speed, and now stood lightly conversing with Ibrahim across the counter of that prosperous merchant's booth. He was still in his riding-suit, and dusty, travel-stained and tired, but his wits were sharp and his pluck ready. This Moorish Jew with whom he had to deal was middle-aged and rather portly. He wore the black gaber- dine and skull-cap of his race. His black moustache and full black beard heavily masked his mouth, chin, and BARRY GORDON cheeks. His nose, though racially prominent, was not aggressive. It marked him as a man more stony than fiery. His close-set eyes, though large, were dark and hard, with lights in them obscurely gleaming as if re- flected on black marble. Altogether he seemed an impressive figure, and looked not a little incongruous in this bazaar full of trinkets and ornaments. Behind him, hanging at the back of the booth, were displayed his heavier merchandise vases, jugs, water- cups and all sorts of native brassware for sale at fab- ulous prices to curio-hunting tourists. At the sides hung multi-coloured Moorish silks artlessly draped, and leather wallets and slippers in all shades of red and yel- low. On the counter were kief-boxes, amulets, rings, ear- pendants and necklaces of gold coins a varied assort- ment of native jewelry and gewgaws, many crude and valueless save for their oddity, but some revealing the rare delicate touch of the true craftsman. At the front below the counter stood piles of pots and pans, some brass and copper, others made of the local clay or tanja. From the top of the booth against the front flap long kief-pipes were slung, and Arab weapons. As Barry glanced up while talking casually with Ibrahim, he noticed just above his head a large hang- ing sword in a leather sheath closely studded with small cowrie shells. The blade was half drawn, revealing an [253] BARRY GORDON intricate, engraved design. The sword was common enough, but Barry, seeing it edge down, significantly over him, smiled with dry humour. " Fine sword, that," he observed carelessly. Ibrahim nodded. " A great bargain," he declared, leaning forth over the counter and twisting his neck to look up admiringly at the weapon. " The blade is true Damascene, the scab- bard very valuable. In some parts of Africa, shells, you know, are still used for money." Barry nodded, and on the spur of the moment said with a shade of meaning: " They go well together, Ibrahim money and the sword." The Jew drew back in his booth. Otherwise he be- trayed no sign. But his answer was not without sig- nificance. " Yes ; and he who would contend against their power risks all." Barry shrugged, indifferent to the implied threat. They were now alone, the Street of the Silversmiths be- ing almost deserted in favour of the market-place. " I don't come to contend with you," said Barry, " but to ask you to aid me in obtaining the freedom of my brother." Ibrahim came out from the interior of his booth to keep better watch on the street and occasional passersby. [254] BARRY GORDON " Is your brother in prison ? I have not heard." " Oh, you have not heard," said Barry dryly. " Then I'll tell you. He has been AH Hamed's captive for over two years. I thought him dead, but I've lately been told he is still living." Ibrahim raised his black eyebrows, stroked his black beard. " You interest me. This is like night in the forests of the south, a world of darkness filled with unknown things." " Perhaps you can shed light on it," suggested Barry ironically. Ibrahim pondered the case, heavily impassive. " You say your brother is a captive, and has been mourned as dead though alive. This fills me with won- der. This is like a story told to a child." " Then pretend you are a child," said Barry with mocking significance, " and believe it." " A man may believe and yet know nothing," said Ibrahim. He drew closer and lowered his voice. " Faith is beyond price; but knowledge, being inferior, has a value." Barry felt a thrill of satisfaction. The Jew was show- ing his hand at last. But the game was deep. Ibrahim must have been waiting for this, daily hoping for this chance. Yet he had done nothing to bring it about. Had he? Perhaps he had. [255] BARRY GORDON Barry turned to the booth, again toying meditatively with some of the knickknacks on the counter. The game was so deep that it seemed unfathomable. Perhaps after all the Jew had caught him by the subtlest move imag- inable. Barry took up a kief-box and began twisting and untwisting its delicate silver chains. His brow was drawn, his eyes were baffled. The game was even so deep that perhaps Ibrahim had refused to buy Umlai's kief- boxes on purpose to antagonise the silversmith and bring about this very interview ! Barry uttered a short laugh. He looked up at Ibra- him with a sudden bold candour. " I prided myself," said he, " on tracing this affair to you, but all the time you have been fishing for me! " Ibrahim made a deprecatory gesture. " Oh, yes, you have," said Barry calmly. His glance grew sharper. " Ibrahim, I know this case from A to Z. You loaned money to the Pretender. His uprising failed and he could not repay you. At your suggestion he took my brother captive. You wanted a ransom, but you got scared. So you decided to contrive the lie about my brother's death. You did it so well that the world be- lieved. Then you waited two years. Then at last you plucked up courage and sent a man to the consulate. Then I came, as you knew I would, and you fished for me ! " Barry smiled darkly. " And now that I'm nib- bling you're hoping for a good haul." [256] BARRY GORDON Ibrahim drew back a step and regarded him with a mixture of admiration and irony. " You are more to be feared to-day," he said, " than when you came to investigate two years ago." Barry winced. " But that is saying little," added Ibrahim calmly. " What reason have we to fear you even if you know the truth? To your brother publicity would be as risky as to us. We would see to that." Barry made a gesture of impatience. " Come, Ibrahim, if you want a ransom, name it. How much does Ali owe you? " Ibrahim's eyes narrowed. " Not so fast. A debt of this kind largely exceeds its face value. When Ali pays me, it is not only your brother who will regain his freedom ; it is also Ali him- self." " I see. You mean he will no longer be under your thumb. You will lose your grip on him." " Yes, and on the revolution." Barry's brow darkened again. He felt deeply dis- turbed. He was contending, he saw, not against a small cupidity, but profound ambitions. " Wheels within wheels," he muttered. " If you have any heart, give it a fling. Be human and help me." Ibrahim drew himself up with implacable dignity. [257] BARRY GORDON " The home of a Jew's heart," he said, " is with his family. There you have no claim on my hospitality. The home of a Jew's brain is his shop. Here I welcome you." Barry felt his hope deaden under the weight of this answer. " Then name your price," he said harshly, " in cold money ! " But Ibrahim still preferred to temporise. " Cold money ? " he echoed, smiling. " Money is never cold. It breeds a passion hot as love." " Yes," said Barry, " and as cruel. Name your price. Are you trying to estimate my paying capacity? What's your motive in waiting? You have golden dreams of power, eh? No, Ibrahim, if you see it as it is, if you see it with any compassion, it's a nightmare." Barry's tone was bitterly cold. " The central figure of your dream is my brother a poor devil of a prisoner perhaps half-starved, half-naked so low in luck that by now he is probably cursing his God." Ibrahim shook his head. " No," he said, smiling suavely, " I prefer to think of that poor prisoner set free. I think of his hap- piness at being released, his return to life, man- hood and the world." The words flowed from the Jew with oily smoothness. He waved his long dark hand as if picturing the captive's release. " I think of him," [258] BARRY GORDON said he, " as for the first time he walks out into this sunshine." "Stop!" ejaculated Barry with sudden desperation. " Drop all that ! You needn't try to play on my feelings. I suppose you think my heart's my purse and, if you cut it open, money will come pouring out. For God's sake, name your price ! " Ibrahim fell silent, his swarthy face unreadable. It was as if the spreading darkness of his secret projects and calculations hung visibly before him. Even his full black beard and moustache seemed, as it were, dense shadows outcropping from his abysmal depths. But his eyes were so lacking in expression, so like stony solids, that they masked those depths impenetrably. " Ibrahim," said Barry with strained calmness, " if you don't come to the point, I'll fight my way to your captive. I'll call oh the American Government ! " Then for the first time Ibrahim laughed aloud, a low, short, dry laugh, utterly toneless, like the knocking of wood against wood. " Fight your way ? " he said scoffingly. " Have you seen the gray horses of Ali Hamed? Have you seen Ali's aim with a rifle a rifle made in your Christian Amer- ica ? " he sneered. " No ; if you had you would be less eager to fight your way. He can shoot an insect on the wing." Barry met sneer with sneer. [259] BARRY GORDON " That for him and you ! " he said, snapping his fingers. " Ali will find more than an insect to deal with if you and I can't come to terms at once." He made as if to turn on his heel. " Your price, or I cable to Wash- ington. You know what that means. It means a dozen warships here in Tangier harbour. It means your town bombarded, your home destroyed. It means that this shop of yours, and all this truck with which you swin- dle foreigners, will be utterly wiped out." He smiled mockingly, tauntingly. " No remunerative trading, Ibrahim. No foreigners paying twenty dollars for a sword worth two, or fifty for an amulet worth five, or a hundred for a necklace worth ten. No thousand per cent, profit, Ibrahim not by a long sight. No foreigners at all as customers; but natives your own people look- ing for bargains. You understand? bargains, scat- tered in the streets by foreign guns ! broken necklaces, scorched silks, cracked jewels ! I've seen these devasta- tions before now. Can't you imagine the scene? the pretty disorder?" He smiled dryly. "What wreckage! merchandise mixed in with fragments of human bodies very possibly some of your own body ! " He laughed grimly ; but Ibrahim shuddered, clutched at his arm, and began to protest against this horrible outburst. " Enough ! Forgive me ! " Barry drew away his arm with open aversion. He was [260] BARRY GORDON only conscious that Fate, somehow incarnate in this man's hateful form, had been torturing his soul. He laughed again cruelly. His bitterness, now at high pitch, had rarely been so sardonic. " How you would tear your beard ! " he said. " I can imagine whole handfuls of it whirling like thunder- clouds over Tangier." The Jew cowered. " Forgive me ! " he wailed. " I have tormented you." He came very close and in a whisper named a ransom. Barry on hearing it started in dismay. " As much as that ! It's fabulous ! " Ibrahim drew himself up and folded his black robe about him with regained dignity. " That is my price." " Then go and whistle for it," said Barry hopelessly. " I'd give you ain own to my last dollar, but that would not pay half. Your demand's preposterous." Ibrahim raised his heavy black eyebrows. " Are you buying a horse a slave a woman ? No. You are buying your brother." He came so close that his beard brushed against Barry's chest. " If the money is not paid," he said, " your brother dies at once ! " Barry suddenly felt his blood surge to his head, felt his hands grow hot and restless. His fingers ached to fasten on the man's throat. They were tightly con- stricted on his riding-whip. He saw red. But the wis- [261] BARRY GORDON dom of experience and the instincts of restraint bred in him by his seven years' conflict with life were like steel chains on him, curbing his impulses. He began pacing up and down, his gaze on the ground, his facial muscles working, his teeth in his under lip, his whole look and bearing those of a man in a tragic quandary. From far up the street came the tumult of the market. On both sides the bare white houses shut out air. Though the sun was low, its brazen rays flowed molten through the town. Tangier was a furnace and a babel. Ibrahim, his back to his shop, stood impassively watching the American. They were both too engrossed to notice a movement in the booth. From behind it a woman stole in at the far side. Though she was a Jewess, she was veiled. And though for several years her beauty had brought large custom to this very booth, she now concealed herself in it with the utmost secrecy. Silent as a shadow she slipped behind the silks hanging at the side, and waited, breathless with anxiety. Suddenly Barry turned to Ibrahim. " One thing I ask : let me see my brother face to face, if only for a moment." " No ; you would try to rescue him." " What if I did ? Surely you and Ali could prevent it." The Jew thoughtfully stroked his beard; then his [262] One thing I ask: Let me see my brother face to face BARRY GORDON eyes cleared and his manner was again smooth and tentative the manner of the born bargainer. " This, too, has a price," said he. " Your brother is my capital. For two years this capital has lain idle, and now I lose it. If you wish to see your brother before he dies, that is a loan. Pay me a fair rate of interest and you shall see him. But you will have to make haste. Even with fast riding it will take you two days to get to him." Ibrahim's tone was so metallic that Barry shuddered. He had never conceived such inhuman barter. To hear Tom spoken of in these utterly heartless terms of trade was almost more than he could bear. Again the whip in his hand quivered, his fingers tingled. He could have beaten and choked this man to death for trafficking so brutally in Tom's Jife-blood. Perhaps Ibrahim felt his danger. " I will make the rate low," he said, and named it in a whisper. Barry started. The Jew had exactly estimated his cash resources. On his arrival he had made a large de- posit in the Tangier bank, and somehow Ibrahim had ferreted out the figures. " Will you accept payment ? " asked Barry, " after the visit has been safely accomplished ? " " No," said Ibrahim, " you must make it now. You can trust me. The word I give I keep." [263] BARRY GORDON Barry nodded. He knew the type. This trader would commit any wrong save a breach of contract. " We won't haggle over this," he said at length. " I have a friend here in Tangier who's in constant touch with the United States Government. Break your word, and you know the penalty." He weighed the project carefully. Meanwhile Ibrahim's eyes gleamed. He kept a grave front, but he was laughing in his sleeve. The sum, though not a twentieth part of the demanded ransom, would discharge the full amount of Ali's debt to him! And the captive would still be theirs. " I name two conditions," he said. " The first : That save for the escort of my men you go alone. The second : That you go unarmed." Finally Barry looked up. " Will you give me a written passport ? " " Yes." " Done then ! " said Barry ; and the silks, hanging in the booth, trembled. But the men were too engrossed to notice. Their con- tract closed, they stood a moment facing each other with keen antagonism, the Jew ironical and secretly pleased, Barry grim and no less impenetrable. Then Ibrahim re-entered his booth and, seating him- self at the counter, began his letter to Ali Hamed. Barry went at once to the bank. [264] BARRY GORDON Silently the woman slipped out behind Ibrahim and hastened to a small fandak or stable on the outskirts of the town. At the entrance she uttered a low call, and a horse, whinnying gladly, came out to her. Mounting into the saddle man-wise, she rode off swiftly toward the east. In the meantime Barry returned to Ibrahim with a certified cheque. Across the counter of the booth they made a tentative exchange, Ibrahim examining the cheque, Barry the passport, which, translated, read as follows : This shall protect the American who bears it (him, and him only), and shall admit him (him, and him only) to the presence of Ali Hamed's companion. This shall also assure the American who bears it (him, and him only) a safe return. IBRAHIM, THE LENDER. Both satisfied, Ibrahim thrust the cheque under his gaberdine, Barry the letter into his breast-pocket. That closed the bargain. " My men," said Ibrahim, " will come for you to the south of the market-place at sundown." As Barry turned off through the side street he met Hicks, who was evidently seeking him. Hicks appeared greatly agitated. " Barry," he said, " they're here. They've followed us. [265] BARRY GORDON I saw them at the sok Mr. and Mrs. Beekman and Mrs. Van Ness ! Barry seemed dazed. " And " " Of course," said Hicks, " your wife must be here, too. They are probably at the Hotel Granada." He took Barry's arm. " Come, we'll go there." " No," said Barry, " I can't. It's out of the question." He spoke quickly, tersely. " I've found our man. He's a Jew in the booth near the mosque. He demanded a ransom. The sum was fabulous two or three times what I'm worth. But I've arranged to see Tom. He's somewhere in the Rif Mountains." Hicks frowned. " The Rif Mountains ! Ali's stronghold ! " He drew himself up, staunch, loyal. " When do we start? " Barry smiled gratefully. " Thanks, Jim, but except for a native escort I go alone." " Alone ! " cried Hicks. " Man, you're mad ! What's your plan? " Barry averted his eyes. He withdrew his arm from his friend's restraining grasp. " Come. There's not much time. They meet me at the south of the market-place at sundown." " Barry," cried Hicks, " you're a fool ! I shall go to your family. Perhaps you'll at least listen to your wife." [266] BARRY GORDON Barry sadly shook his head. " You only make it harder for me. Don't tempt me." His look was stricken ; his eyes were piteous with ap- peal. " Promise me, Jim, not to see them till I've left." Hicks flung away in a tumult of anxiety. " I promise nothing ! " he muttered. Barry stood a moment looking after him, then turned with a sigh and went for his horse. [267] CHAPTER III " AT THE SOUTH OF THE MARKET-PLACE AT SUNDOWN." GOD PITY WOMEN ! THE CALL TO PRAYER HICKS, stopping first at the cable office, sent an urgent message to Washington, then went at once to the Hotel Granada. In the privacy of Mr. Beekman's room he took but a moment to explain the affair to Muriel and her father. He told them the salient facts so quickly and succinctly that their first relief at seeing him lasted but a moment. With every word he spoke their anxiety grew. Though Mr. Beekman was thoughtful and impassive, Hicks saw his thin lips twitch and his brow all at once age under the strain. As for Muriel, the change in her shocked him. Her face was drawn, her eyes were hollow and circled with shadows, her lips bloodless. All buoyancy and sparkle had gone out of her and all beauty, save the piteous haunting beauty whose outer expression is unbeautiful, whose key-note is pain. Yet he could not spare her. The case was too grave, the danger too imminent. [268] BARRY GORDON " Barry's plan is mad," he said in conclusion ; " sui- cidal!" The word stabbed her into action. Her eyes lit up feverishly. " No ; the ransom ! " Mr. Beekman nodded. " Yes ; any amount, and at once ! " Muriel was on fire with impatience. " Where can I find Barry ? " " He's to meet his escort," said Hicks, " at the south of the market-place at sundown." She turned to the window and shot a glance at the western sky. The sun, immense and blood-red, hung almost on a level with her eyes. Blinded she turned to the door, led the way down- stairs and out into the street. Hicks and her father made for the booth near the mosque, she for the market. As it was now late and the crowds were returning from the sok, Muriel had to work her way up-stream against a vast tide of humanity. But though she was pressed by the lowest scum of Africa, though she was jostled by men in filthy sacking full of rents that re- vealed great streaks of brown and black skin, scarred with disease and caked with dust, and though now and again she found herself wedged between horses and [269] BARRY GORDON mules whose cursing riders wrangled for passage through the narrow streets, she never faltered, never flinched in her struggle up-stream. How she passed them even the natives must have wondered. She must have seemed like a spirit melting in and out and onward so swiftly, so elusively, that not even the walls of the kasbah, their fortress, could have stopped her. When at last she gained the market-place and crossed it, she came upon Barry in a copse of trees. For a moment he did not see her, did not hear her. Busy about his horse, he was looking to the girths of the saddle, the strength of the reins, the adjustment of the bit. "Barry!" He turned, bared his head, and smiled as if he had left her but a moment before. Outwardly he took it with so much ease that the meeting recalled his return after his seven years of wandering the evening when he had walked in and greeted them off-hand as if after merely a brief absence. This nonchalant quality in him im- pressed her now even more than it had then. It showed her the spirit in him of world citizenship, the spirit of fatalism, the spirit of his adventurous ancestors, the spirit of a large intimacy with life and death. But his eyes, as they met hers, betrayed feelings far deeper. Once more they had the old lost look. [270] BARRY GORDON Muriel stood hesitant. " Are you sorry I've come, Barry ? " He smiled sadly. " It makes it doubly hard," he answered. " That's all." Then with an effort he nerved himself to speak for an instant straight from his depths. " Muriel, help me to do this thing." The appeal thus swiftly made, he assumed at once his first manner. He turned to his horse. " Look, Muriel a full-blooded gray barb. See her veins stand out. Look at her head, her neck, her withers ! " He seemed to be trying to regain his old recklessness, trying desperately to seem glad of his mad plan. Stuf- fing his soft felt hat into his pocket, he bent and passed a hand over the horse's flexible steel sinews from shoulder to fetlock. Then he straightened up, and with an arm through the reins stood back a step to survey his mount in perspective. " Gad, there's blood for you, Muriel ! There's family for you ! " Muriel stood motionless, her eyes blind with unshed tears. She had an impression of a queenly, imperious horse, with veins and muscles visible under a gleaming coat; a mane and flowing tail like silver water; atten- tive ears and large impatient eyes, now turned toward [271] BARRY GORDON her as if rebuking her for this intrusion. But to Muriel the animal was unreal a shining cloud a beautiful but evil phantom waiting impatiently to take Barry away from her. Barry drew the horse's head closer. " Pat her, Muriel," he said desperately. " Pat her." Muriel recoiled, and he let the mare out again to the length of the reins. They stood at the edge of the copse of trees. The market-place was desolate now merely a large expanse of dust crossed by ever-lengthening shadows. In the distance hooded figures drew away silently into the white city beyond ghosts returning to their tombs. With a sudden impulse Muriel came between Barry and his horse and intercepted his gaze. " Oh, Barry, why did you leave me that night with- out a word ? " For a moment he was mute, mustering all his strength to resist the temptation of her nearness to him. Then he said quietly: " If I had allowed myself to see you, I might not have come here at least until too late. Muriel," he added almost inaudibly, " I loved you too much." He saw, as it were, a wave of life pass over her and ebb away. " I was yours then," she told him, " as I am now." He shook his head. [272] BARRY GORDON " Only nominally." " You and I are married," she said, looking up at him bashfully under her lashes. " Yes," he replied, " because I deceived you." She raised her head with a quick toss and her eyes flashed contradiction. " You have never deceived me ! Your doubt about Tom's death was a mere presentiment." " Yes," said Barry, " but the presentiment was very strong. Yet I never mentioned it to you. Silence they say is golden. Mine was a leaden lie." "No," she rejoined; "you were silent because you wanted to spare me. You did not want to make me un- happy." Her plea on his behalf rang with spirit and convic- tion, but Barry shook his head. " That," he replied, " is what I used to say to my- self, as a sop for living the lie." His face darkened. " Muriel, the deeper motive was this : I did not want to lose you." Muriel quivered and lowered her eyes. She looked down thoughtfully at the dust now yellow in the long, oblique rays of the setting sun. Then she gazed up at him dumbly, and he saw that she was not unimpressed by his confession. Her look was altogether sad, and once again she unconsciously branded on his heart a new impression. [273] BARRY GORDON She was wearing a dark blue hat and travelling suit. Behind her under the trees the dusk had gathered thick, but there were still large patches of golden sunlight. On the yellow ground at her feet lay shadows in huge blots. In the blended glow and gloom the shade seemed tinged with deep purple likewise her dark dress and hair. In the heart of this purple gloom her face, lit by the light through the leaves, was like the face of a lovely spirit, weary and pale. When presently she held out her hand to him in forgiveness, he felt as though that small white hand touched his heart-strings and made them vibrate with pain. Once more with childlike simplicity she said to him: " Barry, I love you ! " Barry trembled. He forced himself to refuse the proffered clasp, fearing the contact of their palms. He turned half away with a pretence of examining the reins looped on his arm. " Yes, because I'm your husband," he said, fingering them nervously. " You're loyal, Muriel, to your mar- riage vows." " No ; I loved you before." " That was before you knew Tom was still alive. Wait till Tom comes back to you. Tom's worth thousands of me. He has traits that would give any woman con- fidence, safety, and peace." He turned back to her, meet- [274] BARRY GORDON ing her wounded gaze with a candour outwardly cold. " Muriel, it's only fair play to both of you. If a man's an interloper, he ought to stand aside. For generations the honour of the Gordons has been almost as proverbial as their sins. Have I inherited nothing but their vices? No ! " he exclaimed vehemently. " No ! " He turned again to his horse. " They can talk as they like against blue blood, but give it a race and it wins." He stroked back the silvery mane. " Doctors make blood-tests with microscopes. That's all very well for the body, but how about the larger blood-tests " he drew the mare's head toward him, looked into her eyes, and smiled " tests of speed, staying-power, pluck tests in the open air when the blood runs warm and sings ? " The mare began to champ her bit and paw the dust. " Yes, in just a moment," said Barry answering her eagerness. " They ought to be here now." Muriel drew closer to him, her brow drawn with be- wilderment. " Barry, I can't make out your plan. When you come back there will be no change, even if Tom comes with you." Barry averted his eyes. " That's all in the future," he answered evasively. " The present fact is this : I've got to go ! " His voice disturbed her. Under its grim calm there [275] BARRY GORDON was a note of anguish. She slipped her hand through his arm. M Barry, wait. Take time. Tom is held for ransom. Father will pay it. How much better, how much safer, to do that ! " He drew away from her hand, then turned to face her, but stood dumb a moment, his glance on the ground, his fingers clenched on the reins. At last he looked up. " No, Muriel ; Fve got to go. There's a reason you can't guess." He hesitated a moment, gazing at her with hopeless yearning. Then he forced from himself a con- fession far worse than the first. He told her quietly of the darkest blot on his past. " Muriel, after I left Kitty that night in Paris when first we read the news of Tom's death, I began to think of you as I had not allowed myself to think of you since Tom had won you. For that I don't blame myself. Con- sidering my love for you, it was only human. Any thought may come to any man. The right or wrong depends on whether or not he surrenders to the thought till it kindles into deeds. That was what I did. Though I knew these African tribes and their strategies, and though I believed that the syndicate's engineers were correct in their first suspicions of Ali Hamed, what did I do? I sat alone in a Paris cafe tin daybreak and drank drank hard! Because I was starting in the morning to look for Tom, to try to save him for you, I drank "[276] hard ! Though I needed a clear brain and every faculty alert, I drank hard ! " And that was not all. I kept it up. Though I strove to get at the facts, I drank hard ! " So I did not find Tom, and ever since then the memory of those days and nights here in Tangier has hung on me like a millstone. You remember just before our wedding I asked you about your love for Tom. That was when the memory last cropped up and accused me, denying me the right to marry you without confessing. Yet, Muriel, my love that day was so desperate that I kept silent even then. ** But the gods cut short my happiness. Hicks came, bringing positive news that Tom was alive. Can you blame me because I left you at once? Can you blame me because I am leaving you now? No, Muriel, you can't. Do you realise that if, when I came here at the time of Tom's capture, I had kept sober, I might have found him and saved him these two eternal years of imprisonment and perhaps agony? That's the point. A man's no stronger than his greatest weakness. My one great failing, Muriel, though I thought I was free of it, has wrecked us an!" He drew a deep sigh; then slowly his face cleared as though a burden had been lifted. " Now Fve shown you my soul," he said. Muriel stirred. Throughout his simple confession she [877] BARRY GORDON had stood motionless, drooping like a dying flower, as if this weight he was casting off was descending grad- ually on her. When at last she raised her head he saw that she had become resigned to his going. Her eyes were filled with tears. Evidently she could scarcely trust herself to speak. But when finally she did reply, her voice was full of courage and spirited sympathy as if she under- stood. " Barry, you're right. It's your only chance your one salvation ! " To her surprise he laughed. " Salvation ? Muriel, no," he said ironically, her sur- render curiously embittering him. " Don't accuse me of hunting for a passkey to the back door of heaven. How do you think I would look in a halo ? Ten to one I'd wear it over one ear ! " His bitter levity had no effect on her. Behind it she saw, as never before, the man himself. " Barry," she said quietly, ignoring his outburst, " you're to have an escort, aren't you ? When will you come back? Tell me there isn't much danger." Again he averted his eyes, but his answer was light and reassuring. " Danger ? Why should there be ? I've got a pass- port." At these words, suddenly, as if in response, several [278] BARRY GORDON shots rang out in quick succession. Then came a beating of drums. They both started and glanced in the direction of the clamour. The sight that met their eyes was familiar to Barry, but strange and terrifying to Muriel. Across the deserted market-place a small company of natives was passing slowly out of the town. The proces- sion, though slow, was riotous with motion and noise. It was led by figures that seemed crazed. They were dancing savagely and with mad gyrations, their white robes whirling like driven clouds, their arms aloft, their great gaunt hands flourishing lengthy Moorish guns, flinging them up, spinning them, catching them on high, and discharging them thunderously as if in mid-air. So incessant was this discharge that over the entire procession trailed clouds of smoke turned by the sun to a fiery mass. Behind the frantic leaders came musicians giving forth weird and ghostly sounds ; and behind the musi- cians a mule richly harnessed and bearing on his back a large cabinet draped with flaming silks. The rear was brought up by stragglers leaping and shrieking hideously. The whole thing was unearthly, ferocious, and mena- cing; appallingly indicative of the savagery of these people in moments of unrestraint. [279] BARRY GORDON Barry's mare, akin to it all, grew restless and pawed the ground. Her large eyes gazed at the human storm. Her ears were lifted, her nostrils dilated, her body quiv- ering with excitement. She thrust her nose under Barry's arm. He laughed dryly. But Muriel had drawn close to his side and was clinging to him, her eyes blinded by the powder-flashes, her ears deafened by the shots. She was pallid as death. He heard her breathing fast. Slowly and unconsciously he put an arm about her. " It isn't anything to be afraid of," he said quieting- ly. " They are firing blank charges. They call it ' laab el barnd.' It's merely powder-play a way of cele- brating. That's a wedding party. They're taking the bride to the groom's home. She's in that box on the mule." He drew a sigh. " God pity women," he said, " the world over ! " The procession was now leaving the market-place, and soon the tempest of noise, colour and motion had passed. In the distance the yells and gun-shots were dying away. But Muriel, her spirit now at the mercy of her senses, was still trembling. The sight of those savage fanatics, so expert with their weapons and in every way so hor- ribly eloquent of destructive force, made her heart sink and her pluck fail. The sun was now half lost behind the western sky- line. [280] BARRY GORDON Barry withdrew his arm from about her and looked toward the town expectantly. Muriel, understanding, turned and faced him, looked up at him with beseeching eyes. " Barry, I can't let you go," she sobbed. " These people are murderous, terrible. Oh, I can't let you go ! Wait at least a few moments. Come and find out what father has done, I implore you." His gaze was still sternly set toward the town, as if he could not trust himself to look down at her. " No," he said ; " if I waited, I might be too late." "Too late? Why?" " I might that's all. Don't ask me, Muriel." " I must ask you. Tell me why, Barry. It isn't fair to go like this, without telling me, without explaining. I won't let you. I can't ! Oh, Barry ! " He had thought to spare her, but his silence he saw was crueller than candour. " Muriel," he said, " this is the reason : Tom's in the gravest peril. They may at any moment take his life." As he said it he felt that her last hope was crushed, her last plea withdrawn. In spite of himself, he looked down at her and saw in the now dense gloom such a piteous figure, a face so stained with tears, so pallid with suffering, so ghost-like in the shadows reaching out to grasp her, that his heart seemed suddenly to crack and break. [281] BARRY GORDON She drew back into the shadow. He and his horse stood just beyond in the open glow. The mare had raised her head and was gazing toward the town. Barry, too, had turned and was waiting, tense in every line. Muriel once more came close to him. But he stood straight, shackling himself with his will power. Suddenly the mare started forward, tugged on the reins and began to whinny. Barry, shading his eyes with his hand, strained them toward a distant gate. Muriel followed his gaze half blindly through her tears. Out into the open rode a pair of ruffianly natives, heavily armed. Seeing him, they halted midway in the market-place and waited. Barry turned to Muriel, and she saw him sway. " Muriel," he repeated brokenly, " help me to do this thing!" Dazed by his appeal, she drew back a step into the shadows. The strain on him eased. His face was filled with a calm light. " Dear Muriel," he said in a voice now very quiet, " you have shown me a vision few men see." Those were his last words as he left her. Turning he thrust his foot in the stirrup and swung up lightly into the saddle. In a moment he had joined his escort. Between them [282] BARRY GORDON he rode slowly up the hill. He did not look back. For an instant on the brow of the slope the mounted figures stood out boldly against the sky; then they descended beyond the crest and Barry had left her. Long she stood there numbly gazing at the vacant sky"; stood there while the shadows crept across the market-place and the gloom under the trees deepened from purple to black ; stood there till at last she heard a long, low, monotonous call issuing from the town. It was not sudden, this call, but seemed to grow gradually out of the silence, as though the voice had been calling eternally, yet was now audible for the first time. Glancing toward the town, she saw the figure of the muezzin in the tower of the mosque, a figure very small in the distance but leaning out commandingly ovei- the world. He was calling the faithful to prayer. Muriel knelt alone in the shadows. [283] CHAPTER IV THE RIDE. CASSIM AND ACHMET. NIGHT ON THE EDGE OF A CONTINENT. A MOCKING VOICE THE ride seemed to Barry slower and more ar- duous than any in the past. Before now he had known the racking wear and tear of lonely journeys through this roadless land. Often he had fol- lowed similar African trails rough, world-old tracks full of hummocks and hoof-holes. More than once in the rainy season he had seen mules bogged belly-deep in the quagmire and left to die. More than once in the summer, when the holes were baked by the sun into hard pitfalls, he had seen a horse suddenly stumble, had heard a leg-bone snap. And because the native riders would not waste powder and ball to save these stricken beasts, he himself had ended their pain. But with all these misadventures, he had never till now felt so keenly the irk of slow and careful riding. Hitherto he had always had time and to spare. He had been an idle wanderer, as truly nomadic as all the countless generations of men and burdened animals who had beaten these trails into the earth. He had moved from place to place as if in a sleep, taking no thought of the [284] BARRY GORDON morrow. But to-day his impatience kept him stark awake. After skirting the town, the natives halted in a wood and, dismounting, bade him do likewise. Then they stripped him and searched him for weapons. This done, the ride was resumed, one in the lead as guide, the other in the rear to keep watch on Barry. They were rugged mountaineers, these men about as wild and murderous-looking a pair as he had ever seen. His years of dangerous travel had trained his eye to read faces quickly but with care. This he had already done in the present instance. Upon first riding up to them in the market-place he had caught a sharp im- pression of the two, and now after several hours he thought he had a working knowledge of their char- acters. The one who had taken the lead was the older a tall, gaunt man, Cassim by name. From under his turban a great tangle of grizzled hair rioted over his neck and shoulders. His grim visage, framed by this coarse and uncouth mane, looked like a rock in a thicket. He was mounted on a bay charger and carried a na- tive gun. At his waist Barry saw the hilts of a brace of daggers. The man in the rear, by name Achmet, was less im- pressive. Perched high on a travelling pack on a mangy mule, he looked every inch an African derelict, a worth- [285] BARRY GORDON less drifter, his flat, pock-marked face sapped bloodless by sensuality, his blear eyes the eyes of the confirmed kief-smoker and hasheesh-eater. This Achmet, Barry decided, was Ibrahim's one mis- take. Through him the thing must be done. The track wound between long stretches of olive trees and scrub aloe. As darkness fell, the going was very difficult. Even when the moon rose over the mountains ahead, every step was a risk. The play of its beams with the shadows made the way so tricky that every foot of it had to be watched. All that night and the next day they pushed onward. As they rode, boys came out from the zereebas, pip- ing on reeds and crying after Barry gay curses. " N'zrani ! Christian ! Dog and son of a dog ! " they mocked, calling to others, " Come and see the Naz- arene." Then Achmet in the rear would drowsily wave them back with taunts insulting to Moorish youths. " Schwei ! Schwei ! Go to your mothers," he would drone. " Spawn of fleas ! " But soon the zereebas and flat country were left be- hind. The riders had reached the foot-hills. Hour after hour they rode in single file without a word. Then the scene became wilder, bolder. They were in the mountains. Hour after hour they pushed onward and upward, the ascent growing constantly more precipitous, until at [286] BARRY GORDON last they gained a small plateau overlooking the Medi- terranean. It was again night. The moon sailed high over the peaks. Far below lay the sea like a silver ribbon. Here and there huge rocks jutted out of the earth. Here and there old mountain oaks loomed rugged and full of shadows. Cassim's bay leader evidently recognised a familiar resting place. Blown and spent by the rough climb he balked and would go no farther. The mutiny spread at once to Barry's mare and the mule. The gray, still spirited, halted, snorted, reared and shied at shadows, but would take not a step forward. As for the mule, it seemed to have struck root and stood as fixed as the oaks and rocks. Achmet, sliding down from the pack, belaboured the beast's flanks with his gun-stock. " Son of a pig ! " he cried. " On ! on ! spawn of ver- min." His oaths were vain. He turned to Barry and Cassim, who were now dismounting. " They smell the fandak." Cassim nodded. " Ihyeh, the fandak. Let us camp there. He who spares his beast gains his goal the quicker." He led the way through a strip of oaks and palmetto scrub. Here the plateau expanded widely, and from all direc- tions vague trails converged to a common centre the [287] BARRY GORDON fandak. Barry had seen many of these enclosed stock- ades, but none so desolate or ancient as this, which to judge by its decay must have dated back to the days when piracy had flourished on the sea below. Doubtless the Rif pirates had built the place. Ever and anon swooping down on coastwise voyagers and climb- ing back burdened with booty, they had felt the need of half-way shelters between the sea and their mountain lairs. Doubtless many a captain of a rakish korsan had lodged here, and with him his murderous crew. But since the decline of that bold sea-brigandage the fandak had been put to tamer use. Though to-night it happened to be deserted, evidently on many recent nights it had housed wayfarers bound God knew whence or whither. As Barry followed Cassim and Achmet under the arch, he noticed that the place still reeked with the smell of recent occupants men and mules and horses who had spent the night here and slept together and fed together and then resumed their restless wandering nomads all. As in most fandaks, the middle of the inclosure was open to the sky, but a cloistral passage, roofed to afford protection against inclement weather, margined the open space. This dark passage was evidently familiar to Cassim and Achmet. They seemed to have proprietary rights in the fandak. Straightway they went to an oaken door [288] BARRY GORDON at a corner, and Cassim drew from under his haik a large key. Opening the door he entered a closet and brought out a feed of straw for the horses and mule. Meanwhile Achmet, who had entered with him, emerged with a brazier full of charcoal, and, undoing his pack, set about preparing a meal. " I go a moment," said Barry in Arabic, " to think and be alone." Cassim bowed consent. Barry drifted from the fandak. Passing through the strip of oaks and palmetto scrub he came out again on the open ledge where they had dismounted. Here on a rock he seated himself and made his final plans. Where these mountaineers were taking him he could not guess. It might be even to Beni Aloo, a town no Christian had ever entered save one. A shadow crossed Barry's face. He remembered a low- bred Berber woman in the streets of Beni Aloo ; also a high-bred Berber woman on a roof in Beni Aloo one of those far flat roofs where intoxicating odours and the plaintive music of the gimbri snare the senses, and women clandestinely unveil. He, the beggar woman, had been charitably received that evening by the lady on the roof in Beni Aloo. But the end had been a nightmare. Whether or not he was now bound for this or any other familiar locality he could not tell. In the old days [289] BARRY GORDON he had come from the southeast. Now he was coming from the west, and the look of it all was different. One thing, though, was certain. He was going again into the country of the Kabyles or hill tribes. He was again on the move in that hazardous intrusion which few foreigners had attempted and still fewer survived. But how differently he was going now. No excitement, no hidden weapons, no adventurous disguise. Merely a decision in his mind, cold and irrevocable. Even the fast, warm-blooded ride he had hoped for had been denied him. The test was demanding the calmest, sanest forces of character. Far below him lay the sea like a silver serpent stretched dead in the moonlight. All about him over this pale warm Muslim world the air pulsed subtly, as if with the beating of Allah's heart. Here and there a flood of moonlight threw out into relief many mountain crags and serried ridges. Here and there it was crossed by black ravines and canons great gashes of shadow. From one or two fell infinitesimal gleaming streams that trickled outward into the gloom. Everywhere the enchantment of the Moorish night the old indescribable enchantment in which he could never lose himself again. Ah, yes he could! He could lose himself here for all eternity. Here between the pillars of Hercules, here in the garden of the Hesperides, he would lie at rest. Here [290] BARRY GORDON his soul, like an ancient voyager, would venture forth on " the stream of ocean." But, oh, that Muriel had known these African night- hours with him ! Oh, that he had been permitted to melt into this midnight, not in death but in love! Oh, that their mutual pulses might but once have contributed to this vast pulsation ! Oh, that their hearts had throbbed but a moment in unison with the divine heart that stirred this air! But no such rapture was permitted man. Only the Muslim paradise afforded it. While he sat there, the Mohammedan spirit in every masculine nature awoke in him, and the spirit of the Christian grew cold. It was not Mahomet who had said, " Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends." To Mahomet a man's life and a man's love were his own here and hereafter. Oh, if the Christian spirit, crueller by far than the other, had been less firmly rooted in his western nature ! But here it was, cold and dull, to be sure, and almost mechanical, yet inexorable as death. He heard a footstep. " Sidi." He turned. Achmet stood behind him. " Sidi, I have cooked a meal." [291] BARRY GORDON Barry rose. "Why do you call me 'sir'?" he said bitterly. " Why don't you call me a dog of a Christian ? " Achmet gazed off vacantly into the moonlight. " We are poor," he answered, " but you Roumi have money to buy kief and hasheesh." He shot a glance at Barry out of the corner of his eye. The look was crafty, dangerous, criminal. Barry smiled. " Yes, Achmet, but not with me, not on my person. Nevertheless, of what I have in Tangier enough shall be yours to buy kief and hasheesh for the rest of your days. That won't be long," he added dryly, " if you keep at it." Achmet turned and regarded him dazedly. " Allah knows I cannot be bought," he said, the light of a long-lost manhood flickering in his blear eyes. " Ihyeh ! Ihyeh ! Allah knows ! " " I suggest no dishonourable purchase," said Barry coldly, " no real breach of contract. Doubtless you know of my bargain with Ibrahim. It admits an American to the captive and guarantees an American a safe re- turn. Good! What matter that it says the American? To-day 7 am the American you understand? But to- morrow on the ride back another may be the American you understand ? " Achmet gazed at him stupidly and shook his head. [292] BARRY GORDON " No, Sidi ; but if it is no breach and thou wilt fatten my purse with much kief-money, the thing is done." Barry nodded. " You will be paid on your return to Tangier. Now what of Cassim ? " Achmet smiled. " Cassim smokes little kief, eats little hasheesh, but he fights, he kills." Again Barry nodded. " I see he carries a native carbine. How about a Lee- Metford or Winchester? " Achmet chuckled. " For the price of a rifle like Ali Hamed's," he said, " Cassim would sell to thee his horse and his wives." Barry laughed dryly. " I shall have no use for either," he said. " My de- mand is trifling. Come ! " He led the way back to the stockade. There, while the mule and horses munched their straw on the fandak cobbles, the three men in the cloistral passage drank thick black coffee of Achmet's brewing and fed upon a chicken he had stewed over the brazier. This and a few dried figs and cakes, sodden and tough as cow-hide, constituted their first and last meal be- tween Tangier and their destination. After they had finished they fell to smoking, Cassim and Achmet kief in their long pipes, Barry a cigarette. [293] BARRY GORDON Now he unfolded his plan to them in detail. The project was luckily simple and suggested no lapse from their primitive code. Achmet, smoking dreamily, and now and then resorting to a small embossed hasheesh cup beside him, was soon so befuddled by his vice, so given over to its somnolent delights, that thoughts of an endless supply of them seemed to fill him with a rare rapture. And as for Cassim, the choice of a Lee-Metford or Winchester, in exchange for so trifling a service, fairly transfigured his grim countenance. A single move against the interests of Ali Hamed he might not have made for untold wealth, but the scheme was utterly harmless. It was as if he had seen paradise. Barry, reading their faces by the light of a candle lantern which Achmet had hung over him, played on their pet weaknesses until the deal was closed. In the matter of pandering to Achmet's vices he had not a qualm. The poor dog would get kief and hasheesh if he had to do murder for it; and as for Cassim, if kill he would, he could kill more painlessly with a Win- chester than a native blunderbuss. The affair settled, Achmet was for slinging a cot for Barry in the cloister ; but the air was so fetid under the low roof that Barry declined, and sat through the night in the fandak entrance, his back against the wall, his sleepless staring eyes every now and again on the squatting figures under the lantern. [294] Barry played on their pet weaknesses until the deal was closed BARRY GORDON His vigil reminded him of that night, seemingly cen- turies ago, when he had watched over Tom in the Beek- mans' barn, and had wakened to find Muriel gazing at him out of the heart of the dawn. What a different to-morrow now awaited him ! When at last it came and the sun climbed above the distant ranges toward Algeria, the travellers resumed their march. Late in the afternoon Cassim called a halt within sight of a lofty and small white town, so like many an- other eyrie in these mountains that Barry could not determine whether or not he had ever before seen it. Certainly not from this approach. At a word from Cassim Barry dismounted, and Ach- met, drawing from the mule-pack a long djellab or hooded mantle of rough gray cotton stuff, threw it over Barry's shoulders. This was an expedient which Barry himself had often adopted. It protected a foreigner from curiosity caused by European costume. Doubtless Ibrahim had ordered it, fearing the unruly spirits in Ali's band. But the next expedient was not so pleasant. Achmet drew from the pack a strip of greasy shoddy and tossed it to Cassim. Cassim then bound it about Barry's eyes and, drawing forward the hood, helped him up again into the saddle. This done Cassim remounted, grasped the gray's bridle, and led on up a sharp ascent. Finally he drew rein and, taking Barry's passport [295] BARRY GORDON from him, again dismounted. For a moment Barry was left in black suspense. He was dimly conscious that Ach- met stood at the horse's head and that several low voices were murmuring not far away. Once he heard a low exultant laugh. Blind and helpless he waited. Then at last an ironical voice close at hand said resonantly: " Marhabba bi kum welcome to thee, N'zrani ! " He was now ordered to dismount, some one led away his horse, and the passport was lightly thrust back under his cloak. Then the voice said : " Guide him to our guest, unblind him, and leave them together. But wait near." [296] CHAPTER V THE CAVE AND ITS OCCUPANT. GREATER LOVE HATH NO MAN THAN THIS " THEN began a descent of some sharp declivity, Cassim and Achmet supporting Barry each at an arm and guiding his steps. When at last they stopped and withdrew his blind- fold, he found himself on a wide ledge or shelf of rock that jutted out from the mountain-side. This projection was the narrowest and most dangerous pass he had ever seen. On the one hand rose a sheer black cliff seemingly to the sky ; on the. other nothing. Barry instinctively glanced over the edge. Far below him lay a vast chaos of moonlight and shadow, shapes of crags and ledges and giant primeval oaks; voids where gorges were and the gloom hung dense; then rolling ridges coastward. Beyond and below all this he saw the sea, laid like a sword significantly between the sleeping continents. He turned toward the mountain-side and glanced up. Just where he stood the pass deepened considerably, but not enough to yield him a view of the town nestled some- where amid the peaks above him. [297] BARRY GORDON As he lowered his glance it fell on a patch of white wall abutting from the cliff. In the middle of this wall he saw an oaken door. Cassim with a large key was fumbling at the lock. Beside Cassim stood Achmet holding his candle-lantern above the keyhole. Stunned by horror at sight of this tomb-like cave, Barry, as if in a nightmare, stood waiting. Then at last the massive door was opened and the two, turning, motioned him to enter. If ever he had seen a death-trap, this was it. If ever he had stood at the threshold of a dangerous interior, he stood there now. Yet he did not hesitate. Anguished with pity for Tom, a pity that tortured his heart and suddenly burned awake his old, long dormant, brother- ly love, he passed swiftly through the doorway. But now within he was forced to pause, checked by the gloom. At one side in the rocky wall a deep, small orifice, crossed by iron bars, formed a natural window; but the moonlight slanting in was so sickly, the one streak of it across the cave so thin and pale, that it only deepened the surrounding darkness. This darkness was further intensified by a silence, not like most silences merely negative, but positive, ag- gressive, and sharp. Barry's senses seemed to be stimulated abnormally. Then he knew why the silence seemed so acute. Just [98] BARRY GORDON as the darkness was intensified by the streak of sickly moonbeams, the silence was intensified by an almost in- audible sound. He listened. He thought he heard a breathing and a dripping a faint distressed breathing and a slow drip- ping. Straining his eyes toward the corner of the cave, he thought he saw on the ground a form blacker than the general blackness. The sight of this stricken shape, and the sound of its breathing and the near-by drip, filled his mind with subtle horror, his heart with a pity that was agony. His nerves, greatly in need of sleep, were strained almost to breaking. In that first moment he felt sickened, as if with actual nausea. He broke into a cold sweat. His head was splitting. His body was shaken by a chill. Then it burned. Fear? Yes, a moment of exquisite fear, a moment at the mercy of imagination, a moment in the midst of a whirl of nightmare stuff gloom and flare; silence, breathings, drippings, and all phantasmal terrors. Fear? Yes, but not cowardice. The fear was full of courage. With an effort he summoned his will to his aid and drew himself up powerfully. Then the fever and chill left him left him so sane and calm that even had some poor hideous ghost now risen half fleshless from the [299] BARRY GORDON grave, he could have comforted it with a large com- passion. Achmet brought in the lantern, handed it to him, and withdrew. Barry held it aloft and looked toward the corner. He saw a man huddled there. The man lay on a ragged Moorish cloak spread on the ground. He was on his side, his back to the entrance, his knees drawn up, his arms flung out, and his face buried between them. He was dressed in an old riding suit badly torn and worn. Every now and then his whole body twitched mechanically. Not far from where he lay the seepage of some mountain spring oozed through the rock above and fell from a ledge in glimmering drops to the ground. Otherwise the gloom of the corner was unrelieved save for a small patch of radiance where the lantern-light touched the man's hair. Barry drew a step nearer, holding forward the lantern. The hair caught the light and shone like gold. No finder of hidden treasure, no digger of buried gold, was ever more thrilled by a sudden gleam than Barry was then. Impetuously he started forward, but stopped short. The shock might be too severe. Tom's twitching was the twitching of nervous sleep. Wake him too suddenly and the nerves might snap. In Barry's knockabout life he had seen even joy do murder. [300] BARRY GORDON Drawing forward the hood of his djellab, he set down his lantern, went quietly to Tom, and bending over him gently touched his shoulder without speaking. Evidently the sleep was light and feverish. Agitated even by this soft touch, Tom shifted, woke with a groan, and looked up. But the light was behind Barry, and the hood of his Moorish mantle shaded his face. Tom saw nothing unusual in his visitor. Wearily he sank down again. " What do you want now ? " he muttered. " Can't you let a man sleep? Instead of waking me, why didn't you knock me on the head and kill me? As you didn't have the kindness to do that, for God's sake let me sleep." Barry drew back heart-sick. He was silent a moment. Then he said all Jbut inaudibly : " Tom." Tom, rising to one elbow, stared up here and there toward the cavern roof, as if he thought the voice had come from a spirit hovering over him. " Who spoke to me? " he asked. " Who" He shook his head sceptically. Barry moved a step closer and again said, very low: " Tom." Tom's face was haggard, his eyes were haunted and bitter. " The same old maddening dream ! " he muttered to [301] BARRY GORDON himself, staring into vacancy. " The same crazy illu- sion ! Perhaps it comes when they're thinking of me remembering me trying to find me." Barry drew closer still. " Tom old man." Tom's eyes brightened feverishly ; his cheeks red- dened with a sudden hectic flush. He rose to an alert half-sittingiposture, the palm of his hand on the ground. "Barry's voice! Yes, go on, Barry. I'm listening. Talk to me." Apparently he thought the voice came from an un- seen visitor. He did not seem to connect it with the cloaked figure beside him. Doubtless to his dazed mind this figure was merely one of his captors interrupting his dearest dream. Impatiently he waved away the in- truder. " Leave me alone here, won't you ? My brother is speaking to me. If you've got an atom of heart, don't wake me." " Tom, you are awake. Quick ! Get up ! Don't you want to be free ? " Tom smiled bitterly, still gazing into vacancy. " Free? Oh, you're always saying that in these dreams. What's the use ? Talk to me about home about Muriel." Barry winced and again laid a hand on his shoulder this time with a firm pressure. [302] BARRY GORDON " Tom, for God's sake, believe the reality of this ! Prove it ! Look at me ! " Slowly, unnaturally, like a somnambulist obedient to an outer voice, Tom rose to his feet and, nerving himself, turned to gaze at the speaker. Barry shifted his position, faced him, and, throwing off the cloak, stood fully revealed in the lantern light. Tom trembled. There was a silence, a moment of awakening that seemed like a second birth, full of trav- ail and upheaval. It was nearly ten years since they had seen each other, more than two since Tom had left home. " Give me a minute," he said feebly, " to get a grip on myself." They stood face to face, separate and mute, waiting for the strain to slacken. Finally Tom smiled, but the smile was not the boyish smile of the old days. The sunshine in it, once cloudless, now came filtering through a mist. " Barry," he said, " I had given up hope." Barry's face was lined, his brows were drawn, his eyes were darker than the cavern. " So had we, but it's all right now." " Is it? Thank God! Say that again, Barry." They moved to each other and grasped hands. " It's all right now," Barry repeated quietly. " Cas- sim will be here in a minute. When he comes you are free." [303] BARRY GORDON He drew apart from Tom and glanced about at the rocky walls. " How long have they kept you in this hole ? " " Not long, I think. We are always on the move." " Good ! Then you're not prison-killed. You're well enough to ride ? " " Yes. Till recently they have treated me more or less tolerably. It's been a lazy, torpid life, drifting from place to place with AH Hamed." Tom's look was still dazed, his faculties inert. " All the time I've been getting stupider, duller, more despairing." He smiled mirthlessly. " Once or twice there came a break ; once or twice they cut up rough, but I brought it on myself." Barry was thinking, planning. " How? " he asked mechanically. A spasm of pain crossed Tom's worn face. " O God ! sometimes I couldn't stand it. I'm not like you, Barry. I can't mix with these people. A little humour, a little fatalism, a mere spark of their fire, and I'd have won their friendship. But I'm too unlike them ; it wasn't in me. One night I tried to escape." Barry was thinking, planning, glancing at the barred window, the massive door. "Yes, and then?" he asked mechanically. " Oh, then we had a mix-up. There was only one of them awake. He sat smoking kief. I must have been crazed, murderous. I sprang at him. Poor devil, his [304] BARRY GORDON throat still looks as if I had tried to hack it with a dull knife. I had my nails buried in it, but he managed to choke out a cry. Then the rest woke up and would have tortured me to death, but Ali Hamed came in and cursed them away. As it was, they had about done for me. I've got a lot of dagger wounds still open, a lot of black lumps where they hammered me with their gun-stocks." The shadow lifted from his face. " But what's all that as long as you have come? " His eyes brightened with affectionate fervour and admiration. He drew nearer and grasped Barry's hand in both of his own. " I knew if any one found me it would be you." The look and tone of gratitude grated on Barry. He felt that he was utterly unworthy of it. He shifted and gently withdrew his hand. His manner grew curter. He stuck to his thoughts and plans. " Have you had food regularly ? " " Yes, such as it was gluey bread, dried figs, dates, and their sickening kous-kous." "How long since?" " Not long." " Good ! Then you can keep going. Have you had much sleep ? " " Such as it was fever and nightmares hideous ab- surd nightmares. One night, a week or two ago, I dreamed you had stabbed me you of all people and were picking my pocket " he put his hand on his heart [305] BARRY GORDON "just here. That's what comes of living with these ruffians. You get dreaming your own brother is a thief!" Barry winced, laughed harshly, then pursued his clean- cut course. He motioned toward the seepage in the corner. " Take a drink of water plenty. The ride's long, the heat shrivelling." Tom, still half dazed, crossed to the damp spot and, turning up his mouth, let the drip from the jut of rock trickle into it. Barry went to the door and looked out into the night. Close at hand he saw a shadow. It was Achmet leaning indolently against the wall. " Cassim is long in coming," said Barry. " Ihyeh," said Achmet, never turning his drowsy gaze from vacancy. " The horses had to be fed and watered." " You should watch the mountain-side," said Barry. " Some one else might descend." Achmet, moving to a vantage-point, shrugged in- differently. " Whoever comes comes," he muttered. " The thing is in Allah's hands." Barry nodded and turned back. These words, though murmured by a kief-sodden dreamer, somehow eased his mind and lightened his heart. The thing was in Allah's hands. [306] BARRY GORDON When Tom turned from the wet rock he looked re- freshed and more alert. " That dripping has been horrible," he said. " Some- times it got on my brain, but the water was a Godsend. It must be a spring." " Yes. What town are we under? " " I don't know. I think you must have been here be- fore. Only an hour or two ago some native woman came to the window and spoke your name." Barry started. What ghost had risen out of his past? It seemed as if nothing he had done would ever die. " Did she? " he said. " What was hers? " Tom frowned uncertainly. At last he answered : " I think it was Naomi." Barry looked bewildered and incredulous. " Naomi ! " he exclaimed. " No, she could never again be in this region. She lives somewhere in Tangier." His brow was drawn ; he bit his lip. " Where did she come from?" " She didn't tell me," replied Tom. " When she saw her mistake she vanished." Barry's eyes were dark with perplexity. " She said nothing? " " One thing." Tom's face went a shade paler. "What?" " She said Ali was going to have me shot." "When?" [307] BARRY GORDON " To-morrow." A sigh like a moan broke from Barry's heart. Then it was true. Ibrahim had not deceived him. " If you hadn't come," said Tom, " I believe I'd have died gladly." He drifted to the barred orifice in the rocks where the woman had spoken to him. With his hand on the bars he looked out into the moonlit world as if to assure himself of its wide liberty. " Tell me," he asked without turning, " what have you done? How have you managed it? Are they getting a ransom? " " Yes a ransom." "What's the price?" " Never mind, Tom. Don't worry about that." " When's the payment? Now? " " No to-morrow." Tom turned, puzzled. " I don't understand. If they let us go to-night, how " He was interrupted by the appearance of a shadow in the doorway. " Cassim is coming," said Achmet. Barry caught up from the ground the voluminous cloak on which Tom had lain, and quickly threw it over his brother's shoulders. " Cassim and Achmet," he said, " will take you to Tangier. When you get there, give them each fifty dol- lars. It's a two days' ride, but you'll have fresh horses. [308] BARRY GORDON You'll have to keep going without sleep or food. Re- member, Tom, keep going! " Tom's face was clouded with bewilderment. " What about you ? Do you think I'd leave you here ? " "Why not? Of course! Don't bother about me. I've got a passport." Barry's easy tone and mention of a passport seemed reassuring, yet it went against the grain in Tom to start first. r " Why can't we leave together ? " Barry frowned impatiently. " Because I've got to stay and pay the ransom." "You swear that's it?" " Yes." " Then why should I not wait with you? What's one day after two years ? " Barry forced a smile. " Do you think I'm going to make the payment be- fore you're free? Not I! If I did they might go back on the bargain. That would be a mess. They'd have the ran- som and you too." Tom's face hardened with resolve. " Then let them ! Blest if I leave you in this trap ! " Barry despaired. He had feared it. He knew Tom. At this juncture Cassim hastily strode in. " I am followed," he said, " by Ali Hamed. The thing cannot be done." [309] BARRY GORDON Barry swore under his breath, caught up his mantle, threw it about him, and drew the hood over his head. Then for a moment the two brothers, cloaked alike, stood face to face. Barry trembled, breathing hard, racked by the clash. " Will you go? " "No!" " Don't be a fool ! I tell you I have a passport." " Are you sure they would let you follow me? " " Tom, I shall leave here to-morrow." "You swear it?" " Yes." But Tom could not bear to leave him. " How can you swear it ? They might keep you. What could you do alone? " " Hark ! " said Achmet suddenly. They listened. Footsteps crunching on dry stubble came slowly down the pass. Driven desperate, Barry drew from his breast Ibra- him's letter. " This," he whispered to Tom, " is my passport. It guarantees me a safe return. Unless you go, I destroy it." He held the paper in both hands as if to tear it. " Stop ! " said Tom. " You swear that guarantees you a safe return to Tangier ? " [310] BARRY GORDON " By a man whose guarantee is law to these people? " " Yes. Do you think I'm lying? " " No. I'll go." Barry grasped Tom's hand and wrung it. " Thank God ! Good-bye, Tom ! " Cassim drew forth the band of greasy shoddy and blindfolded Tom, then pulled the hood farther forward, masking his face with deep shadows. The footsteps crunching on the dry stubble drew closer to the cave. " Save by the grace of Allah," said Achmet impas- sively, " it cannot be done." " By the grace of Allah it shall ! " said Barry, no less calmly ; and he slipped the passport into Achmet's hand. Then they started, and just outside were challenged by a low resonant voice. Barry listened. There was a moment of dead silence, then they were evidently allowed to pass. He heard their footsteps recede and die away. But Ali was still near. Barry, hearing him stir, crossed quickly to the win- dow, not to look out, but to keep his back to the entrance and conceal the exchange. Ali, entering with a lantern, stood and gazed at the hooded figure. Barry raised his hands to the bars as he had seen Tom [311] BARRY GORDON raise his, and gazed out as he had seen Tom gaze out. The pose was excellent typical of a man long captive. And the cloak hid his figure, its hood his dark hair. But Ali, instead of turning, drew slowly nearer. Barry's blood raced in his veins. His heart beat against his ribs. He broke into a cold sweat. If Ali discovered the trick before the others had a good start, Tom was lost. Suddenly, to his amazement, Ali laughed softly, ironically. " Turn," he said, " or I shoot ! " The game was up. To refuse was senseless. Barry turned and faced him. Ali raised the lantern a moment, scrutinised him, low- ered it and again laughed. Barry saw at once that this famous Berber rebel was still in his prime. Tall, and clad in a pure white burnous that fell in shimmering folds about him, he looked a princely figure. The poise of his head was autocratic, but his bearing was full of ease and grace, and his eyes glowed with sardonic humour. Though he had threatened to shoot he had drawn no weapon. If he carried one at all, it was under his burnous. For a moment the two stood mute, face to face. Then Ali said in Arabic : " Did you think I did not know ? Did you think Ach- met and Cassim would not tell me? Did you think they BARRY GORDON wanted to be fed to the dogs ? Not they ! But the event is happy, the exchange unutterably gratifying. Never have I had such good fortune. To me it means more than any ransom. Willingly I free your brother and accept you in his stead." He folded his arms with judicial calm- ness and his eyes narrowed. " Some years ago," he said, " you spent an evening on a roof in Beni Aloo." His face darkened with a look of pain, but his smile was iron- ical, his voice smooth as a cat's purr. " You spent that evening, N'zrani, with Naomi, the bride of my youth ! " [313] CHAPTER VI THE SPELL OF BARRY*S SACRIFICE. THE AFRICAN GARDEN. MURIEL AND TOM. BLACK MAGIC IT was the first day after Tom's arrival in Tangier, the third since he had left Barry. At a window of their room in the Hotel Granada Mr. and Mrs. Beekman stood side by side, gazing ab- sently toward the eastern mountains. Long they were silent and motionless. For once Mrs. Beekman was not the creature of her nerves and fussy intellect. At last when her husband turned to her, the change impressed him. The lines in her face were no longer puckered with irritation. They had relaxed into the symmetry of unsel- fish sadness. On her cheeks there was a faint colour, and her mouth, though still the merest ghost of a Cupid's bow, seemed kinder. But the deepest change was in her eyes. Their icy blue seemed melted by an inner light. For once she was not petulantly repressing her latent woman- liness. Tears were falling as if from a fountain at last unsealed. As he turned to her, she, too, noticed a change. She saw that his expression had mellowed, saw in his calm [314] BARRY GORDON gray eyes profound feeling, and on his passionless lips a tremor. " Nowadays," he said, " self-sacrifice is out of fashion. At any cost, says the world, grasp happiness. Greater folly hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. The world will call him a fool. Let it ! As for me, I am proud to have known that fool and the thought of losing him is more than I can bear." Mrs. Beekman drew even closer to her husband. " Do you think there is no hope ? " He shook his head. " The nearest American warship is at Malta." " But the native troops " Again he shook his head. " They've tried for years to take Ali Hamed and have failed." He put an arm about his wife and drew her to him, drew her head down on his shoulder. Resting against him, she wept uncontrollably, sobbing out the heart so long stifled. It was a rare moment, a mutual moment perhaps unprecedented in all their years of married life. As the full meaning of Barry's sacrifice came to them they were now at last drawn together, and knew they t would never again be separated. All unwittingly, the prodigal they had tried to redeem was the cause of their own redemption. He had gone to throw his life away as lightly as a boy runs to the sea and tosses in a stone, and [315] BARRY GORDON a like elemental energy had been set working by the act. Outward from that central deed, circles were already widening. When Mr. Beekman bent to his wife and she gazed up at him, their look seemed to obliterate the years. They had seen a vision of love. Far on an eastward road Tom and Kitty were return- ing from a long walk toward the mountains, whence they had hoped against hope to see Barry come. It was even- ing, the hour between sunset and moonrise, and the dark had so deepened that even Muriel, who had preceded them with Hicks, had now turned and was following them back to Tangier. " Oh, if I had only guessed what he meant," said Tom, " when he told me he was going to pay them a ransom ! If I had only known before I got here! Kitty, if he doesn't come by morning I shall ride back to him. For his sake I've waited all day trying to get troops, but it's no use. It means indefinite delay. These people are snails." Kitty thrust her hand under Tom's arm and clung to him. " If you go, you go to die," she faltered, " not to save Barry. It's futile, senseless ! " " Yes, but I must go." " No, Tom, no ! I can't let you ! " Her breath quick- [316] BARRY GORDON ened, her hand quivered on his arm. She was silent a moment, struggling against feelings prematurely torn to the surface by his suicidal impulse. Then she said in a low voice: " Tom." "What, Kitty?" " I can't let you." She assumed an incongruous light- ness of manner to mask her incongruous feelings. Incon- gruous ? Yes ; to her he was still a boy despite the wear and tear of his exile still a boy in a world of old men. And that she, a divorced woman, several years his senior, should find herself suddenly so disturbed, made so des- perate, seemed as incongruous as anything in life. Yet she had vaguely known it for years. For years she had dwelt on his memory, telling herself, rightly or wrongly, that this was her^ first love. Into her marriage she had dashed recklessly, as it were, to explore married life. She had not known love. But she knew it at last. And now as she hung on Tom's arm, this feeling went out to him a queer, pathetic, motherly sort of passion. " Tom, could you love twice? " His arm did not move. Always unperceptive, and now utterly given over to the barren suicide he planned, he evidently did not suspect her. " Never," he said mechanically, without even consid- ering her question. Kitty's bright face paled, and the faintest trace [317] BARRY GORDON of wrinkles appeared at the corners of her eyes and mouth. " But, Tom," she protested, " Muriel loves Barry, not you." He inclined his head. " She has always loved him." " Yes," said Kitty, " and if by any chance he comes back to her, she'll love him till she dies, and after. And if he doesn't come back she'll love his memory. So what about you ? Are you going to try to be contented as Old Faithful Old Trusty Old Dog Tray thanking your stars when she speaks to you smiles at you pats you feeds you with crusts of pity ? " " No," said Tom quietly ; " if I live I shall devote my time to my profession. I've been buried so long that every interest in life will have a new value. I shall make friends, money, a place for myself in the workshop of the world. I shall prove myself a man. Barry has set me an ex- ample that will always inspire me. For his sake and Muriel's and my own I shall try to prove myself worthy of his sacrifice." Kitty's heart was heavy. " I wish you luck," she said, " but I can't bear I can't " Then for the first time he felt the quiver of her hand and noticed the subtle discords in her voice. But he did not understand, she hid her feelings so well. [318] BARRY GORDON " Kitty, what's the matter? " he asked. Kitty withdrew her hand, tossed her head, and quick- ened her pace. " I don't know. Oh, it's nothing," she said quickly. Though she felt weary, and life looked misty and gray and full of old men' and worldly wisdom and worldly folly, she was still blessed with pluck. And now, under the moving spell cast on all of them by Barry's coura- geous act, this pluck of hers bloomed into the rarest bravery of woman a bravery which, in spite of pique, could yet be kind. " Good luck, Tom ! " she said with a tone and man- ner full of light friendliness. " I shall always be wishing you happiness watching your success. Good-bye, now. I think I shall go away." " Go away ? " he said in surprise. " Yes, for many reasons. I can't stand it here much longer. The strain is too great and nobody needs me. If I could do anything it would be different. Tom, I'm as fond of Barry as you are, and I can't bear to stay here and wait so helplessly. There's a train at midnight from Gibraltar to Paris. I think I shall take it to-night. If there's any news, they can telegraph to me at once. Paris, I think, will do me good. I need the life, the sparkle the old, old sparkle of everything but tears." At the last there was a catch in her voice, but she laughed it down. " It may seem selfish ; it may seem [319] BARRY GORDON heartless ; but I suppose I am selfish yes, and heart- less, too." Tom remembered something preposterous Mrs. Beek- man had said years before, and the memory disturbed him. " Were you expecting to go so soon ? " he asked, be- wildered. " Half," she answered with a nonchalant shrug. " I wasn't sure. It seemed to me the odds were even, but now the die is cast." Her warm blue eyes were tender and indulgent. She smiled at him as if at a child, the disparity of their ages seeming greater to her than be- fore. Yet it was not that he seemed younger. Suddenly she stopped and repeated her airy farewell. " Good-bye, Tom good-bye ! " Stopping, too, he echoed the parting word, turned to her affectionately and took her hand. In that moment they, too, had a vision of love, but the love was hopeless. Nevertheless, it lifted them for a moment toward the height Barry had attained. Thus the circles ever widened outward into infinity. Before Tom knew it, Kitty had turned to join Muriel and Hicks. Hicks was heart-broken. For once his face and crabbed tone had softened. As they hastened home, thinking perhaps to find news awaiting them, he said to Kitty: [320] BARRY GORDON " Barry was my only friend. If I've lost him, I'm utterly alone." In winter, much to the chagrin of the Moors, Tangier was polluted by the presence of infidel tourists, infidel pigs. The Hotel Granada was a nest of abominable Nazarenes. But now in summer the place was purged of these swine. To-night the hotel was almost empty. In the office the Spanish landlord, a little smooth old man like a fish pre- served in oil, sat asleep in his chair, snoring. At the entrance a swarthy Moorish porter, wrapped in a splendid white burnous, stood leaning against the door-post crooning to himself an Arab love-lament, weirdly and plaintively: My love cares nothing for me. My love is a white cloud vanishing. Her eyes are the eyes of a young gazelle, timidly gazing, then hastening away. My love is a walled garden. Her breath is the breath of roses I cannot pluck. Her voice is like music heard only in a dream. Her kiss is withheld and given to another. My love is a sword that pierces my heart! Save for this romantic porter and the Spanish host, the ground floor was deserted. Mr. and Mrs. Beekman were in their room, Hicks had gone to the cable office, [321] BARRY GORDON and Kitty was on a small paddle-wheel steamer, cross- ing the Strait of Gibraltar. Out in the deserted garden of the hotel stood Muriel and Tom, still straining their eyes toward the eastern mountains. The sky was clear save for a small, far-off cloud-drift. The moon had risen and was flooding the garden. Near them were a stone seat and table, and all about them palms and dwarf orange trees, the oranges glimmering vaguely in the moonlight. Below them lay the harbour and curving shore, the white foam ever stealing against it and withdrawing. To one side rose the city pallid and spectral on the hill, the emerald minaret of a mosque impaling the heavens. Behind them, hidden by the palms and dwarf orange trees, a shadow stole in from the street. It was Ibrahim. He alone had been embittered by Barry's sacrifice. At first all had been well. He and Mr. Beekman had agreed on a ransom. Then came the news of the exchange of captives. Yet still all had seemed well. One prisoner was as valuable as another. The money lay almost within his grasp. But then came a strange message from Ali Hamed, saying that now no ransom whatever would be accepted. " Not fifty times my debt," Ali had written, " would buy this other man from me." So the game was up, the money lost. From his dreams of gain and power Ibrahim had been cruelly awakened. [322] BARRY GORDON Usually he accepted reverses with a bowed head the profound resignation of his race. But this reverse was so galling, he had been so cleverly tricked, that the sore began to fester and malicious impulses seethed in his gloomy depths. Nor was this all. He was not only revengeful, but an- xious and sad. He was the victim of another misfortune, seemingly quite separate, but even worse. His heart had suffered a mysterious family loss even more lamentable than the loss of money. Muriel was long silent, her anxious face subtly trans- figured by a look of adoration cast toward the distant mountains. The darkness of her suffering was relieved as if by a glowing light of inspiration and pride. In the midst of her grief there was joy. Her love had grown immeasurably greater. Barry's act had intensified it into a calm white heat of worship and passion. She loved him as she had never dreamed she could love. Until to-day she had only groped in the dark, trying to find his true nature, loving him on faith, believing in his latent no- bility, his hidden soul. But now his soul was no longer hidden. She seemed to see him clothed in its light a figure imaged above the distant mountains fair, mili- tant and strong. Then she heard a stifled sigh, and her thoughts re- verted to Tom. As she turned he saw that, although her face was worn [323] BARRY GORDON by intense anxiety, the moist light in her eyes was the light of a large tenderness. Evidently her thoughts were solicitous for him as well as for Barry. She seemed to feel compelled to speak to him against her will. When she did so her voice was very low, but its cool sweet quality was like a breath from the north penetrat- ing this sensuous African night. " Tom, I've something to say. It may not be neces- sary; in fact I'm sure it is not. But for your sake as well as my own it seems best. Then there can never be misunderstandings. The truth will be permanently re- corded between us." Her voice softened with sympathy, her eyes overflowed with sad affection for him. " I want to tell you that I shall never forget your old love for me a love to which I now know I never responded. I want to tell you that always in the future if you need me you can count on me as a loyal friend; but as for love whatever has happened, whatever does happen my whole soul is Barry's ! " Tom bowed his head in submission, then drew himself up with an effort to regain his old sturdiness. But when he smiled, his smile was like the pale moonlight. " Of course, Muriel. How could I wish it to be other- wise? In a way it must be as if I had not come back." She held out her hand to him. " Yes, Tom ; you are starting in the morning to go to him, but even if you return safely, even if we see [324] BARRY GORDON each other every day of our lives, this is a last good- bye." He took her hand, held it a moment, then, in spite of him, his eyes asked a favour of her. She did not hesitate. This was a meeting and a parting, a moment to him so sharp with finality that even reluctance would have seemed ungenerous. His kiss was the kiss of a brother, hers like the touch of a snow-flake, though all around them the African garden breathed warm enchantments. They, too, had had a vision of love, and the love was hopeless. Thus the spell of Barry's sacrifice overlay all other spells, and the circles ever widened outward into in- finity. Only Ibrahim had remained uninspired. When he saw them clasp hands he smiled with a lewd cynicism and shrank deeper into the shade of the orange trees. Ah, if the American who had robbed him of his captive could come and see them now ! The Jew's smile was like black magic. Suddenly, as if in obedience to it, a shadow appeared in the arched en- trance from the street. Ibrahim, seeing it, stared as if at a ghost. The shadow at once approached behind Muriel and Tom. But as they kissed each other it stopped short; [325] BARRY GORDON then slowly it receded to the wall and stood there in the dark, swaying like a palm tree blown by a wind. As the lover-like pair withdrew to the hotel, Ibrahim, watching the stricken ghost, again smiled, and again the smile was like black magic. Gradually unseasonable clouds closed across the moon, the garden darkened, and softly into the night came the crooned love-lament of the porter : My love cares nothing for me. My love is a white cloud vanishing. Her eyes are the eyes of a young gazelle, timidly gazing, then hastening away. My love is a walled garden. Her breath is the breath of roses I cannot pluck. Her voice is like music heard only in a dream. Her kiss is withheld and given to another. My love is a sword that pierces my heart! [326] CHAPTER VII THE DEATH OF NAOMI, AND THE JEW'S VENGEANCE. THE AGONY IN THE GAEDEN. DAWN IBRAHIM waited till the man came out of the shadows ; then he rose, approached him, and asked impassively : " What miracle has happened? " The answer was casual, listless. " None. You're outdone, Ibrahim that's all." There was no triumph in the voice. The speaker seemed stupe- fied. " Yes," admitted Ibrahim, slightly cowering under the fact, " outdone. Yet it seems incredible. Did one of his men release you ? " The answer was mechanical, dull. " No, one of his women." " Impossible ! Was there not a guard ? " Barry passed a hand across his eyes as if to dispel the figments of a nightmare. He seemed to be replying without volition, as though for the moment mentally controlled by Ibrahim. " Yes ; but the woman had a dagger." Ibrahim smiled ironically. [327] BARRY GORDON " Doubtless the stab was repaid with interest." As he spoke the moon came out and revealed his face. Under his coarse black brows his eyes gleamed with satisfac- tion ; between his moustache and beard his lips were full and very pink. " Ali must have made short work of her." Barry shuddered, and again passed a hand across his eyes. Instinctively he drew up his sleeves and glanced at his arms. From wrist to elbows the flesh was crossed with ragged gashes. He remembered that his hands had been bound at his back, that he had hacked the palmetto cords against the rocks behind him and quickly had got loose. But it was all unreal. He slipped his fingers under the neck of his shirt and felt a furrow across his shoulder, still damp. He remem- bered that a woman had brought his horse, that he had caught her up with him into the saddle to try to get her safely away ; remembered that they had ridden like mad along the pass on the edge of the precipice, had ridden like fury through a black void. He remembered that the gray mare was lithe as a panther, and had seemed to understand. But then had come a shot from behind. The bullet had ploughed him here on the shoulder. Ali must have been too enraged to aim true. But the second shot had come lower! Ibrahim saw beads of sweat break out on his fore- head and glimmer in the moonlight. His face was hag- [328] BARRY GORDON gard, his look vacant. But Ibrahim could not surmise the picture that haunted him, could not see the wounded woman slip from his arms, and go falling over the edge down ever down. Barry groaned aloud. " O God ! Wnat a death ! Poor Naomi ! " The Jew started back, stunned. His blood froze in his veins ; his heart seemed to stop beating. He was suddenly filled with wild grief. This accounted for the mysterious loss he had mourned far more than the loss of money. He had just been gloating over the death of his own daughter ! He drew away to hide the turmoil of his emotions. In a flash he saw it all. This was the man who long before had robbed Ali Hamed of Naomi. This was the man who had brought lier back three years since to Tangier. This was the man for whose sake she had left home not a week ago. And now she was dead. And this was the man for whom she had died! Ibrahim's grief quickly gave way to blind wrath. He did not weigh the case. His grief and rage told him only that his daughter Naomi was dead, and that this man was to blame. The inner truth was unknown to him. He was ignorant of the extenuating circumstances. One night a man, at odds with himself and life, had sought oblivion in a risky adventure and had found it. His sin had been a sin of youth and despair, and there the [329] BARRY GORDON affair would have ended. Since that one night they had not again seen each other until now. Naomi, though, had never forgotten him. That was the pity of it, that the immediate cause of her death. But Ibrahim saw one cause only. His grief and rage were entirely centred on Barry. Yet he curbed himself. After the first moment when he had turned away he maintained his habitual calm. Seeing that Barry knew nothing of Naomi's parentage, he thought it best not to disclose himself as her father till the moment was ripe for vengeance. Barry, no longer heeding him, paced back and forth in the garden. At length he stopped and stared at the doorway through which Muriel and Tom had gone. " And now to come back to this," he muttered brokenly to himself, " now to come back to this ! " He went to the stone seat and sank down on it, fagged to the soul. It was not only the long strain of the rescue that had told on him, nor the stress and horrors of the subsequent flight. For five days and four nights he had had little food and less sleep. Save for the dull pains in his head and the pit of his stomach his body seemed to have ceased to exist. Likewise his will-power. He was a man made entirely of brain-stuff and spirit-stuff and raw nerves. He had lost all sense of balance and pro- portion. Everything large in life looked trivial, every- thing trivial large. [ 330 ] BARRY GORDON The picture of Muriel and Tom standing here in the exotic night, kissing each other, had at once branded itself on his naked soul. Instead of trying to reason, he accepted it as the crowning tragedy. When they had kissed they had put the period to his life. That was all. Tom had risen from the dead, and her love had risen, too. What else could he have expected? Always he had known she loved him Tom the staunch, the sane, the reliable. All along he had known it was so, had admitted it was best. What a fool to have fought his way back ! The blood of others had been shed for him and lives sacrificed to what end? Sitting there limply on the stone seat, staring into vacancy, he cursed the charmed life he bore, cursed the fate that so often had saved him from death. Ah, if Ali's first shot had come truer ! Ah, if he had died then ! or, better yet, in some earlier fight ! or, even better, if he had never been born ! If ever a conclusion had been foregone this had. It was all so consistent, so diabolically well planned. No geometrical problem could have worked out more neatly. Ibrahim drew nearer. He longed to torture this man to the very quick. " I see you regret your escape," he said, his voice still harsh with emotion. " Doubtless you wish yourself back in the keeping of Ali Hamed even with the prospect of [331] BARRY GORDON immediate death. AH could have harmed your body only ; this home-coming harms your soul ! " Barry frowned up at him, anger flickering in his eyes. "What have you to do with it?" he muttered with dull irritation. " By what right do you dare insin- uate " " I insinuate nothing," said Ibrahim more smoothly. " The truth is, your courage has won my heart, and for your sake I grieve. Since your brother's return I have seen and heard much. I fear he is more welcome here than you. Every one has spoken of it. My son, I pity you." Barry struggled to rise, but could not. He could only frown up impotently at Ibrahim. "Pity me? No. You're pleased, damn you! I believe you're Fate in the flesh, you black crow, standing there smiling at me ! " Ibrahim raised his eyes in deprecation. " No. Could I have done so I would have warned you before you entered this garden. It would have been more kind." " Kind? " said Barry hoarsely. " What's the meaning of that word? It has no place in the scheme of life." His voice fell and faltered. " The end of everything is cruel." Suddenly he fumbled in his pocket and took out a coin. " Ibrahim," he said, " if there's a drop of human blood in your veins, do me a kindness. I can't do it [332] BARRY GORDON myself because when I stand I feel dizzy. Go, please, and get me a drink." Ibrahim hesitated a moment, then took the money and, assuming a servile air, turned to the hotel. " Brandy ! " called Barry weakly, and Ibrahim bowed. But even as he did so a new light gleamed in his dark eyes. The chance had come. Passing through the hotel to the street, he hastened to a Spanish apothecary and procured a powder very convenient in these emergencies. Drop this drug in a glass and, though it would at once dissolve, it would neither cloud nor discolour any liquid. Moreover, it had no smell. Yet it was even surer than dagger or bullet. Returning to the hotel with quiet speed, Ibrahim asked the porter for a glass of brandy. The porter, steeped in his amorous dreams, fetched it mechanically. Ibrahim, paying him, took the glass out into the garden. As he went through the shadows he passed a hand over it, dropping the poison into the brandy. Then he set the glass on the table. " My son, good night," he said. " Thank you," replied Barry heedlessly. " Good night." Then Ibrahim, fearing to be found there, withdrew from the garden. Barry did not balk at the breach of abstinence. For two years he had scarcely ever been tempted. Since the [333] BARRY GORDON evening when he had returned to Muriel after his long wanderings the old craving had subsided. And this sub- sidence had been seemingly rendered permanent on their wedding day. But now her love was gone and the fight finished. Possibly he might have fought on, but why should he? There was nothing for it now but to start out again like a lost ghost. Once more the old derelict life, the aimless drifting, the sin and pain. Once more the futile attempt to lose himself somewhere in the great waste bounded by the poles and the sunrise and the sunset. But the void would be even emptier than before. In the old years she had never been his, but now she had. A day and an evening she had been his almost. But then the cup of joy had been caught away from him and now, as though by an unseen hand, this other cup was offered in its stead. Weakness? Then let it be! His mind and spirit were following his body into numb non-existence. He was done done! He had no senses, no faculties. He was not a man. He was merely a vague blot on this moonlit garden a disfiguring shadow on the earth's fair face. God ! How he loved her ! He loved her as if with an elemental force. His love was like a thing moved by the central energy kindled at the central flame. He loved her like a man of the Middle Ages a fanatic a fool! [334] BARRY GORDON But now he must go and forever keep to far places and change his name. She must never dream that he had escaped from Ali Hamed. How long he sat in this half stupor he did not know. It might have been a moment ; it might have been hours. All the lights were out in the hotel. The porter had not seen him. The door was closed. . . . Yes, the door was closed, and only the gate to the street stood open. . . . Yes, the gate to the street stood open. He took up the glass of brandy and gazed deep into its fiery depths. As he did so he unconsciously began to move his lips, muttering. The words had little meaning to him, but as he spoke them something prompted him to rise. The thing he was muttering seemed to be a sort of toast or song ^a song appropriate but somehow dan- gerous. If you offered this toast, you died. The devil re- sponded in person. Barry laughed harshly. Nonsense! Superstition! He tried to recall something. No, there was no music to it. ... The music was lost . . . like everything else. . . . He was merely a poor wretch muttering a song he could not sing. Instinctively he tried to put a little humour into it, a little conviviality and dash, but the attempt was sickly. Nevertheless he did succeed in raising his glass as if pledging some one: [335] BARRY GORDON Up, friends, up! To-night we sup, Tho' to-morrow we die of the revel. Rise for a toast Tho' to-morrow we roast. A health to He stopped short. He saw a picture painted in fire. Suddenly memory, awakened by the toast, flashed a scene before his eyes. He saw a man with a glass similarly raised. The man was facing a dark and menacing por- trait. The man was old and out of his mind. Suddenly Barry heard the man's voice. The voice was repeating these very words, this very same toast to evil incar- nate. The voice was his father's. What was the meaning of this picture and this voice? It seemed a miracle. Lowering his glass he stood thinking. This, too, was a tragic night. This, too, was a night chaotic with shat- tered illusions. And the end, though it might not come for years, would be the same if he drank. He, too, would go down to the grave hopelessly beaten. To do so seemed an outrage, not only against himself but against his father. His father had forewarned him and forearmed him. His father had looked to him some- how to redeem them both. Suddenly Barry was torn by a mortal struggle [336] BARRY GORDON torn as if bodily by a thousand invisible hands. He felt he must die if he did not drink this brandy. Tremor after tremor ran through him. By turns he was cold and hot, by turns limp and tense. Yet through it all every faculty grew keener. It was as if a lightning stroke had shown him the vital im- portance of this crisis. All at once he saw that everything depended on this terrific conflict. If he could win now, he could never be beaten as long as he lived. If he could win now, in this the darkest moment of his life, that would settle it for good and all. If he could win now against this sea of troubles, he could for ever captain his own fate. If he could win now, for Muriel's sake with- out her love he would prove himself worthy to have loved her. He would go into his exile a man. Nothing in life liad ever equalled this. He had fought in battle and faced dangers, but he had never fought in a battle like this or faced a danger as crucial. The rescue of Tom had been child's play compared to the rescue he was trying to make now. Yet the clash was without motion or sound. The fight was on a battleground hidden in himself. He stood mute and alone. Since his father's death he had never once said a prayer. Whether or not he did so now he did not know. He seemed to seek outer aid. Something in him seemed to act independently of his mind. It seemed to send up [337] BARRY GORDON from the depths of this abyss a dumb appeal to great heights. He felt as if he must die if he did not drink this brandy. The invisible hands were rending his flesh his veins ! . . . Muriel ! Muriel ! He did not speak her name aloud. It was merely the quick come and go of his life-breath. He set his glass down on the table. He had won ! He felt weak and inert, but he had won. This was all he knew ; lie had saved his soul from hell. Little did he dream he had saved his body from instant death. His force of will now steadily grew. He crossed with slow but sure steps toward the open gate the gate to his exile. On the way he paused and half turned, staring. The door of the hotel had opened. A woman approached him and cried out his name. He recoiled. " Why did you come? " he groaned. " How did you know?" She seemed to be dazed, half in a dream. She seemed to doubt her senses. " Barry ! Oh, is it you, Barry ! Can it be you, Barry ! What has happened ? " Her voice was hushed and un- [338] BARRY GORDON natural. " I'm afraid the anxiety has driven me in- sane." She paused in her approach and stared at him un- seeingly, trying to regain control of her senses. " I've been up all night, but, oh, I know I'm asleep. A man seemed to come into my room. He said he was your father. He pointed to the window. I went and looked down. I saw a shadow here in the garden." She drew a step closer to him. " Is that what you are a mere shadow ? " " Yes," he faltered, " a mere shadow." She closed her eyes and then reopened them, and, still seeing him, brightened. Slowly her faculties awoke. The vapours that had gathered about her in her long vigil gradually withdrew. But the invisible barrier he seemed to be raising between them kept her still half-dazed and apart from him. " Barry, no, I'm not asleep ! No, I'm not dreaming ! " she exclaimed. " It's really you. I know it is. But, oh, what is the matter? Every minute I have been pray- ing for you, and now you have come back to me, and yet O Barry, what is the matter? " He smiled sadly. " Muriel, I saw you with Tom." Her eyes were piteous with bewilderment. "With Tom?" she asked, dazed. Barry felt bitterly conscious that he had never loved [339] BARRY GORDON her as he loved her now. His body, mind and soul, seeming slowly to regain coherent life from her presence, were all being played on by the agony of his passion. " Yes, here," he said brokenly, " telling him you were his." Muriel looked stupefied. Then all at once she under- stood, saw his mistake. Instantly she was broad awake, a real woman in a real world. All her spirit and courage rushed back to her, flooding her with vivid love and life and light. " Barry ! Barry ! " she cried. " I was telling Tom I loved you \ " She came very close to him, and his whole body began to relax. " I was saying good-bye to him," she added fervently, " for ever whether you had lived or died ! " Barry swayed, shaken by happiness so acute and sudden that it seemed akin to suffering. When he spoke, his voice rang with a joy pitiful to hear. " Muriel ! " he exclaimed. " O Muriel ! O God ! " He relaxed utterly and sank at her feet in a swoon, spent by sleeplessness, starvation, and gladness. Instinctively she glanced toward the hotel for aid. As she did so her eye was caught by the glow of the glass of brandy. His need seemed so urgent that she did not hesitate. She knew nothing of his recent struggle or the secret poison in the glass. She knew only that he had fainted. [340] His voice fell to a whin per like a sigh BARRY GORDON He might be dying of some hidden wound. She caught up the glass, hastened to him, dropped to her knees be- side him, raised his head on her arm, and held the stimu- lant to his lips. He opened his eyes, saw the liquid fire, and took the glass. Muriel steadied his hand. But instead of drinking he poured out the brandy on the ground. He lay back again, his eyes closed. " It's nothing but a lack of food and sleep," he said feebly. His voice fell to a whisper that was like a sigh, but she saw him smile. " It's nothing but this sudden happiness." Happiness was hers, too. Silently it overflowed her heart and eyes in a warm rain. Sinking down beside him in the African garden, she drew him to her breast and bathed his forehead with her tears. Gradually to the east over the distant Rif Moun- tains, gradually over the rugged region of his expia- tion, rose the light of dawn. THE END [841]