cL 
 
"Kid," she said, "what did you do it for?" Page 
 
I 
 
 
 1 
 
 f ^ 
 
 
 THE 
 
 
 
 DAY OF SOULS 
 
 d l^>rtVipl 
 *** ypvuvi 
 
 
 1 
 
 By 
 
 Charles Tenney Jackson 
 
 
 
 
 
 With Illustrations by 
 
 Paul J. Meylan 
 
 
 
 Indianapolis 
 The Bobbs- Merrill Company 
 Publishers 
 
 . 
 
 
 Ju, ^ 
 
 : 
 
 
COPYRIGHT 1910 
 THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY 
 
 PRESS OF 
 
 BRAUN WORTH & CO. 
 
 BOOKBINDERS AND PRINTERS 
 
 BROOKLYN, N. Y. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
76 / 
 
 TO THE MEMORY OF F. E. 
 
 297226 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 In the shelter of the narrow balcony which overriung 
 the stairs leading to his lodgings above the Family 
 Liquor Store, Arnold kissed his bride-to-be; he held 
 her against the cold railing, brushing the hair from 
 her eyes, a curiously remorseful rapture on him at 
 the touch of her warm lips, the remembrance of her 
 helplessness, her fears, her trust. The lights of the city 
 down the hill were on her face, the gray Jew town 
 stared at her through the slant of the rain it *was 
 monstrous under the dark. The little mountain girl 
 clung to the man, hiding herself from the portent of 
 the unknown city, the evil shapes of the trades fogs 
 stealing from the sea. Through the mumble of the 
 night the Lime Point fog-horn moaned. 
 
 Arnold looked down at the girl s head, he twisted a 
 wisp of her fair, damp hair, wondering at the fight 
 within him, the sweetness of this faith against the 
 knowledge that he did not love her. 
 
 "My little picture girl," he whispered, his gentle jest 
 ing giving way before her distress ; "you do care, don t 
 you?" 
 
 "But I can t go to your rooms," she answered, 
 through half -sobs, "no not till we re married." 
 
 "Sylvia, in San Francisco no one cares what you do. 
 i 
 
2 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 I just thought you d want to fluff your hair. See, this 
 curl s wet and this and this prettiest one of all! I 
 just wanted you to look your best for that crazy crowd 
 at Sedaini s, where we ll dine." 
 
 His right hand slowly withdrew from his trousers 
 pocket. He had no money nothing. Their clothes 
 were damp with fog; the girl trembled in his arms; 
 again she murmured : "No no. Wait I couldn t !" 
 
 "I ll stay outside if you d rather," he answered, in a 
 strange simplicity for him a dark, lean-faced, fault 
 lessly-dressed young man of the city, politician of the 
 street, idler of the midnight, a "rounder" the town 
 would have told you. "Kid, I ll do just as you wish 
 all my life long." 
 
 Above her rain-wet cheeks her gray eyes smiled 
 gratefully ; always his gentleness won its way with her, 
 and laughing, he clasped her and ran up the remain 
 ing steps to the door that faced on Happy Alley. 
 
 "No no," she protested ; "John, we mustn t !" but, 
 laughing still, feeling a delicious novelty in her reproof, 
 Arnold placed her through the doorway and, bending, 
 kissed the gloved hand he held. He had a secret love 
 of the theatric, glossing it over with his belittling 
 humor. Then, closing the door he stood without in the 
 drip from the ancient gable, looking down Washington 
 Street to where a blur of water-streaked lanterns and 
 the snarl of gut and kettledrums from a green lattice 
 on Portsmouth Square set forth the wedding of Wo 
 Hop Loey, the fish merchant. 
 
 "Why can t you love her?" he muttered. "She s 
 good and fine and true the only true thing in all your 
 life and nothing stirs you nothing!" 
 
THE DAY DF SOULS 3 
 
 And through the fog-drift among the mountains to 
 the north he watched a single star, it was from there 
 she had come the country-up-in-back beyond the 
 Mendocino Ranges and the cloud-wrapped coast. 
 
 The girl within the room turned up the dim gas 
 and looked about, sniffing the smell of tobacco, leather, 
 gun oil, rose-leaves and liquors which was not unpleas- 
 ing. Beyond the light she made out a long table, a 
 huge sideboard, a black old piano, and on a couch a 
 Mexican serape, with broad bands of red and green 
 vivid in the gloom. 
 
 Over the furniture and on the floor were scattered 
 books, magazines, sheet music, neckties, hats, pipes, 
 tobacco-boxes, glasses and decanters. Apparently noth 
 ing was ever set aright. The old sideboard held dishes 
 of exquisite coloring, silver and ware of oriental 
 lacquer ; on the table was a brass brazier across whose 
 top were the dried stems of a dozen roses whose petals 
 were falling upon a type-writer; from the portfolios 
 and music sheets on the piano rose a reproduction of 
 The Marquise, but the marble, like everything else, was 
 dusty and hidden in all sorts of careless accumulations. 
 The walls were hung with Aleut baskets, Iggarote war 
 clubs, Moro head-dresses, bobs, spears, grass-plaited 
 arrow cases, and in a cleared space was a dirty 
 cavalry saddle with ragged boots, a saber and. the silk 
 guidon of a troop. Beyond was a hodgepodge of ama 
 teur water-colors, indifferent oil paintings, dulled 
 photographs of men and women, camps and horses, 
 ships, houses and landscapes; while in the farther 
 corner, by the gloom of the chamber, an immense and 
 
4 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 hideous Chinese god of gilt paper and tinsel cloth was 
 staring at the country girl. 
 
 She watched it for a while, half-apprehensive that 
 the malignant face would move, and then murmured : 
 "No, it won t harm me it s his everything here is 
 his his home ours!" 
 
 Sylvia Spring turned to glance in the mirror. She 
 was small and fair as a woman in a story, with ador 
 able prettiness ; her face, delicately pink to the ears and 
 the wayward light hair a demure, merry little face 
 with eyes now gravely gray, but which had, in the sun 
 light, a gleam of the sea s green. And she was gowned 
 in the very smartest that Trinity County could mus 
 ter for the astonishing romance of its South Fork 
 heiress and the city fellow who had wandered over the 
 mountains last summer to put on the "home talent" 
 production of Pinafore for the benefit of the Ladies 
 Aid of the Methodist Church. It was there she met 
 him by the third rehearsal she had discovered that 
 he was a marvelous person; and he that she owned 
 three hundred acres of redwoods near Camp Nine, 
 where the new railroad was coming. 
 
 It is something to have a sweetheart over whom all 
 the other girls are "crazy." Sylvia, the orphan of a 
 country minister, had never possessed one, and here, 
 now, was this lithe stranger with the inscrutable eyes 
 and grave speeches of whimsical impracticality ; here, 
 without effort of hers, choosing her from all the 
 younger set of the Ladies Aid ; and at the end of five 
 breathlessly happy weeks he had told her that he loved 
 her 1 Wasn t it all wonderful most wonderful ? 
 
 How was it that he, John Hamilton Arnold from the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 5 
 
 "City" and she had never seen a place bigger than 
 Eureka, where the logs are hauled to tide-water a 
 fellow who had been a student at the university, and a 
 cavalryman in the Luzon and Peking campaigns, and 
 about the world on a troop-ship ; who had sung in the 
 Tivoli grand opera chorus, and had once "gone ahead 
 of a show that went broke at Kansas City," all of which 
 happened in some mysterious, romantic past of his 
 how was it that he should wander into the green wil 
 derness of northern California, happen on the im 
 poverished Ladies Aid, and then discover her to love 
 love love? 
 
 She couldn t understand it "Jack" Arnold, who 
 knew all the great people in the world, and had seen 
 all the beautiful women, most surely ! Ah, well, he had 
 asked her to marry him, and here she was after sixty 
 miles of mountain trails to the railroad, then to Eureka, 
 and then by the Corona to San Francisco, where he 
 met her at the wharf and brought her up through the 
 brawling streets, the splendor of the night, on a cable- 
 car that clanged and clamored along a mighty hill and 
 shot them forth on a wet, north slope of the bewilder 
 ing city. One didn t need to know, one could just 
 trust when one had a lover like this so sure, so strong, 
 so superior, that even down-town in the jeering hub 
 bub, under an avalanche of lights, rocked in a sea of 
 hurrying faces, he could pause to be gentle, to be kind 
 and merry, asking of her comfort and buying her a 
 bunch of violets. Now, standing before the mirror in 
 his room, she crushed the violets against her beating 
 heart and stifled her pride in him, her joy to be alive, 
 her gratefulness to God. 
 
6 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Ttie ways of her life had slipped, the huge world had 
 engulfed her; she could only cling to him, believe in 
 him, love him. She stared at the misty eyes of the girl 
 in the mirror, finding now that her lips were moving 
 in a prayer : "O, God, make me good, very good, and 
 help him to be good but I know he s good !" she broke 
 in with a sturdy little defiance of some of the doubts 
 the Ladies Aid had held concerning a man who had 
 been in the "show" business, a soldier across seas and 
 a wanderer at home. 
 
 She fluffed the last girlishly wayward bit of hair, 
 and straightened the little blue jacket that the dress 
 maker in Eureka had evolved from a whole pink sheet- 
 ful of Parisian creations. Beneath the jacket, pinned 
 to the bodice, was a needle-case that contained ten 
 thousand dollars in new bills. 
 
 "You d better have Mr. Arnold deposit the money at 
 once, dearie," said the wife of the president of the 
 South Fork Lumber Company, after Sylvia had signed 
 the papers which gave half her redwoods to the mills. 
 "What bank does he deal through in the city ?" 
 
 Sylvia did not know. John Hamilton Arnold, him 
 self, would have been puzzled by the question. Just 
 now, in the rainy dark of the balcony, as he waited for 
 his bride-to-be, he was absently tearing up a paste 
 board. 
 
 "Bluebell at six to one," murmured Mr. Arnold. "I 
 wonder if the mare has got home yet ?" 
 
 He was thinking it rather a pity that his country 
 sweetheart had come this unlucky afternoon when the 
 book-makers had happened to "break" him. When he 
 met Sylvia at the wharf he had had twenty-five cents 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 7 
 
 ten for car-fare and fifteen for her violets. And then 
 to-night was the light-weight fight at Woodward s Gar 
 dens for the championship of the world ; and though he 
 had no money he and Louis Ferreri, the slot-machine 
 agent, could get box-seats from Supervisor McDer- 
 mott, or Deputy Sheriff Jack Holman, or any of the 
 city hair* "push," through whose favor the sport flour 
 ished; or even from Jimmie Kaufman, himself, clerk 
 of the superior court, and impresario for the pugilists, 
 who was always amenable for passes when approached 
 by one who had political backing. And "Hammy" Ar 
 nold was "close up" at the city hall, it was said ; closer 
 than any man to Police Commissioner Stillman, who 
 dominated the night life of the town. ) 
 
 Upon his reverie, as he watched a cable-car rising 
 along the hill street above the humming slot, with a 
 flitting aura of yellow light showing the grass tufts 
 between the cobbles, to vanish in the cloudy heights 
 above, came Sylvia with a pleasing suggestion of vio 
 lets and women s scented stuff. The little blue hat, 
 matching the jacket, was roguishly atilt over her hair, 
 which still held a rain-sparkle here and there. 
 
 "My picture girl!" he cried again, and bowed with 
 that grand raillery which puzzled her, but at which she 
 always laughed ; then kissed her hand with the curious 
 humility that puzzled her still more. "Now, we ll dine. 
 You mustn t mind the crowd down-stairs, if they stare. 
 They re queer, but you ll like some of them Sweet 
 Mellody, and Sammy, the fat, freckled poet who can 
 write anything under the sun, but can t get it pub 
 lished." 
 
8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "If they re your friends, Mr. Arnold," Miss Spring 
 said adorably, "they re all right, I know 1" 
 
 "Mary Mellody is lame and she s a shop-girl at 
 Solinsky s, but if Sammy ever gets a few epics and 
 things on the market he s going to marry Sweet Mel 
 lody, because she s not strong enough to work. We laid 
 that out to Sammy long ago !" 
 
 Sylvia laughed as they went down trie rickety steps. 
 A single gas light at the corner of Happy Alley showed 
 the front of the Family Liquor Store, in the window of 
 which was Unc Pop Radke s fly-specked pyramid of 
 paper whisky cartons. Arnold opened a side door, 
 lifted his bride-to-be down a step, and she was in a 
 saloon! 
 
 From among gray casks uprose Unc Pop, a drip 
 ping measure of red wine in one hand, his apron a dull 
 purple from many apoplectic pulls at the siphon with 
 which he coaxed the raw claret from the bungs. The 
 bar of the Family Liquor Store was no bigger than a 
 bedroom; the green-topped card-table, the lunch shelf 
 with its cheese cubes, blood-wurst, crackers and mus 
 tard pot, the vast wine tuns and steam beer barrels took 
 up most of the space. The back bar mirror was draped 
 in pink net with gay butterfly calendars pinned to the 
 voluminous folds, while below was Uncle Pop s solemn 
 array of case goods Vermouths and Chartreuses and 
 Picons which no patron of the Family Liquor Store 
 ever drank, not even Louis Ferreri, the slot-machine 
 man, who had a diamond in his watch-fob and two in 
 his cuff-links, to say nothing of his scarf pins, and 
 therefore should know what was in bottles formidably 
 inscribed and warranted. On this back bar were Uncle 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 9 
 
 Pop s glasses, graduated like a decent family out for 
 an airing, the big aldermanic biers leading the way, the 
 ladylike punch and clarets, with graceful stems, fol 
 lowing, the ports and sherries, like school-girls, less 
 full-bosomed; while behind toddled the waistless 
 whisky "ponies" and the stubby-legged liqueurs and 
 cordials, an infantile crew with shining faces striving 
 to keep pace with their elders. 
 
 "O, John- a saloon!" 
 
 "Don t you mind it s only Unc* Pop s, where the 
 cat sleeps in the cheese box." 
 
 The grocer parted his vast mustaches to word a pro 
 test, but it was only after the two had closed the lace- 
 curtained door to Sedaini s cafe that Unc Pop was able 
 to evolve his repartee and then he bawled : "Monkey- 
 tootle pizness vy don d you pay vat you owe herein ?" 
 
 The country girl faltered again on Sedaini s saw- 
 dusted floor. She was by another miniature bar, be 
 hind which sat a pock-faced Italian, bulbous as a toad 
 stool on his high seat. In Sedaini s there were six 
 small tables, besides the long one in a sort of recess by 
 the kitchen, each with flimsy cotton clothes and heavy 
 china and dismal cruets. The walls and ceiling were of 
 dirty plaster, cracked and eroded ; and here and there 
 were doubtful pictures, scrawls and daubs, while im 
 mediately above the wainscoting innumerable litho 
 graphs had been stuck on and peeled off, year after 
 year, until the area was a splotched and fly-specked 
 rout of colors and figures the limbs and faces of 
 actresses a generation gone; fierce, epauletted Gari- 
 baldian generals ; gunboat encounters of the Civil War ; 
 prints of Italian harlequins; advertisements of Nea- 
 
io THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 politan steamship companies; employment agencies; 
 politicians pamphlets of the Dennis Kearny era ; cigar 
 and liquor calendars; pictures of prize-fighters and 
 severe statesmen from ancient weeklies a disastrous 
 and slovenly melange. The neat little country girl drew 
 her skirts closer from the sawdust, where a stubby- 
 eared cat was chewing a salami rind, dismayed indeed ! 
 
 At Sedaini s you could dine for two-bits or four-bits. 
 Nearly every one dined for two-bits, not so much on 
 the score of penury, for sometimes even Sammy Jarbo, 
 the laundry route poet, had half a dollar, but because 
 there was not a radical difference in the menu not 
 such a one as to warrant a Lucullian nicety of extrava 
 gance. You got the same vegetable soup menestruui, 
 the same salami and grated cheese and entrees except, 
 if a four-bitter, you could have raviolis and the let 
 tuce Romaine with garlic ; and then the two-bitter was 
 cut off from the roasted chicken and the anchovies, 
 and Henri would not bring you the sabaoine and would 
 scowl if you a two-bitter ordered the kirch or cog 
 nac. But with either you got a whole bottle of red 
 wine, and the sapient two-bitter, by sliding his empty 
 bottle under the table and kicking it cautiously under 
 his neighbor s, could protest he had not been served, 
 and delude Henri into bringing another. So time hon 
 ored was this practice that Sedaini s patrons had long 
 since kicked all the varnish off the wainscoting; and, 
 when detected, equally honored was the joke of Henri, 
 the greasy-brained Gaul : 
 
 "Bien? Nex time, M sieu, we connec you wiz ze 
 pipe-line !" 
 
 As it is always for the hungry man to laugh at the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 11 
 
 baker s jest, so would the two-bitter roar; and Henri, 
 if placated, would produce the second bottle all for 
 twenty-five cents. 
 
 When Arnold and his mountain sweetheart Sylvia 
 was too far a-whirl in the adventure to protest tripped 
 past Sedaini s bar, the place was vacant except for a 
 group about the long table in the rear, and a waiter at 
 one of the small stands where he poured him red wine 
 from a cracked agate measure, and broke a huge loaf. 
 The people about the large table were in a wrangle. 
 From the curtained box window facing the street, 
 where was the sole display of Sedaini s cafe, Henri 
 had brought a gay salad beets and cresses and onion 
 tops and garlic greening over a vast cone of fish and 
 lobster. To each guest in turn he offered it ; they looked 
 suspicious: one smelled it; one shook his head, and a 
 fat red-headed boy poked a finger into the mayonnaise. 
 
 "That salad, Henri," said he, "has been in the win 
 dow a week the cat has slept by it since last Sunday 
 on the same comic supplement." 
 
 The waiter protested; again, to each guest he of 
 fered the salad. In despair at their refusals, he re 
 treated to the front, and, depositing the dish, conferred 
 with the pock-faced proprietor. Again, from behind 
 the dirty lace curtain, Henri expostulated; and then, 
 v/ith Sedaini advancing majestically in silence on the 
 table, he brought the vast, rubicund salad. 
 
 The proprietor pleaded. 
 
 "Eet eez good salad I make heem yesta this after 
 noon da good lettuce I buy " 
 
 And the table, roaring at him, cast anathemas on the 
 salad. The proprietor protested, objurgated ; he called 
 
12 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 on the saints, and Henri, the waiter, to uphold him; 
 he put the dish on a chair, ,-the more fervently to 
 apotheosize his handiwork, and one of the guests the 
 young man with red hair and large ears deliberately 
 raised his foot and set it upon the venerable salad. 
 Gone was its usefulness. The proprietor wept. 
 
 "Charge it to Arnold," said the sallow-faced man 
 who was eating soup on a piano stool, and at once 
 there was a chorus of assent : "Yes, charge it to J. 
 Ham Arnold ! O, yes, let Hammy pay it !" 
 
 Arnold stood behind the group, by Sedaini s grimy 
 portieres, unseen, apparently, but as the short, fat poet 
 stood kicking the onions from his shoes and repeating 
 joyously: "O, yes; let J. Ham pay for it put it on 
 his bill!" he sighed patiently and gripped tighter the 
 hand of his bride-to-be. 
 
 The proprietor dismally dissented. "Meest Arnold, 
 on what he ow-a da me I could retire. He got-a da 
 mon, he mak-a da pay but when he hav-a da mon?" 
 
 Mr. Arnold, after his contemplation, reached forth 
 a hand that closed on the scruff of the poet s neck. 
 Down he plumped him on the chair, on the green 
 and yellow wreck of the salad. The table was in an 
 uproar ; the victim squirmed ; Henri called to the Vir 
 gin, to the proprietor, to the cook. Even Unc Pop 
 stuck his head fearsomely through the door from the 
 Family Liquor Store. "Py Colly, some day dis monkey- 
 tootle pizness will burn the block !" so the grocer glow 
 ered to the expressman at his bar. 
 
 And in this scratching about, this gabble, wide-eyed, 
 shrinking, horrified, stood the bride-to-be from the 
 country-up-in-back. Never had she seen such table 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 13 
 
 manners ; iff the lumber camps, at the great cook-houses, 
 the woodsmen gobbled ; but never was a poet compelled 
 to sit on a salad. She caught her lover s sleeve, she 
 dropped into the chair he drew for her, to find herself 
 gazing, embarrassed, into the surprised eyes of a pale 
 girl beside her. Arnold placed her hand in that of the 
 stranger, saying : "Mistress Mary here s the sweetest 
 girl ever!" 
 
 Mary Mellody s fingers clasped Sylvia s warmly. 
 Mary had a shortened leg, giving her a limp. She 
 worked all day long at Solinsky s counters ; she lived 
 in Miss Cranberry s hall bedroom and had not in the 
 world a soul who cared whether she lived or died, un 
 less here, at Sedaini s, a responsive heart was beating. 
 But from her cheeriness she gave a great pity to the 
 country girl. 
 
 "Don t you mind! Ain t they all idiots, though?" 
 she went on, with a sprightly comment, her cheeks 
 flushed now from the claret. "Ham, you fool, ain t 
 you any manners?" 
 
 "Sweet Mellody," said he, "it s my last night of bar 
 barism. To-morrow married!" 
 
 Sylvia s embarrassment grew, and also her new 
 friend s indignation at this evidently banal joke. The 
 rest were intent on Henri, who was on his knees in the 
 sawdust with his salad. The young man at the piano 
 ate his soup placidly ; he was Wally Walters, the "rag 
 artist," composer of Dolly Dunn, and The Eagles 
 March, who played the piano of nights at the Maple- 
 wood Cafe. Vacant of mind, now, his fingers idled 
 over the yellow keys in the Spring Song, indifferent to 
 a dispute between Louis Ferreri, good-looking, mud- 
 
i 4 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 die-headed, a politician of the Latin Quarter, and a 
 dark-faced girl who flung out Yiddish phrases in her 
 scornful voice. Miss Murasky delighted to bait the 
 helpless Louis with these. 
 
 Arnold had spread a paper before Mary. It was 
 his marriage license. 
 
 "John Hamilton Arnold, aged twenty-nine, native of 
 Arizona, resident of San Francisco ; and Sylvia Spring, 
 aged eighteen, native of California, resident of Trinity 
 County." 
 
 Sammy Jarbo, the laundry route poet, had leaned 
 familiarly over Miss Mellody s shoulder. He at once 
 started a commotion, which Arnold quelled by seizing 
 his leg and pulling him to a chair : "Here, keep quiet ! 
 I only meant this for you and Mary." 
 
 But the poet writhed around in such a pother that 
 the marriage license fell to the floor, while Arnold 
 subdued him. Sylvia could only nod to Mary, with a 
 blink of tears over her soup, and whisper: "To 
 morrow I" 
 
 "Let me up!" stuttered the poet. "I have an idea. 
 Married? Romance is the stuff I ve got a lyric here 
 some love dope somewhere!" 
 
 And he fell to outpouring old letters, receipts and 
 scraps from his pockets, all written over indecipher- 
 ably, drooling off in unintelligible mutters, as he turned 
 his pencil-soiled memoranda upside down and around ; 
 for never, when the poet had an inspiration, or felt 
 moved to song, could he make head or tail of what he 
 had written about. So he glowered away, his divine 
 seizure dying until he fell into a melancholy, squeezing 
 Mary s hand under the table and sighing: "If I could 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 15 
 
 only get em when I feel em!" And when Mary 
 squeezed back, the short fat poet murmured, lugubri 
 ous to this comforting, "Sweet Mellody, there s nobody 
 just like you!" 
 
 On Miss Mellody s other side Sylvia sank gratefully 
 into a corner, glad that the others paid her small at 
 tention. Presently her eyes widened when the Jew 
 girl, concluding her argument with Ferreri in a shrew 
 ish retort, turned to her lover, rumpling his hair with 
 some sharp comment. Arnold smiled tolerantly; the 
 young men were accustomed to Bernice Murasky s 
 tantrums with the exception of Arnold she despised 
 them all. And to him because he knew arias from 
 Lucia and La Giaconda, and the fervid Italian operas 
 which she, a sullen girl in the department of Solinsky s 
 where plumes were sold to rich women, was inor 
 dinately greedy to hear she gave a grudging respect. 
 
 The Russian Jewess, California born, an apostate to 
 her faith, was stung with a passion for music, the 
 drama, riches, grand dinners, all that she dreamed was 
 fine in life; she wanted friends who knew of these 
 things, who had seen the great virtuosi; and she had 
 none, except John Arnold, and he, an idler, a street 
 politician, indifferent to all that she was gluttonous to 
 revel in, seemed content with the riffraff of the cigar- 
 stands, the crony of prize-fight promoters, race-track 
 tipsters, like Ferreri and her brother, Mannie, a clerk 
 in a pool-room. And he knew all of La Bohtme, and 
 had once actually spoken to Melba! 
 
 But he preferred to nod familiarly to the stock 
 players of O Farrell Street. The Jewess almost hated 
 Arnold for his nonchalant indifference to all that was 
 
16 . THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 denied her; the most he would do was to raise his 
 careless baritone in The Postillion, or The King of the 
 Winds, with Wally Walters pounding Sedaini s bad 
 piano. Yes, she hated him, as she did any one who 
 had what she lacked. She despised Louis Ferreri, but 
 at times she debated whether she would not marry 
 him and his seven diamonds anybody who could take 
 her to the Tivoli grand opera, night after night, and 
 to supper afterward. She would have sold her virtue 
 for a box during the Grau season ; her soul for a voice 
 like Tetrazzini s. 
 
 "Get me some tickets for the Tivoli to-night," she 
 pestered Arnold, her brilliant eyes on him. "Why 
 don t you keep in with that bunch?" 
 
 "I ve noticed that the more I m in, the more I m 
 out, one way or another," answered the young man. 
 "I can get you seats at the Alcazar, Bernice." 
 
 She shrugged her shoulders in scorn, and turned to 
 another girl who was chattering with the pianist as he 
 idled through the Spring Song. 
 
 "Nel, you ve got to take me to the Tivoli you ve 
 got to !" the Jewess burst out. "It s Manon, and I m 
 going!" 
 
 Nella Free snapped her jeweled watch; it Had 
 stopped and she glanced at Sedaini s dusty-faced clock. 
 "All right, Kid, I ll go anywhere; I m so tired of 
 sticking around the flat. I just get "mid!" 
 
 The Jew girl s greedy eyes shifted from Nella s mar 
 ten collarette and the luster of her plumes, to the but 
 terfly of pearls at her throat. She checked a sigh: 
 "Tetrazzini! O, it s just a glory that voice like a 
 bird rippling up in the sunshine !" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 17 
 
 "Just grand," murmured Nella ; but she would rather 
 hear Hammy Arnold s singing of Dolly Dunn, as the 
 vacant-faced composer rapped it out on the piano : 
 
 "O, Dolly, Dolly Dunn 
 
 When the battle s fought and won, 
 I ll think of you and your heart so true " 
 
 "Will H. be there?" pursued the Jewess. "Get box- 
 seats and I ll wear my black net. I ve got the Batten- 
 burg done. O, Kid, get box-seats!" 
 
 "Sure. H. never cares what we get. He took me 
 to that other opera and he had on his dress suit ; but 
 his legs are so short and the tails were so long that I 
 got fidgety. I said, Never wear that rig again ! " 
 
 "Was it Wednesday night A ida?" 
 
 "I don t know. It was that opera where the clown 
 comes on, one leg red and the other yellow, and car 
 ries off his daughter, thinking it s the fat tenor. It was 
 just grand, and if H. had had his Tuxedo he looks 
 just grand in his Tuxedo " 
 
 The Jewess sprang alertly to her feet. "Come on 
 some of you boys pay for this feed !" She pushed Fer- 
 reri s head sharply as she passed him. "Drink up! 
 Honest, Louis, you re a dead one! Soak in the Zin- 
 fandel and lie like a log Chickar!" 
 
 Ferreri laughed, the easy defense of the slow-witted. 
 He said that he never minded the "Yit" and her abus 
 ive Yiddish epithets which no one understood. 
 
 The other girl turned with a word to Arnold, paus 
 ing by his chair. 
 
 He had been idly wondering what his bride-to-be 
 
i8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 and Mary Mellody found to talk about so industri 
 ously ; then it came out : "I was going to have it made 
 full here, but she said if I was going to travel .... A 
 slate gray, and run the ruching. . . .But gracious, the 
 
 way they hung, and that tight " The young man 
 
 turned with a smile. Nella Free had laid a small hand 
 gleaming with pearls, for which she had a fancy, on 
 his own. 
 
 "Hammy," sKe murmured, "are you mixed with 
 the grand jury? I heard something to-day." 
 
 "Yes?" he asked lazily; and then with kind inter 
 est: "Nel, I wouldn t get the habit of repeating any 
 thing Harry or the police commissioners say. You 
 know how you stand." 
 
 "But I heard your name I was interested. Harry 
 and that other commissioner, the little Dutch one, said 
 you d have to testify to something you were the only 
 man who could fix things right. You re cutting in 
 deep with the push, aren t you?" 
 
 He studied her a shrewd instant : the red-brown hair, 
 wondrously distinctive ; the good-humored face, rouged 
 over her freckles; her heavy-lidded eyes, dark blue. 
 Always the careless, Gipsy-idle, with a dozen little 
 womanly tricks at odds with her restless sophistication. 
 She was obsessed by her clothes, clean, rich, over- 
 effective. She was self-conscious from this dressing, 
 throwing back her furs with a deprecating shrug that 
 set the pearl butterfly at her throat agleam, and gave 
 a pretty, bird-like twist to her white neck. Nella did 
 not belong in Sedaini s tawdry cafe, but she came over 
 the hill, because the crowd "made her laugh," and be 
 cause Ham Arnold treated her differently from any 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 19 
 
 man she ever knew. Besides, here her prettiness suf 
 fered no comparison, nor were her gowns eclipsed. 
 
 "Nel," Arnold smiled with friendly abstraction, 
 "I m out of politics. I ve cut out the queer work. 
 I m going to be married." 
 
 He saw her surprised eyes flit to the girl from the 
 country at the other end of the table. "That little girl 
 in blue ?" Nella murmured. "Look here, you wouldn t 
 let Eddie Ledyard and me be friends, but you you go 
 marry a good girl ! Ain t I just as good as you, Ham- 
 my?" 
 
 . "Well, you know Eddie s mother his family " He 
 looked into her eyes, the mute judgment, the imme 
 morial wrongs of women, faced him. "She loves me, 
 Nel you see it s different." 
 
 Nella Free stared at him with a complex intent that 
 he had never seen in her restless, variable eyes. "May 
 be he loved me, too," she murmured ; "maybe I had a 
 soul, too. But it s different," she added mechanically, 
 and followed the Jew girl to the door. He saw her a 
 moment in the gloom of the hall leading to the lodg 
 ings above, watching his sweetheart in a curious ab 
 straction ; then she slipped into the rainy night, leaving 
 him an evanescent suggestion of an oriental perfume, 
 exhaled, it seemed, from the bird-like twists of her 
 small, white neck. 
 
 The young man rose and went to his bride-to-be 
 who was still talking interestedly with Mary Mellody ; 
 they had discovered a surprising friendship. Louis 
 Ferreri and Walters were leaving. 
 
 "Aren t you going to the fight?" asked the slot- 
 machine agent. "Kid Brannan ll never get this little 
 
20 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Chicago guy in a twenty-round go, and if Slavin can 
 land his left, it s dreamland for the Native Son." 
 
 "I m not going," responded Arnold. "Sorry, Louis, 
 but" 
 
 The slot-machine man stared. That Arnold should 
 miss the thirty-thousand-dollar championship battle 
 was incredible. Then his eyes wandered to the girl 
 at the other end of the table. 
 
 "Girl," he murmured, "gW 
 
 "Yes," retorted Arnold, "I m going to be married 
 you fellows may as well know it now !" 
 
 His friend s eyes opened, his jaw dropped. "Mar 
 ried?" he laughed. Ham always was "joshing" one 
 way or another. This pretty girl was the latest, eh? 
 The muddle-headed Italian-American departed, wink 
 ing at the impassive "rag" composer who was the 
 new "dame" that Arnold had picked up? 
 
 The sentimentally vacant "Wally" didn t care; he 
 still hummed the Spring Song, which wrought itself 
 into vague variations of his own improvising. 
 
 When Arnold went back to the table he found his 
 sweetheart sitting up very straight, her cheeks flushed, 
 her eyes bright, indignantly regarding Mr. Jarbo. 
 
 "But I don t drink ! I never, never tasted it !" cried 
 she. 
 
 "Well, don t get mad," retorted the poet. "I don t 
 either. I got a weak heart, so nixy on the salicylic for 
 me. But if I could, I d turn out some great stuff. Yes, 
 sir ; look at the kind of stuff they turned out as long 
 as we had two-bottle and four-bottle men in the busi 
 ness ! Look at Shakespeare and Byron and Burns and 
 Poe ! They d get a souse and go home, light a candle 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 21 
 
 in the garret and turn out stuff that s now immortal ! 
 Yes," continued the poet belligerently, "immortal; and 
 here I ve got the cardiac thumps and have to stick to 
 ginger ale." 
 
 "O !" gasped the little mountain bride, 
 
 "Yes, sir stay away from the booze. Here you 
 come down from the country peaceful and pure and 
 lofty and refined ; but you re no genius." 
 
 Sylvia blinked her dismay. She put out a hand to 
 her lover. Drink? 
 
 The city had been a vast surging of lights through 
 gray rain, shouts, hurryings, the changing of money, 
 the smell of wine and garlic a brawling, hungry life 
 that cackled and jeered, and here a red-headed poet 
 was scolding her about drink! She shivered and 
 Arnold put his arm about her. 
 
 "Come on," said he ; "every one s rather crazy, but 
 Sammy s the worst." 
 
 The young man waved his hand as the pock-faced 
 proprietor looked expectantly up ; Sedaini growled, 
 and scratched on his tabs. He looked at Mr. John 
 Hamilton Arnold s account and sighed again; it was, 
 indeed, overlong. 
 
 Mary Mellody and the poet were now the only occu 
 pants of the cafe. From the kitchen Henri and the 
 cook bawled in Gallo-Roman and clattered the dishes. 
 Mary looked back at Sammy, now in process of an 
 other divine seizure, diving about in his pockets for a 
 clean piece of paper. "Ain t you coming up?" she 
 called softly, and then, seeing the well-known symp 
 toms, she stole away. 
 
 The poet glared into the array of dirty dishes around 
 
22 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 him and he blew tobacco smoke about; his eye fell 
 on a paper on the floor. It was the marriage license 
 of Sylvia Spring and John Arnold, and on it were 
 cat tracks of sawdust and red wine. But the poet did 
 not mind this ; he fell to scribbling on the paper, shov 
 ing away dishes, knocking over claret bottles, rumpling 
 his red hair ; his round face f earsomely contorted as he 
 wrote and erased and counted measures. 
 
 And, as always, he presently fell into a melancholy, 
 rubbing his chin and sighing : "O, what ll rhyme with 
 sweetheart? And I wonder if love-stuff is the big 
 stuff? Sometimes it seems like I d never get nothing 
 done!" 
 
 Still he was a good, even an energetic poet as de 
 cent a poet as one can be on nine dollars a week. On 
 frosty mornings, before sunrise, when all the town was 
 still, one could hear his laundry wagon rattling cheer 
 fully over the cobbles as much as six blocks away. 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 Arnold led his bride-to-be carefully down the wet 
 hill to Chinatown. The rain had ceased and the town 
 lights rollicked, clean-washed in the wind. The coun 
 try girl was silent for a time and then she said: 
 "Gracious, John, you live in a queer place that Gran- 
 berry s, up over a tumble-down old saloon!" 
 
 "Well, you see the town has rather stranded Granny. 
 If I left, it might be hard to rent the front rooms, and 
 Granny s been mighty good to me to every one," he 
 added hastily; "and I like them all Unc Pop, and 
 Sedaini, with his grouch all of them. They re all sort 
 of stranded on the hill, and my being there brings a 
 little business from down-town." 
 
 She debated, for a time, this lame and profuse de 
 fense. "And they re so queer! But every one seems 
 to be your friend." 
 
 "That s what s the matter with me," he answered 
 drolly, with a smile beyond her simplicity. "Some 
 times I wonder how you ll like it here, Sylvia. .The 
 fierce old town, the blazing city this San Francisco. 
 Here everything goes!" \ 
 
 "It s different from the country-up-in-back," she said 
 slowly. "But I ll be happy anywhere that you are 
 just anywhere that you are!" 
 
 Arnold checked some confused protest within him 
 at this faith. He seemed humbled when he spoke 
 
 23 
 
24 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 again. "Sweetheart, some day we ll own a hill, a big 
 sunny hill, and on the top we ll live you and I. Sylvia, 
 that s been a dream of mine all my life long to stand 
 in the sunshine on my own hill. I m tired of things 
 here; they re stale. I ve run with a hard-bit crowd." 
 
 "Every one seems so familiar with you. They call 
 you Hammy, when your name s John. I didn t like it 
 Hammy! It doesn t seem fine as you!" 
 
 "Everything goes with me," he smiled. "I suppose 
 it s the way I ve let things drift. Sylvia, some time I ll 
 take a clean brace we ll have that little house on a 
 hilltop seems like I ve always dreamed of that." 
 
 "And roses," she added, "all about the door." 
 
 "You grand little girl !" he whispered. "I wish I d 
 known you always." 
 
 And as they went on through Chinatown, he added 
 restlessly : "Would you like to walk down-town ? The 
 fight the bulletins well, the rain is over, and we 
 might as well." 
 
 He took her through Dupont and Clay Streets to 
 Portsmouth Square, past the squawking orchestra on 
 the balcony celebrating the wedding of the fish mer 
 chant, with the black huddled group of beggars and 
 curious ones held back by the policeman at the door ; 
 past dark basement holes, where, by the light of wicks 
 burning in dishes of fish oil, goldsmiths wrought in 
 tricate oriental jewelry ; past gambling dens and tong 
 clubs where slant-eyed sentinels peered through the 
 wickers of strong doors inscribed with vast, grotesque 
 characters in gilt and black paper ; past brothels where 
 silk-trousered slave girls with gaudy head-dresses and 
 lips henna-stained, their faces pallid yellow, twisted 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 25 
 
 jeweled fingers in the bars of their tiny windows and 
 gibbered at passers-by ; through narrow, tortuous alleys 
 amid thousands of shuffling Chinese shoes and the 
 cackling monotone of Chinese voices. At every door 
 way, in a pot of sand burned the joss-sticks; on the 
 corners were the abalone and sugar-cane merchants 
 and sellers of betel-nut, and the cobblers of spectacles 
 and opium pipes; in the alleys the shrimp and fish 
 venders. They went through the markets where glazed 
 pigs and flattened Cantonese ducks and strange, ori 
 ental delicacies were hung, all adding to the indescrib 
 able street smell opium, fish, vegetables, tobacco and 
 Chinamen which is unlike anything under the 
 sun. 
 
 The little mountain girl had never seen a Chinese 
 habitation. They paused before a drug-store called the 
 "Temple of Heavenly Harmonies," where, in the street, 
 upon the wet cobbles, a priest was having a devil- 
 burning. He threw on the fire handfuls of rice paper 
 covered with gilt characters, and muttered incantations, 
 while the crowd shuffled in thick, soft-soled shoes about 
 him; then he seized the whole boxful of gilt prayers 
 brought to him by a small important Chinese boy, who 
 had red silk braided into his embryo cue and a gay 
 tunic of satin worked in raised flower figures, and 
 hurled the mass at the devil fire, scattering the burning 
 prayers in a swirl across the muddy street. 
 
 Sylvia shrank away from the devil-burning ; it was 
 ghastly, unhuman, even though Arnold laughed and 
 told her it was a harmless matter of commerce paid for 
 by some merchant, and that the Chinese themselves 
 had small respect for their Josses, except to use them 
 
26 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 in fleecing the tourists wHo visited the temples. But 
 the thousands of yellow weazened faces with their 
 brute complacence, alien, inexplicable, gave the country 
 girl a morbid terror; she begged her lover to go on, 
 and never again take her through this place with its 
 stealthy shuffle of feet, its silken glister of vice, its 
 choking, unearthly fumes from the gratings underfoot, 
 its acrid laughter, its bald lights of red and yellow 
 under the sodden drip of the night. They slipped 
 through the dark little square by the Stevenson monu 
 ment to Kearny Street, and went on until she recov 
 ered her composure, smelling at times of her gloves 
 and sleeves to see if the reek of Chinatown was not 
 still on her. 
 
 Arnold laughingly comforted her; it gave him an 
 indescribable pleasure to have her cling to him, to seek 
 him and be sheltered. He took her on through the wet 
 radiance, and when they came to Market, where the 
 main streets of the town converged, she again stopped 
 and shrank against his arm, for it seemed appalling, 
 this rush of people, this surge of life under the blaze 
 of lights and the pall of the sky. So many people hurry 
 ing here, there ; so many purposes, so many lives, un 
 known, dark, troublous who knew what the city 
 covered ? 
 
 And while the mountain girl clung to the man, 
 breathless, suddenly there burst a terrible cry from 
 thousands of voices, a shout as of savages, rolling and 
 reverberating, dying away and then roaring out, a 
 diapason, rough, rhythmic, becoming a mighty chant 
 drowning all the street noises. 
 
 "What is it O, what is it?" she cried; and then 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 27 
 
 saw, leaping to her lover s face, a fierceness she 
 had never seen; he was staring past her over the 
 heads of a pack of people at a square patch of brilliant 
 light on the side of a building, a white square undulat 
 ing in the breeze, which grew from the base of a vast, 
 conicular ray shot through with millions of raindrops. 
 Sylvia could not tell where the mysterious light began, 
 but now a tremor ran through the ray, a streak of black 
 letters leaped upon the undulating curtain; and then, 
 from the packed triangle, from the blockaded cars 
 black with people on platforms, buffers, roofs, from 
 the hundreds of yellow-lighted windows in the canon- 
 like street from all the forty thousand humans in this 
 smother, came the cry again, breaking from the savage 
 throat of the city, overwhelming all else, a tornado 
 beating on the girl in the street. Appalled, she turned 
 to her lover who was gesticulating to a young man in 
 the howl of the crowd. Then he seized her arm. 
 
 "Come ; Benny ll get us a window. Kid, I stand to 
 win five hundred if the fight doesn t go the limit. Come 
 here this way !" 
 
 Sylvia was hurried from the street, the two young 
 men fighting the mob for a way ; she was beaten and 
 harassed, men jammed into her, yelling in her ears ; a 
 young woman hysterically laughing, was pommeling 
 a mulatto in the back just before her and crying: "O, 
 come, you Kid slip over th right. It means clo es fo 
 me O, winter clo es f o me !" 
 
 Arnold and the stranger smashed through the hys 
 teria of the mob and to the entrance of a building 
 where Sylvia was flung against an old man with a 
 patriarchal beard, who, alone, by the elevator shaft, 
 
28 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 was capering fantastically and quavering, a mere 
 squeak of senile obsession : "Kill im, Kid ! get im on 
 the point! Kill mi!" 
 
 The two young men hurried Sylvia to the mezzanine 
 floor of the building and to a dark office. The tumult 
 of street voices lessened so that they heard the whip 
 of the wind about the plaster gargoyle above the win 
 dow the host was opening. And as they crept through 
 the space the voices rose again, not so loud, but with a 
 snarl of anger, as a beast stung in the face with a 
 child s goad. 
 
 "Cover Branny !" yelled the reporter. "Keep off and 
 ride the storm !" 
 
 Amid the howl of fury from the crowd at the plight 
 of its idol, Sylvia saw the black letters dance on the 
 glaring screen. 
 
 ROUND 1 8 
 
 SLAVIN STRONGER. CARRIES THE FIGHT AND STINGS 
 BRANNAN LEFT TO FACE, RIGHT TO RIBS. BRANNAN 
 CLOSES CHICAGO BOY S EYE WITH STRAIGHT RIGHT. 
 SLAVIN LANDS LEFT SWING, STAGGERING NATIVE SON. 
 
 The wavering lines of letters were blotted out. The 
 bellow of the street people lessened, died away to a 
 mumble of discomfiture, of shame and oucrage; the 
 packed throng relaxed, only breaking here and there 
 into growls and retorts and denials, shuffling from one 
 foot to another, pushing out for relief during the min 
 ute s intermission of the fight. The young men in the 
 window made a place for Sylvia in the wide space 
 under, the protecting gargoyle, and sat by her, their 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 29 
 
 feet hanging free. Arnold passed a cigarette to the 
 other. 
 
 "This is Benny Hendricks of the Call" said he ; "he 
 does police." 
 
 "My brother s a dentist," explained Benny, "so I 
 had the entree to this office. Now that s a sight, ain t 
 it? Look down Third Street they haven t been able 
 to run a car since the eighth round !" 
 
 From the window, Sylvia could look either way. On 
 both the newspaper buildings the great splotches of 
 light wavered, and the falling rain spun itself into 
 golden motes through the glare. 
 
 Below, from the store fronts on one side to those on 
 the other, the people occupied every inch of pavement, 
 gutter, street and car tracks. The clamor of the car 
 gongs, menacing, strident, but unavailing, rose in the 
 intermission; the rain-wet helmets of the police glis 
 tened as they tried to fight the tracks clear. In the mob, 
 wedged helpless, fuming and gesticulating, a captain 
 with his raincoat back showing the gold braid of his 
 collar, sat his horse, cursing the blockade and his scat 
 tered detail. In the comparative silence of the minute 
 rest, the crowd put up thousands of umbrellas against 
 the dreary night. At once the street looked like a bed 
 of black mushrooms, bobbing slowly under the arc- 
 lights, glistening, twisting, scattering a little here and 
 there as if the wind had bent them, then re-forming, 
 always with that eerie bobbing of round bodies shin 
 ing under the arcs and the yellow outpouring from the 
 numberless windows of the buildings. 
 
 The country girl shrank from the sight ; at last she 
 had come to realize that somewhere two naked boys 
 
30 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 were fighting on a white canvas field, surrounded by 
 ten thousand more of these mad people of the city ; the 
 rich, the great, the strong, bankers, brokers, merchant 
 princes, writers, illustrators, politicians and legislators, 
 the mayor, and the subtle, real rulers the doers of 
 things in the city, the miracle workers in this diamond- 
 point lust of life they called a city. 
 
 It was monstrous with evil. Under the night, under 
 the falling rain, she looked down on the thousands, the 
 umbrellas, bobbing and glistering like foul blossoms, 
 rank, bulbous a black flower of sin, and watching it 
 she suddenly cried out in terror ; for the groveling thing 
 writhed and dissolved before her eyes, and instead of 
 the dull bloom, she was looking into thousands of up 
 turned faces, pallid, tense, obsessed, in the slant of the 
 rain. She clutched her lover s wet sleeve, but he was 
 eagerly straining his eyes past her at the screen. On it 
 now, in the wavering; letters, was another bulletin : 
 
 ROUND 19 
 
 KID BRANNAN RUSHES FROM CORNER AT GONG. 
 SLAVIN MEETS HIM WITH Two RIGHTS TO KIDNEYS 
 AND MISSES LEFT. BRANNY JOLTS HIM WITH LEFT 
 TO EAR. SLAVIN DUCKS INTO CLENCH, AND NATIVE 
 SON CUTS HIM CRUEL IN BREAKAWAY. BOTH BOYS 
 BLEEDING BADLY. BRANNAN OPENS WOUND ABOVE 
 SLAVIN S EYE WITH RIGHT HOOK. BRANNAN SENDS 
 HIM TO ROPES WITH LEFT TO JAW AND RIGHT TO 
 WIND. BRANNAN UPPERCUTS TO MOUTH. .LEFT TO. . 
 SLAVIN DOWN. .HE RISES AT COUNT OF NINE. .RIGHT 
 TO. . 
 
THE DAY OF. SOULS 31 
 
 The thousands under the glare of the lights became 
 silent. Even the clang of the street-cars stopped ; the 
 helmets of the police were motionless, as though the 
 wearers had been statues. The mounted captain, with 
 one arm extended over the vast throng, was a man of 
 stone. 
 
 In the windows, on the car tops, on the tawdry foun 
 tain of the triangle, where boys festooned its outlines, 
 not a sound came. The girl in the window heard Ar 
 nold, by her side, swallow nervously with a little cluck 
 in his throat. 
 
 And then pandemonium broke loose, the street 
 belched a human maelstrom she turned her eyes away. 
 
 On the white screens of the two morning papers 
 was this : 
 
 KNOCKOUT. . NATIVE SON WINS ! ! ! 
 
 Benny Hendricks and Arnold were on their feet with 
 a shout ; they were grasping hands. Without came the 
 bellow of the mad city ; they heeded nothing they, too, 
 were of it, drunk with it. 
 
 "Thirty thousand dollars and the championship 
 on one punch !" cried the reporter excitedly. "Bran- 
 ny s the boy Branny s the boy a knockout Lord, 
 Lord!" 
 
 A strange fever was in Arnold s eyes, a lashing un 
 rest and doubt ; his look was on the mute girl, but he 
 seemed not to see her, to have forgotten her. 
 
 She shrank still farther from the window, from the 
 bellowing town; had the madness, whatever it was, 
 
32 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 seized her lover, also ? What was he, to whom had she 
 given herself ? 
 
 Fearfully she clasped her hand over her heart on 
 the little fortune, the ten thousand dollars under the 
 blue jacket that had looked so brave in the country-up- 
 in-back. He had liked the little blue gown. He had 
 called her his "picture girl," and now Well, she 
 couldn t tell and then she struggled to keep back her 
 tears, her doubts, for her lover had come to hold her 
 close, soothing her so that the awful street, the place 
 of savages, was shut from her brain. It had no light, 
 no sweetness ; it crippled the good in men, seared their 
 souls. 
 
 The other man had gone, and Arnold was saying: 
 "Sylvia, you weren t scared, were you? I thought 
 you d like to see a fight night. The lad who won is a 
 friend of mine a Native Son of the Golden West so 
 the town s crazy! Come, we ll go eat at Zink s." He 
 suddenly remembered that Bluebell had "broke" him 
 to-day, but no matter. Borrowing was the easiest thing 
 for Hammy Arnold; anywhere down the line he was 
 a good fellow drifting easily on the tide of the after- 
 midnight. And to-morrow he could cash a winning 
 ticket on the new champion. 
 
 So they went on through the dissolving welter of 
 humans, and suddenly from a motor-car a young fel 
 low uprose with a shout at Arnold. The huge machine 
 ground through the crowd, and Sylvia saw half a 
 dozen hands reached joyously to her lover s. He was 
 slapped across the shoulders and buffeted about the 
 curb amid the congratulations of the motor-car party. 
 She could understand nothing of the matter except that 
 
hand over her heart. Page 32. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 33 
 
 Arnold was vainly protesting; and then he turned 
 laughingly to her, and she found herself lifted lightly 
 upon the leather cushions of the tonneau, and the car 
 shot forward along the shining pavements. Past clang 
 ing street-cars, carriages and motors, between dazzling 
 lines of light lining the thoroughfare and the creeping 
 tide of people on either side, the great car leaped, with 
 Sylvia holding her lover s hand in the comforting se 
 crecy of the cushions. On her other side was a stranger 
 leaning forward to talk eagerly with a man in the mid 
 dle seat where sat, also, wedged in between two men, 
 an astonishingly pretty woman whose eyes were 
 brighter and cheeks more glowing than any Sylvia had 
 ever seen. The country girl was introduced to none of 
 these laughing, intent strangers; but she was with 
 John Arnold and that was enough. She clasped the lit 
 tle fortune in her jacket s bosom, and whispered to 
 herself : "I said I d trust him always and everywhere, 
 and I will will willf 
 
 In the seat before her was a tall, brown-faced young 
 man in a light overcoat and white hat, who kept turn 
 ing to talk to the small important one that crowded 
 her so closely to Arnold s side. Always he reiterated 
 in the jerky discussions, to the garrulous negations of 
 the other: 
 
 "I ll give forty thousand for the match, Broughton 
 winner take all, or sixty-five and thirty-five on a 
 sixty per cent, split and one hundred and thirty-three 
 ring-side, or at three o clock anyway they like. Forty 
 thousand for the fight." 
 
 And the short man, steadying himself in the plung 
 ing car, kept crying out: "What s that? what s that? 
 
34 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Tex, I don t think he ll fight a nigger what s tfiat? 
 I said nigger! What? " and above the laughter and 
 the joyous voices in the car and the street tumult, the 
 sporting editor, who was somewhat deaf, kept repeat 
 ing: "What what? I said nigger? O, yes it d 
 draw if he d fight the nigger !" 
 
 The great machine stopped with surprising sudden 
 ness and some one swung the door. Arnold and Sylvia 
 and three of the men were on the sidewalk before the 
 entrance of a cafe the front of a building set every 
 where in colored glass, wondrously intricate figures 
 aglow from the lights within. The mountain girl had- 
 never seen anything so beautiful. 
 
 Though the motor-car dashed off, the three men 
 continued to wrangle, Arnold putting in a word here 
 and there; and then he said: "Billy, let me have 
 twenty," and one of the group, without discontinuing 
 his argument, or even looking at the money, made the 
 loan. 
 
 Arnold stood balancing the coin, yellow in the light, 
 on his thumb-nail; then glancing about at the girl on 
 his arm, he laughed: "Kid, let s go eat." Sylvia 
 nodded, still in a daze. 
 
 As they were leaving, the bronzed young man said 
 coolly : "Well, fifty thousand then there s the biggest 
 purse ever hung up fifty thousand at Goldfield on 
 Labor Day." 
 
 The rotund sporting editor was scribbling on a tele 
 gram form ; the third man nodded : "Yes, we ll fight 
 the coon on a toothpick for that !" 
 
 And suddenly they all separated, the editor rushing 
 down Market Street, the man from Goldfield entering 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 35 
 
 the motor-car, which Had made a pirouette to the curb, 
 the woman leaning to him with a smile ; and the prize 
 fight manager walking past Arnold and Sylvia into the 
 cafe. 
 
 Arnold spoke quietly from the vestibule: "Billy, 
 does it go ?" 
 
 The stranger nodded and passed in. Sylvia, clinging 
 to her lover s arm, could look through the glass doors 
 at an amazing place. Never had she seen so many 
 lights, so many tables, flowers in exquisite vases, so 
 many beautiful women all in a fairyland of color, of 
 grace and of music. She could see no end to the room, 
 the palms beyond arching over mystic, translucent 
 vistas, an illimitable splendor. Why was it all? for 
 what were these marvels gathered, this cave of the 
 Genii stretching under the gray earth ? 
 
 Without, the rain was falling. The girl shook her 
 lover s arm. His eyes were vague and wide. 
 
 "Jack," she whispered, "isn t it wonderful all won 
 derful?" 
 
 "Yes yes," he answered absently; "fifty thousand 
 for the fight in the desert great God, what men, what 
 plungers! Fifty thousand from a little mining camp! 
 That was Tex McLane, and he s getting a hundred 
 thousand dollars a month out of a little shanty not so 
 big as this cigar stand up in Nevada a gambling- 
 room." 
 
 "A gambler and I rode with him !" 
 
 He did not see her horror; he was dreaming. He 
 could see it all, the great arena under the desert sun, 
 the sweating bodies fighting on the platform. All the 
 west would be there, from camp and trail, from the 
 
36 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 secret places and the arc-lighted cities, gathered, mute, 
 tense a huge place of men open to the sky. 
 
 And suddenly she seemed to see it, to awaken, to 
 know him, to encompass all the flare of this life into 
 which he had brought her. In the city the beast lurked, 
 the serpent glided, the savage pursued ; it was a primal 
 world glutting its greed and passions as did the cave 
 men in fen and jungle; only over its brutishness was 
 the glamour of mirrored lights, gilded panels, black- 
 garbed servitors, pleading violins, silks, meats, the odor 
 of flowers and perfumes, the soft skin of women, with 
 wine fragrances on their lips, laughing under the night 
 the town s hard wantonness, its reckless lubricity 
 no, there was nothing good here ; she must have been 
 mistaken, even in the man she loved. 
 
 She turned to go to the street, her hand relaxing 
 from Arnold s arm. 
 
 "Come, we ll have supper," he said, starting from his 
 abstraction. But she drew away as he opened the great 
 door of bronze and glass where the uniformed attend 
 ant beyond had stared curiously at them. 
 
 "No, no " she faltered, and then looked at him, her 
 gray eyes big with resolution "no, I can t go there I 
 must go somewhere, but not there !" 
 
 Arnold bent anxiously to her ; the slang and uncar 
 ing ease of the street had left him. "Sylvia, what s 
 the matter ? Are you sick you didn t tell me " 
 
 She caught at the pretext : "Yes, let s go I-" 
 
 The young man s arm went about her ; he was mur 
 muring his solicitude, asking what he might do 
 couldn t he get something at a drug-store wouldn t 
 she be better if she ate a bit ? 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 37 
 
 "I shouldn t have brought you down-town!" he 
 exclaimed. "I never thought among these people 
 this " He stared in self-reproach at her. "You 
 know, Kid, I m pretty callous ; I have no business with 
 a girl like you. Let s go where you can sit down." 
 
 Again he bent to her with his intent care, and she 
 smiled now to relieve his trouble ; yes, that was his old 
 look, his gentle way of doing things, of caring for her 
 as one would a child no, she couldn t doubt him. The 
 city, the whole round world, might spin drunken with 
 evil, and crash down in shame, but not he he was her 
 knight, without fear or reproach, the fellow of marvel 
 ous adventures ; she had his picture so, a lithe soldier 
 of the cavalry, bearing the silken guidon of his troop. 
 
 Suddenly she laughed, brushing her hot tears away. 
 "O, come," she cried, "let s go home home, and just 
 be glad glad glad always!" 
 
 And in her eyes he saw a light burn, something more 
 than he had ever come upon, and was strangely mute 
 when they reached his lodgings above the Family 
 Liquor Store. 
 
 "I wish Miss Cranberry was up," he said. "I ought 
 to have explained about you. You ll have my rooms 
 to-night the best in the house. Now, you go right to 
 bed. To-morrow we ll be married." 
 
 They were in the warm-scented room and he was 
 searching for a match in the dark when the girl put 
 her arms about his neck. 
 
 "John," she whispered, "are you always going to love 
 me?" 
 
 "Always." 
 
 They were silent for a time; then He muttered: 
 
38 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Sylvia, you ll overlook a lot, won t you ? If I was in 
 trouble lots of trouble and men blackened my name 
 and proved me a liar and tried to prove me a thief 
 a thief, would you love me always, always ?" 
 
 "Always," she answered ; and lighting the gas, as she 
 clung to him, he saw, in the mirror, her white arms 
 about his neck, and her clear, honest eyes on him in 
 the shade of the little blue hat from Trinity. 
 
 "O, Kid!" he broke out suddenly, "you re fine and 
 true, and look what the town s made of me ! You don t 
 know you don t know !" 
 
 He carried her to a chair and kneeling, began unlac 
 ing her wet shoe. 
 
 "Kid, I m not decent I m a crook! There s not a 
 good woman in San Francisco would have me at her 
 home." 
 
 "I don t believe it," she said slowly. 
 
 He was feeling the dampness of her stockinged foot. 
 
 "Do you know, when I wrote you to come to the city, 
 Sylvia, I didn t suppose you d do it. I didn t think 
 you d trust me. It bewildered me when I got the tele 
 gram that you had sailed." 
 
 "Why, that s funny it was just as natural! Don t 
 you know why I did it ?" 
 
 "No. You can t imagine how I ve felt to-day. I ve 
 been humbled and gone about in a daze. I never had 
 such a feeling before." 
 
 "I guess it s because you love me." She slipped into 
 his hand the little silk needle-case from her bosom. He 
 held it for a moment and then saw the edges of the 
 bills projecting; opening the flap ? a bank-note for one 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 39 
 
 thousand dollars lay before him. "It s yours and 
 mine," she added. 
 
 "Sylvia, you sold the land !" 
 
 "Part of it." She laughed with exquisite pleasure 
 and sat back luxuriantly. "My ! We re rich ! It s ten 
 thousand dollars. The lumber company paid it to me 
 just before I sailed, and I wouldn t take a draft. I 
 wanted it in money real money for you to look at. 
 I wasn t afraid !" She laughed again at his wonder 
 ment. "Gracious, what do I know about money? I 
 want you to have it, John, and make everything nice 
 for us." 
 
 "Suppose we live in Berkeley or Piedmont or some 
 where on the hills and have a place with roses just as 
 you said? (Sylvia, you ll never like the town; it s fast 
 and fierce and grinds the soul out of us, and no one 
 cares not a bit. /I d like to keep you just as you are, 
 sweetheart, always ! Aren t your stockings very wet ?" 
 he added anxiously. 
 
 She was untangling the veil from her hat ; with her 
 head turned, she gave a little cry of alarm. "There s 
 some one in the bed !" 
 
 He looked through the double doorway to the rear 
 apartment ; the dim light showed the tumbled coverlets. 
 
 "It s the Polacchi kids," said he ruefully. "Granny s 
 house must be filled to-night." 
 
 She went with him to stare down at the black tousled 
 heads of two children. "Why, Jack," she cried, "in 
 your room !" 
 
 "That s all right. You see a lot of people sort of 
 hang out with me here ; some lad gets sick or drunk, 
 and I come home and find him roosting with me until 
 
40 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 he gets over it. You see, I never can turn away a lad 
 who s been square with me. And these children well, 
 we all kind of look after em, Nel Free and Granny 
 and Ferreri and I. Their dad was drowned off North 
 Point last June. He was a fisherman. The boy, 
 Angelo, sells flowers down on Kearny ; and you ought 
 to hear him with a violin ! Ferreri and I are going to 
 send him to Paris, when he gets bigger, to study." 
 
 "But in your bed and you never knew it," she 
 laughed, watching the rosy cheek of Angelo Polacchi. 
 "You re funny people here !" 
 
 "Granny understands. The lodgings are filled to 
 night. I d hang around down-town most of the night, 
 anyway. But you Sylvia, you ll have to sleep on the 
 couch. It s big and warm, and I ve extra covers." 
 
 She watched him moving softly about the room, 
 removing the serape from the couch, finding sheets and 
 blankets, making her bed, through it all a whispered 
 comment of humor. She placed the violets he had 
 given her in a bowl of Japanese lacquer on the table. 
 Under the gas she unhooked the lace of her collar and 
 faced him with a sober little laugh. 
 
 "Good night, Sylvia." Then he hesitated in some 
 confusion and from his pocket took the case of money. 
 
 "You d better keep this you I" 
 
 "Why, it s yours. You ll have to care for it now. 
 We can put it in a bank to-morrow." 
 
 "Yes," he answered absently, his eyes on the 
 white, firm flesh of her shoulder through the opened 
 waist, where a glow was mounting rosily to melt into 
 the pink of her cheek, as she worked at a stubborn pin. 
 Then he held out his hand and did not offer to kiss her, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 41 
 
 though the sweetness of her breath, inimitably different 
 from that of town women, was on him as she smiled: 
 "Good night." 
 
 She closed the door behind him, discovering, when 
 he had gone down the steps past the Family Liquor 
 Store, that the rusty lock was useless. 
 
 The young man went up the hill and over Powell 
 Street, where all the midnight radiance of the city, four 
 hundred feet below him, spread, like a field of fireflies 
 caught in a net, east and south and west to the bay and 
 to the mountains. Where Powell intersected Market, 
 the wet asphalt was a reflector, in and out of which the 
 cable-cars crawled, like busy insects about a lamp. 
 Arnold stopped on the Nob Hill slope and looked down 
 in the pit studded with cold brilliance. After a while he 
 raised his hand and shook it over the city. "Damn 
 you," he cried, "you ll never make of her what you 
 have of us!" 
 
 He turned into the Maplewood Saloon on Grant 
 Avenue half an hour later. It was a place of costly 
 woods and massive mirrors, yet treated with mission 
 simplicity, and of flawless harmony of color and design, 
 lighted by lights in recesses, save for one bronze nude 
 figure on the back bar holding forth a grape cluster that 
 showed the wondrous tints of the flaming Tokay in the 
 ripening. It was known, though not admitted, that Po 
 lice Commissioner Stillman was interested in the Maple- 
 wood, and that he had paid twenty thousand dollars to 
 a decorator brought from Milan to think over the 
 mural scheme of his saloon. 
 
 Arnold met Louis Ferreri at the bar, idly listening 
 to a discourse from a sharp-faced youth who wore a 
 
42 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 leather automobile cap and a sweater of amazingly 
 broad pink, green and yellow stripes. The high throat 
 of this sweater was gathered by a ribbon of baby blue 
 and in the knot was an immense yellow diamond. 
 Mannie Murasky had purchased this at the Portland 
 Loan Office the day after the Burns Handicap two 
 years ago. It was a real and startling stone. It 
 gathered up all the iridescence of his sweater and 
 smashed it at you so menacingly that Mannie was 
 known as the "Headlight Kid." Young Murasky was 
 of many talents ; a pool-room clerk at times, an "out 
 side man" for an Emeryville book-maker, a cigar-store 
 clerk, a second for amateur prize-fighters, for ever nois 
 ily vociferating about the clubs the claims of some com 
 ing light-weight he had discovered at the Union Iron 
 Works, or Butchertown or North Beach. Mannie 
 would tout his "comer" indefatigably, get some pro 
 moter to give him a try-out at the fortnightly bouts, 
 and then, when his wonder was beaten to the mat, the 
 Headlight Kid would disappear from Market Street 
 to turn up later with another slim-shanked aspirant of 
 the ring-side. 
 
 To-night Mannie had talked himself out over the 
 fight. The slot-machine man was weary with the 
 buffeting which the nimble-witted little Hebrew had 
 given him on fistic matters, and he hailed Arnold with 
 relief. Mannie, too, subsided ; he held John Hamilton 
 Arnold in a subconscious awe, for Ham was "close 
 up" to Harry Stillman, and doubtless the boss, too; 
 and moreover Mannie had once seen him talking with 
 some elegant women in a carriage in front of a Post 
 Street shop. Ham had his hat off, but he chatted with 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 43 
 
 nonchalant humor, though Mannie, pouncing like a 
 ferret into a cigar stand to ask of them, learned that 
 one of these women was the daughter of Barren 
 Chatom, attorney for the railroad, a man to whom 
 Police Commissioner Stillman, the mayor, the boss and 
 even the governor deferred, for Chatom and the rail 
 road could make or break any of them. And Mannie 
 saw Edith Chatom extend her hand with a parting 
 smile to Arnold and drive off behind the coachman 
 with the high hat and yellow pants. That settled 
 the Headlight Kid: "Always stay in wit t ese mutts 
 t at are strong wit t organization a guy might want 
 somepin sometime from somebody." 
 
 "Hello, J. Ham," he began, his rat-eyes on 
 Arnold s fashionable clothes he would have a coat 
 cut like that with no top pocket. "Wasn t t at fight a 
 pippin ?" 
 
 "Didn t see it," rejoined the young man. He went 
 directly to the bar. "Fergy," said he to the drink- 
 mixer-in-chief, "I want to leave some money with you." 
 He was counting out bills, five of a thousand each, 
 eight of five hundred and some smaller notes. 
 
 "How s that?" murmured the pallid barkeeper. 
 "Lord Rex was the only long shot to-day and he didn t 
 carry a thimbleful of money. Fight ?" 
 
 "Picked up five hundred, but haven t cashed in yet. 
 This " Arnold watched the saloon man s languid 
 count "merely velvet." 
 
 Ferreri s eyes widened, and Mannie hopped on the 
 bar rail to gasp : "Ten thousand ? Have I woke up in 
 th mint? J. Ham, whose roll is it?" 
 
 "Mine." Arnold s voice did not invite, and they 
 
44 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 were silent. Louis Ferreri shot a warning at the bar 
 tender. This was a foolish "flash" for Ham to make 
 a man who was mixed in the grand jury scandals and 
 all. Louis lit a fresh cigar and looked with critical 
 pleasure at his reflection in the back bar glass. He was 
 a benign animal, fond of eating, the latest crush in a 
 hat, absorbed with childish vanity in his diamonds. On 
 his watch- fob, his cuffs, rings and scarf-pin he affected 
 a tiger s head design of Roman gold clasping a white 
 stone in its teeth and with garnets for eyes. Besides 
 these he had a forget-me-not of exquisite enamel with 
 a diamond heart, and three others of various settings, 
 but all of purest values and extreme costliness. Like 
 most stupid men he had one single fad which he 
 imagined lifted his conscious dullness, at this point at 
 least, to command attention from the more alert. And 
 these diamonds Louis always carried in a velvet case 
 in his waistcoat pocket. It occupied his indolent mind 
 to change the pin in his cravat for one of the others 
 at intervals of conversation, rubbing the scintillant 
 jewels and watching them in the lights of the cafes 
 and theaters. Within a single evening he might be 
 bedecked with each pin in turn; but on prize-fight 
 nights the slot-machine man wore only the tiger s head 
 pin with the safety catch and deposited the others with 
 Fergy in the cash-register drawer at the Maplewood. 
 
 Caressing the forget-me-not over the bar, Ferreri 
 idly drawled his curiosity concerning Arnold s money. 
 "You certainly got next to something good. And, say, 
 anybody been talking to you about Weldy? Some 
 body s going to get indicted by the grand jury for that 
 registration business, sure, Ham!" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 45 
 
 Arnold shrugged indifferently. "I m through with 
 the funny work. I told you I was going to be mar 
 ried, Louis." 
 
 "O, I see that s your bank-roll ? How much is she 
 worth?" 
 
 "I don t know. She s from Trinity met Her this 
 summer." 
 
 "You re always turning big tricks. Money? and 
 she looked good to me." 
 
 "She s the best ever. I m afraid I ll get fond of her 
 myself. And I m cutting out the old graft now. It s 
 as easy to be a fifty thousand dollar man as a one thous 
 and dollar man, and I m going to break with all this." 
 
 "Yes?" Ferreri s incredulous curiosity followed 
 Ham s eye about the bar-room. "Going after some 
 thing big? Your old man up in the pen haven t 
 stopped working for that pardon, have you ?" 
 
 "I m going at it differently. I ve been doing dirty 
 politics for Stillman and the city hall three years and 
 what have I got out of it ? Now if this girl s got the 
 money and she owns a strip of redwoods you could 
 drop the town in I ll shove some of it right. Under 
 stand ? That pardon will go to the governor with the 
 right people behind it." 
 
 "You re not deuce high with the governor. That big 
 land company down in Stanislaus is too close to the 
 railroad. Chatom s the only man could handle the 
 governor for you, and he well, what pull have me and 
 you got doing a little politics over the hill against 
 Chatom and the railroad and the land company that 
 wants your old man kept in the pen? Say, Ham, we 
 ain t a flash in the pan with the governor." 
 
46 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "I ll turn the trick. With money I can meet some 
 different people." 
 
 Ferreri s wits did not follow at first; there was, at 
 times, a grim satire in Arnold; he would say things 
 that showed, after all, that you had never been close 
 to him, that he was surveying you and himself from 
 some view-point inimitably his own. Louis recalled, 
 as all the Street did, that Arnold s family name had 
 stood for much ten years ago much that Louis knew 
 of only as his indifferent eye wandered over the social 
 pages of the Sunday papers. It was broken now, 
 almost forgotten ; from the only son, the last scion of 
 the house, the years had effaced resentment, shame or 
 hope of reparation. He had accepted, he told himself, 
 with a clear, impersonal survey and he had promised 
 himself, whatever the conditions, to be the master of 
 his life. And so he had come down the way, still 
 seeing his fall clearly, in a sort of philosophic pride at 
 the mordant keenness with which he knew himself and 
 was unmoved, without law, without conscience, without 
 soul. It was as he wished. 
 
 "Different people?" Ferreri drawled. "They re all 
 crooks." 
 
 Arnold laughed easily. "Naturally. But I m through 
 with the little ones. With money I can reach the big 
 ones. I mean socially. Money ll make them forget a 
 good deal and now I ll have some money." He 
 tinkled his glass along the polished wood. "Dad s pretty 
 old for San Quentin. He won t be the same game old 
 fighter that tried to swing the whole San Joaquin into 
 his irrigation scheme. And because he stood wrong 
 higher up the railroad and the land ring smashed him. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 47 
 
 He wouldn t take orders, and they got his backers 
 away, and then he signed his name to some paper that 
 wasn t good, and they got him the other crooks. Ah, 
 well, now I ll swing that pardon. Every day I rub 
 shoulders with more crooks free than dad would meet 
 in a thousand years in prison, but that s all right I m 
 ,not kicking about the game I m the son of a con, and 
 that s all right, too. Only now, with money " 
 
 "You can t reach the governor. There s bigger men 
 than you can go to Chatom and Chatom gives the word 
 and the governor programs like a little man. If your 
 old man was clean as Angel Gabriel what chance have 
 you got?" 
 
 Arnold laughed: "Money," he repeated; "watch 
 me." 
 
 "And a girl on your hands." 
 
 "That s all right. I ll treat her fine." 
 
 "Ham, you don t love her." Louis voice protested 
 curiously. "You why, no woman in this town ever 
 held you for a little minute." 
 
 Ham s mimic laugh rang out. "Well, this kid she 
 thinks I m the only thing that ever happened! I had 
 her the first time I met her she hadn t a chance." 
 And then his cool voice deepened : "And I tell you I ll 
 be fine to her. I ll cut you fellows off the map. What s 
 the use of this? What s all this midnight racket? 
 What s this town ever done for me?" 
 
 "It ll do something for you now" Ferrer! had a 
 sleepy resentment. "Heard the latest? Grand jury s 
 gone into the registration for last August primaries. 
 That ll get pretty close to you you and Fred Weldy 
 were in the registrar s office, and you packed some 
 
48 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 awful raw ones. But you put it through, and Stillman 
 got Weldy into the legislature to help protect the races. 
 O, sure, the whole town knows that, all right! But 
 you you took some fierce chances you do things so 
 openly." 
 
 John Arnold gyrated his highball indifferently: 
 "Well, if the race-track can t protect its men from the 
 grand jury, Stillman better quit running this town. To 
 hell with the grand jury! We ve got five of the 
 superior judges, haven t we ? We can hold the supreme 
 court on a pinch, can t we, long as the railroad s behind 
 the track?" But his mood changed: "Well, I m 
 through. To-night the queer work and I part com 
 pany. I quit." 
 
 The Italian-American laughed again. "Girl," he 
 murmured; "girl! I see you quittin . They won t let 
 you quit they ve got you. The big fight s only begin 
 ning and they need you. And you don t love her. I 
 got a picture of you a family man. Lord, you!" 
 
 The other was staring at his gaunt face in the 
 mirrors the thin curls about his white, high forehead, 
 the eyes deep-set, unreadable, dark, with their trick of 
 laughing even in his reserve. "Look here," he muttered, 
 "suppose I did? Suppose there was a way for me? 
 I m always thinking of the hills, somehow, and to-night 
 she said we d have a place somewhere there " he 
 pointed through the garish lights off to the north 
 "with roses all around the door." 
 
 They were silent along Fergy s polished bar. Ham 
 was staring above the wicker doors. Fergy held a 
 pink globe of a goblet up to flick a last bit of lint away, 
 and it hung, its iridescence flung back from every angle 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 49 
 
 of the room: "That s me," Arnold muttered, "some 
 day." 
 
 Ferreri turned. "Let s blow down the line. They re 
 burning champagne in the red fire to-night, and it s 
 only half-past two. The whole town cleaned up on the 
 Native Son. But that little girl " he signaled to the 
 drink-mixers behind the Maplewood bar. "The house 
 is in every one." 
 
 "All right" Arnold had briefly hesitated "Scotch 
 in a high glass." 
 
 Ferreri lifted his glass solemnly to his friend and 
 the men in the white aprons: "To the little girl 
 Ham s little girl!" 
 
 Arnold went to the lunch where a clean little Jap 
 anese lifted the great silver dish covers. Frank 
 Arasaka California Japanese are invariably "Franks," 
 or "Joes," or "Charlies," smiled with serene friend 
 liness on the young man; a brown-faced, spectacled 
 student of language and medicine, he remembered the 
 days when Arnold had helped him through the English 
 primer. In the Imperial Hotel on Stockton Street, 
 "over the hill," they had argued economics over the 
 raw fish and hot sake many a night, for Arnold had 
 been Arasaka s patron when he was a stranger in a 
 strange land. So the little Japanese said, with a hesi 
 tant sadness now : "I mek you good-by, Mist Arnold. 
 I go back to Nippon nex ." 
 
 "Home?" 
 
 "Yes mebbe. You been mos good to mek me 
 English in the study. Now, I go Nippon. My family 
 mos long, honorable. Nex month come great Samurai 
 festival what you say? solemn? I clean myself I 
 
Jo THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 mek great thoughts. All night by shoji I watch 
 swords of mos honorable ancestors. I mus remember 
 if I ben corage honorable such as them." 
 
 "And they come back to judge you the old fighting 
 men?" 
 
 "Mos exact. All souls awaken! Ol fighting men 
 ask if I ben corage and honor. You know ? No man 
 come dare stand dishonorable before them ol armor 
 and them ol swords w en them ol honorable ancestors 
 ask. I mus mek myself clean firs then I can watch 
 and answer. O, you ben soldier mos honorable you 
 know!" 
 
 Arnold watched him curiously: "You must come 
 clean that night. I see and what do you call the thing 
 the festival?" 
 
 "Very hard to English". In Japan The Day of 
 Souls." 
 
 The hard-faced American looked again at the little 
 brown, spectacled man, wondering idly why this 
 unmoral, scientifically materialistic heathen, spending 
 his days in books, his nights in the whirling lusts of the 
 town, smiling and serene, should go back across five 
 thousand miles of water to sit one night before the 
 armor of the Samurai awaiting their judgment. Then 
 slowly with a smile, his hand went to the Japanese: 
 "Play square then with those ancestors. It s a fine 
 idea. Sayonara !" 
 
 He gambled five dollars into one of Ferreri s slot 
 machines without a winning, and gossiped half an hour 
 with Fergy, the others having gone. Then Arnold 
 caught the owl car up Kearny Street and got off at 
 Portsmouth Square. He was a fellow given much to 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 51 
 
 dreams when alone; when with his friends he had a 
 way of listening abstractedly, but with an encouraging 
 humor of comment. The town called him "square;" 
 the Street nicknamed him, as men do one subcon 
 sciously beloved. 
 
 But Ham wondered at times why he was such a dis 
 aster to himself and those who cared for him ; though 
 when he went about, the homeless dogs Always followed 
 him and he saw the wistfulness in their eyes and knew 
 that life to them was one long yearning for the possible 
 adventure ; and in the eyes of women he saw that which 
 the finality of the morgue records does not show, for 
 it was their secret True Romance; and in the eyes of 
 white-haired old mothers, and the babes who always 
 watched him in a crowd, he saw a wonder which he 
 could not understand, and a peace that troubled him. 
 
 As he climbed the hill into Chinatown, the late police 
 detail from the hall of justice greeted him with friendly 
 pleasantries. When he reached the door of his lodg 
 ings it suddenly occurred to him that there was no 
 available bed in Miss Cranberry s house, and he paused, 
 wondering whereabout he might find a room. Then he 
 saw a paper twisted about the door-knob, his marriage 
 license crumpled, wine-stained, and by the corner light 
 he read the scrawls across its back: 
 
 "If you and I together, Sweetheart," 
 "Sweetheart, if you and I could roam ;" 
 "If together we did roam, Sweetheart" 
 
 "Sammy ; O, Sammy !" sighed J. Ham Arnold. 
 Under the gray, ancient gable he looked down the 
 
52 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 hill to the squat roofs of Chinatown and the Barbary 
 Coast reaching to the bay. The day was coming 
 beyond Monte Diablo to the east. It was still and high 
 about him, a clean land above the wolfish town, the 
 place of savages. A vision came to his somber eyes : 
 yes, he was above it all he had gone back the ways 
 of the years of his life ; he had come to a hilltop in the 
 north, there to stand in an .inviolate peace, a gladness 
 he had put by, forgotten. Ajnd below him lurked the 
 city where the beasts were, beaten, conquered : they lay 
 gross, filled, the weaker dying unheeded, but afar, high 
 on his hilltop he was above this on his lips a victor s 
 song. 
 
 After a while he moved from the wet balcony rail 
 and sat on the rough mat by the door so that he could 
 see the stars fade. Quietly watching them his knees 
 relaxed presently, his shoulders sank against the door 
 frame, the fumes of many liquors stole to his brain, 
 and he slept. 
 
 The light widened over the eastern mountains. 
 Diablo shot a sparkle from its snowy slope. The bay 
 shores grew plain, the town below took form. Within 
 half an hour, because she was from the country-up-in- 
 back and used to early rising, the girl on the couch 
 stirred. Presently she looked drowsily about and 
 started at the strange room. Then she smiled with 
 sleepy luxuriance. From the window the chill air 
 streamed in; she wondered if the children in the big 
 bed were well covered ? 
 
 Sylvia slipped from the couch and glanced at them. 
 Then she came to the window and put her head 
 through, glancing at the patches of sea and mountain 
 under the coloring sky. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 53 
 
 Looking along the balcony she saw a man huddled at 
 the door and, in some alarm, went cautiously to open 
 it. She knew he must be asleep ; now, she saw it was 
 her lover. 
 
 She threw the door wide and in her night-robe, knelt 
 on the step above him. He breathed gently, his dark 
 face, without its inscrutable trouble, now at peace. The 
 girl studied him quietly ; then she noticed the morning 
 damp on his hair and the collar upturned about his 
 chin. She went back and dragged the heaviest blanket 
 from her bed and cautiously placed it over him, tucking 
 it under his form and about his throat. She watched 
 him longer and then, with a smile, reached to the 
 dresser and took the mass of violets from the bowl, 
 shaking the water from the stems. Laughing, she 
 scattered them over him, over the blanket, and by twos 
 and threes and in little garlands, they fell in his face 
 and hair and on the mold of the boards. 
 
 She laughed again out of her happiness. It was 
 grand. It was just as she had dreamed, as she wished 
 to believe; he was a knight wandering through the 
 world doing noble deeds, fighting brave battles ; he had 
 come to lie before her threshold, guarding it through 
 the dark hours; and now., when the light had come, 
 she could reward him with the flowers he had given 
 her and which she had worn over her heart. She 
 looked down at the brute town ; it was stilled for her, 
 in the night, he had conquered. It was without life ; 
 only, over a gaunt hill to the north, lay a drift of fog, 
 like a rag of lace on a beggar s breast. 
 
 She looked down again at the violets scattered over 
 him. 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 A little, old woman with a face as wrinkled as 
 parchment under her gray hair, which was parted 
 primly and yet brought down in a wavy loop over each 
 ear, after the fashion of a school-girl, thrust her head 
 through the door leading from the inner hall to 
 Arnold s apartments. 
 
 "May I come in, Mr. Hammy?" she said, in the 
 brisk querulousness of one habitually hurried. 
 
 "Good morning, Granny," said he, combing his hair 
 at the dresser. "Come in." 
 
 Miss Cranberry entered. "Are the dears asleep?" 
 she asked. "I didn t want them in the small room next 
 the plumber he was drunk again." She bent above 
 the children, still in the rear chamber. "The poor 
 dears the poor dears but Angelo must be awak 
 ened." 
 
 Miss Cranberry caught the flutter of a gown on 
 the balcony outside in the radiant morning. Her small 
 brown eyes peered cautiously about. 
 
 "Bless my soul!" 
 
 Arnold turned, waving his hair brushes. "Miss 
 Cranberry, this is my wife she s to be my wife 
 Sylvia." 
 
 "Bless my soul; bless my soul!" The little, old 
 woman stood among the scattered violets on the 
 breezy balcony, blinking at the light. 
 
 54 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 55 
 
 Sylvia gave her hand to Miss Cranberry s gray 
 talon. "Married ? Well, well, my dears !" 
 
 "Pretty near!" laughed Sylvia. 
 
 Miss Cranberry trembled with delight ; it had come, 
 then the romance with which always she had known 
 she would be concerned. She was a little, shrill- 
 voiced spinster, living in the memories of the Fifties, 
 when she had known the makers of California the 
 Bonanza kings and the builders of the Southern Pacific 
 Sharon, Fair, Huntington, Flood, O Brien, Mackey, 
 Stanford, Ralston the great names of the Comstock ; 
 in some of these families she had been a governess on 
 the intimate relations of a friend ; she knew innumer 
 able stories of the early money kings in the mad San 
 Francisco days; she had seen Casey and Cora hanged 
 by the Vigilantes; she had seen the opening of the 
 Palace, and knew of the day its genius jumped from 
 Meiggs wharf into the bay ; she knew by the sureness 
 of household gossip all the tales of incredible extrava 
 gance, of barbaric imagination, that had gathered 
 about the Argonautic millionaires families. And she 
 had seen the curious fatality overtake them ; their seed 
 perished for the most part; their great, monstrously 
 ugly palaces on Nob Hill, closed, deserted, mournful 
 relics of the Wonder Age of the Golden State, of the 
 most fantastic era in the history of the republic. The 
 great names, the turbulent families, were now tradi 
 tions. The little, old woman had seen their glory rise 
 and fall, and she lived on alone, in beggary, unknown, 
 forgotten to chant, like the chorus of an ^Eschylean 
 tragedy, on the inevitable hand of fate laid against 
 the mighty and the proud. 
 
56 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 For forty years she had retreated before the savage 
 town; she had fought it back from noisome lodgings 
 with her failing strength, while it grew to be a mon 
 ster, harsh, sordid, unrequiting the days of gold, of 
 youth, of prodigal friendship, were done. One won 
 dered how the life spark stayed in such a withered, 
 weary little body, performing prodigies of labor, 
 sweeping her frayed carpets, scrubbing the halls with 
 swashes of dirty water, cleaning the windows, making 
 the beds. On Sunday mornings she was an elegant 
 person in a black cap and silk dress, queerly cut, going 
 to Trinity with her Book of Prayers ; on week days 
 she was the excitable little shrew, with a heart pro 
 digiously kind, toiling for her lodgers, who were im 
 pecunious clerks, itinerant mechanics, peddlers, broken 
 drift of the streets, who paid when they could and were 
 trusted when they could not. The drunken, the im 
 provident, the foolish, the sick, the lame, the despond 
 ent, all were hers; she nursed and protected and 
 defended them, denouncing the police if they touched 
 one of her worthless proteges; clothing the naked, 
 forgiving the unchaste and drunken, toiling inordi 
 nately meanwhile to pay the landlord, the grocer, and 
 the interest on her mortgaged furniture this was her 
 life s tribute to the city, and in requital it would some 
 day at the Morgue draw a sheet over her bones. 
 
 The old woman was all aglow as John Arnold told 
 of his love affair, all little cries and smiles and won 
 ders ; she kissed the girl s rosy cheek ; she was hungry 
 for something apart from the stink of the kitchen and 
 the murky halls ; she loved clothes, faces, manners of 
 distinction, and the lightness of youth. She must 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 57 
 
 know all about it; they must stay to breakfast; yes, 
 she would run to the corner for hot rolls, and to Unc* 
 Pop s for bacon. And while she was hustling about 
 with astonishing agility, a step sounded on the stairs 
 leading from the attic, then a tap, tap, tapping a 
 cane on the wainscot. 
 
 Miss Cranberry flashed a startled look on Arnold. 
 
 "You know, don t you? it was in the morning 
 papers a cablegram from Manila? Hush, the Cap 
 tain s coming." 
 
 "The papers ? Manila ? I have seen nothing." 
 
 "Larry s dead. He struck an officer and was dis 
 honorably discharged; and then he was killed in a 
 quarrel at some little place with a big name in Samar. 
 The paper just mentioned it." 
 
 "Larry!" Arnold stepped back, his lips tightened. 
 At the bottom of the attic stairs an old man felt his 
 way along. Sylvia s eyes shone with sympathy; she 
 whispered: "Larry? I heard you speak of him the 
 soldier" 
 
 "My bunky," muttered her lover. "I left him at 
 Cavite. Here s his father." 
 
 The Captain turned his clouded eyes on them. 
 His face, with the noble sweep of hair, the mustaches, 
 the stained, gray imperial, had the grand theatricism 
 of another era of strong men ; you would have marked 
 him in a street among a thousand. His head inclined ; 
 he had heard his name his right finger-tips went to 
 his bushy brow. 
 
 The younger man saluted as gravely in this bit of 
 play to which neither of them ever directly adverted. 
 
 "Sir, I heard to-day that a troop-ship had come 
 
58 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 from the islands. Any news ? Is the Third Squadron 
 still in Samar? You mentioned my son s name as I 
 entered." 
 
 Miss Cranberry sent a frightened warning to Arnold. 
 The young man looked calmly into the veteran s half- 
 blinded eyes. 
 
 "There was some fighting, sir, in Samar, and Larry 
 well, the Squadron was cut up a bit, I understand." 
 
 "Eh ? and my son ? " The old man s eager voice 
 trembled. 
 
 The group was motionless. Arnold s cool tones 
 broke the constraint. 
 
 "I was going to tell you, Captain. Larry can t 
 return with the regiment. He ll be delayed a bit he 
 was well, a bullet through the arm." 
 
 "Wounded?" 
 
 "On the firing-line. Just a scratch, but blood- 
 poisoning. They sent him back to Cavite and cut off 
 his arm." 
 
 A proud joy shot through the Captain s face. He 
 cleared his throat oracularly. 
 
 "An arm? bah ! It ll make a man of the boy. A 
 mere scratch you should have seen our colonel, sir, 
 at Kenesaw his shoulder shot to ribbons " 
 
 "I know," faltered Arnold, to this familiar story. 
 "But Larry can t come soon as we hoped. You ll be 
 patient, Captain." 
 
 The Captain s grand air heightened. His fingers 
 went to the little button of the Loyal Legion on his 
 coat. Ah, no, it was nothing! He was a Georgian, 
 but he had fought for the North because, under that 
 same flag, his father had fought with Jackson at New 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 59 
 
 Orleans. He had 4ttt himself off from his people, but 
 after the war, angered at the Reconstruction, he had 
 resigned from the national service. They had been 
 hard years since, while a film was blotting the sun 
 from his eyes, but he had not complained. Never 
 would he accept a pension from a Government that had 
 treated his South as it had been treated ; one could be 
 proud, one could be clean, one could be patient it 
 was enough that one had served. These were strange 
 days now a commercial gabble of corruption and 
 the ways of money, hard to understand; and a man 
 who had fought at Shiloh, at the Wilderness, and had 
 caught his dead colonel at Kenesaw, and was going 
 blind, had better stay from it. He had one son, but 
 Lawrence had been a wild fellow a profligate with 
 this town man, Arnold, in camp and bar-room. Well, 
 maybe he would redeem himself in the Philippines 
 with Lawton and MacArthur. One could be patient. 
 The poverty of an attic was nothing, loneliness was 
 nothing, darkness was nothing, if one could wait, 
 patient and clean, for this reckless boy to come back 
 redeemed on the firing-line in the honor of service. 
 
 The Captain glanced about, nodding sagely. He 
 was trying to conceal his proud joy; it was better than 
 one could expect to have one s son wounded in such 
 a petty affair as this in Samar. His hand went to the 
 scar in his bushy brow as he frowned to dissemble his 
 thoughts. 
 
 "An arm gone um um! I hlope they won t baby 
 the boy. What of his comrades, sir and the action 
 what was it?" 
 
 The young man took the veteran s arm and led him 
 
60 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 apart from the women. "Captain," he whispered, "it 
 was splendid! A sergeant at the Presidio, just 
 returned, told me. It was a place called Bamboang. 
 The fellows held an old church all day against thou 
 sands. Larry was shot trying to drag a comrade from 
 danger he ll get the Honor Medal !" 
 
 The Captain started in the infinite issues of feeling. 
 The dim hall light glimmered in his eyes until he saw, 
 through a fulguration of glory, his son, a heroic figure, 
 a symbol of the older Republic, clean, ennobled, trans 
 figured. He turned to the dark to hide his brimming 
 tears from Arnold. 
 
 "Well, well, sir!" 
 
 They saluted each other gravely as two officers at 
 parade. The veteran turned to the stairs. 
 
 "And, Captain, it s all right about the money. Larry 
 doesn t need it. We ve arranged so that he ll send it 
 to me, and I ll hand it to you three dollars a week. 
 It s fine of Larry." 
 
 "I thank you, sir." The Captain s air was brusk. 
 This was irrelevant, this money talk. He went down 
 the front stairs, tap, tap, tapping with his cane, to 
 walk the block In the sunshine, remembering always 
 that a soldier must keep his shoulders back. 
 
 Arnold stood with folded arms gazing after him. 
 "I am an elegant liar." He checked a smile. "The 
 Captain s got small use for me. Larry it s tough to 
 go that way !" 
 
 His mind went back to his dead bunky ; to the moon 
 light nights on the Lunetta to Inez and Josefa, and 
 that Tagalog girl at Santa Ysabel. He had loved in 
 many ports and byways; He thought of his days of 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 61 
 
 youth, of the price he had paid for them ; of trie dead 
 trooper sleeping in Samar a bit of his own life was 
 bound up in the moonlight on the island shores. 
 Maybe Larry was the happier man ! 
 
 A touch came to his arm; his bride of to-day was 
 looking up at him. 
 
 "He wasn t so bad, was he Larry ? Did he quarrel 
 with his father ? Wouldn t he come home ?" 
 
 "Little girl, he was just like me my bunky." 
 
 "Miss Cranberry says that you ve been paying his 
 father s room rent and for his meals and pretending 
 all the time that Larry sent the money. What ll you do 
 now?" 
 
 "Kid, I don t know. Do you think I d tell the Cap 
 tain that his son was killed in a dirty barrack row? 
 He s too blind to read the papers he never sees any 
 one he ll never need to know." 
 
 "He ll just wait," said Miss Cranberry. "The 
 grand old man!" 
 
 "Let him wait," retorted Arnold. "We ll muddle 
 through somehow!" 
 
 The old woman went bustling off to get her rolls 
 and bacon. The two lovers sat in the grimy little 
 kitchen facing the air-shaft ; on one side was the gas 
 stove, on the other the dining-table, with the cracked 
 oilcloth. "Admiral Byng," the Cranberry parrot, 
 swung on his dirty perch in the window and squawked 
 at the Liquor Store cat, who, utilizing the entire build 
 ing in his forays, had arrived for breakfast with 
 Granny. 
 
 The old woman s voice came in an excited query 
 from the stairs. Then she flew breathlessly to the 
 
62 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 kitchen. "A guest, dearie," she cried. "A gentleman 
 to see my little mountain girl!" 
 
 Following Miss Cranberry was a tall man whom 
 Sylvia seized on in delight. His face and neck were 
 burned to a dull red, the powerful jaws were clean 
 shaven, his eyes very blue; and he wore the "best 
 clothes" of a woodsman funeral black, with a little 
 butterfly tie of brilliant purple under his celluloid col 
 lar. He carried a cotton flour sack filled with some 
 protuberant stuff under one arm, and about his clean 
 shoes crawled a small pointer pup of the most unimag 
 inable color as dogs go. That pup was only a shade 
 more subdued than the woodsman s necktie. 
 
 The stranger s eyes shone with satisfaction as he 
 released Sylvia s fingers. 
 
 "I brought the pup," he began, "an* I m the delegate 
 to this weddin ." 
 
 "Why, Louisville !" she cried in her laughing. "It s 
 just fine !" 
 
 "An* Miss Winkle sent you some dried apples," con 
 tinued the man from the North. "Came from the 
 clearin* over the ridge on the South Fork yes, seh !" 
 
 "Jack," began his bride-to-be, in some confusion, 
 "this is Mr. Banway. He s head faller at Camp Nine. 
 The boys all call him Louisville." 
 
 "Bo n in Kentucky when I was quite young," said 
 Mr. Banway, with a pleased and reminiscent joke. 
 Young Mr. Arnold extended his hand genially, as the 
 woodsman inserted a finger to hoist his celluloid 
 collar. 
 
 "Glad to meet you any friend of Sylvia s " 
 
 He was interrupted by a cry from the girl. She was 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 63 
 
 staring at a squab of a child in denim overalls, his 
 yellow curls under a knit red cap, who was peering 
 trustfully about the balustrade. 
 
 "O, Louisville!" 
 
 "The Camp said to bring it to you. Mrs. Baker 
 went to Arcata, an there wasn t a woman left at 
 Nine. We all rememb d you said you d take it. So 
 the skid-boss give it them overalls " 
 
 Sylvia was laughing over the small man, laughing 
 and blushing and twisting his curls. Arnold, too, fell 
 to smiling at her pretty confusion and with his own 
 wonder. 
 
 "Its mother cooked at Nine," said Sylvia ; "then she 
 died at the hospital in Arcata last summer. Mrs. 
 Baker and I cared for it when I came down from Trin 
 ity to the big trees. All the boys in the slashin stand 
 by the Cookhouse Kid he s so little." 
 
 "And is he it ours now?" inquired Mr. Arnold. 
 
 "Well, I don t know I promised because I had 
 nothing to do and the boys all said " 
 
 "And that pup? Louisville, what s the matter with 
 the dog?" 
 
 "Belonged to an Arcata dye-house man," related Mr. 
 Banway solemnly. "Used to be white, that spike-tail 
 pup. The dye man thought he d make him into a 
 walkin adve tisement, so he put him in the blue vat 
 an then tried to paint Arcata Dye Works on his ribs 
 in red and yellow trimmin s. Well, that fool dog 
 began to pe spire before he got dry, and the colehs 
 run, and when the pup saw himself, he did, too, and 
 crawled into the bay. Reguleh Easteh-egg dog afteh 
 them colehs run. Dye man was so shamed o that job 
 
64 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 that he sent the pup up to the woods to bleach. 
 Trouble was he couldn t boil the dog so s the colehs d 
 stick. We gave im to the Cookhouse Kid, an* he sits 
 round remorseful, speculatin if he hadn t oughte been 
 boiled, afteh all. Reguleh scrambled-egg dog." 
 
 "Now he s a real lavender," added the girl from the 
 country-up-in-back. 
 
 The grave-faced young man of the city stood look 
 ing at his bride-to-be, at the pup, at the dried apples 
 and the Cookhouse Kid; there were some aspects of 
 matrimony that apparently he had not considered. The 
 Northerner seemed to read his study. 
 
 "They all go along with heh" he added; "sorteh 
 mutual." 
 
 "Louisville, I don t mind marrying the dog and the 
 dried apples, but I don t know about another rrian s 
 baby" 
 
 "John, it s such a little one !" cried the bride-to-be. 
 
 J. Hamilton Arnold removed his hat and bowed 
 with debonair mischief. 
 
 "Sweetheart, with you I d marry the whole of north 
 ern California. Blue dogs and babies ? why, it s sim 
 ply great!" 
 
 "Come to breakfast," cried Miss Cranberry from 
 the smoky kitchen, and they were marshaled in; 
 Sylvia with the manikin, and Mr. Banway with the 
 dried apples. The black-eyed Italian children left the 
 room, having eaten ; and Angelo took his sister of five 
 down to Happy Alley to play while he went to the 
 flower market. Miss Granny s kitchen had never had 
 such a packing about its little wall table; and never 
 was the old woman so vivacious, so happily engrossed. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 65 
 
 She heaped their plates and scolded when tHey would 
 have no more ; she asked a multitude of questions. In 
 fifteen minutes she knew the history of the waif from 
 the big woods, of Mr. Banway, the price of condensed 
 milk in Camp Nine, what a "soogler" was, and how 
 long the skid-boss had had the boil on his neck; and 
 had, in return, given the woodsman three different 
 remedies to carry back for the afflicted. With each 
 revelation of the big woods and their life she was 
 swamped in shrill wonder; forty years of lodging 
 houses had not dulled her eager, child s appreciation 
 of the marvelous world. 
 
 "Some of them redwoods along Little River is three 
 hundred and sixty feet high," concluded one of the 
 woodsman s tales, "an the tops grow into a mat so 
 thick the sun neveh reaches the ground, and down in 
 the glades the ferns grow six feet tall. By Mighty, 
 what a silence !" 
 
 Miss Cranberry could not believe it ; her black eyes 
 sparkled, her mouth worked as she groped for a suf 
 ficing imagination. 
 
 "And beyond the redwoods and the camps in the 
 slashin s," added Sylvia, "is the country-up-in-back, 
 where / came from!" 
 
 "Sixty mile o mountain trail to Trinity," resumed 
 the woodsman ; "that s how we brought heh out ! 
 The s no fog up-in-back no ferns an redwoods it s 
 green an sunny all the way." 
 
 "And -flowers! How d you like to see seven miles 
 of poppies along a trail, and great blue and purple 
 spikes and daisies and buttercups so many flowers 
 on so many hills that they are just a blur?" 
 
66 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "An nobody but the coyotes to smell em," Mr. Ban- 
 way confirmed. 
 
 The little, old lady sat back. In her grimy air- 
 shaft, under the parrot s shelter, she had one hyacinth 
 bulb that Frank Arasaka, the Japanese medical stu 
 dent, had given her when he had lived in the block and 
 had received her help through the fortuitous, occi 
 dental wisdom of "Is That a Cat?" Long she had 
 tended the hyacinth, but it would not blossom, and 
 here was a flower empire lorded by the yapping coy 
 otes ! She fell into a daze, and even when the guests 
 extricated themselves with a well-generaled manoeuver 
 of chairs, from the kitchen, she was still absorbed. 
 
 On the sunny balcony over the alley Arnold offered 
 Banway a cigar. 
 
 "When s the big show coming off?" queried the 
 guest. 
 
 "Some time to-day. It won t be much, but you re 
 in on it, Louisville." 
 
 "You goin to be good to heh you town man? 
 You see, the camps ll neveh fo get that preacheh s 
 girl. He was the only man c d come into the woods 
 an tell us about ou souls. All the big, rough country 
 from the South Fo k to the sea sorteh raised heh. 
 How-so she come to be a laidy, I cyan t see, but 
 she is." 
 
 "She s the best I ever knew." 
 
 "I hea d you d been a pretty wild one?" 
 
 "Well, you know how a man knocks around." 
 
 "I like you, som-a-way. I see you lookin right at 
 dogs and babies an that old woman wouldn t be you* 
 friend if you weren t tole able. I guess that God 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 67 
 
 A mighty ll pass up a lot of deviltry in them that smiled 
 an didn t fear His world." 
 
 "Old man," said Arnold, "let s go have a drink." 
 
 They went down and through Unc Pop s grocery, 
 with its shelves of soap and canned goods, and kegs 
 of fish and pickles, to the tiny bar. 
 
 "When A mighty made a good woman," said the 
 woodsman, as a toast, "I guess He knew what He 
 needed to get us all stampeded fo His Kingdom." 
 
 Mr. Banway grew solemnly inclined after that; he 
 excused himself, saying he had business on the city 
 front and would return at four o clock for the mar 
 riage, yet indeterminate as to the exact hour. Arnold 
 and his bride were to shop. 
 
 He took her down througK the sunny morning 
 affairs of Kearny Street, loitering here, there, at the 
 windows. Sylvia lost her night-dread of the city ; its 
 glitter, light, motion, the sheen of silks and the jewels 
 in the store fronts came to overwhelm her, and she 
 flitted from one charm to another, with little cries of 
 delight, a bound of soul, a woman finding her own in 
 the primal love of pretty things, the gay, comforting 
 vanities for which cities are builded. 
 
 Arnold took her to the very best shop in the city, 
 and when she became lost in the crush, for the fash 
 ionable trade was at its flood, he went to the vestibule 
 of the store to await her. Near him in the street was 
 a smart victoria, the horses superb, the coachman cor 
 rect, the single occupant a young woman about whose 
 throat was swathed a fluff of chiffon and feathers. 
 She was comfortably fixed in the cushions, apparently 
 awaiting some shopper. The young man s mind dwelt 
 
68 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 on this, for at once he glanced from the carriage 
 back into the store and turned aside by the doors. But 
 another young woman, coming out, had seen him. 
 She went directly to him with a surprised smile, greet 
 ing him with distinct pleasure as though she had come 
 on an opportunity long deferred. She was tall, 
 exquisitely tailored in a gray morning dress, with the 
 freshness of grooming added to her radiant health ; a 
 woman of thirty, clear-skinned, fine-looking from a 
 distinctive, deliberate originality and shrewdness, that 
 surmounted the conventionality of clothes and class, 
 and marked her at once as a Californian born and bred. 
 
 A studied indifference enveloped Arnold as he took 
 the hand she offered ; he would rather not have met her. 
 
 "But you couldn t evade me, could you?" she said 
 clearly. 
 
 "Not in the least," he laughed, shaken from his 
 defense; "we haven t met often of late, Edith. I 
 thought perhaps you had accepted the situation." 
 
 "That you had resolved to lose us altogether? Of 
 course you ll say you ve been busy another amateur 
 opera, wasn t it, up in the Valley ?" 
 
 "I needed a vacation, and, still more, the money." 
 
 "Of course you did. I remember when you and 
 Watt were suspended from the university, and both 
 borrowed money of me to run down to Honolulu until 
 your respective dads could look at the matter differ 
 ently. You haven t improved a great deal." 
 
 "And I ve had more than a chance in the past eight 
 years." 
 
 She turned keenly to affirm an impression that a 
 shade of bitter satire was in his careless humor. Miss 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 69 
 
 Chatom knew vaguely his way of life; she had tried 
 patiently ever since the ruin of his father s fortunes 
 and reputation to make a friend of Jack Arnold, who 
 had been her playmate in their Sonoma County child 
 hood, and a chum of her brother Watt through a desul 
 tory college career that ended when the elder Arnold 
 was sent to San Quentin for the wrecking of the Irri 
 gation Company through a floating of illegal bonds. 
 That was before Barren Chatom reorganized the com 
 pany and came to the city, where he had risen to power 
 and wealth on the foundations that had ruined Selden 
 Arnold. The elder men had been business friends ; the 
 children cordially intimate. 
 
 When Selden Arnold was convicted, his fortune 
 lost, and his only son dropped from the whirl of the 
 litigious struggle into a trooper s saddle in the Sec 
 ond Cavalry, Watt and Edith Chatom never for a 
 moment wavered in their friendship for Jack Arnold. 
 Edith met him five years later, a returned time-expired 
 man, and received him with friendly eagerness; she 
 could have done much for him, but he consistently 
 rebuffed her. Watt Chatom was busied with his ranch 
 ing enterprises in the San Joaquin, rushing from the 
 city in his ninety-horse-power machine to tear half 
 the length of the state and surprise his Stanislaus 
 County tenants, and then charging on to San Luis 
 Obispo, where he had another nine-thousand-acre 
 wheat farm. Therefore, he could assist little in the re 
 claiming of Arnold. 
 
 And after a year curious stories came to Edith s 
 circle; she ignored them and still laid stratagems to 
 lure her childhood s friend back to the old comrade- 
 
70 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 ship. But John Arnold, himself, would have none of 
 it; he had never been to the great house diatom had 
 built on Pacific Avenue ; he evaded Edith with inscrut 
 able smiles at their inadvertent meetings. She had an 
 irritating feeling that he held their ways apart from a 
 cynical realization of their social differentiation, as 
 much as from his penury or the remembrance of his 
 wounded name, and this galled her with a sense of 
 injustice. For she cared nothing about society in its 
 strict sense; from her assured position, she even dis 
 dained it. She went to the best plays, operas, and 
 concerts ; she concerned herself with higher club activ 
 ities, read the best literature, befriended artistic aspir 
 ants in painting and music, went among the university 
 people across the bay, and for her recreation drove, 
 rode or played golf at the Presidio. She had been for 
 years engaged to an ambitious man of science, an 
 official of the federal forestry service. She had an 
 honest striving after the best human expression, and 
 but a smiling tolerance for either the self-conscious 
 Bohemianism of San Francisco, or its exclusive cir 
 cles, a society which hung open-mouthed on the club 
 witticisms of one liquor dealer, and whose season was 
 opened annually with the ball given by another, an 
 occasion which contributed much to the advertisement 
 of his wares. 
 
 Therefore she resented John Arnold s arrogation 
 of an essential barrier to their friendship. She cared 
 nothing about his family or personal vicissitudes ; she 
 understood that he was "doing politics," in some way 
 or other, for a municipal administration notoriously 
 corrupt; that he was hand-in-glove with an element 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 71 
 
 evilly dominant; but she also understood that these 
 were the ways of men in affairs. Her father held his 
 power by dealing with or utilizing these same social 
 forces, and she had not touched life poignantly enough 
 to shrink from dissembling these aspects of it. Watt 
 had told her once that Jack lived in a "queer joint" 
 near Chinatown; that he had helped carry his district 
 for the race-track crowd, and could probably get 
 "something good" at the city hall if he went after it. 
 
 Beyond that, she had heard little of him except in 
 connection with some of the bitter, perennial news 
 paper charges of ballot-box corruption, which were 
 too common in the city to be considered; and once, 
 driving on Grant Avenue, she saw him standing, with 
 his collar turned up, gazing in the window of a cheap 
 restaurant the day after Watt s gelding won the ten- 
 thousand-dollar California stakes at Emeryville. 
 
 Miss Chatom tightened the small parcel under her 
 arm. A glance at the carriage showed that her cousin 
 Chrissie was getting impatient. She turned on Arnold 
 with a defiant pleasantry concealing her reproach. 
 
 "I don t suppose it s any use to repeat my invitation 
 for you to call, Jack, is it ?" 
 
 He smiled with regretful conviction. 
 
 "I have been indecent about it all. But you d be 
 surprised if I told you I might wish to and to wipe 
 Out a lot that s past." 
 
 "Don t bother about troublesome mights. Come." 
 
 "It ll be different," he said; and then, with sudden 
 doggedness, "Edith, I m going to be married." 
 
 She drew back in quick surprise. 
 
 "I am. To a girl I met up in the country. She Has 
 
72 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 some money; and she s shopping now in here." He 
 glanced about and pointed quietly up the store corridor 
 past a crush of women. "That girl the one in blue 
 at the glove counter." 
 
 Miss Chatom s cool eyes found the objective. Arnold 
 turned from his bride to watch the woman of wealth. 
 Sylvia was much better looking, still there was the 
 ineffaceable thing about Edith that the town man 
 values highly a superb completeness, a round salience 
 of character ; whatever she might havt lacked for her 
 life s expression, breeding and the wond had artfully 
 supplied. 
 
 Edith turned to him with a suggestion of a smile. 
 
 "Why, Jackand money? Is that it?" 
 
 "I shouldn t wonder," a bitter defense was behind 
 his smile. "I m past most anything else, don t you 
 imagine ?" 
 
 "And you love her ?" 
 
 "No," he said slowly, and repeated, "no." 
 
 She drew from his cool smile. After a while, think 
 ing of it, fixing him with her clear eyes, Miss Chatom 
 said : "You won t you re not that sort." 
 
 "I m the lone wolf, and I hunt," he murmured. 
 With Edith Chatom, with any one who had the recep- 
 tiveness of a culture that he had known, he dropped 
 the slang that was his careless habit with his familiars. 
 "Maybe the figure is a trifle forced, but that s it I m 
 the lone wolf who doesn t even train with his pack." 
 
 "But you won t do this you can t. You had ambi 
 tions once ideals. You could have raised yourself to 
 anything, despite all. You could have been all that I 
 might have wished for you. And that s a deal. Jack, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 73 
 
 I never forgot you I tried to help, even when you 
 were insolent to me !" * 
 
 He smiled grimly, again his sufficient self, past the 
 need of excuse, recalling that the height from which 
 she reproved him, the leisured culture that had made 
 her, was based on her father s wealth, which had pros 
 tituted the ideals of a state, cohabited with every un 
 speakable essential of success, and stopped at no law 
 of God or man that had, in his own obscure corner, 
 corrupted him and made him what he was before her. 
 But his smile turned to an impersonal humoring of a 
 sudden whim. 
 
 "It all happened once upon a time," he said; "she 
 was a simple maid of Arcady, and he came riding 
 through the wood. She was fair, and he loitered by 
 the way. He loved her because she was fair, and she 
 turned out to be the rich princess who was under a 
 spell in Arcady until he came. It s a dandy little story 
 I ve thought of it a deal." 
 
 The bright-faced girl in the velvet gown of the 
 country was coming toward them, under her arm an 
 enormous package. 
 
 Miss Chatom snapped shut her gold- woven bag. 
 
 "Jack, if you re worth her, you won t marry her 
 you won t! If you don t love her, she ll never help 
 you rise, and if you go down, she ll go with you. 
 Don t do it don t!" 
 
 Jack Arnold went forward to relieve his bride of 
 the bundle, to explain that it would be sent by carrier. 
 He smiled gravely at her pretty vivacity as she related 
 her adventures in the big store. Miss Chatom regarded 
 them an instant from the doors and then went to the 
 
74 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 carriage by the curb. Some desperate regret was at 
 her heart; it was as though the prelude of a tragedy 
 had been shown forth; one waited for the curtain to 
 rise, and yet knew forebodingly what the climacteric 
 would bring. She stepped up beside her cousin. 
 
 "Wasn t that Jack Arnold you were talking to 
 inside?" queried Chrissie carelessly. "Some one told 
 me he was living in Chinatown and was going to be 
 arrested for something or other." 
 
 "It was Jack. But all that isn t so, Chrissie." 
 
 "Captain Carlin told me once that he was a splendid 
 soldier in the cavalry cool and silent and obedient 
 and he was a private in the toughest troop in the serv 
 ice. He did something fine in that march on Peking 
 he should have stayed in the army." 
 
 "Yes," answered Miss Chatom, "if he only had !" 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 Arnold and his sweetheart idled an hour along Mar 
 ket Street on the sunny side of the Slot. They were 
 scrutinized sharply by every one at the great open- 
 front cigar shops, those peculiar establishments having 
 something of the atmosphere and freedom of the club, 
 indigenous to old San Francisco, which the equable 
 climate fostered a store opening along its entire front 
 or side to the street, with an ornate iron screen at the 
 top and a tessellated floor from counter to sidewalk. 
 Here the warming sun, never too hot for comfort, 
 streamed in, and the afternoon street idlers, fashion 
 ably dressed young men, watched the shoppers and 
 matinee-goers, and gossiped over the form bulletins of 
 the races, or bought the tipsters sheets hawked about 
 by the newsboys. 
 
 Arnold and his bride were by the front of a shoe 
 store, when a bareheaded young man, critically looking 
 over the window display, spoke to him with great 
 heartiness; a sunny- faced fellow, boyish, eager with 
 the day s life, prodigal of its youth. He did not dis 
 cern at the first glance that Sylvia was Arnold s com 
 panion. 
 
 "Hello, Hammy! What s doing in the third race 
 to-day. That Stillman colt all the way, isn t it?" 
 
 "Hasn t a chance," retorted Arnold; "Innocent 
 brings the money." 
 
 75 
 
76 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Eddie Ledyard s face clouded. "They were just 
 telling me do you suppose Nella knows anything 
 about it ? She hears a lot of inside talk, doesn t she ?" 
 
 "Nella? Where d you see her?" 
 
 "O, I just met her at Skelly s she was talking with 
 some fellow who is following the wise money at the 
 track. But Innocent " 
 
 Arnold glanced at Sylvia s unconscious study of the 
 store display. He crooked his forefinger under 
 Eddie s nose. "Son, keep away from that girl Nella. 
 She s got sort of a foolishness about you and you 
 know better!" 
 
 Eddie Ledyard laughed blithely. "O, of course 
 it s only a josh!" Then his eyes gripped their little 
 worry. "But Innocent good, eh?" 
 
 "Only horse in the race." Ham waved a debonair 
 adieu, guiding his bride along the way. 
 
 The boyish bookkeeper looked doubtfully after him. 
 Arnold should know; he was close to the "dope," so 
 the Street had it, and he never said things without a 
 reason. Ham didn t play the races much, but now and 
 then his name was buzzed about with a "killing" he 
 was a fellow who was let in on "good things" by the 
 wise people, which was the reason a certain youthful 
 coterie hung on any word from him. Eddie smiled 
 a farewell at Arnold, who was moving on with the 
 girl in blue. The boys had been more than street 
 friends Eddie Ledyard was a freshman at Lick High 
 School when Jack Arnold graduated, and they had 
 played on the same foot-ball team the senior s last 
 season. 
 
 At eleven o clock, when the tide of life through 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 77 
 
 Market Street was quickening, the loiterers turned to 
 a car that would transfer to the Cliff ride. Before the 
 entrance of an office building across the thoroughfare 
 stood a red automobile ; a man in the tonneau was sig 
 naling sharply to Arnold. Then he descended from 
 the machine with another quick gesture. 
 
 Arnold paused. "Sylvia, I m wanted." He glanced 
 irresolutely about as if loath to take her across to the 
 stranger, yet at a loss as to where she might be left. 
 Then he nodded at the man by the red car and turned 
 to Sylvia. Til have to go, Kid. Suppose you wait 
 in the parlors of the big store we were in just a few 
 minutes." 
 
 She was more than pleased. 
 
 Arnold crossed to the vestibule of the Security 
 Building, where Police Commissioner Stillman awaited 
 him. He was a brisk, alert-eyed man who had 
 been of the "Handsome Harry" type in his university 
 days, ten years ago, before he acquired his flesh; 
 a joker, a raconteur, of flattering address, never 
 at a loss for a quip, an indefatigable worker, a lieuten 
 ant of the boss, a shrewd attorney of the firm of 
 Chatom, Bence and Company. But for politic reasons 
 the police commissioner s name was not on the gilt 
 legend across the windows of the great law offices, to 
 a secluded room of which he now, in great joviality, 
 conducted Arnold. He had sent messengers for the 
 young man that morning and had scoured the city for 
 him the previous night, unavailingly, he said and it 
 was a matter of importance. Stillman closed the 
 opaque glass window to an outer room, where two 
 
78 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 clerks pored over papers and reports; the other win 
 dow looked down on the spacious court of the building. 
 
 The politician offered a cigar and sat back easily in 
 his desk chair, smiling over one of his witticisms. His 
 manner was ingratiating, a patronizing more flattering 
 than unpleasant; his study of the younger man was 
 unobtrusive, but incessant. 
 
 Stillman was the right-hand man of the boss, as cool, 
 wily, astute as the boss himself ; he was known in the 
 street as the "rent collector." v Through his connection 
 with the boss and his position on the police board, 
 where his associates were merely puppets, he was the 
 autocrat of the five thousand saloons and resorts in 
 the city, and of their forty thousand denizens and 
 habitues. From the millionaire liquor dealers shin 
 ing lights of San Francisco society down the descend 
 ing scale to the Barbary Coast, he, the overlord, drew 
 power through his hidden and intricate associations. 
 With the boss he assisted at extorting money from 
 every evil traffic; their business genius founded and 
 directed a score of enterprises that flourished through 
 their connection with the mayor. With one man they 
 were secretly associated in fire insurance, and it was 
 seen that every saloon and dive-keeper took out pol 
 icies with this concern; with another they established 
 a great crockery and glass store, and every cafe and 
 "French Restaurant" needing police acquiescence in 
 its methods saw the logic of purchasing exclusively 
 through this house; they founded a wholesale liquor 
 store, and from it wise dealers purchased their goods ; 
 they had relations with three different law firms, and 
 soon every seeker of justice, from the public service 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 79 
 
 corporations, the Six Companies of Chinatown down 
 to the street drabs and Pie gow gamblers, saw the 
 utility of retaining firms that could have it known, 
 though with subtle circumspection, that they had 
 peculiar resources in getting their clients affairs favor 
 ably before the departments of government, the police 
 courts and the superior bench. Under Stillman, the 
 satrap, the tenderloin vote was a political power, 
 astutely commercialized, organized for tribute; and 
 from every source, none too small to be neglected, 
 flowed an incalculable revenue to those Higher Up; 
 and down again, rotting through the social fabric, 
 flowed a portion of the mighty spoils. Stillman, the 
 specialist in elaborating the night life of the town, was 
 answerable to none save the boss and Barren Chatom, 
 the attorney for the railroad, who represented in the 
 secret government of the city the big money, the bribe- 
 giving boards of directors, managers, takers of profit, 
 as Stillman did the liquor men and the gamblers of 
 the track and the "fight combine;" and against this 
 power nothing in the city could stand. Behind Still- 
 man s smiling camaraderie, his blithe democracy and 
 power with men, stood the vague figures of the secret 
 rulers of the town, as of America, the money-getters. 
 Stillman looked at the young man in the chair across 
 from him, talking on the San Franciscan s ever-present 
 topic of the prize-ring and the races, before he dis 
 closed deeper affairs. 
 
 "Haven t been to Sacramento of late?" he queried, 
 at length, more leisurely. 
 
 "Not since the session began," answered Arnold. 
 
 Stillman laughed placidly. John Arnold was on the 
 
80 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 pay-rolls of the state of California at six dollars a day 
 as a clerk in the senate but he had not been near the 
 capital except to be sworn in. The people paid for his 
 efficient services of last November to the "push," in 
 rather good measure. 
 
 "You re worth something better, boy," resumed the 
 commissioner, patting his paunch with breakfast con 
 tent. "You haven t been around the city hall much 
 since the campaign I ve been in shape to find things 
 for you several times. We ve been pretty good friends, 
 Ham." 
 
 "Yes?" said Arnold leisurely. 
 
 "What I m getting at is this," continued the com 
 placent commissioner: "there s a trick to be turned 
 that s needed badly. Of course you know the grand 
 jury s beginning to push into a lot of things 
 McMahon would like to land Weldy on this registra 
 tion business and one way and another we can t con 
 trol em." 
 
 "They can t get Fred." Arnold s voice was indif 
 ferent. 
 
 "They can," retorted the commissioner emphatically. 
 "They ll indict him to-morrow for fraudulent registra 
 tion." 
 
 The younger man stared incredulously. Weldy, 
 assemblyman from the Fifty-Second, was his friend. 
 In the old days, when his father was going down in 
 the battle of millions over the San Joaquin water rights, 
 Ham used to go every night from the court room to the 
 Star printing office^ where Fred Weldy kicked a job 
 press. After Selden Arnold was convicted, and friends 
 and acquaintances fell away from the felon s son, it was 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 81 
 
 Fred s mother who offered him lodgings in an obscure 
 street; and when he returned from the wars, nursing 
 the bullet he got through a leg in Samar, it was the 
 simple old woman and her apprentice son who took 
 him in when he was again friendless and alone. Two 
 years later Arnold got the union printer into politics, 
 brought him to Stillman s notice, and he was sent to 
 the legislature, wholly untried and inexperienced except 
 for the two months in the registrar s office before the 
 primaries. 
 
 Fred was somewhat sheep-headed, and Arnold had 
 been his sponsor in his brief, uneventful political essay 
 in the tenderloin district. But Mother Weldy was 
 proud of the statesman ; Arnold had met her only the 
 other day and she showed him her new hat with the 
 shiny black cherries, and told him that when Fred was 
 governor she should go back to Bavaria to visit the 
 Grossmutter. 
 
 "That s the rub," Stillman was resuming. "I can t 
 shut McMahon off and he s put the grand jury on 
 Fred he was so sore over the beating he got in the 
 district. And it happens that five or six of the jurymen 
 are from the Fifty-Second and are standing with Mac." 
 The commissioner reached to a memorandum pad: 
 "Selig, O Grady, Brown that s the coal dealer Brown, 
 isn t it? Mayo and Landry." He rubbed his nose. 
 "It s a tough nut to crack. You know the registration 
 was a little raw in spots, and it s certain to furnish an 
 indictment." 
 
 "Can t you hold the jury?" 
 
 "Not in the Weldy matter. It s McMahon s per 
 sonal spite to indict him. And we want him badly in 
 
82 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 the legislature the anti-race-track bill, and then 
 Well, I don t mind telling you. We re behind Chatom 
 for the United States senate next year, and it ll be a 
 scratch fight. We can t afford to have Weldy in 
 dicted." 
 
 "No," said Arnold, "it would kill his mother." 
 
 The commissioner looked on his averted face with 
 sudden cunning. 
 
 "It would," he answered solemnly, "and that would 
 be a dirty deal. Weldy s got a future and the old 
 lady s proud of him." It was the first time Stillman 
 had heard Fred Weldy had a mother. 
 
 The younger man sat in some perplexity, while the 
 little square leather clock on Stillman s desk ticked 
 with business haste. 
 
 "It s funny about these jurors," Arnold muttered. 
 "Can t they be held in line? Of course I don t know, 
 but I thought you had a drag." 
 
 "Son," Stillman leaned to him and tapped his knee, 
 "they wouldn t touch you in a century but I can t 
 hold them on Weldy. That s why I m talking to you. 
 You re the straightest man we ve got everybody s 
 your friend about town. Now, Ham, you and Fred 
 were the two clerks who passed all those registration 
 applicants last summer about whom the big squeal is on, 
 but you notice that your name is never brought into it, 
 don t you ? The mayor and I were talking about you 
 last night. We decided that the thing to do is to have 
 you summoned before the grand jury and swear that 
 you handled all those registration lists all on the day 
 the specified instances of fraud are charged against 
 Fred." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 83 
 
 Arnold sat upright, staring at the other. 
 
 "Great and glorious !" he said at length, "you don t 
 want much, do you?" 
 
 "We want to keep Weldy in his seat we re going 
 to need him badly." 
 
 "And I m to commit perjury?" 
 
 "Jack, we ll guarantee you immunity. We can swing 
 the grand jury in your case. You can hold men that 
 would eat Weldy. I ll deposit ten thousand dollars in 
 any bank you name as a bond and a wager that they 
 won t touch you. I know my men !" 
 
 "Harry, I m out of politics. I ve done a lot of dirty 
 work for you, but I quit last night for good." 
 
 The commissioner smiled. Arnold s face was 
 averted. 
 
 "Well, Fred goes over the road. He ll get five years 
 on every count, if they get it before Judge Ransome or 
 Dolan and they will. If he s indicted, and it gets into 
 court, I throw up my hands and leave him I can t 
 afford to stir the matter further." 
 
 Arnold laughed grimly. "Sometime the lid will rip 
 up and we ll all be blown to hell !" said he. "I see it 
 coming." 
 
 The commissioner sighed. "Well, here s a good man 
 your friend going in stripes. Fred swears by you 
 he ll take your word now when I couldn t program 
 him a minute." 
 
 The younger man rose and went to the window to 
 stare down in the air shaft. He was thinking of Mrs. 
 Weldy and the way the shiny black cherries had nodded 
 above her kindly face ; and of Fred he had intended 
 to put Fred "right" in his budding career. After all 
 
84 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Fred had done little of the registration ; Ham, himself, 
 a lieutenant of the tenderloin push, had sworn in the 
 "floaters" last summer, brazenly, cynically assured 
 that he would be "protected" that this, indeed, was 
 what he was there for. Fred s wrong-doing in the 
 matter had been a mere looking on and grinning at the 
 audacity of it all this revelation of practical politics 
 at the city hall. 
 
 "Ham, it s safe as lying in bed," said Stillman 
 steadily. "You know me I couldn t operate long if 
 my word wasn t good as a bond, could I ? Well, I say 
 you ll be protected, if you exonerate Fred. I control 
 enough of the jurors to stop the investigation right 
 there. And you keep the best friend you ever had out 
 of state prison." 
 
 The police commissioner s voice had the emphasis 
 of truth. Arnold was scratching on the window glass. 
 Then he turned : "Harry, if I do this thing, I m done 
 for." 
 
 "Ham, you re safe. Boy, I can put behind you 
 bigger things than you ever dreamed of!" 
 
 "I wasn t thinking of my safety. I m not afraid of 
 any indictments by that grand jury push but, well, I 
 thought I was out of it all I ve gone pretty deep, but 
 never to perjury." 
 
 "It s up to you whether or not Fred goes over the 
 bay. I tell you, we daren t make any fight in court for 
 him." 
 
 "I m just thinking," mused the other, "what I ever 
 got out of this game. Harry, you put me into politics. 
 I was pretty clean until you got me to working in the 
 district, and I only started it to help my old man 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 85 
 
 because you said you d see that that pardon of his 
 went through. That was three years ago." 
 
 "Arnold," retorted the commissioner, "turn this 
 trick for me and I ll have that matter before the 
 governor in forty-eight hours." 
 
 "You will?" 
 
 "You know the man who can? That s Chatom." 
 
 "Chatom? He s cold as death!" 
 
 "Chatom wants Weldy left alone for that senator- 
 ship fight next session. Didn t I say I could put big 
 ger things behind you than you ever dreamed of? 
 Why, boy, come out of your daze! Don t you see it 
 don t you see?" 
 
 Arnold stirred as Stillman s hand struck his shoul- 
 r der. He wheeled in the revolving chair and stared 
 at the white farther wall of the court. In the outer 
 office he heard the clicking of a typewriter, some 
 where else the muffled drone of a voice dictating to a 
 stenographer. 
 
 "Seen the old man lately?" Stillman s cool voice 
 came from afar to his thoughts. 
 
 "Never since he went up. He made me promise 
 never to see him in the pen." 
 
 "Franey was at San Quentin last week. He said 
 the old man was looking pretty worn and broken." 
 
 Arnold s thoughts went somberly back to his boy 
 hood, when "the old man" was putting in the great 
 irrigation works that ruined him in the San Joaquin. 
 Losing his mother in his early days, an only child, he 
 had grown up the chum of Selden Arnold, the daring 
 operator in lands and development schemes. Many 
 the ride the small boy had had across the California 
 
86 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 hills on his father s saddle horn, while they watched 
 the big ditches dug and the diverting dams and head- 
 gates built. And "the old man" must be worn and 
 broken now he was seventy-one, and a proud, high 
 fighter for San Quentin. Ham had hoped and worked 
 and intrigued three years for the day when he should 
 free him then they would go somewhere and begin 
 anew. 
 
 "Well, boy, what do you think of it?" 
 
 "Chatom can deliver the goods?" 
 
 The police commissioner s hand went to the desk 
 telephone : "We ll go see him." 
 
 "Never mind," muttered Arnold, "I know he can 
 that s not bothering me." 
 
 For Sylvia s face rose to his moody imagination ; he 
 was her knight, without reproach ; he had no past with 
 her, he was fair and stainless, and now he would tell 
 her this yes, he should tell her this ! an unconquer 
 able revolt came to him when he whispered that he 
 need say nothing, he could marry her and be silent. 
 No, the papers would have it, they would hound him 
 and jeer ; they might even, after all, indict him in the 
 grand jury room, and he would be the storm center at 
 once for a mighty struggle, for the old order was break 
 ing. A district attorney in whom the organization could 
 not trust was in office and ambitious for a record. 
 
 And at once Sylvia, her gray eyes filled with doubt, 
 with trouble and with pain was before him; if he did 
 this act he was in the net they had him ; he was again 
 a rounder of the tenderloin, a story-teller about the 
 bar-rooms, an idler on the street corners, at the fight 
 clubs and at the races; and when the time came he 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 87 
 
 again would "do politics" for his master, taking the 
 same brazen, defiant chances, heeding nothing, caring 
 nothing. 
 
 But there was Fred Weldy who had always been 
 pretty straight, and his "old man" who had suffered 
 overmuch from his dogged enemies. 
 
 Arnold wheeled and faced Stillman. "When s this 
 to be done ?" 
 
 "This afternoon." 
 
 "What I" 
 
 "I ll see that you re summoned I have information 
 of every move they make. Our men in the grand jury 
 room are standing pat. I want you to go before them 
 at three o clock this afternoon and swear that you were 
 the official in the registrar s office on August the sixth, 
 last, who swore in the twenty-two voters they allege 
 in their complaint to be fraudulently entered." 
 
 The young man looked attentively at the politician, 
 who smiled, with a hand upraised at the door, and said : 
 "Now, don t mix in that push at the city hall, and 
 don t mind the papers and the threats and the roars. 
 I ll put everything behind you, now the big men, the 
 moneyed interests, the railroad that wants Chatom in 
 the senate and can t afford to lose Weldy in the next 
 legislature I can put the whole damned system from 
 here to Wall Street behind you. Stand right, and 
 there s nothing can break you !" 
 
 Arnold nodded and left with a smile. On the street 
 corner without, in the sunshine and the rushing life, 
 he paused, his lips gray, twitching, and tore open an 
 envelope he took from his pocket. It was a warrant for 
 one hundred and sixty-eight dollars for his month s 
 
88 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "services" to the people of the state of California as 
 a senate clerk. He smiled again over the paper. 
 
 "Only a little," he muttered, "just a little steal." He 
 looked up at the sunny sky; the town seemed tamed 
 and dull, the buoyant morning gone. "Well," he mur 
 mured again, in a sort of patient relief, "I guess it s 
 best. I don t love her it s been fine this morning, but 
 after all, I don t love her. This lets her out. Edith s 
 right and Nel s right. I ll buck it through for Fred 
 and the old man but, O, little girl !" 
 
 Sylvia met him in the parlors of trie great store. 
 They boarded a car for the Cliff, and he was quiet and 
 gentle, even more than she had ever seen him. She was 
 radiant in the cheerful day; pretty, gracious, pleased 
 with the way she had seemed to compromise with this 
 large, new life. A resolve to be tolerant of everything 
 and every one; to see, to know, to live to the full, to 
 be the woman came to her. In the crowded store 
 parlor she had uttered a prayer, as she listened to the 
 clangor, and now a wonderful happiness had enveloped 
 her. Everything would be right now. She had given 
 herself to this man and his life ; she would glorify both 
 with her love. 
 
 They walked along the sands below the Cliff, look 
 ing at the illimitable Pacific, the flick of a sail in the 
 blue, the sun warming the fresh wind who couldn t 
 be happy on such a morning ? Presently Arnold smiled 
 down at her ingenuous chatter. He packed the dry 
 sand in a heap for her to sit on, and sat by her hold 
 ing her hand, regardless of the people sunning them 
 selves about. 
 
 "I never saw the ocean but once before, and that was 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 89 
 
 when I came down from Humboldt. And when we 
 rode over the long trail on the ridge back of Little 
 River, Louisville showed it to me just a tiny blue 
 over the great redwoods miles away ! O, it was beauti 
 ful and, I thought of you! You didn t come to 
 Trinity by the coast, did you? You don t know how 
 black the slashin s look after the fires, and how big the 
 trees are, and how the fog hangs low in the canons and 
 the green hills peer through everything s so big it 
 scares one!" 
 
 "But that s what I want. I d like to own a hill, clean 
 and big and high in the north little girl, wouldn t 
 that be fine?" 
 
 She laughed. From his pocket she took the marriage 
 license, stained with wine and marked with cat tracks, 
 and opened its pleasing width on her lap. "John Ham 
 ilton Arnold," she mocked, "aged twenty-nine, and a 
 white man !" 
 
 "Not now," he muttered ; "black as the rim of hell !" 
 
 She started at his tone. 
 
 The man suddenly sat up and shook the sand from 
 his sleeve and did not look at her. Then he turned 
 toward her, dropping his eyes from hers to the mar 
 riage license fluttering in the wind under her hand. 
 
 "Sylvia, do you know what you re doing? Do you 
 know what I am?" He watched now a wave crest 
 from the ocean break so near that its salt spray splashed 
 the sands at their feet. "I m a rounder in the tender 
 loin nothing else. I m a desperate failure. I had a 
 chance to study law in the biggest firm in this town 
 I studied it just ten months ; I had a chance to go to 
 college I went just eighteen months; I had a chance 
 
90 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 to stick at ^music with this voice of mine and I threw 
 it away; I went in the army and all I did was to get 
 shot in the leg by some Kackeyack. I came back to this 
 town, and what have I been since ? A grafter, a hanger- 
 on of the worst crowd under God s sun. Do you 
 realize it ?" 
 
 "You told me once you were almost a gambler." 
 
 "Yes, I tried to cut in with a book at Emeryville 
 track and I quit broke. Wally Walters and I wrote a 
 musical burlesque once and I tried to land it on O Far- 
 rell Street and the bunk men held us up." 
 
 He saw she was puzzled by his town jargon. "I 
 mean if we d bribed the grafters around the theater 
 we d have had our show put on. I m just telling you 
 all this to have you see what I live in the cold, fierce, 
 dirty game it is and this is only the least of it all." 
 
 "It isn t right," she said slowly. "John, you 
 mustn t !" 
 
 "Nothing s right it s a big graft. I never had a 
 man come to me with a straight proposition in my life. 
 I never tried to spring a straight game myself that 
 some crook didn t block me." He poured a handful of 
 sand into his hat. She saw the thin curls blow about 
 his white forehead. "Kid," he went on, "I never had 
 anything get so close to me as you have I never 
 wanted to be square so badly in my life as I do now." 
 
 The girl s gray eyes filled ; the radiance of her morn 
 ing was dying. 
 
 "I guess it s cause you love me," she whispered. 
 
 He stirred restlessly. 
 
 "Look here. Last night you placed ten thousand dol 
 lars in my hand to keep for you, you stayed all night 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 91 
 
 in my rooms alone. You simply floor me with your 
 way of looking at things and trusting me." 
 
 "Why not ?" she said, staring at him. 
 
 "Sylvia," he retorted, "do you know who I am? 
 I m Seld Arnold s son." 
 
 "Arnold? Seld Arnold?" She was thinking hard, 
 then she started. 
 
 "My father s in San Quentin. You must have heard 
 of the big case in the San Joaquin. All the farmers 
 hate him he financed the big irrigation works and 
 when the crash came a lot of them were ruined. The 
 railroad smashed him because he supported Pennoyer 
 for governor the public doesn t really know, but that 
 was it. They won his financial backers away, and then 
 the old man did a foolish thing." 
 
 She looked away at the sea; a tremulous twitch of 
 her chin was all that he saw of her suffering. 
 
 "I know, now. I was a little girl, but I remember. 
 My father lived there then and he lost everything 
 church and all. We moved to Trinity and took up some 
 timber land." 
 
 "Well, we did it we ruined half that country." 
 
 The girl rose on one knee in the sand, looking in 
 tently at his somber face. A slow mischief came into 
 her eyes; she half crept toward him and then she 
 leaped against his shoulder, her firm arms about his 
 neck, her clean breath on his cheek. Laughing, she 
 kissed him again and again, overwhelming him with 
 her belief in him, her trust and love of him. The pass 
 ers on the sand, the carriage people on the Cliff drive, 
 looked on them amused. 
 
 He was confusedly trying to put her back, "Don t, 
 
92 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 little girl don t!" he whispered. "Let me tell you 
 let me explain " 
 
 "What do we care?" she cried joyously. "Suppose 
 your father is in prison, and suppose he did ruin mine ? 
 O, we re young and free, and that was long ago !" 
 
 "But that isn t it. No, you ll have to know." 
 
 His face made her draw back; her laughing eyes 
 shrank from his steadiness ; she sat on her heels in the 
 sand. 
 
 "What do you mean, John? Isn t it all right?" 
 
 "I told you the kind of man I am. I was square, 
 wasn t I?" 
 
 "Well, I guess you told me most the worst and I 
 forgave you !" 
 
 "There are some things I can t tell. The whole town 
 would smile if I tried to explain that you were straight 
 after you had stayed at my place last night, but no 
 matter. I ve been square." 
 
 She sat staring doubtfully at him. The silence grew 
 long. He dug his fingers into the sand and poured it 
 in a little yellow stream from one hand to the other. 
 Without looking at the girl who was trying to put back 
 the straying hair from her ears, he resumed. 
 
 "I can see it all, now I can look ahead to all my 
 life. Sylvia, I brought you here to tell you I wouldn t 
 have you in it for anything !" 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 "Hadn t we better go back to town?" he evaded. 
 "Haven t you some friends you can stay with to 
 night?" 
 
 "To-night ? What do you mean, John ?" She looked 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 93 
 
 at him in an inexplicable horror now. His stern face 
 was not averted, steadfastly he dared look at her. 
 
 "Sylvia, here s your money every cent. That s all 
 I was after. I was just playing you that s all." 
 
 She could not answer, she could not look at him. 
 
 "But aren t you aren t we " 
 
 He took the need of speech from her, gently, as if 
 to shelter her. 
 
 "I m done for that s all. And I m glad for it gave 
 me a chance to be square with you. Little girl, it s for 
 your good the simple, honest soul in you. I m not 
 going to marry you, Sylvia. I don t love you." 
 
 The girl rose. Slowly she faced the keen sea-north. 
 There the redwood forests were, the gloom of the hills, 
 the silent places. She looked into the wind over the 
 ocean, trying to fasten back the wayward brown hair 
 blowing about her face. She turned to the east, and 
 there the city lay under a dun cloud, the brute town 
 from which, for twenty hours, his arms had sheltered 
 her. Now Never had she been so lonely. She had 
 not dreamed that any one could be so sad, the wind so 
 chill, the world so desolate. Mute and dry-eyed, she 
 faced again the northern sea. 
 
 "It came over me this morning," he went on slowly. 
 "I saw how I had treated you. Yes, it must be that 
 something awoke in me I saw so clearly." 
 
 "Something awoke in you," she whispered. "Your 
 soul, I guess." 
 
 He looked at her for a time; it seemed some tre 
 mendous hope was rising in him, and then he went on 
 quietly. 
 
 "No; I just want to be square somewhere. There re 
 
94 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 not many things where I ve a chance, but I wanted one, 
 and that was you. Maybe there s a God who watches 
 and believes maybe He ll understand how a fellow 
 wanted to get back and couldn t ; how, maybe, he found 
 his soul but it was asleep, and while he shook it and 
 cursed it and smashed it, it wouldn t waken. Maybe, 
 if there s a God, He knows. I couldn t make anybody 
 else understand." 
 
 "Don t," she whispered, but he went on slowly as 
 before. 
 
 "Well, with you I did my best or worst. I can t tell 
 which. Only it seems like I must warn you off. I d 
 rather do that now, Sylvia, than sometime have you 
 look at me and know and feel when it was too late " 
 
 "Yes," she had a strange pathos of faith in the look 
 she gave him, "I know. Something s fighting in you 
 your soul and there is a God yes, a God who cares. 
 Else you wouldn t care, I tell you; else you d never 
 care to save me. Yes you ve a soul and it s trying." 
 
 "Perhaps," he muttered, "and perhaps there s the 
 God you pray to. But I never have believed I ve 
 never cared." 
 
 "Believe now," she answered. "You re leaving me, 
 and I m only asking that, believe and try, O, try !" 
 
 He looked on her in such dumb wonder out of his 
 misery that at last her tears were falling that he could 
 be so stricken and so still. 
 
 "Let s go," she whispered, and checked the sob. 
 "But there s God who cares, and I m caring always; 
 and you can believe and you can try all your life long. 
 Now, come," she added. And then, as they went along 
 toward the hotel overhanging the ocean rocks, Arnold 
 
THE DAY OF! SOULS 95 
 
 silent in bewilderment, she cried out, as if in joy : "And 
 I ve made you better, and you can t forget !" 
 
 Within the dining-room she paused by a small table, 
 laying down her gloves and the little silken case which 
 held the money he had that morning withdrawn from 
 the Maplewood and given back to her. "I think I ll 
 fix my hair," she said. "It s all blowy." 
 
 And again, with wonder at her gentleness, he 
 watched her go to the dressing-room. He tried to cry 
 out and it was a mutter : "God cares !" and he repeated 
 it not knowing what he said : "God cares God cares !" 
 
 A waiter smoothed the cloth and set the silver, while 
 Arnold stared down the sun brilliance on the wet 
 coast leagues to where the California mountains rose, 
 a blue barrier. 
 
 "I did it wrong," he muttered. "She doesn t under 
 stand. I told it wrong, somehow somewhere." 
 
 The seals on the ancient rocks barked in silly 
 bravado ; on the drive the carriage wheels glittered ; on 
 the beach children shouted. The young man saw one, 
 bare-legged in the winter wind, sturdily tugging at its 
 pail of sand, and wondered if it was not cold ; he, him 
 self, shivered in the draft down the corridor. Then he 
 glanced at his watch she had been gone eight min 
 utes. He waved away the approaching waiter. Look 
 ing down the cliff, he saw some men on a pinnacle 
 gesticulating and pointing at the seething whirlpools 
 at its base. From a window below him a man s bald 
 head protruded ; he, too, was gesturing. In the yeasty 
 waves plunging among the rocks eighty feet below, a 
 blue drenched object was boiled up and sucked under. 
 
 He dashed up in a swift fear, staring out in the sun- 
 
96 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 radiant net of spray hiding the caverns. But it was a 
 bit of flotsam of the sea. Then he whirled about at a 
 touch, with a face ashy as the rocks. A small tightly- 
 bottoned boy, who sold cigars about the tables, held a 
 paper to him. 
 
 "Table seven," he said, "single gent it s you. Lady 
 gave me this for you. She took a car." 
 
 "Car? Did you see her take the car?" 
 
 "Yes, sir. Blue car. Haight Street line, ten minutes 
 ago. She told me to wait that long." 
 
 Arnold took the note. Below the ornate letter-head 
 of the hotel was written in Sylvia s girlish hand : 
 
 DEAR JOHN I can t understand, but never mind. I 
 believed in you always and I prayed. If you don t love 
 me, it s all right. I told you there s a God to under 
 stand. And I won t take the money. I ve more, and 
 maybe this will help you through it all. You ve always 
 been fine to me, and I m all right. I m thinking about 
 home but it s lonely in the country-up-in-back. 
 
 Always, SYLVIA. 
 
 At ten o clock that night Arnold wandered into the 
 Maplewood saloon. His face was flushed, his eyes 
 sparkled alertly, shooting nervous glances at the hab 
 itues, but he spoke to none. Ferreri idled over the bar ; 
 he was ignored. Cronies spoke curiously to him; a 
 buzz of comment followed him as he passed to the rear 
 of the establishment under the blaze of the electric 
 lights. He went along the passage by the gold room, 
 famous for its political conferences, to the tapestried 
 corridor by the curtained boxes. At the farther end of 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 97 
 
 the passage, near the ball-room, he leaned unsteadily 
 aside to allow the exit of a waiter, and then, being 
 under a light, he mechanically drew an evening paper 
 from his pocket. In the course of a two-column story, 
 pungently satiric, on the current investigation into 
 scandals affecting the municipal government, was a 
 paragraph which Arnold folded over. It read: 
 
 "Another witness before the grand jury this after 
 noon, was J. H. Arnold, formerly clerk of registry 
 under Blasingham. It is alleged that Arnold s testi 
 mony directly refuted the evidence that has gone to 
 show Assemblyman Weldy s connection with the fraud 
 ulent registration. The former registry clerk swore 
 that he alone was on duty when the registrations cited 
 in the evidence as illegally entered, were sworn in, 
 and further, that they were regular registrations. Ar 
 nold was defiant in the extreme in giving his testimony, 
 relying on a well-established pull to protect him, but 
 it is said further investigations may result in his in 
 dictment for perjury." 
 
 About each green-paneled polished wall of the danc 
 ing-room, on a border of carpet, were small tables, and 
 though the hour was early the place was well filled. 
 Through the smoke and above the voices, the idling 
 notes of a piano strayed. A woman in one of the groups 
 at the tables a magnificent creature with a regal yet 
 merry face, a "coon shouter" of the music-halls was 
 humming, though her velvety contralto raised it to 
 more than this, an aria from Rigoletto. 
 
 "La Donna e Mob-il-e" she sang and then smiled 
 
98 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 languorously to Arnold. They had been together in 
 the chorus of the Tivoli opera in the days of Colla- 
 marini; she knew him as all the women of the night 
 knew him as they turned on street and in cafe to look 
 at him, the penniless jester who gave them nothing save 
 his friend s smile. 
 
 "I heard Arnold had married a million," put in her 
 companion, a diminutive jocky of the Santa Anita 
 stables. "He ought to make good, that guy ; the whole 
 town s open to him everywhere." 
 
 The "coon shouter" shrugged her shoulders. "La 
 Donna e Mob-il-e," she hummed, and then, because 
 Wally Walters at the piano fingered the bars of a senti 
 mental refrain, her purring contralto followed : 
 
 "Where the Blue Hills rise 
 Neath the sunny skies " 
 
 THe young man who had been coming toward ttie 
 singer, turned to a side door. When this again opened, 
 the woman, indolently slurring her song, saw him, his 
 face to the north, watching the stars above the city 
 hills. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 Kearny Street in Old San Francisco, now for 
 ever gone began at Lotta s Fountain in the city s 
 heart and ended in a cliff tumbling to the sea. Within 
 this mile and a half was the most cosmopolitan life ever 
 packed along an equal thoroughfare on the world s face. 
 Every type, vocation, business, there found standing 
 and shelter, from the carriage rich, shopping at one 
 end of the street, to a huddle of Basque shepherds, 
 down from the Sierra to escape the October snows, 
 idling winter-long in the windowless wine-shops, at 
 the other ; from the making of a great newspaper to a 
 Mexican peon braiding horsehair riatas. Every race of 
 Asia Japanese, Chinese, Coreans, Burmans, Hindoos, 
 Russians; peoples from all Polynesia Filipinos, Ma 
 lays, Kanakas, Aleuts ; from the nameless ports of the 
 South Seas; from every port of Europe, Hammerfest 
 to the yEgean Isles; from Africa, refugee Boers and 
 blacks ; from every turbulent republic of the Americas 
 the complex, hybrid, New World type in its evolu 
 tion, Latin, Celt, Anglos and Northmen, mingling but 
 not mixing with the racially triumphant Mongol all, 
 and in numbers so proportionably equable that no one 
 element drowned the other, here lived and bartered or 
 sojourned from the shipping tributary to this eddy of 
 the world stream. 
 
 99 
 
ioo THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 At one end of Kearny, money rings, cabals of poli 
 ticians, controllers of the state s affairs, makers of a 
 people s thought ; at the other, Cantonese peddlers hag 
 gling with Tuscan fishermen over the White Devil s 
 nickel, each howling at the other in an alien but com 
 mon tongue. Christian churches of every type ; a tem 
 ple of Greek Byzantine, a shrine of Buddha, a housetop 
 where the Mussulman faced the east, an alley cellar 
 where a Polynesian sailor groveled to his idol of clay 
 all faiths were there, and all unbeliefs, from the 
 oriental acceptance of fate to the uncertain philosophy 
 of the occidental agnostic; and over and about the 
 clamor and the complacence, shrill and acrid with false 
 brasses and bleating reeds, the commercial snarl of 
 Asia drowned the others with its myriad josses ob 
 scured by blue punk smoke and silk-gowned, money- 
 changing priests. 
 
 The great, the rich, the downtrodden, the namelessly 
 foul, all lived in the sixteen blocks from the fountain 
 to the bay ; all businesses from tawdry foreign shops to 
 the emporiums of merchant princes whose doors ad 
 vertised that seven languages were spoken within; 
 cafes for every purse, from the exclusives and the race 
 track idlers drinking champagne at a table fifteen floors 
 above the street to the windowless, basement wine 
 shops of Telegraph Hill ; all vices, for here the hoary 
 iniquity of the Middle Kingdom and the Sea Islands 
 traded namelessly with the wickednesses that the West 
 had brought down from Sodom and Babylon ; and the 
 morphine fiends lolling about the Stevenson monument 
 in Portsmouth Square, leered across at the venal jus 
 tice of the city courts ; the dragon flags of the Chinese 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 101 
 
 roots mocked the foresworn ideality of .the Mouut and 
 Magna Charta. 
 
 And into this glut of alien life the white race poured 
 all that was picturesque, bizarre, inordinate, from the 
 Rio Grande to Great Slave Lake ; all that the defiant 
 young West could enrich and send to rot and revel in 
 the port. Miners from Tanana, Pelly, Amargosa and 
 the spaces of Death Valley and Nevada ; cowboys from 
 the Inyo deserts and Arizona, Utah and Montana; 
 lumberjacks from California valleys as little known as 
 the fastnesses of Thibet; soldiers from every post be 
 tween the two frontiers, lithe men with burned, lean 
 faces, the scuff of a panther s footpads in the nervous 
 spring of their heels^ ready with life, eager for play in 
 the ingenuous, shrewd humor of the American. 
 
 Old San Francisco was as inevitable to the dweller 
 beyond the Rockies as God to Mahomet; the very 
 phrase with which it was summed spoke, that any 
 where over the range it was "The City." That meant 
 no place on earth but the gray town, prematurely 
 wrinkled, like a woman in whom youth s excesses too 
 long burned, which huddled on a point of sand, 
 scourged with winds, racked by fogs, scintillant with 
 dust motes in the cold sunshine, where lived the most 
 cheerful people in the world; where now the gayest 
 courage in the world serenely builds. % 
 
 Old San Francisco was fashioned by the weather 
 and a two-bit piece. The climate forbade the roseate 
 dalliances of youth, moonlight sittings, twilight 
 porches, trysts of summer nights ; year-long after sun 
 set the guerilla trades fogs harried the bleak suburbs, 
 routing the dwellers so that they fled to the down-town 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 and. 1 under .the. arc-lights defied the somber sky. The 
 blatant Pacific drove them to their lubricity; they in 
 vented a prodigality of meat, light and music for two- 
 bits that no man might lack cheer, and being a home 
 less people of brave wit, an ingenious people of mad 
 individualism, dwellers in a town of superlatives, gild 
 ing the common with a defying genius, on the opti 
 mistic two-bits they reared a method of life artistically 
 unique, hectically materialistic, astonishingly brilliant, 
 and most potently human which last at once explains 
 Old San Francisco. Nothing was bad to the gray city 
 that offered a pretext for dining; nothing could be 
 good that forbade fellowship. It lived, loved and died 
 in the radiance of its gorgeous, labyrinthine cafes, 
 laughing with its merry mistresses, though the bread 
 be stale, the wine raw and the jewel on her finger a 
 bit of glass. It had no patience with a virtue that would 
 not feast with it, jest with it, forget with it in its curi 
 ously child-like amourousness ; but with an under 
 standing heart the Ten Laws might have sat with the 
 harlot and been illumined. 
 
 Through the sunny morning tide of Kearny Street 
 at ten o clock, Arnold came to Portsmouth Square near 
 the golden galleon of the Robert Louis Stevenson 
 fountain. He was gently drunk and the air was cool 
 after the night. When he reached Fish Alley among 
 the squawking Chinese vendors, he debated for a time 
 and went on up the hill ; he had forgotten something, 
 or wanted something he could not remember which. 
 
 Miss Cranberry was sweeping down the front stairs 
 of her lodgings between the Family Liquor Store front 
 and the lace curtained door of Sedaini s; she paused 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 103 
 
 a moment in the fresh morning to evade the dust 
 skurry she had raised and looked about. The street 
 was still, save for the children at play in Happy Alley. 
 The old woman went to the lamp-post to beat the dust 
 from the mat, and now discovered her chief lodger 
 half-way up the outside stairs to the balcony. 
 
 "Why, good morning, Mr. Hammy!" she cried. 
 "And so you slipped away and were married on the 
 sly! We waited for you the whole evening Mary 
 and Sammy and that big man from the woods. He was 
 disappointed, for he must go North to-day. How s the 
 bride?" 
 
 "Well," said Arnold, in the illogic of liquor. "Every 
 thing s all right, Granny and I want to get in find 
 a handkerchief." 
 
 "Why, your rooms are open," she answered, aston 
 ished, and came nearer. 
 
 "Of course," retorted he, and retreated upward. She 
 came to sweep the porch. He was fumbling in the lit 
 ter on his dresser. She blinked at the mud on his pat 
 ent leathers and on his trousers, much perplexed and 
 wishing to question him, but his mood did not invite. 
 
 "The dear heart the dear heart " began Miss 
 Granny. "I suppose you kept her at the Palace? You 
 are thinking of a trip, Mr. Hammy?" 
 
 "Trip? O, yes trip!" He was plunging about 
 among tentative deceits, his dulled brain hopeless of 
 explanation. "It s all right, and don t you worry. And 
 maybe we won t return to-night, Granny." 
 
 And he backed away, warily watching her as she 
 gaped in wonder at him, unguessing his plight. All 
 night he had been about numberless resorts, now 
 
104 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 staring vacantly at his companions, now arguing bril 
 liantly on a multitude of matters. With a mutter to the 
 old woman s perplexity he gained the street and then 
 Portsmouth Square, where he paused to see a group of 
 pudgy Chinese infants playing with an abject dog un 
 der the acacias. It was the lavender pup from the 
 country-up-in-back, and to him it slunk, dragging a 
 length of ragged rope by which the woodsman had 
 tied it to Granny s balcony. 
 
 The drunken man lifted the clumsy brute ; he gave 
 a dime to a squat Chinese boy in a head-dress of gilt 
 and pink and with dirty flowered trousers, and an 
 other to Yet Kai, the opium pipe mender, senile and 
 toothless, standing by, as a reward for some sort of con 
 structive rescue of the country dog, and then went on, 
 gravely wiping its muddy feet with the clean handker 
 chief he had found at his rooms. 
 
 "Old lad," he murmured, "stick by me. I want you, 
 pup I need you. Just be square with me, lad, and 
 you ll wear diamonds." 
 
 The pup cringed, he was forlorn, friendless, and that 
 was not right this pleasing morning in Ham s eyes. He 
 paid fifteen cents for some meat scraps at Coffee John s 
 and then, after the pup s hurried, furtive-eyed mastica 
 tion, the adventurers went on. Arnold spent a roving 
 hour on Kearny Street. Being hungry he ate, and re 
 membrance reasserting, he drank deep and often. By 
 noon he had driven the little stings from his brain, the 
 qualms from his stomach, the weariness from his legs. 
 A brimming cheeriness seized him to be out among 
 such rushing people in the sun with no care, and the 
 pup to amuse him. At bar after bar he took the em- 
 
THE DAY DE SOULS 105 
 
 purpled pup from under his coat and set it on the wood 
 and drew a laughing coterie with his recital of the 
 woodman s story the dog that wouldn t be boiled. 
 But ever, when the crowds had grown and the laugh 
 ing was at its best, the jester withdrew, mordant and 
 alone, fought his way through the streets alone, fled 
 as one haunted from the revelry he evoked. From the 
 last foray he crossed Lotta s Fountain to the Chronicle 
 corner and came on Angelo Polacchi behind a 
 clothes-basket of violets and flanked with chrysanthe 
 mums, so that Angelo s Italian eyes shone from a 
 flower bank, for all the world like a manikin in the 
 centerpiece of a rich man s table. 
 
 Angelo sold flowers for Pietro Scifoni, whose wagon 
 rumbled in every morning from the San Mateo road ; 
 he was always delighted when Arnold appeared, for 
 the young man never failed to hail him fraternally, buy 
 violets, give treble the price, and display to all the curb 
 vendors that Angelo was the protege of a most great 
 man, a "politico/ yes, surely a great man and rich, 
 for did not Angelo get two-bits for himself, as well as 
 selling Pietro s posies? 
 
 Angelo was so buffeted about by sweetness that Ar 
 nold could not twig his ear as was customary, but he 
 bought a whole armful of yellow chrysanthemums, re 
 warded the boys on either side of the favored one as 
 well, hailed Pietro, Giuseppe, Old Soldi, each by name 
 and with inelegant merriment, and then suddenly dis 
 covered that a laughing group was about him, and that 
 he had hung a chrysanthemum wreath about his own 
 neck. That was funny and yet well, it was all right, 
 and he laughed with the joyous morning people. 
 
io6 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 So Mr. Arnold gained Market Street with distinct 
 self-approval it was right and logical enough to dis 
 turb the flower market; the sun was fine, the day 
 young. He drifted on with his chrysanthemums, and 
 at noon was in the Maplewood cafe where he made the 
 pup lunch dismally on terrapin, while he went behind 
 the bar to instruct Fergy in compounding a "granite 
 face." 
 
 And presently He had a group of cronies about him, 
 Mannie Murasky and Louis Ferreri and a prize-fight 
 promoter with a Sonoreno bull-fighter in tow, and 
 others, all chaffing and laughing young men in the 
 democracy of the street, from a newsboy tipster of the 
 races to Watt Chatom, son of the railroad attorney, 
 who had, that morning, charged in from his great 
 wheat ranches of the San Joaquin in his ninety-horse 
 power car, mud-covered, cursing the roads and boast 
 ing alternately of his racing stud and his drubbing of 
 a recalcitrant ditch-tender on his Tuolumne irrigation 
 canals. 
 
 "Hello, J. Ham !" shouted the rich man s son, flushed 
 from heavy eating and drinking and the night s riding 
 through the keen hill air. "Hear you ve struck money 
 again. Well, here s another good thing fattening up at 
 the track " he looked about and pulled Arnold aside, 
 "Corsair let me put you right." 
 
 And though feverish youths hung about crazy to 
 hear this racing talk from two men who were "close" 
 to the wise people, Watt Chatom and Arnold separated 
 with a knowing laugh. Mannie meantime had gathered 
 a retinue which all day ate and drank at Arnold s ex 
 pense, worthless young men whom Ham did not know 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 107 
 
 by name, but who knew him and felt now a cocky im 
 portance to be treated by Ham Arnold, the notorious, 
 who even yesterday had had his name in the papers 
 as the defiant forefront figure of all the blaze of evil 
 life that encompassed the city, who stood forth to all 
 the Street as the symbol of the after-midnight, its jester 
 and its jest. 
 
 At six o clock Louis Ferreri descended from his 
 machine on Market Street and found them before the 
 Richelieu, Mannie clamorous to dine at Marchand s. 
 He knew a ten-twent -thirt vaudeville actress who was 
 to be there to-night and was anxious that she should 
 see him traveling with a spender like J. Ham Arnold. 
 But Ferreri took the host aside. 
 
 "Shake that bunch," he cautioned. "What s the mat 
 ter with you? Where s the girl?" 
 
 Arnold smiled in high serenity. "Never mind. 
 You ll have to loosen if you travel with me. Let s kick 
 into Marchand s and see that looker that Mannie is 
 touting so strong." 
 
 But Louis protested. No girls for him no, sir! 
 Once at the Woodmans picnic at San Jose he had a 
 topaz ring and he met a girl, and well, no more girls 
 if or Louis ! It was all right for J. Ham Arnold. Ham 
 could stroll into a cafe, nod to the house, sing a snatch 
 of The Rosary, or Always, and drift on down the line. 
 There was nothing for him to pay nor a crook to rob 
 him, the girls looking back at him but Louis? 
 
 Well, once he had a topaz ring 
 
 Arnold split the argument they would dine at San- 
 guinetti s, for he wanted a place where the pup would 
 be de riguer. That was the word he used, and Mannie, 
 
io8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 impressed, yielded. Anything J. Ham said and a 
 cup of coffee. Sure, Ham was right. They would go 
 down to Steve s and have whatever it was Ham men 
 tioned in French. 
 
 So, with the dog, now befuddled under a chrysanthe 
 mum wreath, they went the way to the water front. 
 Then Arnold saw Sammy Jarbo on a car and must 
 needs stop the cavalcade to hail him, get him off and 
 add him to the party. Sammy was astounded, but 
 his protests were drowned in gabble, as Mannie led the 
 way importantly into all the saloons to Davis Street, 
 climbing on the bar-step with an important flourish to 
 the loungers. "What cha havin ? Aw White Rock 
 aw, be a sport. Aw, come on rum an gum sure, 
 rum an gum !" 
 
 And he would protest when Louis stuck to mineral 
 water and Sammy to ginger ale. Arnold drank any 
 thing now ; he had got the pinwheels out of his brain, 
 and had forgotten something, he said, and felt all 
 right, and was all right, and so rounded out the 
 achievement with many libations. 
 
 At Steve Sanguinetti s, famous for its cheap con 
 viviality, given over to clerks, fishers, sea mates, stu 
 dents, shoddy Bohemians, shop-girls and gaping tour 
 ists who heard of Steve s at the hotels, the quartet 
 found a table and at once attracted attention. Arnold 
 bought a red balloon of a fakir, tied it to the pup s tail 
 and set him forth as a centerpiece. At once the abashed 
 pup had the stage. With shrieks of delight the diners 
 rose, and from all points of the sawdusted floor 
 brought their chairs, jammed the small tables together, 
 and, as Mannie said, "made it a party." In vain the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 109 
 
 one-eyed proprietor objected. He was hustled off 
 behind his bar, bombarded with French bread, threat 
 ened with a syphon soda bath by a girl in a window, 
 and so threw up his hands in despair. 
 
 Ferreri was in a panic he had on the forget-me-not 
 pin, which had no safety catch, and here he was sur 
 rounded by girls who slapped his back and scalded his 
 knees with coffee as he tried to watch all points of 
 danger. Mannie gurgled with joy; it was what he 
 called a "bird of a time," and despite jeers and cat 
 calls, he was master of ceremonies, calling for more 
 red wine and denouncing the raviolis. Arnold was 
 talking foot-ball with a trio of university juniors, who 
 had "caught" a like number of Oakland shop-girls 
 and "chased them over to the city to eat at Steve s." 
 Every pirl about the bay knew that this meant not to 
 wear yuui ILst clothes, and to laugh when strangers 
 at adjoining tables called you "kid" or "dearie." 
 Steve s was perfectly harmless, but then you mustn t 
 mind! 
 
 Out of this laughing orgy of youth and good diges 
 tion Arnold suddenly broke away a girlishly bright 
 face near him, it seemed, had curiously caught him. 
 The others saw him staring at her, and then he left, 
 paying for thirty-two dinners at fifty cents each and 
 giving ten dollars to the musicians and the waiters. 
 And he would not talk as he stumbled to a car. 
 
 "What s the matter, Hammy?" asked the poet anx 
 iously. "You never got so wild as this. What s hap 
 pened? Come on home." 
 
 "Home? Little man, you run along and make a 
 
i io THE DAY OF] SOULS 
 
 nice poem about home and the stars and love. And 
 leave me alone." 
 
 But the poet clung to him. "No, you ve done 
 enough to-night. And brace up for that little girl." 
 
 A smile came to Hani s gray, weary face. "Just a 
 dreamand I m killing it. It whirls and whirls, but 
 I m strangling it. Here " He held forth a long 
 envelope in which was the silken case containing 
 Sylvia s ten thousand dollars. "Mail it Trinity 
 County. Find box, Sammy mail it." 
 
 Sammy s eyes bulged at sight of the bills edges. 
 "O, what s the matter? You ll have to register it. 5 
 
 "Register?" Arnold s thick voice raised. "All 
 right to-morrer." He stumbled past the other. 
 "And that ll end it. And you can make your nice 
 little poem home and love and my soul and God, 
 who never cares nor answers !" 
 
 Mannie and Louis joined them, Mr. Murasky with 
 a new idea. The night was still young they would 
 go to the Tivoli. Nobody d care at the old free-hearted 
 Tivoli they could have whatever it was Ham men 
 tioned in French about the pup. Yes, sir, to the 
 Tivoli and hear Tetrazzini and the dago bunch sing, 
 and Paul Steindorf s orchestra. No grand opera for 
 Mannie, but a mutt told him to go look over the 
 chorus a dame, third from the right, first row. But 
 when this scheme was broached in the car, Arnold 
 holding to his chrysanthemum-enwreathed pup, with 
 the red balloon floating from its tail up among the 
 car straps, mutiny seized his henchmen. Ferreri 
 wouldn t go to the grand opera. Thunder no ! Man 
 nie was crazy in the head ! Wouldn t they be a scrab- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS in 
 
 galagus party for the opera Ham and his pup and 
 the balloon and chrysanthemums? Everybody knew 
 him the orchestra leader and the tuba player and a 
 lot of guys. No, sir no opera ! 
 
 But Mannie got twenty dollars from Ham and 
 squirmed off through the crowd. Outgeneraled, the 
 muddle-headed slot-machine man still protested. Go 
 to the opera with a fool dog and a balloon? They 
 would get pinched, that s what would happen, and the 
 bunch down the line would get hold of it and he d 
 never hear the last of it, and it would hurt business. 
 Maybe it was all right for J. Ham Arnold; he was 
 wont to set the Street laughing ; and to go on a little 
 toot was all right but cut out the grand opera. 
 
 But Mr. Arnold decided that he was tired and 
 wanted to sit down, and an opera was as good as any 
 place to sit down in. So, still croaking evil, the slot- 
 machine man saw them disappear through the vesti 
 bule, Ham hiding the pup under his coat and Mannie 
 juggling the balloon behind a woman s hat, until the 
 trio was presently in a stage box. But in the lights 
 the poet was seized with misgivings. Suppose that 
 fool pup barked? And that red balloon? He urged 
 Mannie to give him the thing, but the little Hebrew, 
 sniggering until his yellow diamond was a coruscation 
 of light, reduced to a regurgitative smother of laugh 
 ter, refused. And then the overture was quelled, the 
 curtain shot up, and Rudolph and Marcel were blow 
 ing their fingers in the Parisian attic, for it was La 
 Boheme. 
 
 "Questo mar rosso mi ammolUsce" narrated the 
 baritone. 
 
ii2 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Look at th pup," whispered Mr. Murasky. 
 
 "Che fai? . . . Nei deli bigi guardo" answered 
 Rudolph. 
 
 "Look at his nose," continued Mr. Murasky. "Kee- 
 hee " 
 
 "L amore e un caminetto che " 
 
 "e in fretta!" bawled the baritone. 
 
 "Look at" 
 
 "Say, Mannie " Arnold stirred, trie pup rose to- 
 shake himself, and the ladies in the adjoining box took 
 notice "if you don t keep still I ll throw him into 
 that big horn. Now " 
 
 "You re drunk," gasped Mr. Murasky, chortling 
 with suppressed glee. 
 
 "I m drunk, but I ll get over it. You re a damn 
 fool, and you never will get over it." 
 
 "Ma intanto qui si gela " quavered Rudolph, but 
 his eye was on the front row, which craned about fur 
 tively at Mr. Arnold s box-party. 
 
 "O, Ham!" whispered the affrighted poet, "don t 
 talk so loud !" 
 
 Mannie Murasky suddenly straightened, with a 
 countenance blankly alarmed. "Where is it? Who s 
 got it?" 
 
 "Got what?" 
 
 "A te I &ito primo!" warbled the tenor, his eye now 
 on the pup. 
 
 "Ga s sake!" whispered the Headlight Kid, "duke 
 it catch it !" 
 
 Under the edge of the poet s chair the red balloon 
 was balancing. The trio watched it; the poet breath 
 lessly over his shoulder, Mannie hypnotized by appre- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 113 
 
 hensions, and J. Ham Arnold philosophically inter 
 ested. 
 
 "Grab it!" gurgled Mannie. 
 
 The poet put down his little finger and pushed the 
 balloon back under his chair. It bobbed to the other 
 edge, gyrating maddeningly. The women in the next 
 box looked at it entranced ; the tuba player gaped ; the 
 front orchestra row craned; Marcel and Rudolph 
 blinked over the footlights. 
 
 "Don t wiggle," chattered Mr. Murasky; "don t 
 move O !" 
 
 Pop-eyed, staring frightfully ahead, sat the poet. 
 
 "My goodness !" exclaimed an indignant one in the 
 adjoining box, "it s awful!" 
 
 Mr. Arnold uprose and bowed to her with resigned, 
 solicitous patience: 
 
 "It is it is distinctly the worst yet !" 
 
 Injuredly gathering up the blue pup, with its trail 
 ing festoon of autumn flowers, the box-party host 
 departed. Mannie turned, but dared not follow. 
 Between him and the exit the balloon titillated under 
 the chair s edge ; a breath would start it toward the pro 
 scenium. 
 
 And, staring straight before him, listening to the 
 two Bohemians cackling of their woes, sat the laundry 
 wagon poet. He was cold as ice ; his feet tickled with 
 terror. It was worse than being stuck on the forty- 
 ninth stanza of Pizano s Quest. Then the portieres 
 parted; Mr. Murasky had flown. 
 
 "Pres-to!" squealed the baritone. 
 
 The poet prayed for an earthquake. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 At nine o clock Arnold descended from a boot 
 black s stand on Grant Avenue, inspected his shoes 
 critically, and turned down this street of fakirs. He 
 gave himself a comforting conceit that his senses still 
 broke subconsciously through the tide of his drunken 
 ness, that he could see tolerantly above the chaos that 
 charged him now and then. He went along Grant 
 Avenue, carrying the dog under his arm with lordly 
 complacence. 
 
 This curious place was packed throughout its four 
 short blocks a forum set aside by unwritten law to 
 the evangelist, the agitator, the fakir, the proclaimers 
 of revolutions the unwashed, unclean, the ebullience 
 of the defeated, the querulous individualism of this 
 town of hates, of humors, abortive demagoguery, 
 obscure genius and turgid idealism here its mordant 
 soul of discontent rose to question and to defy. Never 
 such a town of charlatanism so lavishly supported and 
 incredulously jeered; palmists, astrologers, clairvoy 
 ants, seers and prophets flourished as the native bays, 
 and on Grant Avenue, now before Arnold s eye, the 
 blatant life, the staccato under-voice of the city found 
 expression. 
 
 At one end of the asphalted forum a Socialist agi 
 tator stormed at artisans, complacent from being the 
 highest paid workers in the world ; near him the band 
 
 114 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 115 
 
 of the Salvation Army beat the cadence to Heaven; 
 then an old man, unknown, unheeded, lost in the 
 throng, quavered a silly discourse on free love, next 
 to a Jew bawling the merits of a magnetic cure-all 
 ring ; and a faded woman distributing pamphlets fore 
 casting the end of the world, a decrepit Egyptologist, 
 with a patriarch s beard, lecturing. on the lost scar- 
 abseus of Khem, were shouldered by a broken-down 
 pugilist, who was selling tips on to-morrow s races; 
 while beyond, in the end of a cart beneath a choking 
 gas torch, a quack doctor, in top hat and silk waistcoat, 
 pompous and strident-voiced, pointed to his red ana 
 tomical charts, gaping skull segments, dismembered 
 limbs, gruesome, diseased viscera, ghastly under the 
 sinuous light. 
 
 But beyond these, the smaller groups unattached 
 and disintegrating about the lesser orators, the dis- 
 putative curb philosophers, none lacking hearing, 
 Arnold s eye caught an unusual figure. Over the 
 packed throng, lit by a flaring torch above the rostrum 
 on which she stood, was a woman in the black, loose 
 robe of an academician, the mortar-board cap sur 
 mounting a face, young, strong, Romanesque ; a Diana 
 grace in the arm s gesture. Over the ragged men, the 
 homeless idlers, the fools and shamblers, the filled and 
 complacent, the hungry and absorbed, the street 
 dreamers and idealists, the banal and corrupt, she tow 
 ered as vivid in the night s flare against the dark as a 
 Rembrandt study. 
 
 The young man stopped before the dominance of 
 her voice. Above the shuffle of the street, clear, sonor 
 ous, it leaped far over the yap and clamor ; it held him 
 
ii6 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 as did the figure poised, the face compelling imperi 
 ously. Always his secret love of the theatric moved 
 him; now he staggered on and a phrase came to him 
 out of a climacteric period. 
 
 She was preaching of a mystic Christ, a symbolic 
 interpretation of all revelations and messages of God, 
 the superimposition of a modern esthete on the ancient 
 prophecies, an oriental concept of the fervent faith 
 that had led the western races. The soul of the world 
 slept, she said, because men were engrossed with the 
 earth, lacked vision ; they turned away from the inner 
 light, for within each was the power to redeem. 
 Society was evil, a city corrupt, an era debased 
 because men sank the real beneath the apparent. 
 There was no sin, suffering, death ; the soul was incor 
 ruptible, but it slept unexalted. Within each lay the 
 power to pass complete, serene, unmoved through all 
 existences; and the Christ she taught was a mystic 
 teacher, high, detached, Nirvanic, as a disk of pale 
 gold against silver. 
 
 In the street they listened, they whose Christ had 
 been a Man of Sorrows, gone down to death hot with 
 passion for the common love of the fallen and the 
 failed, who had passed along the dusty roadside unbe- 
 friended ; they listened to this modern concept, this 
 denial of sin and agonizing, of a God to aid, or the 
 need of aid, to this symbolic Christ beckoning them to 
 await absorption back to the eternal and the infinite; 
 before her astonishing appeal, her wondrous voice, 
 they stood but no man came. 
 
 Arnold, the drunken wanderer, elbowed through the 
 throng until he was by the platform. He lurched to 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 117 
 
 it until the torch flared higher, and with a shift of the 
 black robe she turned her face to him. For an instant 
 he fought back the delirium to look at her, her eyes 
 widening, her lips parting, startled as by an accusing 
 revelation. And it seemed to him that she stood a 
 meaningless symbol, high, detached, with empty 
 hands above the outcasts, as though they waited for 
 some great message and she had none nothing, a 
 fool s talk, a scientific formula as senseless as the 
 gibber of any priest to their needs. And, staring at 
 her for a while, he reeled through the press of faces 
 to turn with a cry: "Who cares? Who answers? 
 You re sleeping, too ! You ve failed !" 
 
 She saw his glance at the sensuous completeness of 
 her body as he made way, the crowd cursing him in 
 mutters, to the curb. Then, with a curiously mechan 
 ical falter, as in a dream, she saw him go again to the 
 Oriental saloon. 
 
 Arnold paused by the bar, steadying himself against 
 his sickness, his dimming brain ; then he groped to the 
 rear of the establishment and staggered into one of 
 the boxes, a square apartment hung with heavy Turk 
 ish weaves and gold-threaded tapestries. Here, under 
 the half shadows and uncertain glows from a lantern 
 of perforated bronze, which hung over the table, he 
 fell on the cushioned wall seat. A mulatto attendant, 
 in fez and jacket of oriental figure, looked in at the 
 man leaning his head on the table, showed his gleam 
 ing teeth in a familiar, friendly smile and departed. 
 The air of the place was warm, voluptuous with liquor 
 and tobacco smells and the drugging exhalations of 
 the voluminous, tawdry hangings. At this early hour 
 
ii8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 none was in the labyrinthine rear establishment of the 
 Oriental. From the bar-room a musical device, with 
 a chiming, fairy-like tinkle, gave forth a tremulous 
 pianissimo movement from the Song to the Evening 
 Star. 
 
 The mulatto in the red fez was holding a whispered 
 conference at the end of the corridor ; a woman s voice 
 questioned, and then she came along the passage. 
 
 The man in the box heard the rustle of her silken 
 gown, the parting of the portieres, her friendly little 
 laugh. He raised his heavy head to greet Nella Free. 
 
 From her came a barbaric suggestion of perfumes, 
 silks, jewels, an elegant coiffure, apt to her setting 
 she was beautiful in the semi-purple shadows of the 
 corridor. One white hand was on the Turkish hang 
 ings, the other held back the marten fur collar from 
 her bosom. 
 
 "Andy said you were here and needed your 
 friends," she laughed. "What s the matter, Ham? 
 Who did this to you ? I m surprised !" 
 
 He looked at her steadily, silently, while the trilling 
 melody of the Tannhauser song came softly from the 
 front. She shrugged her shoulders with another con 
 strained little laugh, and seated herself opposite him. 
 The attendant appeared with a tray on which tinkled 
 two iced glasses of a pellucid green liquor. 
 
 "Sallie and I just dropped in while it s quiet," Miss 
 Free remarked. "You know I daren t go round town 
 very much. I ordered the creme de minthe for us 
 but you " 
 
 He motioned tlie waiter away and turned to watcli 
 tier gravely, again master of his dimming senses. She 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 119 
 
 twitched nervously under his eyes ; she rubbed her red 
 lips with a bit of lace and started to rally him, but he 
 interrupted with a moody impatience. 
 
 "How long has Stillman been keeping you?" 
 
 She tossed her chin petulantly. 
 
 "I told you once everything." 
 
 His directness hurt her. 
 
 "He ll never marry you." 
 
 She twisted about in the seat. "Well," she laughed, 
 a hand on her side, "he s had plenty of time to make 
 good ! But it s all in a lifetime." 
 
 "Yes five years now, isn t it ?" 
 
 "I met him when I was a candy-store girl in Oak 
 land I was sixteen. Harry s been good to me ever 
 since." 
 
 "Just a little girl and life smashed in on you." 
 
 She laughed in deprecation. "See here what s the 
 matter with you ? I kept my mother well off until she 
 died, and I m keeping my little sister in Notre Dame. 
 I d rather be here, Hammy, than to be one of these 
 shop-girls. Did you ever ask any of your millionaire 
 friends who run the big stores and support the 
 churches how a girl can live on four dollars a week?" 
 
 "Some day, Nel, he ll quit you and then then " 
 
 "I ll be old and ugly, eh?" she retorted sharply. 
 "Well, so ll the other girls. And then dead, eh ? Well, 
 so ll the good girls." 
 
 The man raised his Head, fighting the grim tide 
 drowning his brain. 
 
 "Your soul s asleep," he muttered ; "soul s asleep !" 
 
 "Who cares?" she answered, with fier idle laugh. 
 "It s all in a lifetime! Who cares?" 
 
120 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "God cares." He looked at her; her blue eyes 
 widened in a sort of fear. "God cares," he muttered, 
 "and I m going back somehow some way." 
 
 She sat staring at him, the tinkling note of the star 
 song in their ears, silent in the drugged air of the 
 Turkish room. 
 
 "What s the matter with you?" she said at last, her 
 nervous laugh following. "God? And going back? 
 Hammy, you re awful drunk. I ll call the machine 
 and send you to the baths. You re crazy." 
 
 A man came laughing along the passage; Eddie 
 Ledyard stood before them. 
 
 "Some one said you needed looking after, Ham," 
 he cried. "Nel, what s on him, to do this ?" 
 
 Arnold folded his arms, his body swaying, and 
 looked benignly on them. 
 
 "You two," he muttered, "going to love each other, 
 eh? Now, don t. Love s a bad joke, Nel; so bad that 
 I can t laugh at it any more." 
 
 The flush of the girl s blood mounted through her 
 rouge. Eddie laughed confusedly. "Jolly along," he 
 evaded. "Must have made a killing! And who s 
 going to win the Narcissus stakes? Watt Chatom s 
 filly?" 
 
 "Bianca," murmured Arnold sententiously, drawn 
 from his stupor. 
 
 "Bianca!" cried the girl. "That s what I heard, too 
 on the dead !" 
 
 Ledyard started they should know, these two 
 they were in with the inside crowd at the track. "Sure? 
 You sure it s Bianca, Ham?" 
 
 Arnold nodded cunningly and unsteadily transferred 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 121 
 
 the dolorous pup from one pocket to another, holding 
 its forefeet in the crook of his arm. "Bianca," he 
 affirmed sleepily, and waved them away. "I m close 
 ,to the wise talk Bianca." 
 
 Another step had come along the corridor ; a pow 
 erfully built young man, with a red face and blue 
 German eyes, looked into the box with a nervous 
 laugh. 
 
 "What s this I hear?" he demanded. "Ham, they 
 told me to look you up !" 
 
 Hammy looked with superior benevolence on the 
 legislator. "Fred, I m all right no crook s going to 
 strong-arm me. I ve come back s where I belong." 
 
 Fred Weldy s startled laugh echoed; he stared at 
 the others. 
 
 "Take care of him," Nella whispered. "There was 
 a girl he was going to marry. And she must have 
 thrown him down Hammy, a lad who s good to every 
 woman ! You d better take care of him." 
 
 Arnold put his hand paternally on Weldy s shoulder, 
 as always he had done since their high-school days, 
 though the job printer was his own age. 
 
 "Son," he began impressively, "I m close up and 
 you aren t. I put you in politics, didn t I, Fred? I 
 made you." 
 
 The legislator started, laughed feebly. Ham was 
 indeed drunk, thought he, for boasting was the last 
 thing in him. 
 
 "Come on home, Hammy," he urged. "I just ran 
 down from the capital to see you. I ve been reading 
 all this stuff in the papers and I had to see you " 
 
 "To-morrow," returned his political godfather, with 
 
122 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 dignity. "To-night I m merely getting the right per 
 spective of some things. And don t mind the papers 
 no grand jury crooks on earth can get me. I didn t 
 save you, Fred merely program program joke on 
 the people made an provided." 
 
 Eddie Ledyard, to whom politics was a closed book, 
 was staring. Nella Free shrugged her shoulders, with 
 a warning to the one "close up." But he went on: 
 "Afraid? Afraid of this town? What is it? A rat 
 I can kick it and it squeals and what can it do ?" He 
 touched the statesman s arm imperially. "I m putting 
 you wise when you re close to the big men and the 
 big money, nothing can touch you nothing! Look 
 here we put you in the legislature to kill this investi 
 gation of what killed the anti-racing bills now, you 
 know where you get off, don t you ?" 
 
 The legislator laughed deprecatingly ; his manhood 
 writhed. "Be still, old man; you re drunk! And 
 you re a marked man now, with all these stories out, 
 and all the preachers and unions and farmers howling 
 to know what killed the racing bills. God s sake," he 
 went on pathetically, "and all the crooks and liquor 
 men in the state hounding us the other way. I came 
 down to talk to you, Ham, and you re drunk !" 
 
 "Perspective," murmured the other. "Want to get 
 off and see things different merely so. I m crooked 
 I know that ; you re crooked you know that ; we re 
 all crooked we all know that; but let s get away 
 from pretense and tell one another so. What s this 
 gag the preachers spring? They stand up and tell 
 God we re all sinners ; but they daren t tell that to the 
 big money behind, Their souls are asleep, too, I 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 123 
 
 could go preach on the avenue to-night I feel relig 
 ious. Here s you that s crooked, here s me that s 
 crooked, here s all of us that s crooked and yet I 
 think God cares." 
 
 They looked on the drunken fool, and after a bit, 
 fighting his delirium, he lurched through the doorway. 
 Weldy watched him long, and then went after him, but 
 he had gained the street, lost in the throng. 
 
 In the stuffy little box the clerk looked anxiously 
 at Nella across the table. "God cares!" he echoed, 
 with a laugh. "O, what s got into him ?" 
 
 "If some one cared it d be different with a lot of us," 
 she answered. "We d be different if just some one 
 cared." 
 
 The boyish clerk tried to take her hand across the 
 table ; he went on with eagerness : "Yes, you d be dif 
 ferent if some one cared and if you cared for some 
 one. You can t fool me, Nel. I told you once how 
 much I cared " 
 
 She checked him with a laugh ; she tapped him play 
 fully with the rubber tube of the Turkish pipe on the 
 table. "Here, now, stop, Eddie. Haven t you a 
 mother and everybody? I promised Hammy I 
 wouldn t let you talk like this. And besides," she hur 
 ried on, "you couldn t stand the pace a little bit. My 
 bills last month were three hundred dollars for just 
 clothes!" 
 
 "If you loved," he burst out with the fine chivalry 
 of twenty-one, "clothes wouldn t matter not if you 
 cared!" 
 
 Nella laughed, choking a tremor from her voice, 
 reaching for the evening paper on the table. "Now, 
 
124 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Kid, let s just be friends. Here," she added to hide 
 her trouble, "the Narcissus entries are out. Eddie, 
 Ham said Bianca. Let s just be friends and you can 
 play fifty for me at Corbett s. Come; we re only 
 friends, and we ll back Bianca !" 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 At midnight the westerly fogs streamed across the 
 city, the cold wind searched the streets. From the 
 squat markets of the water front the wanderer came 
 alone. He was uncertain of the corner, trembling 
 with the chill and reaction; he was beginning to 
 remember, and he wished to forget. But as he started, 
 something moved across his shoes. Scared, wet, hun 
 gry, dragging a frayed rope in which was twisted a 
 single scuffed chrysanthemum, the country dog crept 
 to his feet. In and out of drink shops, the splendid 
 places that boasted that for fifty years they had not 
 closed their doors, day or night; the gin joints of 
 Chinatown, the Italian wine rooms hewed out of the 
 hill rock, the Japanese resorts, where sloe-eyed little 
 women fed the master hot rice wine, the brute had 
 followed. Now he picked it from the slime, wiped its 
 feet and tucked it from the fog beneath his coat so 
 that its nose, with a dreary snuffle, lay by his ear. 
 
 "Cold, pup ?" the man muttered. "Neve mind, pal ; 
 you stand by me and be square. Jus follow me, Kid, 
 and be square." So, stilling its racking shivers on his 
 breast, he went into the darkness. 
 
 He was before the garish portal of a Barbary Coast 
 dance-hall an hour later. The narrow, cobbled way 
 shone with the arcs each direction, a mile from Kearny 
 to the bay, and all along came the blare of bands 
 
 125 
 
126 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 from basement after basement dance-hall, so many 
 and so close-packed that the crash of reed and brasses 
 from thousands of instruments became an inharmonic 
 riot without form, without time ; and as the red glare 
 of the street made it a gaping wound in the dark quar 
 ter, so over it hovered this insane ensemble, the soul of 
 music maddened. 
 
 Arnold watched the stream in and out of the famed 
 places of the Coast. Sailors, soldiers, recruits and 
 time-expired, cattlemen and miners, salmon packers 
 and Sierra shepherds, broken adventurers from all the 
 south, and with these, sight-seeing women tourists, 
 guided by police, flashy youths over from the town, 
 patrolmen and plain-clothes men, made up the after- 
 midnight tide. Within the halls the same pageant, 
 laughter, hurrying, shouts, quarrels his impassive 
 eye rested on it with curious interest, for it was far 
 removed from the night aristocracy he knew down 
 town. 
 
 He was at The Welcome, when a dozen soldiers 
 crowded the entrance of the dance-hall, noisily bawl 
 ing to others in the street. The ever-ready patrol 
 wagon had dashed by. 
 
 "Mexican cut a girl at the Firefly/ muttered a 
 hanger-on, "and a tough whaler cleaned out Cowboy 
 Mag s." But none would go to see it was merely 
 the prelude to the night s police court harvest. But at 
 two o clock the pace quickened. Arnold, recovered 
 from his stupor, had begun drinking again, spending 
 money sensationally free from hall to hall; he soon 
 had a following mostly of riotous soldiers "gone 
 broke" and hailing him as blood brother. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 127 
 
 "M son-of-a-gun," murmured a yellow-striped 
 corporal. "Ol Sec Cavalry s wat he is. Sure! 
 Santa Isabel Pilar del Rio Rosario whole bunch 
 of fights s ze was in." 
 
 "Ev hear of Inky Idgetts?" broke in another. 
 Troop guide helVe fine bucky Idgetts Third 
 Squadron. Me an him " 
 
 Against his crowding confreres Arnold waved the 
 pup : "Sure sure. OF Sec Cavalry sure !" 
 
 "This yere Idgetts" 
 
 "I bane know him " 
 
 A huge and hairy sailor pushed into the martial 
 group. His blue eyes and pink face turned from one 
 tc another in great good nature. 
 
 "Idgetts me an him" 
 
 "I bane know him, too " 
 
 "O, Scandinavia, forget it !" murmured the corporal, 
 softly. "Blow!" 
 
 A yellow-haired girl clung to the sailor s arm. "O, 
 come, you Babe ; don mix !" she pleaded, and tried to 
 draw him from them. 
 
 "This yere Idgetts they lin-cheed him " 
 
 "By Valdez I coom " 
 
 The narrator of Idgetts exploits turned on the 
 Swede. "Now, hit the grit! I m tellin of this yere 
 bucky. They sliced im " 
 
 But the Viking thrust beaming among them: "I 
 coom by Valdez " 
 
 And then, as the blonde girl clung to his huge arm 
 wailing: "Aw, don start nothin ! Aw, come, you 
 honey!" a fist shot over her shoulder at the seaman s 
 ear. He fell back, looking with amazed infantile 
 
128 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 injury about him, and then, propelled by some Human 
 catapult behind, for what reason and by whom will 
 never be known, the celebrant of the Idgetts epic was 
 suddenly doubled up and into the Northman s stomach. 
 And at once the place was a whirling fight. Into it 
 plunged a trio of bouncers and floor managers. The 
 proprietor himself, a former light-weight pugilist, now 
 barrel fat, bobbed about, panting in the press, a cork 
 on troubled waters. The swaying battle jammed the 
 door, the white windows fell with a snarl of breaking 
 glass and the combatants went to the street, with the 
 police leaping on the flanks like ready dogs. 
 
 Arnold was in the thick, dodging, laughing ; fie saw 
 an officer s club raised above the girl, who still clung 
 screaming to the seaman s sleeve. 
 
 "Barret, cut that !" His hand went about the police 
 man s wrist. The other jerked free and whirled his 
 lighter antagonist against the broken door. "You will, 
 will you?" he roared. "Le* go that club !" 
 
 "O, quit," murmured Mr. Arnold. "Don t be fool 
 ish you know me" 
 
 "No, I don t! Don t gi me any lip!" The officer 
 forced him through the thickening crowd. The fight 
 had stopped with surprising suddenness. About the 
 prisoners seized at random the police listened dryly to 
 the gabble, wiping their perspiring heads. The 
 wheezing proprietor, so short of stature that nothing 
 but his round post of a head was seen, cursed the sol 
 diers and onlookers, who jeered him and the dance- 
 hall women in the wrecked front of The Welcome. 
 And, towering above all, the great Swede looked with 
 round-faced, babyish perplexity at them and the patrol 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 129 
 
 racing under the white arcs a block away. The girl 
 saw the oncoming wagon. 
 
 "Ga sake," she wailed, "if I get pinched! O, if I 
 get pinched ! George " she appealed to the proprie 
 tor -"tell em I wasn t doin nothin I" 
 
 "I don t want youse in my place at all if you ain t 
 a lady. I won t stand for you if youse ain t a perfect 
 lady." 
 
 "Cut out the bull," murmured a policeman wearily. 
 "They ll all go." 
 
 Arnold turned to him. "See here, you can t 
 ride me!" 
 
 "Dry up !" the officer retorted. "Here, climb in the 
 wagon !" 
 
 The prisoner s eye was on the patrol van backing to 
 the curb. He turned with a menace on the officer. 
 "Say, sport, I m Jack Arnold. You ride me and I ll 
 break you. Just ask Harry Stillman or the chief 
 about me " 
 
 "Tumble in," replied the patrolman ; "sing it to the 
 birdies." 
 
 And, staring at the wagon, with a sudden laugh, 
 Arnold got in. 
 
 The plunging van with the Swede, the dance girl 
 and the querulous historian of Trooper Idgetts, 
 whirled through the glare of Pacific Street to the hall 
 of justice, leaving at The Welcome, on the bar, sur 
 rounded by pools of beer that stuck to its feet in 
 unpleasing puckers, wearing dismally a frayed chrys 
 anthemum in its rag rope collar, the lavender pup from 
 the country-up-in-back. 
 
 The dance-hall girl wailed in the jogging van: 
 
130 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Aw, Jo ll kill me I never been pinched Jo ll kill 
 me!" 
 
 Arnold came to her, a hand on her arm. "Now, 
 don t go on so, sister. I ll see you through this." 
 
 She turned savagely on him. "Aw, you c n talk! 
 You come down the street in yer good clothes and 
 money and to-morrow it s all right. But what 
 chance s a girl got? Just tell me what s right about 
 it?" 
 
 The young man sat back in the shadows of the van. 
 He watched her, and then, when they descended, he 
 said quietly: "Kid, I m sorry. I ll see you through 
 it all." 
 
 But she snarled at him, though before the desk ser 
 geant in the basement office, he watched her unmoved, 
 in a sort of dream. 
 
 The idling officers gave them a casual inspection. 
 Beyond, a tall woman in black was identifying some 
 stolen trinkets at a desk, and the book-sergeant did not 
 look up for a moment. 
 
 "Shinanigan at George s," laconically began the 
 complaining officer. "Girl and this Swede jumped a 
 soldier who wouldn t stand percentage and Crosby 
 tried to put em out. And this fellow," indicating 
 Arnold, "tried to swing on me." 
 
 The heavy-jowled sergeant grunted and turned to 
 the arrest book. 
 
 "Name?" 
 
 "I coom by Valdez," said the sailorman. "Captain 
 Nelson, he tole me " 
 
 "Name!" roared the sergeant, and the arresting 
 officer said : "Ole Oleson that ll do for him" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 131 
 
 The desk man scratched stolidly ; then turned to the 
 soldier. "Name?" 
 
 "My name s Franzie H. Franzie. Hell, I wasn t 
 doin nothin ! I was just tellin of this yere Idgetts " 
 
 "Name?" thundered the sergeant to the dance-hall 
 girl, who wept, clinging to the rail. 
 
 "I was just trying to keep em from fighting. 
 George ll tell you. I m Maude Cummins. Oh, Jo ll 
 kill me" 
 
 "Take em up," growled the bulbous-headed one. 
 His heavy eyes wandered with sleepy malice to Arnold. 
 He sat back, putting down the pen, and took up his 
 dead cigar. The well-dressed prisoner had stood non 
 chalantly apart, watching the matter. 
 
 "Say, Jack, can t you raise enough deviltry in Ellis 
 Street without comin over here. Gotta bank roll, hey, 
 and gotta spend it?" 
 
 An idling patrolman laughed. "Was it Hermoine 
 in the Sixth?" he put in, and Jack Arnold smiled 
 placidly. 
 
 The arresting officer looked his discomfiture. He 
 had "made a break" then, had he? He was new on 
 the force and met many "drags" that perplexed him. 
 Concealing his chagrin he drove the other prisoners 
 to the door. But the girl clung to the rail, turning on 
 Arnold with a scream of rage. 
 
 "You know! Tell em I wasn t doing anything. 
 Here you get off you re some damned politician 
 some sure-thing man strong with the office " 
 
 "Shut that !" bellowed the sergeant. 
 
 "Naw, you wouldn t do a thing to him, wouldja? 
 Him with his good clothes an his pull " 
 
132 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Redmond," began Arnold, "she s right. George 
 just wanted to give her the run and she wasn t do 
 ing a thing." 
 
 "She can tell that to the judge to-morrow. Up !" 
 
 The girl shrieked as they forced her to the door. 
 The tall woman in black turned a troubled face, but 
 they did not see her. Arnold stood, his face darkling, 
 the liquor craze driven for a time from his brain. 
 
 "Look here," he said, "that girl s right she was 
 trying to stop the row." 
 
 "Don t go tellin me my business," the desk sergeant 
 blustered. 
 
 Arnold swung before him. "Yes, damn you, you 
 run that girl in for nothing, but you don t do a thing 
 tome!" 
 
 "Get out of here!" snarled the sergeant. 
 
 "Yes, I m let off. I ve got a drag, haven t I? I m 
 strong higher up, ain t I ? That poor devil of a sailor 
 will get ten days and lose his ship and wages, and that 
 lad from the cavalry will be cinched at camp, and that 
 weak-minded girl will be robbed by the bond sharks 
 and the judge ll wink at it. O, it s great to be an 
 American ! It s a fine old graft and to hell with the 
 crooks like you !" 
 
 The sergeant was dumb with astonishment his lit 
 tle pig eyes rolled bewilderedly between the oily fat 
 of his cheeks. Then dismay gave place to wrath. 
 "Get out of here !" he roared. "Take him home he s 
 drunk!" 
 
 Arnold shook his fist at the brass buttons. "Send 
 me up ! Go on, you crook ! Afraid of me, aren t you ? 
 O, it s a great thing to be an American !" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 133 
 
 "Git !" howled the sergeant, and a laughing patrol 
 man slipped an arm about John Arnold and led him 
 away. On the broad steps he freed the belligerent. 
 "Pull out, Jack. Old Redmond will jug you if you 
 roast him it s fierce. Now get home, boy !" 
 
 The young man leaned against a polished pillar of 
 the hall of justice and looked across the dark spread 
 of Portsmouth Square. His dimming senses rose to 
 note the fantastic roofs of Chinatown, a dragon flag 
 limp in the promised morning. Still and sleeping the 
 city lay. He stretched an arm to it. "What s right in 
 it all? What s right?" 
 
 The stars beyond the dragon flag rocked; intent 
 with his sickness, he did not hear the door open, the 
 woman come out. Seeing the man she stopped, and 
 then he slowly turned with a dull glance at her, the 
 preacher of the mystic Christ in the street of fakirs. 
 
 "It s you," he muttered, "and you ve failed, too. 
 You re way above it all you ve given nothing to us 
 all you ve failed, too." 
 
 She was silent before his insolence. The light on 
 her face from the electrolier recalled a flickering re 
 membrance of his student days a medallion he had 
 seen, a Minerva head. The woman had a face as pure, 
 as unmoved as that classic profile. He turned from her 
 with a growl. "I m going back. I want it right." 
 
 And then stepping clear of the column s base, he 
 pitched headlong to the pavement. She hurried after 
 him, kneeled, turning his face to the light. Blood 
 splashed her gloves. A cabman came from the all- 
 night stand across the street. 
 
134 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Bad tumble," he said, bending over. "It s Jack 
 Arnold !" 
 
 "We d better get him to the hospital." She wiped 
 the blood from his head. 
 
 The driver hesitated. "Mebbe not. He s not hurt 
 much and he s pretty well known I d hate to mix 
 him at the mergency. He lives jus up the hill." 
 
 "Well, home, then. Bring your cab across." 
 
 They got the senseless man into it with difficulty. 
 The woman held him on the cushions as the vehicle 
 whirled through Chinatown. Once he struggled to 
 consciousness. "Le* me explain He cares He 
 cares " 
 
 "Be still !" she whispered and held him closer in her 
 strong arms. It seemed a stealthy joy had come, the 
 outpouring of a maternal softness as a glow in the 
 white stillness of her soul s way, she who had moved 
 alone and with empty hands. 
 
 At the curb below his rooms they lifted him to his 
 unsteady feet, feeling of her handkerchief bound about 
 his head. While the driver took him up the stairs she 
 searched for his hat in the carriage. She found some 
 thing else a dirty package, a sort of silken case, 
 bulging with money. She looked out at the drunken 
 man, at the driver assisting him with commiserating 
 jests; with a frowning thought, a hesitance, she placed 
 the packet in her bodice. 
 
 The cabman returned. "He can get in all right 
 says he mustn t wake up Granny!" He laughed. 
 "And he says to thank the lady !" 
 
 "You know him" she said calmly "very well?" 
 
 "Everybody knows him. A lad round town one 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 135 
 
 of the race-track crowd. But square" she was ten 
 dering him money "no, not from you. I ll take you 
 home. They call you the Christ Crier down-town, 
 don t they? And we ought to help sinners." He 
 laughed. "We all know you," the driver muttered. 
 "They turn to watch you your grand voice." 
 
 She smiled wearily. All the town knew her as the 
 Street knows its pageantry no more. And so, across 
 the abyss dividing her pale Christ from the red shores 
 of life, she knew the world no more. Untouched, 
 listening curiously to the agony beyond the gulf, she 
 had moved alone, complacent, soul sufficient. 
 
 Arnold felt along the balcony rail to his door. The 
 clock in the hall of justice struck five. He looked on 
 the city lights, on the ocean fog above. Then the 
 lights became comets, the clouds, whirling bands he 
 fell squarely, as one stricken by death, on the mat be 
 fore his door. 
 
 After half an hour his fingers moved along the mat, 
 finding some substance which they carried to his lips. 
 The dead fragrance of the violets her violets, scat 
 tered over him on another dawn as he lay here, her 
 guardian knight, were on his lips, but he did not 
 know. 
 
 Presently, rap-a-tap, dragging a rag rope out of the 
 slime of the streets, a homeless dog crept up the stairs. 
 He whined miserably, and then slunk on to crawl upon 
 the master s breast and, sheltered, sleep. On this the 
 day came and then the sun shone a thief, a perjurer 
 and an outcast, senseless in the blood and flowers on 
 the hilltop. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 "There s a good deal to poetry," continued Mr. 
 Jarbo, dining with Mannie Murasky at Sedaini s, "be 
 sides getting the words to match at the ends of your 
 lines. Technique s a big thing, but then you ve got to 
 look out for the poetic principle. Many a good lad s 
 had to quit the business and go unhonored down the 
 corridors of Time because he was a shine when it came 
 to handling the poetic principle." 
 
 Mr. Murasky, uncertain but disputatious, continued 
 to polish a loaf of Italian bread across his sleeve, 
 sparring mentally for what he termed a "come-back." 
 
 The poet moved far from Mannie s sphere ; he was 
 a fellow always dumbstruck by a pretty face or good 
 things to eat, and an alliterative line or a felicitous 
 measure, suggesting to his vague conceits the great 
 thing he should sometime do, would play the devil 
 with a whole day s work for him. 
 
 "Never neglect the poetic principle," the versifier 
 continued to admonish, "and if a man ever wants to 
 land the big stuff he s got to look out for technique. 
 Poe was strong on technique if he d have cut the 
 booze" 
 
 "Poe, nothin ," put in Mannie loftily. "If he d ever 
 hit th street alongside of J. Ham Arnold he d been 
 nothin but a trail of smoke in th distance. How s 
 Ham feelin this morning?" 
 
 136 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 137 
 
 John Hamilton Arnold was, indeed, Mannie s secret 
 examplar. He would like to have idled about the 
 town in that fashion, being seen fashionably dressed on 
 sunny afternoons along Market Street in debonair 
 chaffing with the politicians, the sporting writers and 
 race-track men. 
 
 He now looked on the downfall of his patron with 
 mixed feelings, proud to have it said that he and J. 
 Ham were on a "toot" together, but what indeed had 
 happened ? 
 
 No one knew none questioned the prodigal, though 
 about his bedside revolved a world of solicitude. A 
 hero returned battered from the wars could not have 
 evoked such a going-on of mustard and hot water, 
 towels and ice, tea and toast as Miss Cranberry got 
 under way from the moment Arnold was found uncon 
 scious on the balcony. Mary Mellody, home from the 
 shop, bathed his brow ; Sammy ran to the drug-store ; 
 Angelo played the riddle; Theresa watched him from 
 the window with limpid Italian eyes, while the Cook 
 house Kid sat on the bed the fallen champion was 
 hedged about with interest. When Captain Calhoun 
 put his head in the door he was lied to with easy sub 
 terfuge; Mr. Arnold merely had a headache, and in 
 deed he did! Even Bernice Murasky, the imperious 
 shop-lady, put by her shrewish disdain and came up 
 with a softened judgment of this foolish business. 
 
 But none upbraided the sufferer. Down in the 
 world of half-lights, where chastity must smile, and 
 honor devise pretexts; where life wounds itself, beat 
 ing a slow way with crippled wings, there is an ampli 
 tude of charity like unto that revealed for the stranger 
 
138 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 in the tent of Abraham ; the indwellers can not moral 
 ize nor draw scientific deductions from the grind of 
 the gods. 
 
 Therefore, Ham, though he got drunk, was most 
 patiently restored, jestingly rehabilitated, and in no 
 wise scolded. 
 
 But there was an astonished note among them all. 
 What of the romance? Was Arnold married, and if 
 so, what of the bride in blue ? Among all the varying 
 circles in which he revolved, impossible stories had 
 run. Here, at Miss Cranberry s, the thing focused 
 they had seen her; she was no street myth, but what 
 had become of the country girl in blue? But none 
 questioned the recreant, his mood did not invite; for 
 thirty hours he was uncommonly sick. 
 
 The Blue Star Laundry poet had his theory. To 
 Nella Free and Mary and Bernice Murasky, in the 
 dusk of the hall, he whispered a complete, evolved re 
 construction of the downfall. 
 
 "No wedding-bells for her," asserted Mr. Jarbo. 
 "She shook him, and he took to drink. It s elemental, 
 it s epic, in its simple grandeur a fair, false face a 
 broken heart and then quick to the booze." The 
 poet was scratching through his pockets for a pencil 
 and the back of a laundry tag whereon to write. 
 
 "She wouldn t!" cried Miss Mellody indignantly. 
 "That little thing with the big eyes? she wouldn t!" 
 
 " O, Woman, in our hours of ease/ " sighed 
 Sammy, the pencil in his mouth. 
 
 "My Lands!" Miss Cranberry routed the gossips 
 from the hall. "Don t clutter up the place with any 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 139 
 
 more poetry ! The drawer of your washstand is most 
 full now, Mr. Jarbo." 
 
 But on the balcony outside, the poet mooned an 
 hour over the deceit of woman. "What a man wants 
 to do is to get em out of his system," mused he, and 
 then went down to Unc Pop s back room to place his 
 feet on the table and read The Compendium of Uni 
 versal Knowledge and World s Gazetteer. It was new 
 and bound in shiny red morocco, with gilt letters, and 
 one could carry it in one s vest pocket. It is not often 
 one can procure universal knowledge for forty cents. 
 Mr. Jarbo saw that though the print was fine, yet the 
 volume was small; and that if he began at half-past 
 seven o clock and read diligently until ten, he would 
 have assimilated the cumulative wisdom of the human 
 race for six thousand years. 
 
 Arnold lay that night in a stupor. The sparrows 
 were shrilling about the gable and on the rails of the 
 balcony when he came back to actualities ; the door of 
 his room was open on a glad morning with the fog 
 twisted into ringlets on the hills. Miss Cranberry 
 was tiptoeing about his bed, her gray hair escaping 
 from a sweeping cap. 
 
 "Granny?" The voice from the bed was the first 
 lucid utterance since his return from the quest of for- 
 getfulness. 
 
 "There, there, dearie!" She sat by the bed, her 
 hand on the cold compress across his brow. "Never 
 mind never mind !" 
 
 There was a long silence, while they listened to the 
 sparrows. 
 
140 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "I was drunk as a fool," he muttered; "did I lose 
 my watch dad s watch ?" 
 
 "No, no; only the crystal s broken. There be 
 quiet." 
 
 "Granny," he continued, "I was arrested and rode in 
 the wagon that s getting pretty low." 
 
 "Now, boy," she whispered, crouching lower to 
 stroke his cheek, "don t you mind. Theresa s got some 
 pretty shoes with beads on them that Nella girl 
 brought them for her." 
 
 "That s like Nel," he mused, "and did Unc Pop get 
 the rope for the barrel swing ?" 
 
 "Yes and the expressman gave us a lime barrel " 
 Miss Cranberry pressed Arnold s hand on the cover 
 let. There were few small concerns of the block into 
 which he did not stop to inquire on his way down 
 town of a sunny morning when the Happy Alley kids 
 were all around Aurelio Pico, the retired vaquero, who 
 was wont to bring his spindle into the alley and braid 
 his horsehair riatas along its ninety-foot free space. 
 Even the solemn, tarry-faced students in the Japanese 
 boarding-houses across the street knew him and he 
 them ; he was curiously attached to the nondescript old 
 block which was neither of the Latin quarter, nor of 
 the respectable "hill," nor yet Chinatown, though the 
 oriental wave was fast submerging it. 
 
 Arnold lay quiet with Miss Cranberry s hand on his 
 compressed brow. 
 
 "Granny, I had a fight a big Swede and a lad of 
 tHe cavalry " 
 
 "There, there, never mind, I know !" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 141 
 
 "And the police ran in a girl a girl who wasn t 
 doing a thing " 
 
 "Never mind, boy; you rest. Dearie, I know how 
 weak and foolish we are !" 
 
 He turned, beaten by his recollections, to the wall. 
 "Granny, I didn t marry Sylvia. You can t understand 
 but I had to get out of it." 
 
 "I know, boy," she quavered, "I. believe you must 
 have tried. And there s a God who cares for trying. 
 O, yes ; I ve not lived seventy years down here not to 
 understand !" 
 
 A shadow fell in the door s sun. A manikin in 
 blue overalls and red knit cap stared in. The young 
 man started. It seemed odd that child? His mind 
 went back it was his, then ? the waif from the coun- 
 try-up-in-back ? 
 
 "That kid," he muttered, "didn t shedidn t they" 
 
 "She never came back and the woodsman left Tues 
 day. He waited for the wedding, but you did not 
 come, and his ship was leaving for the North." 
 
 He turned away again and, crooning a lullaby, the 
 old woman left the room. After while the young man 
 drew up in bed and motioned to the infant. 
 
 "I ll call you Bill," he began, "and I ll see you 
 through you and the pup." 
 
 The Cookhouse Kid gouged its ear and gurgled. 
 
 "Bill," continued the foster-guardian, "for you and 
 the pup I ll have to make good." And when Miss 
 Cranberry returned, his voice came thickly from the 
 coverlet. "Bill, when I get through this, I ll finish the 
 barrel swing for the Alley bunch you and Angelo 
 and Theresa and the Joost kids." 
 
142 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Mr. Hammy," put in the old lady, shaking her 
 finger from the end of the bedstead, "I d rather have 
 you get roaring drunk seven days a week than to for 
 get to finish the barrel swing." But she sighed as she 
 departed. 
 
 Mr. Hammy passed a restful day. He dwelt on a 
 multitude of things, and a deal of others he shut stead 
 fastly from his mind. "What was I saying?" he mut 
 tered. "Who d I talk to? Did I drag her name into 
 all that bar-room gossip? Poor kid poor little girl 
 I ll write I ll tell her" 
 
 He broke off, staring at the paper joss in the dim 
 corner of his room, a single idea beginning to form 
 out of chaos: "I ll write and explain I ll send the 
 money or did I send the money ?" 
 
 He thought slowly, then whirled out of bed witH a 
 cry, searching for his clothes, and knelt, going through 
 the pockets with shaking fingers. 
 
 "Granny," he called, rushing to the door, "did I 
 h ave any money left?" 
 
 "It s on the dresser with your keys," she answered, 
 and he looked feverishly for it. There were gold and 
 silver and a crumpled note of the one hundred and 
 sixty-eight dollars of his legislative salary, there re 
 mained fifty-one. 
 
 But nothing else not a bill of hers! He sat un 
 steadily down on the bed and called back a jarring 
 memory of white-aproned men, laughing cronies, lunch 
 counters, sawdust, the voices of women, Japanese gal 
 leries, liquor smells, gold-woven tapestries, glittering 
 incandescents, the blare of bands, quarrels and ob 
 livion. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 143 
 
 "How d I get home?" he muttered. "Somebody 
 found me somebody ! A woman ! Robbed robbed ! 
 O, you damned fool her money ten thousand !" 
 
 He reeled back and fell face downward across the 
 bed. 
 
 At half-past six o clock Mary Mellody came down 
 the hill from the Powell Street car. She was tired, 
 thinly dressed, and the mist fell damp. Under the 
 awning of the Family Liquor Store she met a woman 
 who seemed taller, broader, more radiant in every way 
 of physical personality than she really was, because of 
 a curious emanation of an inner self. Her dark hair 
 clustered low on her brow and about the fine ears ; her 
 nostrils were wide, her chin a trifle sharp, her neck 
 beautifully modeled under the skin s pallor; her eyes 
 indistinguishably uncertain in color. She wore a pale 
 gray silk waterproof enveloping her to the chin, a cap 
 of the same stuff, suggesting the elegant ease of sim 
 plicity. 
 
 "Does Mr. Arnold live above in these lodgings?" 
 she asked. 
 
 "Yes," answered Mary. 
 
 "I wish to see him." She was ascending the stairs, 
 but, with a smile, stepped aside for the lame girl to 
 precede. Miss Mellody faltered before the stranger s 
 sureness. "I think Mr. Arnold s sick I think." 
 
 "He ll see me. It s another day of San Francisco 
 winter, isn t it ?" Her arm was assisting Mary as they 
 reached the floor above. Almost by a gesture of com 
 mand she won from the other the direction of Arnold s 
 rooms, and passed on to them, leaving the lame girl 
 
144 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 with an intense and envying doubt of the inexplicable 
 grace of her carriage. 
 
 In the passage the stranger saw an old woman 
 clucking to a parrot hung in the dirty window of a 
 kitchen beyond. She paused, and at the instant from a 
 door directly by her, a young man appeared. He wore 
 a beflowered lounging robe of padded Chinese silk and 
 a cigarette was between his teeth. His dark face was 
 hard; a feverish surprise shot over it, then he calmly 
 threw away the cigarette and stepped back, as if ex 
 pecting her to enter. She did their recognition was 
 mutual and instantaneous. She looked an instant 
 about the jumbled apartments dim in the ray of a 
 shaded student lamp on the table. The place seemed 
 to surprise her more than did the occupant. 
 
 Then she turned ; the man was smiling at her with a 
 faint amusement. 
 
 "I wished to see you," she began coldly. "You may 
 remember our meeting " 
 
 "On Grant Avenue ? I was very drunk. Please be 
 seated." 
 
 She sank into the chair indicated ; he stood at the 
 table s end, the splotch of light from under the lamp 
 lighting vividly his flowered robe, but dimly his face. 
 She wished to see it plainer, feeling an insecurity, ap 
 parently, in her situation. Then she realized that he 
 was studying her intently ; when her eyes rose to his, 
 he still held his interest. 
 
 "And later you had a Hard fall" 
 
 "Still and very drunk." He interrupted her 
 again gravely. "You re the street evangelist." He 
 fingered his cigarette case. "I suppose our meeting 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 145 
 
 explains itself. PerHaps you called to illuminate me 
 on my ways of life " 
 
 "Quite the contrary. I ve called to apologize 
 rather to explain what is hard to explain." She sat 
 forward nervously in the big chair. "Did you have 
 money quite a sum of money that night ?" 
 
 Arnold s face lit with reassurance. He came nearer, 
 eagerly, as though he would have touched her hand 
 lying on the table. 
 
 "I did and I lost it. And you why I can t begin 
 to thank you !" 
 
 She sat back with a sudden wincing, shading her 
 face with her glove. 
 
 "Please don t. I didn t save it for you. It s lost." 
 
 "Lost?" 
 
 "I found a roll of money in the cab it must have 
 been considerable and it seemed to me unsafe for 
 you to have. I didn t know the cabman, or where you 
 might possibly go later, and I thought I would keep it 
 for you." 
 
 "Yes. But lost" 
 
 "It s desperately hard to say. I am a stranger to 
 you" she put her hand to her hair nervously, and 
 again leaned to him "but I lost the money that night. 
 When we reached the bottom of the hill, it had slipped 
 somewhere. I searched in the cab and up the street 
 again, and everywhere. I couldn t find it it couldn t 
 have been dropped on the sidewalk." 
 
 "You couldn t find it?" 
 
 "No. I put it in my dress here but well, I ve 
 lost your money." She rose and faced him abruptly: 
 "How much was it ?" 
 
146 THE DAY OF! SOULS 
 
 Arnold was lighting another cigarette : "You don t 
 mind if I smoke ? I m a bit shot to pieces to-day." 
 
 "But the money !" she demanded. "It s a desperate 
 matter with me how much was it ?" 
 
 The young man rested his hands leisurely on the 
 table, and looked at her with a smile. "Nothing I m 
 not quite sure myself." 
 
 "You know," she retorted, "it was a large amount. 
 How much?" 
 
 "Very little." 
 
 "It was not. I am a stranger here I am preaching 
 in the street, but that is no title to honesty. I ve lost 
 your money, and I m going to account for it. How 
 much was it? I demand to know." Her voice rose 
 sharply. 
 
 "Well," Arnold s response was velvety nonchalant, 
 "forty-five dollars." 
 
 "You know better. I saw a hundred-dollar bill on 
 the outside, and there were many more. I wish the 
 truth." 
 
 "That hundred was merely phony I mean counter 
 feit. I beg pardon, but the language of the street 
 comes a deal easier with this present head." 
 
 "I wish to know the truth of this money I have lost 
 for you." 
 
 "Well, one hundred, and two twenties, and three 
 tens and honestly, I believe it was one hundred and 
 sixty-five in all merely that don t distress yourself." 
 Arnold flicked his cigarette ash airily. She did not 
 guess, beneath his measuring ease, the splitting sick 
 ness on him. "I suppose, as you are a preacher, you 
 worried a deal. It was a hard fix," he murmured. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 147 
 
 "You think I am an evangelist, which I am not in 
 the least." Her voice had a suggestion of irritation 
 at being put on the defensive before this unregenerate 
 and his languid eye-interest of the silken movement of 
 her raincoat. 
 
 "It was something about our souls, I recall," said 
 he ; "and didn t I say something foolish ? I was in the 
 devil s own humor. I suppose I was unusually drunk, 
 but I wanted to be drunk, I m glad I was drunk. But 
 it s a shame to embarrass you." 
 
 "This is not you who is speaking." She watched 
 steadily his mordant eyes. "You belittle your soul." 
 
 "I have none. I am a liar and a thief." He smiled 
 slowly at her flushing face, the brightening of her eye, 
 the imperious daintiness about her. 
 
 "You re the earth-man your feet in the clay," she 
 went on, "but your soul is above all this. And you 
 can t even deceive yourself. You got drunk to try it, 
 for some reason, and you failed !" 
 
 He watched her still with a gentle satire of interest. 
 She went on with a direct charge to his rebuffing. 
 "You can find the serene and inner life. Beyond that, 
 nothing matters nothing is real." 
 
 "Beg pardon, but in my world everything matters 
 and is real. You yourself are very real behind this 
 patter of yours I believe you re magnificently human." 
 
 She steeled herself against the admiration his eyes 
 paid to her regal figure, her face, her sensuous woman 
 hood. And yet he had defeated her; she could not 
 find way against his irony. 
 
 "Well," she turned at the door, "I lost your money 
 I ll recover it or repay you every cent." 
 
148 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Why bother? I imagine you re a scientist, or a 
 theosophist, or something extremely superior. Any 
 how, you just said nothing mattered, nothing is real. 
 Well, my money was a mere human hallucination 
 why worry about it ? What s a handful of paper to do 
 with the eternal verities?" 
 
 She hesitated to control the anger on her tongue. 
 The jester broke the hollow sphere of her serenity; 
 he went on undaunted. 
 
 "I remember a deal of your talk. I wonder how 
 you come to be doing that sort of thing. You re a 
 creature far different" he, also, hesitated "it doesn t 
 fit you. Who sent you?" 
 
 She recovered her control. "The saintliest man I 
 ever knew a clergyman, a worker in the worst of 
 London s East End." 
 
 She stopped, and the man went on with shrewd 
 mercilessness. "He asked you to a dying request 
 and he loved you." 
 
 She started at his guess. "Yes," she answered sim 
 ply, but in wonder. "He asked me to give men his 
 message on the streets of every city in the world. He 
 had worked among them the very worst. He left me 
 money for this and I could not refuse. And I ve 
 taught as I saw Christ, a symbolic promise for the 
 race, one of the spiritually developed figures, a 
 prophet." 
 
 "I thought He was a man who fought through a 
 hard game and lost. But you have it that there s 
 nothing to lose or suffer. Let s apply this to my case. 
 I wasn t drunk, and money nothing! Stuff of 
 dreams." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 149 
 
 She bit her lip. "You don t believe me !" And to 
 her swift anger his admiration again paid tribute. "It 
 is insufferable to rest under this imputation !" 
 
 "Do you imagine for a moment that I believe you 
 have that money ?" 
 
 She was silent and he went on gravely. "Now, 
 please don t. I have an awful headache one of the 
 worst headaches that an earth-man with his feet in the 
 clay could have. I take it you re a prophet of the new 
 spirituality I m reading a bit about it in the maga 
 zines. Well, I m back with the cave-men. I get down 
 one day and bump my head on the ground to God, and 
 the next, crack the bones of my enemies and offer them 
 to the devil. Real bones real devil." 
 
 At the door she turned again, calmly disregarding 
 him. "I shall advertise try every way to find that 
 money. And then, if it isn t found, I ll have to accept 
 your word and repay you. One hundred and sixty- 
 five dollars?" 
 
 "Yes, thank you; it will keep me in cigarettes a 
 month real cigarettes, the kind a man with his feet 
 in the clay smokes " 
 
 Her face showed nothing : he was suddenly contrite. 
 "I beg pardon. Don t mind me. They ll tell you 
 around this town I was never serious in my life." 
 
 "But you believe that I lost that money? You be 
 lieve me?" 
 
 "Absolutely. And you me?" 
 
 "Not in the least." 
 
 "Thank you. You are a person of excellent judg 
 ment." 
 
 She extended a card with her gloved hand. "My 
 
1 50 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 name is Grace Wayne. My address is Twenty-six 
 Weston Road, Melbourne." 
 
 "Australia, eh? I thought you were an American 
 straight through." 
 
 She continued coldly : "I am touring the world on 
 a mission sent, I told you, by a dying man s request 
 that I could not evade." 
 
 "To tell men of the new scientific God. I don t be 
 lieve that s what he meant you to do. I had a curious 
 idea the other night that you had failed, somehow 
 you were an actress reciting lines of some magnificent 
 vanity or other. God knows what! But no man 
 cared." 
 
 She watched him steadily ; Ke went on with a sudden 
 new interest. 
 
 "Right up the line from you there s a crowd beating 
 out sinners with a drum the Salvation Army. What 
 do you think of them?" 
 
 She smiled with a trifle of supercilious amusement. 
 "They are very good people they are attempting 
 much ;" then added, "on their level, in their way, very 
 good people." 
 
 "No, they re bad people most of them have been. 
 That s why I can blow in on Adjutant Hogjaw Frem- 
 stedt to-day and ask him to take charge of a girl from 
 a dance-hall that I m going to get out of jail. I 
 wouldn t dare ask any good people to mix in that. 
 But Fremstedt he was a bum himself, once." 
 
 She ignored him, and then smiled, putting out her 
 hand, and he felt a firm pressure and was puzzled at it. 
 "Good-by. I shall come to inquire about this money." 
 
 So in the end she had confused his jesting. Under 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 151 
 
 the lamp he read the card again. "Grace Wayne 
 she s interesting. She s got class above the rest of 
 those fakirs. But science or theosophy, or whatever 
 it is oh my head my head !" His hand went to the 
 wet compress. "And Sylvia her money gone!" 
 
 But after a while he muttered : "Ah, well let it go 
 let everything go! I didn t care for her but, O, 
 little girl!" And in the silent room his sick fancies 
 visualized dim figures from the night about him; the 
 preacher s simple daughter, kind and young and fair 
 in her steadfast faith, and then this other woman he 
 had later mocked, a sort of noble sweetness in her 
 grace and bearing she, too, had believed in his soul ; 
 and the faith of neither had he been able to crush, out 
 rage them as he might. 
 
 But shortly he refused to think of them. "I ll go 
 on now," he murmured. "It was a last chance, but I 
 broke with it. I ll go the limit now." 
 
 After a moment he was himself again a hard-faced 
 young man of the town, lighting a cigarette with a 
 wax thread from the delicate Satsuma bowl on the 
 table, and then lying back to blow smoke rings mood 
 ily into the violet gloom of his apartments. 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 Assemblyman Fred Weldy of the fifty-second dis 
 trict came down from the capital every Saturday to 
 see his wife and babies, his mother, a few political 
 persons with whom there were matters to discuss, and 
 to pass an hour at cards with his uncle, Mr. Radke, of 
 the Family Liquor Store. This was a long-established 
 custom; ever since his job-printing prentice days, 
 Fred had made it a point to be in the little back room 
 of the saloon Saturday evening, to drink three beers, 
 smoke limitless pipes and play a "Series." There 
 were five games for which the job printer and the 
 grocer contended, and Unc Pop had, in a greasy note 
 book behind his bar, a record of hundreds of games 
 and thousands of points of Mississippi High-Low, 
 Seven Up, Casino, Hearts and Whistle Jack. 
 
 At these silent sessions business could go smash. 
 Never would Unc Pop leave the back bar to wait on 
 fretful women in his grocery department; they would 
 come in and pound a nickel on his counter in vain, 
 while the merchant grunted his displeasure behind the 
 screened door. Customers usually went behind the 
 counters and helped themselves on these occasions, but 
 never would the grocer protest. "Fritzie had to be 
 stuck," custom, or no custom. 
 
 Another rule o/ Fred s was to dine with Arnold on 
 his over-Sunday sojourns in the city. They invariably 
 
 152 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 153 
 
 went to the Odeon, where the best German dishes 
 were; where one came on a deal of sardellen and 
 cheese smells ; and where, after the Sunday Schuetzen 
 Fest at Shell Mound, there would be a brave array of 
 green coats, cockades and impressive bronze and silver 
 medals along the bar. 
 
 Here, the two friends were at a secluded corner on 
 a Saturday of the mid-winter legislative session, and 
 with them Louis Ferreri and Eddie Ledyard, of the 
 Market Street shoe house. The four were intimately 
 at ease; they had "joshed" one another over a score 
 of reminiscent and familiar matters, of the street and 
 town. The three of them were "digging" Louis Fer 
 reri, who was part owner of a horse that had finished 
 last in three consecutive starts across the bay. The 
 slot-machine man chewed his cigar and grinned; he 
 shifted his tiger s-head diamond, sticking the forget- 
 me-not pin in its place through his four-in-hand, and 
 grinned again helplessly, until Mannie Murasky came 
 in and went joyously back to join them. That shifted 
 the conversation from Louis luckless "skate" for a 
 minute. Mannie had a fervent story. Yes, sir, over 
 in San Leandro there was a "comer" a boiler-maker 
 w r hom Mr. Murasky, at the next meeting of the Po- 
 trero Athletic Club, was to translate to pugilistic fame. 
 
 "C n he put em over ?" retorted the discoverer. "A 
 wallop from t at guy would stop a ferry-boat a 
 straight left an t en a shift ; in an out he c n fight 
 see-saw, duck an stall ; on foot-work t at mutt d make 
 Gans look like he was nailed to th mat. He s a won 
 der, a wiz " 
 
 "Yes, like that other farmer you imported who 
 
154 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 fought three rounds, and then suddenly remembered 
 his mother was opposed to boxing," said Ledyard. 
 
 And the quartet hooted Mr. Murasky and his 
 "champ." Ledyard, the boyish bookkeeper at the shoe 
 store, brought the conversation again to the races, and 
 again Mannie breasted the onset. He had a horse in 
 pickle yes, he did something juicy in the fifth, and 
 magnanimously would let his friends in to the roof. 
 "Th talent t ink this horse is a jungler from Spo 
 kane," confided Mannie, shaking his thin shoulders 
 until his yellow diamond let loose a headlight radiance. 
 "It s exclusive Bomba, in th fift don t forget t at 
 name. Sell your sister s hatpins an get on." 
 
 The shoe store man s eyes glittered nervously ; Man 
 nie had landed a long shot one time; he busied him 
 self much about the track. Perhaps ? 
 
 At his side, Arnold suddenly muttered unintelli 
 gibly. He had been in some queer moods the past 
 month, his cronies said ever since his big drunk, in 
 fact. He was still immaculate in dress, but he drank 
 more than he had ever been known to before, and had 
 been at the race-track every afternoon while drawing 
 his salary from the state treasury for his clerical work 
 at the capitol. 
 
 Strange stories had gone about concerning Ham 
 things at which even the tenderloin winced a bit ; they 
 centered about some unknown country girl whom he 
 was said to have brought to the city, robbed and turned 
 adrift. The Street was pretty swift, but that was a 
 raw deal it didn t seem like the fellow. But there 
 was Fergy, of the Maplewood, who had seen the 
 money, and a half-dozen who had seen the girl, and 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 155 
 
 some had even heard Arnold s declaration that he was 
 to marry her. And then she had disappeared, and 
 J. Ham had been going it strong. He had spent more 
 money than ever before, plunged higher on the ponies, 
 drifted deeper into the after-midnight life, reckless, 
 mordant, untiring, unappeased. 
 
 But in the hectic life of the Street, the affair was 
 already almost forgotten by his familiars. It was 
 some queer work, but then it was no one s business. 
 The grand jury inquiry into the registration frauds 
 had also dropped from view; some unseen machina 
 tions of the sinuous power that creeps for ever about 
 the underpinning of the social structure had intervened 
 and an acquiescent if doubting public was gulled from 
 the issue. The banded evil of the city flung John 
 Hamilton Arnold forward as a challenge ; honest men 
 dared not accept the wage of battle, and his nonchalant 
 perjury was now of the past. He, himself, had both 
 ered about it least of all ; he had been busily taking to 
 himself the aids of oblivion. 
 
 "What odds are you getting, Ham? How s Presi- 
 dente posted?" repeated Eddie Ledyard curiously. 
 
 "Five to one, straight. Just a flyer; I don t know 
 anything about the horse." 
 
 But young Ledyard s face grew crafty; there was 
 "something doing" sure there was! 
 
 "I c n get you better," interposed Mannie Murasky ; 
 "five an a half." 
 
 "Presidente Presidente " repeated Ledyard, "let s 
 look up the form." He rose, and then turned to the 
 table : "Coming out some night, Hammy ? We ve got 
 
156 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 a new piano, and Stella s home from school. And 
 mother s always asking why you never come." 
 
 Arnold waved an indifferent good-by as Mannie 
 went with the clerk. 
 
 "That lad s got no call to play a cent," he muttered. 
 "I used to run with him in school, and now he s keep 
 ing his mother and sister on his salary." 
 
 "There s nobody compelled to play the races," Fer- 
 reri protested sluggishly. "Why don t these lambs 
 stay out of the life?" 
 
 "Well, as the game is shoved at em night and day 
 on every corner, in every newspaper and by every 
 sure-thing man they meet, I guess staying away isn t 
 so easy. They don t think they don t consider until 
 the dope is soaking out of them and there s another 
 long-term sucker or another vote for the push, when 
 we need to lift anything." 
 
 Ferreri sat up with slow interest. 
 
 "And what s getting into you?" he mumbled. 
 
 "O, nothing! I just watch the game played out 
 that s all." 
 
 "You ought to see the sports hanging out at Sacra 
 mento," put in Weldy. "They can t do enough for us, 
 either." 
 
 "You re on that committee to investigate the charges 
 that bribery beat the Lacy bills, ain t you?" queried 
 Ferreri, with renewed interest. "What ll the farmers 
 scare up next ?" 
 
 The legislator shot a nervous glance at Arnold. 
 
 "They want an investigation, all right," said he. "I 
 guess the track must have done some raw work last 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 157 
 
 "Cost my company ten thousand." The slot-machine 
 agent languidly adjusted himself in his seat. His 
 concern had six thousand gambling machines in the 
 city, reaping a harvest that made ten thousand dollars 
 for buying the legislature a pittance; Ferreri himself 
 had a contempt for the statesmen. 
 
 Weldy was restless, seeming to rise against some 
 implication of himself in this nonchalant recital; he 
 glanced about the cafe and then turned defensively to 
 the others. 
 
 "Twenty-eight suicides, and nine men in the pen 
 from playing the races that s what Lacy said was the 
 record in this city during the season, when he de 
 manded this bribery investigation to see what beat his 
 bill. That s pretty tough everything so open for 
 boys like Eddie Ledyard." 
 
 "God s sake," retorted the slot-machine man, "hear 
 him talk ! Say, you ain t bucking, are you ?" 
 
 "I m on the committee," Weldy shifted his big red 
 Hands. "It s pretty close. Lots of the members are 
 afraid the investigation will be made." 
 
 Ferreri sat up straight. 
 
 "Well, don t you know how you re going to vote? 
 If your committee reports against the investigation, 
 that ll settle it, won t it?" 
 
 "Well, there s a lot to be said," answered Weldy, 
 and then he felt Arnold s foot against his leg, a pres 
 sure that stopped him. "O, it s all right, of course; 
 everything ll go all right," he concluded lamely. "Still- 
 man Ham, here everybody knows I m not bucking 
 anybody !" 
 
 "I guess not " retorted the slot-machine politician. 
 
158 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Just remember who elected you, who put you in line 
 
 for the easy money." 
 The assemblyman s big face reddened. "Here, you," 
 
 he growled and glanced at his sponsor for support 
 
 "no crook sporting man runs me !" 
 
 Ferreri laughed shortly. "Crooks, eh ?" 
 
 "All crooks," interposed Arnold. "No such thing 
 
 as a straight sport. Crooks ? why we re all crooks ! 
 
 " We re most of us liars an* arf of us thieves 
 
 An the rest are as rank as can be ; 
 
 But once in a while, we can finish in style " 
 
 Ferreri laughed again. This was well enough from 
 Arnold every one was used to J. Ham ; but Weldy 
 he was only a cheap legislator. 
 
 But Louis wouldn t argue with Ham ; he would al 
 ways make some retort that you could only answer 
 with a laugh, and the laugh sounded sickly. 
 
 Louis had, he said, a date over on Golden Gate. He 
 presently left the two friends alone. Weldy sat, 
 sprawled on the small of his back, sucking his cigar, 
 his big legs stretched under the table. 
 
 "It makes me sick," he growled. "Ham, it s taken 
 for granted that I m out for the money. You don t 
 know anything about it the pushing and hauling and 
 whispering we re a hot bunch of lawmakers, we are ! 
 All the dirty little rats in the state are up there to give 
 us orders." 
 
 "How s the bribery business coming?" 
 
 Weldy threw up his hands with a gesture pathetic 
 in his virile manliness. "God s sake, I wish I was out ! 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 159 
 
 It s all on me, the way the committee stands, two to 
 two. I just wanted to ask you, Ham. The whole ad 
 ministration is trying to stop a report in favor of an 
 inquiry, and here s my union, and all the decent people 
 I know, hounding us the other way. There s a delega 
 tion of preachers up there now my wife s uncle s one 
 of em from Alameda County " 
 
 Arnold studied his friend s worried face. He was 
 surprised ; he had taken it for granted that Weldy was 
 getting his "bit" in every chance that came. It was a 
 fool statesman who didn t pick up his five thousand a 
 session these days when the prize-fights, the gambling 
 machines and the races were all on the rack, and the 
 big money from higher up was also abroad. 
 
 And then Arnold had a curious sensation; He sud 
 denly recalled a day when he and Fred Weldy would 
 have thought exactly the same on the ethics of "easy 
 money," but now he was calloused to it, while Fred 
 hemmed and hawed. Arnold remembered further that 
 he had, in his own mind, through all their friendship, 
 assured himself of a certain superiority to the job 
 printer. 
 
 "The union s playing hell," resumed Fred. "I 
 thought they d stand for the program, but the boys 
 passed resolutions against that bribery deal. You see 
 where it puts me, Ham." 
 
 Arnold smiled at the assemblyman s childlike insist 
 ence. 
 
 "But it just struck me all of a sudden the other day 
 why the gang got behind me so strong on that grand 
 jury business, and why you were put up to swear what 
 you did ! The House is torn up pretty bad, and I see 
 
160 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 4 
 
 now how badly the track and the gambling men need 
 me." 
 
 "Fred," Arnold leaned to him across the table, "the 
 men who run this town haven t any use for you or 
 me. They ll use us and throw us aside when the time 
 shows fit. They don t owe me anything, and I ve no 
 love for them it s every man for himself in this 
 game. But you re my friend. I didn t go before the 
 grand jury to help the gamblers at Sacramento, but 
 to help you. You were in more danger than you ll 
 ever know. And there was your mother, and I " 
 
 "I know you did, Ham. But you took awful 
 chances. You re the most reckless man I ever knew !" 
 
 "Program." Ham smiled distantly. "Fred, it was 
 all cut and dried some men on that jury knew exactly 
 how I would testify. Man, you don t know yet how 
 smooth things run, do you ?" 
 
 "I wish I was "out of it," sighed Weldy. "The 
 union s knocking me, and my business is running 
 clown. Lord, Ham, I was happier in the shop. Don t 
 you remember when you used to come in every after 
 noon, and I d be kicking the job-press, and we d talk 
 socialism how we read Marx and were red-hot for 
 the brotherhood of man? You were just out of col 
 lege and I d just got through prenticing, and we were 
 both straight and full of big ideas, and no man could 
 mutter anything about easy money to us like Louis 
 did just now. We ve gone pretty far, ain t we, old 
 man?" 
 
 "Pretty far," said the other. "They grind you 
 through the mill Fred, I know !" 
 
 "We thought we were Socialists," laughed Weldy 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 161 
 
 mirthlessly. "We were chuck-a-block with big 
 schemes, weren t we? We were going to get into 
 union politics and hammer away, and lead the boys to 
 our way of thinking, and crack over some of the dirt 
 we saw all around. The Social Commonwealth, the 
 Fraternity of Man Lord, Lord !" 
 
 "Fred, there s nothing wrong with our theories 
 our beautiful scheme of human betterment and all that 
 but we re wrong that s it. The run of men aren t 
 intelligent enough, aren t honest enough, to conduct a 
 highly organized state. Character, that s what s lack 
 ing." 
 
 "Well, they ain t all as bad as that." 
 
 "Aren t they? Well, now, take the organization 
 here, the thing that rules, the real life of the present 
 social state for the outward form of government 
 doesn t cut any figure take it from Barren Chatom, 
 who runs things here for a half-dozen moneyed men 
 in New York take it from Chatom down through 
 every class of men who concern themselves with public 
 affairs, who do things, down through them all to the 
 hypo fiends we beat out of the lodging-houses on elec 
 tion day who s honest among them all? Can you 
 name one?" 
 
 The statesman shut his eyes against the smoke of 
 his cigar for a minute ; then he murmured in protest : 
 "Thunder thunder!" 
 
 "O, there are some" retorted Arnold. "Unc Pop, 
 Captain Calhoun, Sammy Jarbo, poor devil driving a 
 laundry wagon for ten a week and writing his verses 
 to Mary Mellody but show me the men who are 
 shoved against life where it s white hot^ who win, and 
 
162 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 who aren t willing to stand for crooked work ? I don t 
 say they do it they don t need to do it they stand 
 for it, which is the same thing when results are fig 
 ured. Socialism? Hell! As long as men haven t 
 sand enough to run a ward primary straight, they ll 
 never run an industrial revolution. Show me I m 
 crooked but I deal with crooks." 
 
 "O, thunder thunder!" protested the legislator 
 feebly. 
 
 "Show me a man in politics who isn t advanced by 
 crookedness, who isn t willing to keep his mouth shut 
 about the thousand deals away down beneath him that 
 boost him along one man who fights against raw 
 work in and out of season! Why, he d be crazy, 
 wouldn t he ? He couldn t be elected to referee a dog 
 fight!" 
 
 "You re putting it pretty strong, Ham, pretty strong. 
 Here s the people, the great, strong heart of the peo- 
 pie-" 
 
 "The people be damned !" said Arnold. "Let them 
 be gouged they stand for it." 
 
 "You re anti-social," answered Weldy solemnly. 
 "You re a regular bandit an outlaw. Ham, you re 
 the most dangerous man in the community." 
 
 The other smiled and broke off suddenly. "How s 
 Lillie and the babies?" 
 
 "Fine. We re building over in Berkeley, but it s a 
 tight rub to get the money. I m going to get the mort 
 gage renewed next week. And when I get through 
 with this cursed legislature, I ll stick close to the office 
 and go home to Lillie and mother and the kids every 
 night, and pay my union dues and attend the meetings. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 163 
 
 But the boys ll never get me into politics again. No 
 dirty gambler can say he owns me I" 
 
 Arnold laughed and slapped his friend on the back 
 as they went up Market Street through the damp and 
 shining night. Before the Maplewood door he 
 stopped. "Come on have a drink!" 
 
 Fred protested; he had had enough at dinner; he 
 was going to take the next boat to Berkeley, where his 
 wife was boarding while the cottage was being built. 
 But Arnold insisted ; he dragged Fred in, and the first 
 man they met was Harry Stillman, the police com 
 missioner, immaculate, debonair, smiling in a crowd 
 at the bar. He left it and came to the new-comers. 
 The legislator seemed crestfallen before the politician s 
 witty sallies. 
 
 "Down over Sunday, eh ? Fred, we re losing you 
 they tell me you don t mix much with the boys. Now, 
 here, you know " He jerked some quip in the 
 assemblyman s ear and they both laughed, Weldy in 
 odd protest. "Let s go in the gold room," added Still 
 man. His eye roved to Arnold with a quick signifi 
 cance which the latter understood, for he turned away. 
 
 "We ll crack a small bottle," continued the police 
 commissioner. "Jack, join us in twenty minutes." He 
 threw his furred automobile coat to an attendant at 
 the door to the rear of the Maplewood establishment, 
 and Weldy followed him within. 
 
 Arnold idled ten minutes with a group at the bar; 
 then went to the street. 
 
 Of late he was harried by restless imps "little 
 puckers under your scalp," he described them to 
 Sammy Jarbo that would not allow him to be alone, 
 
164 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 to be unoccupied, that forbade him the hours of read 
 ing or idling with his voice and piano at his rooms, 
 which had formerly served as surcease to his vagrant 
 life. Night and day now he must be down-town, 
 around the haunts of his kind. For one week he dwelt 
 moodily on Sylvia Spring, and then he killed remem 
 brance with another drunk and went his way more 
 evenly. 
 
 "She s gone home," he told himself, "and some day 
 I ll send her money back I ll break the books for her 
 or cut into something at the city hall. I ll be square 
 there, and then forget her. But the rest damn them 
 I ll knife this town deep somewhere !" 
 
 And so, baffling his memories, he plunged on the 
 races, a figure in the betting room, with his clean- 
 graven face, his immaculate clothes, each afternoon. 
 He began to plot how he would get an easy graft at 
 the city hall. He had connections powerful enough to 
 let him in on many sources of revenue hitherto passed 
 indifferently by, for he cared little about money. He 
 had spent as he received, and for years had forgotten 
 whether or not he had ever had ambitions. It had 
 been as easy to jest with them as it had been with his 
 conscience, to whip and bind them to his evil. 
 
 "But now I ll get money," he promised, as he stood 
 without the Maplewood. "It s what they re all at, and 
 I can be cleverer than most. I ll get all I can I ll get 
 back for what they ve done to me !" 
 
 And this idea that now he was matching his cun 
 ning, his single wit, against an enormous, compact 
 and intricately organized social force, malign, soulless 
 and of illimitable power, stuck to him. He suggested 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 165 
 
 to himself the cave-man, an outlaw cave-man, contriv 
 ing to outwit a mammoth yes, the renegade savage 
 in the place of the savages. He glutted his humors 
 with the picture. The most cunning savage might 
 slay the mammoth and then cheat his fellows, too! 
 
 Three doors from where he stood by the curb, the 
 glare of an electric sign above the side entrance of the 
 Maplewood cafe fell on a red motor-car. A woman 
 was the only occupant. Arnold watched her for a 
 time, and then went leisurely to the machine. 
 
 "Hello, Nel," he said, with brusk cheeriness to dispel 
 his mood ; "how s the world with you ?" 
 
 The girl hardly stirred in her furs; her eyes were 
 fixed on the crowds in the street of fakirs. 
 
 Sunday nights the human tide eddied and choked 
 the thoroughfare, congesting about the haranguing 
 speakers, the beaters of drums and cymbals, the stri 
 dent panaceaists and proclaimers of revolutions. But 
 Nella Free was watching one beyond the others the 
 woman in black, who towered above the street throngs, 
 whose face she saw under the flare and swing of the 
 gas torch; whose arm, lifting the somber robe, was 
 classic in its appeal, whose voice thrilled over the yap 
 ping fakirs, so that now and then the girl in the motor 
 car caught a word of its resurgent fervor. 
 
 She laid a hand on the young man s sleeve as he 
 leaned over the tonneau. "Listen! It s grand, just 
 like a theater like an actress speaking!" 
 
 "It is/ answered Arnold indifferently. "Acting 
 superb acting!" 
 
 The girl looked at him with curious, attentive 
 rebuke. "You re getting bitter, Hammy, ain t you? 
 
166 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 And you re getting funny little lines about your eyes. 
 iYou don t care for anything or anybody." 
 
 "Superb acting," he murmured, and smiled at her; 
 then swung lightly into the seat beside her, snapping 
 open his silver cigarette case. 
 
 The girl turned to him with a pleased laugh ; from 
 the shift of her furs the perfume of violets exhaled. 
 The young man suddenly descended, and, without 
 word, leaving her astonished, disappeared in the door 
 way of the Maplewood. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 "Love," said the laundry route poet, dissecting his 
 raviolis at Sedaini s on pay night, "is the divinest 
 ecstasy of the human organism, but it s fatal to genius. 
 Herrick and Lovelace and some of those second-raters 
 framed up some good stuff with love as the motif, but 
 the big men never monkeyed with it." 
 
 Mary Mellody looked pained and in much doubt; 
 it was hard to dwell with the fat young poet s soul. 
 In her hand-bag she had at least eight inches of ballad 
 burdened with the amorous tragedy of one Tiburico 
 Vasquez, an early California outlaw, who eloped with 
 his friend s wife, and was thereafter hanged through 
 the husband s machinations, which Mr. Jarbo had con 
 fided to her for criticism; the stanzas dripped with 
 tender passion, and the poet had squeezed her ringers 
 ecstatically as he read them to her on the stairs. 
 
 But now Miss Mellody turned to Sammy in con 
 fusion, a spot of color on her pale cheeks, a catch in 
 her voice : "You don t care for nothing," she declared. 
 "Sammy Sammy !" 
 
 "I don t?" protested he. "Look at me, girl; you ll 
 be fatal to me." 
 
 He grasped her hand across the table, and they 
 drank in each other s glances, Mary with her color 
 heightening, her eyes growing bigger under the poet s 
 hypnosis, until she flung about from him on the chair. 
 
 167 
 
168 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "O, you re awful, just awful, Sammy !" 
 
 The laundry route poet uprose and strode the little 
 cafe, Napoleonically ; he tried to frown, and then 
 came back to sit across from her. 
 
 "Sweet Mellody," he began presently, with a soften 
 ing voice, "how ll I ever turn out the big stuff with 
 you? You make me feel flimsy. How ll I ever get 
 past the forty-second stanza of Pizarro with you?" 
 
 "I don t know," she faltered. "I suppose I m just 
 only in the way!" 
 
 The poet shook his head lugubriously, but without 
 speech. 
 
 But as they went slowly out and paused under the 
 balcony of the Family Liquor Store, ere going to their 
 rooms, he saw, within her eyes, sonnets, rondeaus, 
 cycles of such songs as Dante found in the gaze of 
 Beatrice, or Abelard in Heloise. Perhaps, after all, it 
 didn t matter so much. 
 
 Miss Cranberry found them hand in hand coming 
 up the lodging-house stairs, and discreetly turned 
 within the little kitchen to scold the parrot. Nella 
 Free met them in the hall with a nervous laugh. 
 
 "My," she said, "you kids! Where s Hammy?" 
 
 "We don t see so much of him now," answered the 
 poet. "He s going it pretty fast down-town, isn t he? 
 You ought to know." 
 
 Nella laughed again in her usual good-natured con 
 straint. She was obsessed by her idleness, her vacant 
 mind, her good clothes; her lover, for expedient rea 
 sons, forbade her to mingle much with the life of the 
 down-town, where otherwise she would have been it 
 was "politics," and she reasoned on it not at all. But 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 169 
 
 she chafed and fretted, heart-hungry, inutile, for ever 
 going about with her nervous little laughs and small 
 questionings. 
 
 At times she envied Bernice Murasky, the apostate 
 Jewess, the sullen shop-girl, who gnawed her fingers 
 with fury when she saw Nella with a new hat, costing 
 three times as much as Bernice earned in a month; 
 but she could not have held herself a week at the level 
 on which the shop-girl fought wildly against the con 
 ditions that were crushing her dreams, her worship of 
 an unknown and glittering estheticism, the beautiful 
 things and ways of life. Bernice, to herself, reviled 
 the other girl, her inanities, her shallowness ; here, she 
 might have read, studied, traveled, found a dozen 
 expressions for the piteous woman s note which the 
 girl of Solinsky s was dying to give forth and she 
 thought of nothing but pleasing her lover, dressing 
 prettily, idling about her flat. Debarred from friends, 
 she chattered town gossip with her maid or messenger 
 boys or the janitor. 
 
 She came to Sedaini s to eat the cheap table d hote 
 because "the boys made her laugh ;" and up on Wash 
 ington Street she wouldn t interfere with Harry s 
 political affairs ; she could really have a friend. When 
 she visited Cranberry s she invariably brought some 
 thing for the Polacchi children shoes for "Terry," 
 as Arnold had nicknamed the small girl, a sweater for 
 Angelo, or now, sweets for Bill, the waif. With these 
 small gifts Nella supplicated tolerance in Miss Gran- 
 berry s sharp eyes ; but here she was mistaken, for the 
 old woman did not draw back from Nella s ways of 
 life. She guessed much, but, in her cap and black silk 
 
i;o THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 gown, going to Trinity of Sundays, Miss Cranberry 
 found no judgment. 
 
 The hard town had taught her; one does not live 
 forty years in San Francisco lodging-houses for noth 
 ing; one finds the infinite and necessary compromises 
 with life. The divorce court or the morgue may make 
 the summing-up of one s neighbors, but one can leave 
 the signing of the count to God so the little, old 
 woman had it, and, kneeling to try the new shoes on 
 the fisherman s orphan, she would mutter: "There, 
 there, dearie the pretty things the pretty things! 
 And who the giver is we ll not ask she s only what 
 men made her there, there dearie, run and play." 
 
 So in and out of Cranberry s lodgings she fluttered 
 with her silks and perfumes, her furtive gifts, her 
 laughter and unrest, her Gipsy carelessness. It was 
 the one spot in all the world where she was free, 
 wholly free; she could gossip with Granny in the 
 kitchen, listening indifferently to long tales of the days 
 of Ralston; she could loll in Arnold s morris chair, 
 smoking his cigarettes, or idle in Mary Mellody s 
 room, conferring on fashions, or sit with the other 
 girl on the edge of Sammy s bed, listening with doubt 
 ful appreciation to his abominable verses here, in all 
 the world the world held no winking wisdom about 
 her ; she was free, and her spark of personality found 
 itself, her confused consciousness cleared. With them 
 she had no need of pretense, for they faced each day 
 with elemental, sophisticated simplicity. They had no 
 need of pretense, either, and therefore had a charity 
 impossible to the better ordered world. For good or 
 evil they were cut off from its sincere largeness of 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 171 
 
 good, its clean friendlinesses, its buoyant virtues 
 they had to make their own and live them. 
 
 Of late Nella had not been at Sedaini s. Wally 
 Walters, the silent pianist and rag composer, and 
 Hammy Arnold, who could always make her laugh 
 with his songs and contortions when he chose to 
 mimic some histrionic idol of the day, were not now 
 patrons of the four-bit table d hole. 
 
 Arnold, in fact, had not slept at his lodgings for a 
 fortnight. He had been let in on a great coup at the 
 Emeryville races, where a secret clique put forward an 
 unknown horse in a rich handicap, getting a light im 
 post on their mount against which the unsuspecting 
 public bet heavily on a popular favorite. But the "long 
 shot" galloped home against a field that had no chance 
 with him, and the inside people made an enormous 
 profit. Arnold won four thousand dollars on the affair 
 and lost three of it within the week, recklessly backing 
 other horses. But it made him a great man among the 
 cigar store habitues, the juvenile hangers-on of the 
 form sheets. When J. Ham Arnold strolled into the 
 smoking shop where Mannie Murasky supervised the 
 gambling-machines, and cast an eye over the entries 
 posted, envious youths craned to see what horse and 
 odds he was considering. 
 
 He came back from the track a few days later broke. 
 The book-makers had his other thousand besides three 
 hundred borrowed from Ferreri. He now secured fifty 
 dollars from Fergy of the Maplewood on the plea that 
 his salary from the People for eminent services ren 
 dered at the capitol was due. About the cafes his 
 meteoric rise and fall at the track was the subject of 
 
172 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 merriment. He met it with a serene smile, but he was 
 weak and overlaid with drink, sleeplessness and throb 
 bing humors. But he had forgotten, he told himself ; he 
 looked back on the brief, troubled rise of his better 
 self, the pain of it all, as now a grotesque emotion; 
 when the memory grew too acute he drank and 
 plunged deeper in the life of the town. He had paid, 
 out of his winnings, a month s rental on Miss Gran- 
 berry s house, had sent two weeks groceries to the 
 place, a piece of gray dress goods for the old lady and 
 a department store jumble of stuff to her proteges, but 
 he had not been near his rooms. They strangely 
 haunted him, the silence, the shadows, the whip of the 
 wind on the balcony, the disarray of papers and books 
 and music scattered over the floor and furniture. On 
 his one visit there he had found a small soiled glove, 
 stained, perfumed with the crushed stems of flowers, 
 among the stuff on his dresser and staring at it, he 
 closed the door and left. 
 
 But one reminder he had of Sylvia and her story. 
 About the town, day and night, in the fight clubs and 
 gambling places, the cafes, and across the bay at the 
 races the lavender pup followed him. It was at his 
 heels when it might be, and, abject, cringing, grotesque 
 in its color and shambling uselessness, it waited for 
 him, always waited in doorways and on curb. At first 
 he resented this reminder of the country-up-in-back, 
 and of the last snapping of the bond holding him to 
 his better self, and then he came through brooding 
 toleration to a sense of relation with the brute. He 
 made a place for it at the hotel, and solemn, sad-eyed, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 173 
 
 prematurely old, it seemed, the pup sat about the 
 master. 
 
 "Old man," Arnold muttered, "what the devil do 
 you want? I can t make out. Hungry, pup? Cold? 
 No? Well, what are you watching me for?" And at 
 other times he held one-sided conversations with the 
 inquiring one: "We re broke J:o-day, pup, ain t we? 
 They certainly cleaned us out in the fifth. Never mind ; 
 we ll wear diamonds when this bunch of bookies is 
 striking us for hand-outs. Stick to me, old man. I ll 
 fill that purple hide of yours with canvasback when we 
 pull off the big win." And yet again he addressed 
 the dog from his hidden trouble. "She liked you, 
 didn t she? the grand little girl! Well, we did our 
 best to put her square, but it wasn t much, was it, pup ? 
 Here, you little cuss, look at me ! Am I as bad as she s 
 got a right to think ?" 
 
 But he tore the memory from him ; if tHere was in 
 him the faint jewel of a good deed, he buried it deeper 
 with outlawry. He turned from one bad affair to an 
 other. Stillman had told him that when the governor 
 came back from New York he would be seen about the 
 pardon. Ham must be patient something would turn 
 up soon. 
 
 The "something" did in the middle of tKe midwinter 
 legislative session. Arnold was summoned from a 
 Bush Street poker club one night by telephone to meet 
 Stillman at the Maplewood. He was ushered to the 
 gold room and they had a quart of champagne before 
 the commissioner of police, the raconteur, and maker 
 of quips, the agent for the boss and higher-ups, quelled 
 his wit to the conferential reason of the meeting. Ar- 
 
174 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 nold knew something was due ; he idled back, watching 
 Stillman s reflection in the polished panels of white 
 birch and gold behind the table, waiting for the 
 ripening. 
 
 At length, with fraternal assurance, Stillman, too, 
 leaned back and sighed. 
 
 "I see we ve got to handle Weldy," he said. "I 
 thought he was going to hold out on us." 
 
 "How s that?" queried Arnold. He did not bother 
 himself about politics at Sacramento, or even read the 
 papers these days. "I thought he was making good 
 up there?" 
 
 "Ham, you stung yourself on that fellow. You re 
 member we gave him the_ v nomination mostly on your 
 word ? Now, look what he s at ! The colonel tells me 
 Weldy holds out of every caucus the delegation has 
 called on this Lacy investigation. Of course it s the old 
 game, but I thought Weldy would be grateful enough 
 to you not to stick out for a price." 
 
 The younger man tipped forward so that the front 
 legs of his chair thumped the floor. "O, look here, 
 Harry, Fred isn t looking for money!" he retorted 
 testily. 
 
 "He isn t ? He certainly isn t bucking us for glory, 
 is he?" 
 
 "In this investigation business? I haven t heard 
 much lately." 
 
 "Well, you knew we got him on the special commit 
 tee to report on Lacy s resolution to look into what 
 beat these civic purity bills, didn t you ? Of course the 
 two farmers on it are dead after the investigation, and 
 the two city members, of course, are against it. THat 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 175 
 
 puts it up to Weldy. Now, I got him on that commit 
 tee to kill the affirmative report. I didn t even inquire 
 how he stood I supposed your man would always 
 stand right. But he doesn t stand right, and what else 
 can he want except a hold-up ? He s a wise guy, that s 
 what he is. He s got a cinch on us." 
 
 "I guess not it doesn t look like Fred." 
 
 "It s a hold-up or else he s going to vote for the in 
 vestigation of where the money went that beat the Lacy 
 bills," retorted Stillman coolly, "and that last would 
 raise hell up and down the state, wouldn t it ?" 
 
 Arnold looked at the intricate mosaic of the stained 
 glass window that screened the gold room from the 
 street ; he was trying to study the matter out ; he had 
 rather forgotten Fred Weldy the past month, along 
 with everything else. "Fred s funny," he asserted, at 
 length, "and the unions have been jumping on him 
 about this bribery inquiry." 
 
 "Well, who s he taking orders from?" demanded 
 Stillman. "What did these rat unions have to do with 
 it except to vote for him ?" 
 
 The other laughed. 
 
 The business agent for the labor municipal adminis 
 tration went on with the brisk hurriedness he always 
 used when the time for quips was past. "He s a bad 
 actor. He s handed us the double-cross. Personally, 
 Fred s all right, but he s on the wrong lead here. But 
 we can break him." 
 
 "Break him ? You couldn t get Fred back into poli 
 tics with a club, once he can get out of it !" 
 
 The business agent looked shrewdly worried. 
 
 "That s bad. You don t imagine he s coming any 
 
i;6 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 baby play ? that he will favor the investigation ? My 
 God no!" 
 
 "It s an even bet," murmured Arnold complacently. 
 He was enjoying Stillman s perplexity it was rarely 
 one saw him at a loss. 
 
 "Well, we ve got to get him. There s big men be 
 hind the track, Ham the best people in the town here, 
 socially, and all and there s nobody wants any stink 
 stirred about the killing of the Lacy bills. Now, you 
 know that I m responsible, Hammy. I took it from 
 you that Fred was straight. Some of these people are 
 asking me what sort of a dub we sent up there from 
 your district. I come to you, Ham. This fellow s 
 yours, and you ll have to handle him." 
 
 "Harry, I don t want to mix. I don t owe the track 
 anything. I ve been trying to support a brace of 
 bookies out there for two weeks myself, and I think 
 that lets me off." 
 
 "I ve heard you went wild. Ain t you got more 
 sense than to buck that crowd? Ham, this racing is 
 fixed for the rubes and the cheap- John clerks and all 
 these little screws and sawed-offs that think they can 
 beat another man at his game. If you want to go on 
 the turf, go right. Go inside and work out," the com 
 missioner continued thoughtfully; "don t be handing 
 money up to the professionals with the rest of the 
 lambs get inside and take it yourself." 
 
 "I just take a flyer now and then for the sport." 
 
 "Sport nothing, it s business. Hammy, between 
 you and me there s nothing so weak and foolish as the 
 sport he s just the sucker for the man with the long 
 business head to play." 
 

 Will you need five hundred? What kind of a stiff is he?" Page 177. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 177 
 
 The younger man watched the brusk business agent 
 tilting the white-robed bottle across the table ; he heard 
 it crash back in the ice, and said not a word. Stillman, 
 the jollier, the man-about-town, the sponsor for the 
 sporting men, defender of the open lid, did not drink, 
 but he lit a fresh cigar. 
 
 "Business," he continued, "and that s why the races 
 are run, the booze is sold and the houses flourish 
 some business man wants the money, and we develop 
 the sport to feed into the mill. Well, I don t often open 
 up this way, but I know you understand. Business 
 and that s why we ve got to get Weldy. Ever talk with 
 him ? How much will he want ?" 
 
 "Harry, you can t touch him." 
 
 "O, yes we can," the debonair man-about-town airily 
 waved his cigar toward the other. "He s waiting for 
 the offer. I know these stiffs in, politics he s holding 
 out to stick us hard." 
 
 "Well, go to him, then." 
 
 "Yes. But the colonel and the boys at Sacramento 
 are afraid of Weldy. He s pretty raw, and they don t 
 know how to approach him. So they passed it back to 
 me ; and he s yours, Ham he s yours." 
 
 "I pass him up." 
 
 The police commissioner had drawn a roll of new 
 bills from his pocket. He counted them briskly. "Will 
 you need five hundred? What kind of a stiff is he? 
 He s got a house in Berkeley and a mortgage due, I 
 hear." 
 
 Arnold sat upright from his indifferent lounging. 
 "Harry," he muttered, "cut this out he s my friend." 
 
 "That makes it better. Five hundred will get him. 
 
i;8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 It s more than was put up to kill the anti-track bills to 
 begin with." Harry Stillman laughed. The people s 
 representatives were always more or less a joke. 
 
 "Harry," said the other, "you re shoving a lot of 
 work on me this winter. I put through that grand 
 jury trick, and I stood for the registration, and " 
 
 "Hammy, you re the safest man we ve got you have 
 a serious way of being strong with people." 
 
 "Yes, and you think you ve got me now. I suppose 
 you d railroad me to San Quentin through some of the 
 push judges if I jumped the program, wouldn t you?" 
 
 The politician laughed debonairly. He never allowed 
 the steel to show through the velvet. 
 
 "I ve gone pretty deep," muttered the younger man. 
 "It s rotten !" 
 
 "My boy," said the other, and his face had a patient 
 seriousness, "no man can deal with the American 
 people without becoming rotten. Some day I m going 
 to write a treatise on the way the people corrupt their 
 politicians the baneful effect of the business man on 
 the boss ; the cunning contrivances of the governed to 
 prostitute the government." 
 
 Stillman smiled across the table, shoving the money 
 to Arnold s hand ; about him, after all, was the lovable 
 wit, the assuring camaraderie, on which, in democ 
 racies, power is built; which stills alarms and scruples 
 alike in minds less alert. 
 
 "Now, go after your man," he continued. "If he 
 won t take the money, let s donate it to the Children s 
 Hospital I ve already given them one thousand." 
 
 "Weldy won t touch it," mused Arnold, distantly ab 
 sorbed. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 179 
 
 "Flash it on him. If he don t all right. It ll let you 
 out, Ham you ll have done your best. I ll bet you a 
 hundred dollars he takes it." 
 
 "I ll take you." Arnold laughed mirthlessly. "Harry, 
 you re a son-of-a-gun ! You only look at life one way 
 don t you ?" He picked up the roll of bills, smoothed 
 their crinkly length and tucked them in his pocket. "I 
 think I ll go on another drunk I feel it coming." 
 
 "Cut that out," retorted Stillman soberly. "That s 
 another thing you must leave to the rubes and seven- 
 dollar clerks. If you have anything to do with liquor, 
 sell it to the other fellow. Ham, I ve got one rule of 
 life that I never saw defeated Always work from the 
 inside out!" 
 
 The police commissioner accompanied the younger 
 man to the bar-room and bade him a fraternizing fare 
 well. Arnold strolled slowly up Market Street. The 
 down- town tide to the theaters and cafes was just 
 setting in at half-past seven. He went on until he 
 found himself in Union Square, and sat restlessly down 
 on one of the benches, staring into the dim west above 
 the shrubbery which was lighted by the high arcs. 
 Across the shining way came the clamor of the cable- 
 cars, a murmur of street voices and noises indistinct, 
 confused, but lending to the evening peace of the 
 Square where, in the palms and acacias, the sparrows 
 were asleep. 
 
 Arnold heard the twitter of a late bird in the bushes 
 at his back. He took out the money and idly twisted 
 it about his fingers. 
 
 "My friend !" he murmured ; "they want me to buy 
 my friend !" 
 
i8o THE DAY DE SOULS 
 
 A white shaft erected by the citizens of San Fran 
 cisco to the memory of the soldiers and sailors who 
 fought at the battle of Manila rises from the sward of 
 Union Square. Upon the capital stands a winged Vic 
 tory stretching a wreath and a trident to the sky. 
 
 About a clump of acacias near the young man came 
 a bent figure, slowly feeling for the path with a cane. 
 Tap-a-tap sounded the walking stick and then it 
 stopped. The Captain straightened himself, his hand 
 to his imperial, his face lighted with wistful expectancy, 
 his half-blinded eyes straining to see the monument 
 against the dying light of the west. 
 
 The younger man s gaze followed. The veteran s 
 right hand rose slowly to the brim of his slouch hat. 
 Then his eyes went to the ground, the cane tapped on 
 along the path. But at the pavement he looked back, 
 and again Arnold saw his slow salute ; his eyes on the 
 marble shaft, on the bronze Victory rising immutable, 
 serene, triumphant, above the brawling town. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 Arnold was taking his usual saunter along Market 
 Street at noon, having risen earlier than was his cus 
 tom. On the "sunny side the Slot" he met Sammy 
 Jarbo, who rehearsed some gossip from over the hill. 
 But Arnold had only a distant interest in Washington 
 Street, it appeared, though he asked of everybody, and 
 particularly if the Captain had heard any news from 
 the army department headquarters. Being assured that 
 no word had reached the father, he relapsed into si 
 lence, walking along with his hand on Sammy s 
 shoulder, through the California morning. 
 
 Sammy and he had been as brothers by reason of the 
 old days when they were "broke" together; and be 
 sides, it is something to have a friend to walk with 
 through such weather. They wandered as far as the 
 city hall plaza, and then Sammy had to depart for his 
 afternoon wagon deliveries. He gave his friend a last 
 troubled look; Arnold was as always, well-dressed, 
 immaculately groomed and polished, but his face held 
 a pallor that had crept above its swarthiness, his mobile 
 mouth twitched more than it was wont in other days. 
 
 "Hammy," muttered his friend, "why don t you get 
 through with it ? Don t let a girl break you up like this 
 it s pretty tough to be turned down cold, but come 
 out of it." 
 
 181 
 
182 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Arnold smiled kindly on him. Between these two 
 there had been that fellowship which is the chief virtue 
 of men, and of which women know nothing ; and when 
 he chose to close his heart, Sammy could find the way, 
 if it was to be found. But he only smiled benignantly 
 now and gripped Sammy s shoulder tighter. "Little 
 man, I know you mean it !" was his only word. 
 
 "Women," continued Mr. Jarbo; "they ve been 
 breaking up things for five thousand years, ain t they ?" 
 He sighed. " Uncertain, coy and hard to please 
 didn t those knights of old have it handed to them 
 same as we?" 
 
 Arnold s smile deepened. "I ve wanted to tell you 
 something. Sammy, that lame girl loves you." 
 
 "Eh?" stuttered the poet, "what are you at?" 
 
 "Mary Mellody. She s fine and she s up against a 
 hard game. Life s a tough old proposition to a girl 
 like her, lame, cut off not a soul in the world who 
 cares. And she loves you. I tell you, that s all that s 
 worth while to have some woman believe you re bet 
 ter than you are." 
 
 "And it seems that to you they re just an adven 
 ture" 
 
 "Don t talk about me. With me the adventure s 
 done. Women have been fair weather friends with me, 
 but when the dark days came they always quit me 
 then. All except " he broke off with his old imper 
 sonal humor. "I ve analyzed the matter, Sammy. I ve 
 made a study of failure, I ve been after the philosophy 
 of it; I ve worked out its principles, and after while, 
 \vhen tHe demonstration is done, if any man wants to 
 go to the devil I can give him an exact formula." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS !i8 3 
 
 "You re an awful fool," sighed Sammy, "and I give 
 you up." 
 
 "That s best." The other gripped the poet s arm. 
 "But you you take your little old case of heart fail 
 ure and swing in hard. You marry Mary and live, boy. 
 That s one thing I want before " he broke again and 
 stared over his friend s head. "Well, don t bother about 
 me things don t hurt me. The world can uppercut 
 me pretty hard, and I ll smile." 
 
 The poet s eyes were troubled. "I wish you d break 
 with all this. O, Hammy, if we could all be like we 
 were once just young and laughing together over 
 some fool thing! Seems like up on the hill they re all 
 waiting for you Granny and the kiddies and that old 
 soldier seems as if we all believed in you. Up there 
 you re no crook, like the papers call you." 
 
 He left his friend staring at a fleck of blue above the 
 town where the trades fog broke. In the afternoon the 
 wine-like sunshine came and Arnold idled along streets 
 bulging with traffic and in cafes agog with pleasure. 
 And at three o clock he was in Abrams pool-room, 
 nervously fingering the bribe money in his vest pocket. 
 He had had a drink or two, and the gamblers fever 
 was on him, a blind resurgence. He remembered that 
 it was the day of the Narcissus Stakes, and he had 
 been given a "hunch" on Bianca not as straight as 
 the plot that landed Corsair with the big money but 
 well it was worth a twenty, surely ? 
 I The pool-room was a noisome place with the stink 
 of unwashed men, bare of floor, dim-lit from grimy 
 windows. Benches were along two sides of the base 
 ment on which the wrecks of the racing "dope" loafed, 
 
184 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 watching the others who had not yet come to the 
 street, as they studied the blackboards on which the 
 horses were posted. A partition ran along one end of 
 the room, enclosing the telephones and paraphernalia 
 of the pool-room men, and before this space was a 
 high counter so high that a tall man could not see 
 over the top and the dope gamblers, after they had 
 made their choice, were compelled to reach their money 
 over their heads to the clerks, who then bawled the 
 bet to the ticket writers, and passed the pasteboards 
 back to the customers. The room was filling now, with 
 a slow interjection of new life among the dreary hab 
 itues, for it was nearly the time of the first race at 
 Emeryville track. The reek of tobacco and whisky was 
 in the air. > 
 
 As the minute of the start approached, the shuffling 
 crowd thickened below the high, board counter and the 
 husky-throated, stunted clerks bawled louder, while 
 the money dribbled up to their hands. The patrons 
 had one common facial characteristic a weak show of 
 wisdom; they would nod their heads and mutter and 
 shove, cunningly penciling their racing forms and 
 newspapers. The protruding lips, watery eyes, weak 
 chins above grimy, collarless shirts, the sordid front 
 of the beaten people all were there ; and among these 
 off-scourings were small clerks, dray-men, mechanics 
 at their nooning, high-school boys, laborers, cigarette- 
 sucking weaklings every cheap class of the town 
 poured its pitiful earnings into the coffers of the rich 
 men behind the races, into the pockets of the gamblers 
 who ruled the city, who used the newspapers to adver 
 tise their business and glorify their deeds in the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 185 
 
 sporting columns, the courts to protect it, and the gov 
 ernment to give it dignity. 
 
 Arnold threaded the dull crowd and placed twenty 
 dollars on Bianca; he was coming out, ascending the 
 stairs, glad to be rid of the foulness, when some one 
 cried out by his side. Eddie Ledyard of the shoe house 
 was pointing at the green ticket in his hand. The boy 
 had at first started, ashamed to be seen in the place, 
 but here was Arnold, a man accustomed about town 
 to better company than himself. 
 
 "What s your play, Ham?" cried Eddie. "They re 
 they re off in the first !" 
 
 "Nothing," said the other carelessly. "Just a piker s 
 bit with me Bianca." 
 
 Eddie looked shrewdly at him. What was up, Ham 
 playing the pools? And was it Bianca? The racing 
 dope makes the best of friends suspicious ; maybe there 
 was another big coup on like that of Corsair? The 
 youthful clerk greedily peered at Arnold s ticket. "Bi 
 anca," repeated his friend; "Bianca, Eddie seven to 
 one." 
 
 "Are you sure?" whispered the shoe clerk. "Ham, 
 I m done for this week I flew wide on Presidente, 
 and it hurt." His voice broke. "It s something fierce, 
 ain t it?" 
 
 Arnold eyed Ledyard narrowly. The boyish fellow 
 jerked uneasily, as though his collar was too tight; he 
 bit his fingers, staring at the entries and the odds 
 posted back of the sing-songing clerks. But Ledyard s 
 queerness was nothing unusual; Arnold had seen the 
 racing madness every day on the street and at the 
 track only Eddie was his old high-school pal. 
 
i86 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Bianca," muttered Ledyard. "You got it straight, 
 Ham? Can * she lose?" 
 
 "Couldn t lose if she was tied in the stable," retorted 
 the other. "But, Eddie, you cut this out." 
 
 "I know I know! But Bianca " his gaze was 
 dreamy and afar, and now one could see the tired lines 
 about the eyes. "I got to get back somehow, Ham. I 
 was going to plunge on that Chatom entry Edith M, 
 Watt Chatom s filly but now I remember a month 
 a g> you figured on Bianca for the Narcissus." 
 
 "Yes," Ham s voice was gentler now. "But, Eddie, 
 it s no place for a straight lad like you in this thieves 
 game. You re going high, they tell me." 
 
 The lad was still dreaming. "I m all right. You re 
 a good friend of mine, Ham you wouldn t put me 
 wrong. We ve always thought a lot of you ever since 
 the old Taylor Street days. Stella s home now, and 
 we ve got a chafing-dish and some new opera stuff. 
 Say, Ham," Eddie s eyes brightened with his old 
 blithesomeness, an idea growing bigger in him, "come 
 up to-night. Let s cut out the route and make it a 
 party the chafing-dish and the whole bunch around 
 you at the piano ! Stella d ask some nice girls." 
 
 The two young men looked curiously at each other ; 
 Arnold spoke first, and with a grave regret. "Eddie, 
 I ve drifted pretty far I haven t seen the inside of any 
 man s home for seven years. I d better not mix with 
 your sister s sort of girls. There s an arc-light sizzling 
 in my brain, and that wouldn t be right up at your 
 mother s." 
 
 The clerk laughed again less lightly. He hadn t been 
 about the flat with Stella a great many evenings him- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 187 
 
 self this winter. But it was "home" where the soft 
 lights burn that keep clean the souls of men. 
 
 "I know," he murmured. "The game gets you hard, 
 doesn t it ? San Francisco ! Sometimes I wonder where 
 all the men and women end the good-hearted lads 
 we ve met, and the girls, after all, so kind and merry. 
 There s Nel why can t a man do something for her? 
 If there were some way of untangling it all and be 
 ginning again." 
 
 "Yes," answered the other ; "if there were !" 
 
 "Some day you help her," said Eddie. "You know 
 how to be friends to every one, Hammy. When the 
 trouble days come for Nel, you help her she won t 
 let me be her friend." 
 
 Arnold smiled. The girl had kept her promise then ! 
 
 The boyish fellow did not know. He was musing; 
 sometimes he had debated whether he should ask 
 Hammy Arnold of "down-town," of his other life and 
 circle of friends, to meet Stella and his mother. 
 
 Eddie was troubled by it now ; it seemed as they 
 stood in the sunlight, that the way back to the better 
 world was as fair and open to his friend as to him 
 self. Stella, home, his mother, the laughing faces and 
 the homekeeping hearts an amplitude of all he knew 
 was clean and fine, honoring good and keeping faith in 
 men as they struggled, was about them. Yes, one could 
 go back the way to the soft home glows that keep 
 clean the souls of men. 
 
 "If you d come !" Eddie muttered. "You see, mother 
 never quite believes all that s said about you, Hammy 
 she can t. She always remembers how you sang 
 Abide With Me, at Jimmy King s funeral. It was eight 
 
188 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 years ago and she never can forget we were all boys 
 together." 
 
 The other smiled : "Tell her I thank her, won t you, 
 Eddie? But I can t." He waved a cheery farewell. 
 When he had gone the clerk turned on the pool-room 
 steps, staring at the sanded floor below, the sunlit street 
 above. "Chatom s filly or Bianca? My God, if I 
 could get it straight !" he added dully. "If only I knew ! 
 But Ham said Bianca in the fourth." 
 
 Arnold idled in Billy Rice s hang-out for small the 
 atrical people cheap vaudevillists, stage-hands, press 
 agents and advance men out of a job listening to the 
 chaff, irresolute as to how he should spend the after 
 noon. Then, in front of the Orpheum, he met a man 
 who was reputed to have depleted the racing books of 
 eighty thousand dollars during the meet the organizer 
 of the Corsair clique and close up at the track and in 
 the paddock gossip. 
 
 "Hello, Slive," said Arnold. "Why aren t you across 
 the bay?" 
 
 "I m taking care of the end here we re crowding 
 on all we can before the price drops." 
 
 "The Narcissus? Behind Bianca, eh?" 
 
 The immaculate gambler started. "Bianca? * He 
 bent to the other. "Aren t you wise to this ? Chatom s 
 youngster they can t beat her !" He drew cunningly 
 closer at Arnold s unmoved face. "Look at the betting 
 from fifteen-to-one it s come to sixes, and before the 
 flag drops it ll be three. Bianca nothing! The race 
 is in Chatom s pocket. I thought you were wise." 
 
 Arnold fingered the rest of the bribe money in his 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 189 
 
 pocket. He had placed twenty dollars of it on the losing 
 horse ; now he drew a handful of bills and gave it to 
 the other. "Stick two hundred on at any price you can 
 
 get." 
 
 "Six is the best. You ll lose fourteen hundred by not 
 taking the odds that ran last night we simply couldn t 
 keep this quiet. All right two hundred on Edith M." 
 He folded the money and gave a knowing look. "Say, 
 that mare carries a swell name, doesn t she? Named 
 for Watt Chatom s sister, ain t she?" 
 
 "Yes." For an instant Ham resented Edith s name 
 on the tipster s lips, the flicker of a flame of respect 
 that died away. After all, what was she? Merely the 
 fine gold of the pyramid s point, whose base was 
 builded in the nameless evil of the city ; the enriching 
 soil in which she bloomed an exquisite flower, was but 
 the rotted lives of other flowers as fair. He indiffer 
 ently recalled the two symbols, while his eyes were on 
 the racing chart on the theater wall, its marginal ad 
 vertisements of the lotteries, the clairvoyants, the pawn 
 brokers and the liquor dealers. "Yes, Edith M in the 
 Narcissus." 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 Arnold met Fred Weldy by appointment after the 
 matinee, and took him to a four-bit French dinner on 
 Stockton Street where an indifferent stringed orchestra 
 played; a nondescript table d 1 hote given over largely 
 to prosperous clerks, heads of store departments, fam 
 ily parties a cafe with a suggestion of Gallic smart 
 ness but tamely respectable, where one found a trio 
 of rosy-faced stenographers, middle-aged married 
 women, spinsters and female bookkeepers who could 
 come here unattended and depart to the plays after 
 their cognac, with a buzzing sense of the luxurious un 
 importance of things. 
 
 "Kind of peaceful," Fred Weldy said, as he sat back 
 after the roast chicken and the sprouts, crop-full and 
 pleased. Arnold had been wittily inclined, drolly giving 
 forth the most astonishing theories on social evolution 
 and the philosophical aspect of industrialism, matters 
 on which Weldy loved to argue with a prosy but Ger 
 man thoroughness. 
 
 When they reached the coffee the legislator was re 
 plete with satisfaction. "Old man, it s the best, com- 
 fortablest time I ve had since we had our big dinner 
 together at the Fiore d Italia, way last fall when I 
 concluded I d go into politics. Lord, what a fool I was ! 
 Here I ve been bullyragged and hauled about and asked 
 questions on a hundred things I didn t dream of. What 
 
 190 
 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 191 
 
 the devil do I know about taxing the railroads on their 
 earning capacity and all that ?" 
 
 Arnold laughed cheerily. "Well, you certainly are 
 coming in for a lot of talk on this special committee, 
 aren t you ?" 
 
 "The whole city delegation is wild at me," pursued 
 Fred dismally, "and the railroad lobby threatens me, 
 and the members tell me if I vote to investigate the 
 bribery scandals, they ll beat the safety-coupler bill the 
 labor people want. And yet the unions are dead for the 
 inquiry." 
 
 "Fred, the unions don t amount to a tinker s damn ! 
 The boss and Stillman control the leaders and back 
 of the boss is Chatom and the railroad. So you see all 
 this yawp about bucking the organization, and deliver 
 ing the people from the corporation cinch, and reform, 
 and all that stuff, goes right round in a circle. Every 
 body is traded in right. Still, the big men inside are a 
 little bit surprised at you." 
 
 "O, sure ! I know now what I was elected for ! The 
 push wouldn t have got behind me if they hadn t 
 thought I was all right." 
 
 "And now you re putting me in a funny fix, Fred 
 you know I stood for you. I said the word in the back 
 room of the Maplewood that gave you the nomination." 
 
 The statesman stirred restlessly. "Sure sure! 
 Ham, you re going to plague me, too, ain t you? It s 
 getting savage. Why, they ve even gone to my wife 
 somebody did and the police captain has been at Unc 
 Pop s a dozen times of late just talking around about 
 his side door, and if women come in there just think 
 at Unc Pop s!" 
 
192 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Fred, I m glad you see it. It s how the system 
 works." 
 
 "But what s the racing bribery got to do with Unc 
 Pop ? Women ? why if they want to get after women 
 drinking, why don t they raid some of these big down 
 town joints?" Weldy s indignation overflowed, and 
 Arnold laughed his amusement. Fred never would 
 learn ; he was always the boy. 
 
 "And the Central Security Company holds a mort 
 gage on your home for two thousand dollars, doesn t 
 it?" 
 
 Weldy turned on him, staring with excitement. 
 "What what how d you know?" 
 
 "Well, don t attract every one s attention. Come, 
 let s get out. Only " Arnold s grave voice came to 
 the legislator s ear "I wanted to have you see the 
 knives at your back, Fred. I m trying to put you wise." 
 
 The assemblyman was dazed when they reached the 
 sidewalk; he put his hand through his friend s arm. 
 Suddenly it seemed that the Burgundy they had drunk 
 had made him dizzy. "I m crazy in the head," he mut 
 tered apathetically ; "kind-a crazy in the head." 
 
 They walked through Union Square to the bar of a 
 little corner grocery on Bush Street. Weldy drank 
 whisky feverishly ; he seemed trying to widen his brain 
 to an avalanche of new thoughts, doubts, fears. "My 
 business is running down," he muttered. "I want-a 
 quit I can t afford this legislature game. I m build 
 ing a new house, Ham, a new house and we and 
 we " he meandered off unintelligibly, gulping his 
 whisky and staring at the mirrors. 
 
 Arnold quietly allowed him drink and meditation to 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 193 
 
 the full; and with drink and thought he weakened 
 pitiably. His tongue loosened, he went on with a gar 
 rulous recounting of his business troubles; it was a 
 critical time for him he was a partner in the job- 
 printing office, and he had not yet paid up his share of 
 the investing capital ; living was high, it took a lot for 
 Lillie and the babies and for his mother s keep, and he 
 didn t know he ought to be home looking after things, 
 and not in this fool legislature. 
 
 They went to the quiet back room of another saloon, 
 had a drink, and then Arnold doggedly fired another 
 shot at him. "Let s see, the Londale Liquor Company 
 is carrying Unc Pop on its books for fifteen hundred 
 dollars, isn t it?" 
 
 Fred stared at him again with amazement. He didn t 
 know he supposed so he couldn t see how Ham 
 knew all these things and what they had to do with the 
 case, and yet? well, of course the wholesaler had to 
 "stand in" sure, that was it he could see ! 
 
 "They figure on all these things," Ham continued 
 patiently, and then he fired the last shot. "Fred, your 
 shop had the contract for a great big lot of the 
 printing for the Street Railway Company last year, 
 didn t it?" 
 
 "Yes, \0fe dropped everything else for that. It s a big 
 item." 
 
 "And you want it again, don t you ?" 
 
 "Why why sure, we ve been figuring on it. We 
 loaded up on a lot of paper stock thinking of their re 
 quirements. We re going to bid sharp, for we need 
 that business pretty bad." 
 
 "Well, if you stand right, you can get it I know 
 
194 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 you can! There s a lot of stuff can come your way, 
 Fred, if you re wise." 
 
 The assemblyman was in doubt, then slowly he saw 
 the matter. He smiled sadly on his friend. "I suppose 
 it s up to me to vote against the investigation, ain t it ? 
 Throw down my union and all the decent people for the 
 gamblers ring, ain t it ? God s sake, Ham, I thought I 
 was going there to be square!" He laughed briefly. 
 "But I m getting in bad I m beginning to need money, 
 Ham." 
 
 "Money?" Arnold s voice was softly alert; he 
 leaned across the table. 
 
 "O, well, I meant in general." Weldy s face red 
 dened. "I meant I was getting hard up, with the new 
 house and all !" 
 
 "I know. Fred, there s plenty of money around it s 
 easy enough to get. And why not ? What s the use of 
 stirring this rottenness up? Nobody wants it except 
 women and a few farmers and some dinky Methodist 
 and Baptist brothers who haven t drag enough to scare 
 a fly off your hat. The big churches, such as Chatom 
 attends, don t want it. They never attack anything 
 there, they re too busy praising God. They re afraid 
 He ll forget His business if they don t sing anthems 
 and swing candlesticks and tell Him how good He is." 
 
 "O, I don t knowI don t know," protested the 
 printer. "I don t go to church, but I always thought 
 truth and justice got ahead somehow." 
 
 "Truth and justice," retorted Ham, with sermoniz 
 ing seriousness, "always meet with reward if they re 
 sufficiently advertised and they don t hurt business. 
 Otherwise there s not much demand for the goods." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 195 
 
 "O, I don t know;" Weldy was troubled and con 
 fused. "There s Christ and what He taught." 
 
 "Christ s out on the street," Arnold murmured. 
 The wise people higher up couldn t do business with 
 Him around." 
 
 They had gone to the pavement, Weldy seeking ref 
 uge in self pity. "We got-a hold that contract my 
 partner s no hustler, Ham," he pleaded. "O, we just 
 got-a hold that printing the shop s running down." 
 And in the dark Arnold swung on him with a sud 
 den, vicious snap. 
 
 "Well, how is it, Fred?" he whispered. "Do you 
 need money?" 
 
 "Money? God s sake what re you talking money 
 for ?" Fred s voice, too, was in a whisper ; he tried to 
 assume a trembling indignation, but the quiver in his 
 tone was not of anger. 
 
 "Do you need a loan?" 
 
 "A man can always use money. But you don t you 
 think" 
 
 Arnold s hand went to Fred s in the dark. The as 
 semblyman felt the crinkle of bills crushed in his 
 fingers. He backed off, coughing weakly to hide his 
 confusion. "I got-a go to Unc Pop s. Yes, sir Unc 
 Pop s. God s sake, Ham Unc Pop s !" 
 
 The briber followed him a few steps in the deserted 
 street. "Two hundred and fifty," he whispered ; "and 
 two-fifty more coming, Fred." 
 
 "Sure sure!" murmured the legislator, laughing 
 foolishly. "It s getting late, ain t it ? Sure sure !" 
 
 Arnold watched him go hurriedly up the hill. His 
 friend was strangely bent and old, it appeared, or it 
 
196 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 may have been the flicker of the arc-lights on him. 
 The other man lit a cigarette and sauntered leisurely 
 down-town. "I got him," he murmured apathetically. 
 "But what chance did he have ? It s like a wolf-pack 
 hunting what chance did he have? The whole town 
 was on his back the wolf town. What chance did he 
 have?" 
 
 And the fancy of himself leading a pack of gray 
 wolves, hunting down a wounded animal, dragging it 
 to the snow, throttling it as its struggles weakened, 
 moodily fascinated him. Then a trouble grew on him 
 that he could view the matter so apathetically. But he 
 dulled this: "Why should I be sorry? It s wolf eat 
 wolf in this game every man for himself. Fred s of 
 age, he knows where he s going." 
 
 Yet the memory of his big bluff friend, uncertain, 
 feeling this way and that for help, dumbly hurt, and 
 then dragged down by the gray wolves of the city, 
 haunted Arnold. "I led them," he murmured. "I m 
 the outlaw, but I joined the pack to pull Fred down." 
 He was revolving the matter, still impersonally, view 
 ing his other self from afar, when a newsboy thrust 
 a sporting extra of a paper in his hand: "Winner n 
 Narcissus ! Extra !" he caroled. 
 
 Watt Chatom s filly, Edith M, had beaten Bianca 
 easily in the fourth race. 
 
 "Eleven hundred to the good," murmured Arnold, 
 but his winning gave him no pleasure. He was sur 
 feited with the track, sleepless with ill-reckoned nights. 
 Ferreri had told him that he "looked shot to pieces," 
 and he knew to-night that drinking had failed to drive 
 the pricking devils from his brain. "I ought to get 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 197 
 
 away a week or two," he mused ; and his fancies went 
 back to the brown, sun-beaten ranges along the Tuo- 
 lumne, where he had been a boy, and then the green, 
 steaming jungles of Mindanao and Samar, where he 
 and Larry Calhoun had been bunkies. He wondered 
 now, with a singular melancholy sentiment, of their 
 peace. And then the North rose, the giant redwoods 
 spanning rocky gorges sunless and still. Above, the 
 trails led to the brushy ridges and piney slopes, the 
 country-up-in-back where once, for four weeks, he had 
 been happy, it seemed; where he had been able to 
 make a simple country girl smile, and watch her eye 
 brighten at his coming. 
 
 "But I didn t love her," he murmured slowly. 
 "That s dead in me. It s good the little girl found it 
 out it s better so much better !" 
 
 But the stinging imps bothered his head, and going 
 to the Oriental, he had three drinks. Then because the 
 place was quiet, and he could not tolerate silence any 
 longer, he went to the street, seeking something to 
 make him forget. 
 
 Grant Avenue was emptying itself at half-past nine ; 
 the impossible street of fakirs and proclaimers of revo 
 lutions and millenniums was losing its motley life, but 
 over one last dissolving group came the splendor of a 
 woman s voice. 
 
 Again he saw her, the black robe swaying, the aston 
 ishing appeal of the serene face under the torch, the 
 light bronzing the huddled men before her. A mor 
 dant desire to bait her further came, for to-night his 
 soul seemed dead, rolling in its abyss. He had had a 
 note from her weeks ago, inclosing a check for one 
 
198 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 hundred and sixty-five dollars. She had been forced to 
 accept his statement of the amount lost. He had seen 
 her twice since on her rostrum, giving her little 
 thought. After all, she was but a superior fakir of 
 this town of fakirs. Unreal, Romanesque, impossible, 
 she was but one of San Francisco s down-town figures 
 that defied placing. Watching her, he drew a sense 
 of weariness from her utterance; saw it, too, in the 
 impassive men who listened. He was below her stand 
 when she looked down at the conclusion. A color 
 touched her cheeks a moment s confusion at his 
 speech. 
 
 "How s the harvest? I take it they reject your 
 pearls?" 
 
 "Wise, hopeless faces souls impotent, asleep. It s 
 a hard town, isn t it ?" 
 
 She gathered her robe to go, while a negro removed 
 the stand, and with a jesting commonplace Arnold was 
 by her side, dropping his argot of the street. She felt 
 his indifferent insolence of mood ; an intellectual fenc 
 ing, but in mutual understanding, possessed both. But 
 she became serene, her clear practicality came out in 
 their rambling talk, and presently his corroding ten 
 sion lessened she could laugh, be human, of the 
 world, could she? 
 
 But this lashed his evil humor, a reckless whim 
 seized him. "Where are you going?" he asked. 
 
 "I haven t an idea! I walk a deal at night before 
 I go to the hotel." 
 
 A thought came to him that she was keenly enjoy 
 ing the respite. Well, he would try out this spiritual 
 sufficing of hers, this dilettante offering of soul to his 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 199 
 
 mocking world. It was a matter of indifference what 
 she thought of him. He had never been serious with 
 women; least of all with serious women, few though 
 they were in his life. "Suppose we go somewhere and 
 talk," he said. "To the Belvedere." 
 
 "Very well." 
 
 "The Belvedere?" He stared at her. 
 
 "The concert hall let s go. I ve never seen it." 
 
 He thought at first she was having fun at his ex 
 pense, but beyond her frank pleasantness, she was in 
 tent enough. He guessed slowly at her view of the 
 matter she would be, as always, superiorly above it, 
 beyond contamination, or even discomfort, in her 
 power of detachment from the world s grossness. 
 None of this mattered the soul moved untouched 
 through all forms and phases of consciousness, and 
 neither evil nor suffering could lessen it. 
 
 Arnold glanced up the street in some irresolution. 
 But she was pleasantly human, supremely sure of her 
 self. 
 
 "Well," he went on, "won t you be rather conspicu 
 ous in that rig?" He looked at the classic robe, the 
 mortar-board cap on her dark hair. "You see, the 
 Belvedere" 
 
 "I don t mind I m used to the multitude, and its 
 stares." 
 
 "Well " The young man looked again in some 
 consternation up the brilliant street. Already a trio 
 of his cronies had noted them. "You see " 
 
 "You don t mind, do you ?" she began, watching his 
 face. He had a sense of her amusement at his hesita 
 tion. 
 
200 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Well, the Belvedere it s pretty swift for a 
 preacher !" 
 
 "Why, nothing can harm one, can it ?" 
 
 "But you re religious. Won t people your friends 
 church" 
 
 "I haven t a friend in San Francisco hardly one 
 in America. I am alone, untrammeled free to do ex 
 actly as I wish on all occasions." 
 
 She had already led the way. Arnold went along 
 in some amazed doubt of himself. 
 
 Take her to the Belvedere? in that rig? She was 
 a woman who would have won the street s eye in the 
 gown of a fishwife, a cloak, a shawl she would have 
 irradiated distinction from anything. And she now 
 turned in to the Belvedere Music Hall at his side, in 
 that black filmy silk, enveloping her from chin to toe, 
 relieved nowhere save by a tiny gold cross at her 
 throat, and on her head that unusual cap shading her 
 face, a classic face that stirred the crowd in the hall, 
 the clerks, touts, jockeys, dope fiends, bar-habitues, 
 street politicians and riffraff with their women, until 
 a whispering comment buzzed after her entry. 
 
 Arnold tried to look expressionless as he followed 
 her and the shifty-footed usher up the aisle. They 
 all knew him at the Belvedere, the former prize-fight 
 ers who acted as stewards and announcers, the bar 
 keepers, the politician proprietors and their followers 
 Arnold caught the amazed gasp from some of them 
 and they, for the greater part, knew her. Grace 
 Wayne was a figure too challenging in the down 
 town life for any idler to leave unremarked, for any 
 cigar-store philosopher to omit from his summing up 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 201 
 
 of the Street. Arnold felt like a captive bound to the 
 chariot wheels of some priestess in a barbaric triumph. 
 
 The spacious auditorium, gorgeous with lights under 
 a delicately pink dome starred as a firmament, was 
 well filled. The curtain before the stage was a jumble 
 of advertisements, among which was that of a new 
 march-song that the orchestra was just concluding a 
 stirring two-step by W. Walters, which all the town 
 was humming. A brass rail down the hall divided the 
 place reserved for women and their escorts from the 
 section where the men drank and smoked at the little 
 tables. A droning murmur of voices rose, the in 
 imitable jargon of the track and prize-ring, the cigar 
 stores and the Street. 
 
 The two proprietors who were promoters of the 
 great monthly prize-ring contests and controllers of the 
 vote in the district went about joshing their patrons 
 with impartial urbanity it was "Jimmie," or "Billy," 
 or "the Kid," or "this guy" ^everywhere the youthful, 
 happy-go-lucky, alluringly cheerful, roystering, cos 
 mopolitan spirit of Old San Francisco,\ which would 
 gild the blackest sin with the charm of numanness. 
 
 Every one was good-natured ; the waiters laughingly 
 struggled through groups with their trays ; the women 
 at the tables bantered them, the busy stewards circu 
 lated here and there everywhere a humming cordial 
 ity in speech and manner, the most amicable forbear 
 ance and happy adjustment with careless tact and native 
 grace. When the curtain shot up, the orchestra broke 
 to a rollicking dance. Two girls in black jeweled 
 velvet skirts, low-cut bodices and with immense plumed 
 hats, bright-eyed, smiling, humorously en rapport with 
 
202 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 the audience, sang a song of the day, kicked their 
 silken-clad legs with a merry adieu, and then were hur 
 ried into an encore in the words of which the spec 
 tators joined joyously, while the Hungarian orchestra 
 leader turned with a bow and smile to beat the time for 
 the volunteers. 
 
 Arnold and his companion sat at a table near the 
 wall. Save for their nearer neighbors, they were now 
 unobserved. He watched the woman s face; it was 
 radiant with interest, speculation, humor at the care 
 less spirit about her. "Apollinaris," she nodded to her 
 host when the waiter approached. 
 
 "A bottle and two glasses," said Arnold, and then 
 to her: "May I smoke?" 
 
 "Why, of course." 
 
 The young man watched her coloring under the 
 gloss of her black hair and cap, the large nose, the 
 shrewd mouth, the indistinguishable depths of her 
 eyes ; healthily big, firm of mold, the shoulders square, 
 the arms and throat full, she seemed very human, and 
 not at all the mystic. 
 
 "A preacher ?" he murmured, "not on my life ! Now, 
 what s her graft underneath that classy little cap?" 
 
 Then he saw Louis Ferreri and Bernice Murasky at 
 a table some distance away. The Jewess eyes were 
 round with astonishment; she couldn t watch the 
 vaudeville, for her study of this new "find" of Ar 
 nold s. 
 
 Ferreri took the shop-girl often to the great cafes 
 and down-town resorts because her brilliance fed his 
 pride, filled his vacant mind in its easy moments. She 
 could dress well, somehow, and at Zinkand s or the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 203 
 
 Poodle Dog, would talk volubly, gesticulate eagerly 
 and enjoy herself so ingenuously that they would 
 always attract attention, and Ferreri, sitting back be 
 hind the chafing-dish "lobster Newburg," or "en 
 casserole" dishes which she would order with an air 
 of familiar indifference, with the champagne would 
 be vastly flattered by the occasion. Bernice Murasky 
 "had all the swell Yits along Pacific Avenue beaten a 
 block/ to his way of thinking; all she needed was 
 money to "make a front in any class." 
 
 At times the slot-machine man thought he would 
 like to marry Bernice if she wasn t so terribly 
 sarcastic. 
 
 Miss Murasky made a petulant moue when she saw 
 Hammy Arnold looking at her. "What kind of woman 
 has he got now?" she whispered to Ferreri, who was 
 rubbing his tiger s head diamond, debating whether he 
 shouldn t exchange it for the forget-me-not. 
 
 Arnold s urbanity was now not disturbed at the stir 
 his entrance had created. He d give O Farrell Street 
 something else to buzz about with his name, besides 
 graft talk and spectacular sprees and plunging on the 
 races the Belvedere had certainly never entertained 
 a woman such as he had brought there ! 
 
 Grace Wayne s gloved hand attracted his attention 
 across the table. "Why, this isn t so bad," she said 
 demurely. "Not as I thought." 
 
 "It ll liven up after midnight. Tfiese sHow girls 
 will sell drinks down-stairs and there ll be a run for 
 your money if you care to have it." 
 
 "I ve seen much worse the dance-halls of Cape 
 Colony and the East End music halls. This is well 
 
204 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 dressed a glass of beer and some silly music, it 
 seems." 
 
 "You re rather a student of the world," he answered, 
 and looked at her in some new light. A sort of dainty 
 humanness had grown out of her usual impersonality 
 of utterance; he gathered that she was not all the 
 mystic. "I supposed you would find all this beyond 
 the pale." 
 
 "When one has made sure of one s own serenity one 
 \ can see best one can move untouched through any 
 experiences of the lower plane." 
 
 "How does that help?" 
 
 "Help ?" she asked at his abruptness. 
 
 "I was thinking of the rest down here. Your way 
 is good for you. But we re hammering out some 
 thing else than spiritual consciousness." He smiled 
 coolly. "I told you once you d failed in your new 
 thought you have." 
 
 "I have not," she retorted steadily, gravely. "I ve 
 taught the newer interpretation. Old faiths, old forms 
 are passing, and out of the spiritual unrest there is 
 coming the recognition of the power in each soul it 
 can accept, it can move untouched, and in the end re 
 join the eternal and ever-flowing spirit of God." 
 
 He studied her long in the measure of the dance 
 music, smiled, and she saw a trace of pity. To him 
 she was the apotheosis of the rant of the city of fakirs. 
 Beyond that nothing. 
 
 "My soul?" he muttered. "Give me a sign that I 
 have one." But through his ironical aloofness came a 
 feeling that she was weaving invisible cords, checking 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 205 
 
 him, and that he was too conscious of her physical 
 magnetism, and he did not wish to be held or attracted. 
 
 "You re changed," she said, intently watching him. 
 "You ve gone back since I saw you. A soul strug 
 gling, but you refuse to awaken." 
 
 His lips had a slur of contempt which she could not 
 guess. "I am," he answered, "just what I wish to be 
 a thief, a liar." 
 
 "Go on," she answered; "lie to yourself whip 
 yourself " Her eyes grew wide, he was restless be 
 neath their mystery. 
 
 . "And you " he added "a mummer a talker of 
 words that mean nothing. If I wanted a God it would 
 be the old God and not a cloud of light into which I was 
 to be returned, a mere aura of consciousness floating 
 through existences. I would want to go back to the 
 old God and cry out that I was beaten and down, and 
 say: Help me! " 
 
 Her look on him had a dispassionate sweetness defy 
 ing analysis. "You have suffered," she whispered. 
 "O, you have come far!" And her clear gaze con 
 tinued. "You have all the power within you you are 
 supreme you can rise above all this brawling that is 
 my faith for you." She went on with a swift impulse : 
 "I tell you, this is not you!" 
 
 He tried to evade her with indifference, the jesting 
 that was ever his shield. "Well, and then what what 
 of it all?" 
 
 The orchestra broke to a smart fantasy, the hall 
 darkened, a curtain rose, showing a white screen. 
 From the gallery came the snap of a moving picture 
 machine, the hiss of the carbon. Arnold could see his 
 
206 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 companion s face, hurt, in a sort of proud patience, re 
 garding him. He was restless beneath the sense of 
 power she gave, and had turned from her to the green 
 light pervading the room, when a man leaned across 
 and touched his arm. 
 
 "Ham, is that you?" 
 
 It was Hendricks, of the Call 
 
 "Hello, Ben; yes." 
 
 "You d better come. A note was left for you a 
 note" the newspaper man bent down with a queer 
 smile "the police have it." 
 
 "A note?" 
 
 "Eddie Ledyard left it to youhe killed himself 
 half an hour ago." 
 
 Miss Wayne felt the man by her strain in his seat ; 
 his elbow went against her arm with a shove that put 
 it off the table. 
 
 "It s bad," the Call man went on. "The races broke 
 him maybe he s short in his accounts. You d better 
 come." 
 
 Arnold swung out of his chair. "His mother his 
 sister " he muttered. "Benny, break this story, can t 
 you ? Can t you kill it in the local room ?" 
 
 "Couldn t be done. But we won t flash the racing 
 business in it it isn t policy just now we can t afford 
 to stir talk on the track." 
 
 The other did not hear his words. He was slipping 
 down the aisle to the door, past the stilled crowds 
 watching the moving pictures. Over his head the 
 biograph snapped and sizzled it seemed that the arc 
 was in his brain ; he reeled against the doorkeeper and 
 then to the pavement. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 207 
 
 "Where ?" he whispered he did not notice that the 
 woman was at Benny s side "where ?" 
 
 "Stillman s in the gold room. Kennedy s got the 
 note." 
 
 The young man turned and ran the two blocks to 
 the Maplewood saloon. In the bar-room there was no 
 unusual group, only a policeman at the door leading to 
 the rear, and a white-aproned "mixer" peering past 
 him into the passage. The officer lowered his arm, 
 then raised it so that Arnold dodged under. Before 
 the door of the gold room, a captain of police and an 
 other patrolman were listening to an explanation from 
 Fergy, the head bar-keeper, and a reporter stood with 
 arms extended, hands on his hips, looking quietly in 
 the small room. 
 
 Captain Kennedy stepped back. "Jack is that you ? 
 say, Jack, here " 
 
 But Arnold was past them. A revolver was on the 
 table. On the leather top of the broad seat that ran 
 about the room under the polished panels of white 
 birch and inlaid gold, lay the suicide. Nella Free had 
 one arm under his sunny head. She was wiping spat 
 tered blood from his cheek and from the lashes of his 
 wide-open eyes. Blood was on the floor, the seat, the 
 wondrous wooden panels, the girl s gloves and the lace 
 of her waist. 
 
 Arnold ran around her with a cry and knelt by her 
 side, reaching his hand under Eddie s coat, dragging 
 his limp head nearer to stare in his eyes. 
 
 "Yes, he s gone," he said, with a sort of nonchal 
 ance ; "he s gone." 
 
 Nella broke into sobs as she continued to sponge the 
 
208 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 dead boy s face. Arnold dragged the body nearer, so 
 that it was as if the man and woman were struggling 
 over it with monosyllabic protests. The police captain 
 touched the young man s arm. "Here, here " he 
 said "you d better take her away Stillman s girl 
 ain t it ? Ham, take her away." 
 
 "Never mind," retorted Arnold, "he s gone E4die s 
 gone." 
 
 Then he put his arm upon Nella s shoulder. "Don t 
 cry, Kid, don t you cry !" 
 
 There was a stir at the door. Hendricks and Miss 
 Wayne appeared. The latter came to the group by the 
 seat the dead boy, the girl wiping his cheek, Arnold 
 and the police captain. 
 
 Captain Kennedy again touched Arnold s shoulder. 
 "Here," he muttered. 
 
 The young man took the crumpled note which had 
 been found on the table. His name was on the back 
 in the boyish scrawl he had known since his high- 
 school days. Within was written: 
 
 "Hammy, you said Bianca in the fourth." 
 
 Another stir at the door. The coroner s assistants 
 had arrived. The gold room filled, a buzz of voices 
 raised. 
 
 Arnold turned listlessly away; he wiped the blood 
 from his hands on the table top and then, seeing the 
 smear, rubbed it out with his sleeve. 
 
 "Hammy, get her away Cri s sake get her away !" 
 
 Arnold turned as the officer plucked his coat. He 
 went to Nella and lifted her hand which held the 
 stained wet handkerchief. "Come on, Nel !" 
 
 She shook herself free, and he turned about to meet 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 209 
 
 Miss Wayne. "Help me," he muttered, "help me, 
 won t you?" 
 
 She stooped to lift the girl, turning her face to the 
 door. Arnold took the other arm and they led her 
 out and through the corridor to the side door of the 
 Maplewood, and then to the street. The three went 
 past the police patrol at the curb, the little curious 
 throng. The street was ablaze with lights, the after- 
 theater crowds streaming on to the cafes, the flare of 
 the radiant doors open here, there, everywhere. 
 
 By one window which revealed a sea of white 
 napery, shining plate and silver, each table illumined 
 with carnations around which little parties were form 
 ing, the three paused. 
 
 Nella rubbed the red splashes from her white gloves 
 with a handkerchief. 
 
 "I kept him away from me just as you said " 
 she retorted on the man "but it was we that killed 
 him you said Bianca in the fourth !" 
 
 Arnold nodded. 
 
 "You said Bianca in the fourth," repeated the girl. 
 
 Miss Wayne glanced from one to the other. They 
 were both looking at the blood on their hands. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 They went along a little way, the girl dulled and 
 sullen, and the young man heeding nothing of the 
 street people and the tumult. Miss Wayne stopped 
 again presently, and said: "You d better wash this 
 off somewhere it looks bad, and then hadn t you 
 better go home ?" 
 
 She looked at Nella, and the girl laughed feebly, 
 drawing the veil below her chin. "Home? I want a 
 drink. Let s go in Skelly s I feel like I was going to 
 pieces. Do I look white am I ?" 
 
 Arnold took her arm and turned to the side entrance 
 of the cafe. When the three were in the private box, 
 Nella threw back the veil and rubbed her cheeks with 
 a piece of chamois. "Do I look pale ? am I ?" 
 
 She stared across the little table at the man who 
 looked back at her. 
 
 "Now, don t cry!" he muttered. "For God s sake, 
 Nel don t!" 
 
 "No," she retorted ; "you re the one it s hurting so. 
 We killed him, Hammy." 
 
 "Not you," he answered. "I got him in this busi 
 ness long ago yes, I killed him. But you were with 
 him, Nel tell me." 
 
 "There s not much." The girl s eyes went from 
 Arnold to the woman by his side in apathetic question 
 ing of her confidence." "I was in Harry s place to- 
 
 210 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 211 
 
 night with another girl, and Eddie came in through 
 the ball-room and saw us in a box. After Myrtle. had 
 gone, he came to me. He looked terrible, and after 
 while he told me everything. He d lost eight hundred 
 dollars on the Narcissus and it wasn t his." 
 
 Arnold stirred restlessly, but his eyes did not leave 
 her face. "Go on !" he muttered. 
 
 "O, that s just all 1" the girl cried. "He didn t blame 
 any one he just said he was a fool. And he wanted 
 to get away anywhere with me me! I laughed, of 
 course, and wouldn t, and I tried to cheer him up and 
 then, when I left him for a minute, he did it." 
 
 "Yes," the young man murmured, "and I might have 
 helped him, and I didn t. I might have saved him, 
 and I didn t!" 
 
 "Yes, you might." The girl turned to look out 
 above the curtains to the hurrying street. "O, God, 
 who cares? We just smashed him that s all. He 
 was kind of a boy and foolish over me, and he thought 
 you were his best friend. And we just laughed and 
 smashed him. O, God, sometimes I want to quit it 
 all!" 
 
 "Yes," he retorted, "let s quit." 
 
 He stared unseeing at her as she rubbed at the lace 
 of her bodice until her dreary whisper brought him to 
 the present. "See the blood on us," she said; "just 
 like his soul!" 
 
 The man laid his arm on the table and sank his face 
 into the crook of the elbow. The girl sprang up and 
 ran to him ; with her arm about his neck she drew his 
 head back. 
 
 "Now, here, Hammy, you mustn t. You ve got to 
 
212 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 brace you ve got to go down the street and see all 
 the boys and sort-a laugh! Now, here here " and 
 she held him tight, choking a desperate sob in his dry 
 throat "let s wash the blood off your collar you ve 
 got to face it all you ll have to face em all ! Here " 
 she dipped her handkerchief in a glass and rubbed his 
 collar and the lapel of his coat, while the other woman 
 sat watching them unheeded. When the waiter 
 brought the whisky, the man and girl drank it swiftly, 
 but she continued to clean his coat, and then brushed 
 the hair from his brow, which was covered with tiny 
 iridescences of sweat. 
 
 "I m all right," Arnold said presently. "You must 
 go home, Nel." He turned to Miss Wayne. "We ll 
 take her home, won t we?" And when Nella pro 
 tested, he kept repeating mechanically, "You must go 
 home you must go home I ll get a cab and take you 
 home." 
 
 After he had gone out, the girl toyed listlessly with 
 her glass. She seemed unconscious of the other wom 
 an s presence for a while, and then turned suddenly to 
 her. 
 
 "Help him!" she muttered. "You re a religious 
 woman, ain t you ? I ve seen you on the avenue. Ed 
 die s gone and we killed him. Jack Arnold got him 
 to the track and I just laughed!" 
 
 "He cared for you?" 
 
 The girl rubbed her rouged cheek restlessly. "I 
 wouldn t let him. O, you know so little! You talk 
 so grand, but what good s that? Here s Hammy!" 
 She found a bitter pleading. "You help him or your 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 213 
 
 damned religion s no good. Nothing s good that 
 doesn t help !" 
 
 The preacher of the new thought sat back in silence. 
 The girl listened to Arnold s footsteps coming back; 
 she muttered again: "Who cares? O, God, who 
 cares?" 
 
 He looked at her, and mutely helped her with her 
 wraps, and then he said, in a sort of brother s gentle 
 ness: "I care, Nel. He loved you, after all, and I 
 pulled him down. And you you were fine you kept 
 your word." 
 
 She followed, comforted strangely, to get into the 
 cab. Grace Wayne went with them and watched with 
 a sense of failure the man begin once more his sooth- 
 ings. Nella sat as in a dream while he took her hands, 
 saying: "Now, Kid, don t cry don t you care I ve 
 understood it all, and you ve been fine. Now, don t 
 you cry !" 
 
 But on these words, as he was helping her from the 
 cab, she did cry, so that Miss Wayne saw him support 
 ing her to the elevator, and heard her sobs and his en 
 treaties. 
 
 The woman sat quietly until he returned and got in 
 the vehicle. "I didn t want to say anything," she be 
 gan ; "she d better be alone and cry it out. She won t 
 kill herself ? it isn t that bad, is it?" 
 
 "He was the only decent fellow she ever knew in her 
 life that s all." 
 
 "She cared," retorted the woman, "and you killed 
 him. Where are you going? The girl said you were 
 a friend of the family. You ought to see them if you 
 can say anything to his mother anything " 
 
214 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Yes." She saw his face as the rays from a corner 
 light fell within the cab ; it was breaking with agony. 
 "His mother and Stella!" 
 
 "You must go, and to-night. You can t explain, but 
 you can do something you can just say " she broke 
 off despairingly "well, won t you?" 
 
 "I ll go." The young man gave some directions to 
 the driver, and then turned to her : "I m glad you re 
 along you re steeling me through. You see when 
 you re once in the net, you re fast, and then you re 
 always netting others." 
 
 "Yes what about the soul of this girl?" 
 
 "What have I to do with her soul?" 
 
 "There was a man who cared for her, who might 
 have saved her from what she ll come to as sure as the 
 stars, and you and your kind simply snuffed him out. 
 She told me enough to understand you crushed the 
 last hope she had and you ask me what you have to 
 do with her soul !" 
 
 "He wouldn t have married her," muttered the man, 
 "he couldn t!" 
 
 "No matter. He was good and he was something to 
 her. And she spent her grief comforting you trying 
 to help you who d killed him." 
 
 The young man twisted from his companion on the 
 cushions and looked from the window. "You re get 
 ting me in fine shape to see that old mother," he mut 
 tered, and then cried, as a suppliant, reaching to take 
 her hand in the dark : "Don t ! I m done for !" 
 
 The cab stopped on a quiet residence street. Arnold 
 burst from it as tHough escaping torture. He glanced 
 up; a light was in the upper windows of the house. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 215 
 
 He looked at his watch. "His mother knows, now 
 she knows! " But he ran to the steps, and again the 
 woman was alone in the cab, this time for half an hour, 
 waiting in silence. 
 
 When the young man returned, a neighbor woman 
 was with him; after a moment he came and entered 
 the vehicle. Grace Wayne did not question him, as 
 the cab went down-town, but he seemed to catch her 
 glance of inquiry when they passed into the radiant 
 streets, for he turned to her. 
 
 "She kissed me his mother," he said. "Nel tried 
 to help me and she kissed me! What s the matter 
 with you women?" 
 
 "And one way and another, you crush them. I think 
 we d better go and eat something you re shaking do 
 you know that?" She caught his hand and held it. 
 "You re trembling from head to foot." Her pulsing 
 strength seemed to quiet the blood surging through 
 him. "Here, we ll get out. You d better have some 
 thing." 
 
 He laughed shortly when they were on the pave 
 ment before the entrance of a cafe on Mason Street. 
 "No, I think we d better go to a quiet place there s 
 music down there and there s blood on me." 
 
 They were turning back, when Louis Ferreri ran out 
 from a corner cigar stand. He gave a surprised glance 
 at the woman by Arnold s side, then drew him to the 
 curb. She stopped abruptly where she could hear 
 what was said. 
 
 "It s awful about Eddie," cried the slot-machine 
 man. "It s awful! Have you seen Stillrnan, Ham? 
 They re looking for you ain t you seen anybody?" 
 
2i6 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 His voice lowered. "I guess they want you to get 
 a-hold of Weldy and stick by him ; yes, sir, stick right 
 by him, until that committee reports in the legislature 
 Friday. There ll be an awful row over this business 
 it s the twenty-ninth track suicide this year, and 
 Weldy s all in the air." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "I dun-no. Home? Cri s sake, Ham, you got-a 
 hold him! If the papers flash this big, it ll make 
 things bad you got-a get next to Weldy and hold 
 him!" 
 
 Arnold felt confusedly of his head. "O, let me be !" 
 he growled, and Louis seized his arm. 
 
 "Come on, I ll go out with you you got-a get him, 
 and stick by him and keep these damn preachers and 
 women from him till that committee meets." 
 
 "Now, here, Louis, let go of me ! Don t stick any 
 thing more on me than I ve got now. I m pulling to 
 gether a bit." He glanced back at the woman by the 
 curb. She came to the two men and touched Arnold s 
 arm. 
 
 "Come," she said calmly, and they went along to 
 one of the many little oyster houses of the street. But 
 Arnold ate nothing; the wine stung his brain to a 
 fever, and he wanted to get again to the street, any 
 where, to do anything, so he could evade the silence. 
 [Miss Wayne put her hand on his. "Here, you mustn t 
 drink anything more. I understood something of what 
 you were saying about this race-track business. What 
 are you going to do ?" 
 
 "I don t know I don t care. I ve dragged a friend 
 down and killed him, and that s enough to-night." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 217 
 
 "Yes, and you re dragging another down and killing 
 him, aren t you ?" 
 
 Arnold stared at her across the table. "What are 
 you saying?" 
 
 "I ve read the papers a little I ve a certain know 
 ledge of you. It flashed across me just now what you 
 stand for, what your whole life signifies a tool a go- 
 between. And now you re trapping another man to his 
 ruin. And you are !" 
 
 The hard-faced young man laughed with mordant 
 humor. "Yes, you see it exactly." He went on with 
 reckless effrontery, defying her with tone and gesture, 
 leaning to her across the table. "Yes I ve bought 
 him. I can swing him, crash him on the rocks, break 
 him any time. I m glad you understand. You ve in 
 terested me. I ve stopped to listen to your transcen 
 dental preachments, your fine moralities, and I ve often 
 thought I d like to throw you face to face with life 
 the computation on which it s based down here. But 
 you re above it all you " 
 
 "Be still !" she answered. "I ve suffered too !" 
 
 He paused an instant. "Yes a man loved you 
 and he died." He went on slowly: "I ve wondered 
 what sort he was, to send you about the world to save 
 souls to help men down in the street. And you you 
 saw something far different a beautiful, mystical 
 faith of sweetness and light. And it wasn t what he 
 meant. He d say you failed." 
 
 "Hush !" she went on steadily. "You ve no right to 
 say this. I ve known two men he, the purest soul 
 that ever man was, and you, the worst. And you 
 you re strangely like him. I can not grasp it, but it s 
 
218 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 so. Beneath it all " she went on, steadfastly watch 
 ing him, "your evil, I ve seen his face, his ways, his 
 greatness. It is as though he had come to me again 
 in you." 
 
 He sat back, stirred for a moment from his trouble. 
 Then he looked at her in his old ironic doubt. She 
 had been the actress, the dramatic figure of a sort of 
 spiritual adventure, thrilling men with her voice, her 
 lofty face but the homeless, the fallen, the shamblers 
 what was her mystic faith to them ? 
 
 "He told you to go help them," Arnold muttered, "to 
 go tell men of his Christ. But the God he knew was 
 a fighting God down in the London slums; if that 
 man s soul is watching you, it will say you ve failed." 
 
 A recriminating color touched her face. "It s hard 
 to talk to you. It seems that out of dreams and re 
 membrances, that I d known you." Then, with a cry, 
 she rose before him : "O, leave it all ! This is why it 
 seems I d been fighting for you my faith in you !" 
 
 He stared at her, heard her voice come low, vibrant 
 with feeling, her womanhood disengaged him from his 
 uncaring world, a tenderness like the after-lure of a 
 splendid light ; she had broken the gates of his ruthless 
 life. "There s a way !" she pleaded. "O, a way and 
 you shall come !" 
 
 "The way," he muttered, and felt her hand tighten 
 on his wrist. "No, I m done for." 
 
 "You re just beginning," she answered, and a power 
 beyond him confused his senses with inordinate hope. 
 And in this dream he heard her laugh, a sure, glad 
 triumph above the shuffle of the street, the witless 
 mirth of the money-spenders about them in the cafe. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 219 
 
 She touched his arm again. "Come," she added; 
 "you must see me to the hotel. It s very late." 
 
 Still under the spell of her strength he went with 
 her along the streets, and presently he cried: "Ah, 
 well, it s the end. Eddie s dead, and it s the end for 
 me." He turned his worried eyes on her. "I ll go," 
 he muttered. "I want to be alone the hills." For the 
 stillness of the North, the peace of the high and secret 
 places rose ; his memory went back to the years before 
 the city had dishonored him. 
 
 "Yes, go," Grace answered. "I want you to. For 
 your redemption and for my own. I know you 
 you re proving yourself. I told you nothing of all this 
 you ve lived was your real self. I believed in you." 
 
 He looked at her steadfast frankness ; he had put by 
 for a moment her esoteric aspect ; he was silent before 
 the largeness of her will, her unfearing, her human 
 sweetness, wondering if from her faith these came. 
 But his old worries trooped back ; brought, it appeared, 
 by voices from the vestibule of the fashionable apart 
 ment house. A carriage was turning at the curb, the 
 light flirting on the wheels and harness. 
 
 "You can t quite know," he retorted dully. 
 
 Miss Wayne turned to watch the people coming 
 from the Albemarle. The men were in top hats and long 
 coats, showing, now and then, a pearly glint of even 
 ing attire; the women muffled elegantly, giving forth 
 evanescent suggestions of exquisite gowning. 
 
 The party was quite past the doorway when one of 
 the young men turned and then cried loudly. "Why, 
 Jack ! Great " he recovered himself, smiled broadly 
 and put out his hand. 
 
220 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "How are you, Watt?" answered Arnold quietly; 
 "how are you ?" 
 
 "Jack, haven t seen you for days!" Exuberance 
 and puzzled inquiry were in Watt Chatom s tone. He 
 glanced at his sister, who was with a black-bearded 
 man, evidently embarrassed at Grace Wayne s presence 
 with his friend. 
 
 Miss Chatom smiled in some astonishment, nodding 
 to Arnold, and Watt went on: "Why, I m mighty 
 glad to see you, Jack. Say, we won the Narcissus a 
 little mare I had named for Edith. She gave me a 
 glove that we tied under the bridle-band, and Mogan 
 rode to a killing finish !" 
 
 "Yes?" Arnold s voice had its old friendliness. 
 After her nod and her surprised glance at Grace 
 Wayne, Miss Chatom came no nearer, but at Watt s 
 words she turned with a deprecating laugh, as she 
 bent to enter the carriage. And then, looking at Ar 
 nold, her eyes dilated, staring at the blood on him. 
 The horses turned, but the man and the woman at the 
 door still saw Edith Chatom s terrified eyes on them 
 from the carriage gloom. 
 
 "Friends?" Miss Wayne queried. "Edith M was 
 the winner, was she ?" 
 
 "Yes," he retorted, "and Eddie s dead at the morgue. 
 Ah, you can t know what s behind it all. He was my 
 friend he d never have gambled in all his life if I 
 hadn t led him on. Always, I ve been helping smash 
 some fellow down. Yes, that s it ! I m sick with it." 
 
 "You shall go," she answered. "Nothing can matter 
 now nothing harm you nor lessen you. I believe in 
 you. You are a part of my own soul s good." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 221 
 
 He evaded her nervously, unstrung again by his re 
 calling. "I m drifting fast somewhere God knows 
 where! I threw up my hands four months ago and 
 let things drift I think I ll kill myself it s best." 
 
 The light of her eyes was serene. "No, you ll live," 
 she whispered, and she saw the pathos in his clinging 
 to her, recounting his defeats, he who had been the 
 jester an hour ago. 
 
 "I suppose you mean to turn on them," he muttered, 
 "to try and free myself to fight back. But I can t 
 there are big men around this town who could have 
 me sent to the pen on a dozen counts just by crooking 
 their fingers. They can railroad me and I d have no 
 show. You can t fight money and pull, even when 
 you re clean-handed, and I well, God knows, what 
 show would I have in court if it was seen that I was 
 fighting the big men higher up? It s no matter of 
 souls and women what can you know ?" 
 
 "You shall be free and you shall not fail," she an 
 swered, and he went away with the memory of her 
 high, untroubled smile. A block down the street he 
 sat on the curb and rolled a cigarette with nervous 
 fingers. 
 
 "What does she mean?" he said. "She believes in 
 me she cares. She " he broke off, his hungry eyes 
 staring back at the house lights. "You d think she 
 loved me to trust that way trust me!" He rose 
 wearily. "Well, I m done for but it seems always 
 some woman s trusting." 
 
 Grace Wayne sat long by her window, watching the 
 swinging city lights. She had been alone, complete in 
 
222 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 her spiritual sufficiency, but here another conscious 
 ness, blind with hates and errors, brutal with common 
 wrongs and humors, had broken a way to some inner 
 conviction that startled her. She had moved calmly 
 on her extraordinary pilgrimage, conscious in a his 
 trionic vanity of its quality, preaching her Nirvanic 
 Christ, a cosmic race-lover, impersonal, orientalized 
 but here was the brawling Street that lied and hun 
 gered and would have none of it ; here a soul had come, 
 bitter and adrift, to challenge her mystic Jesus. From 
 the common lot, in the faint, cool light of a cathedral 
 retreat she had stood face to face with this mystic 
 teacher ; but now a vision came to her, not of a Divin 
 ity, but of a Man of Sorrows wandering along dusty 
 roadsides, obscure, reviled in the market places; He 
 sweat in dirty clothing; He suffered blows and cried 
 out ; He doubted in His agony perhaps He sinned, the 
 human, striving always to make clear His divinity- 
 was this the God men wished ? 
 
 By her window, looking down on the street, the 
 modern mystic saw nothing wrong in her spiritual con 
 structions, or their outward expression. But she had 
 a vision of herself, alone, a splendid figure under the 
 flare of a great light above a sea of faces telling the 
 new message, and in vain. Only, nearer, from the un 
 believing faces, one figure stood, a man broken by de 
 feats along the roadside ; he called her in his need, 
 and it seemed that through him she might come closer 
 and be understood by his lying and hungered fellows, 
 by the world from which she dwelt apart. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 On her way through the halls of the Albemarle the 
 next morning a card was given Miss Wayne. She 
 went to the reception-room and there met Edith 
 Chatom. The other woman rose with a direct and 
 composed introduction. 
 
 "I have seen you before often," she added. "I 
 know who you are. But last night you were with 
 John Arnold he was ghastly, spattered with blood. 
 You see he used to be a an acquaintance; we have 
 never lost our interest in him. What was the matter ? 
 Tell me." 
 
 "A suicide his friend." 
 
 Miss Wayne s voice was not inviting. The two 
 women faced each other, tall, direct, with potent life, 
 measuring each the other s strength. They had each 
 the clean and leisured culture of the world, yet were 
 sharply differentiated. Edith Chatom felt at once the 
 need of a defense against the other s resolution, her 
 aloof personality, her unfearing. 
 
 "The affair was in the morning papers though not 
 all the truth. The boy shot himself after losing every 
 dollar on the races. I believe he had used some of his 
 employer s money." 
 
 "Mr. Arnold was with him?" 
 
 "Immediately after. He was responsible in a way 
 he d led the man on. You are Miss Chatom? I be- 
 
 223 
 
224 THE DAY OF SCJULS 
 
 lieve you owned the horse against which young Led- 
 yard bet, didn t you ?" 
 
 "My brother did. It s awfully hard, but these things 
 do happen." 
 
 "You are largely responsible you and your sort of 
 people " 
 
 "That is uncalled for." Edith Chatom flushed and 
 checked her retort. "But Mr. Arnold may I ask of 
 him ? What he how he feels himself involved ?" 
 
 "I am going to see him. If you are his friend, you 
 might come." 
 
 "Thank you. He might understand, perhaps." 
 
 The two women went out and over the hill in the 
 sunny morning. There was little speech on the way to 
 the Family Liquor Store. Grace Wayne went up the 
 outside balcony stairs and the other followed, after a 
 glance at the little alley, the decayed board fence, the 
 heavy German with the Bismarckian mustaches, in 
 apron and shirt sleeves, who was sweeping at the side 
 door of his saloon. 
 
 No response came to Miss Wayne s knock. They 
 went through the upper hall and to the kitchen. 
 
 Miss Cranberry was doing her morning dishes. 
 Nella Free, her skirt drawn up to avoid the splashes 
 and the floor, the underskirt standing out in a fluff of 
 iridescent pleats about the chair, sat near. The girl s 
 veil was tied tightly about her brow above her blue 
 eyes, which were cast lighter from the heavy rings be 
 low them; her pale cheeks showed freckles; her lips 
 were drawn. She regarded the visitors indifferently, 
 returning her gaze to the child in overalls, which was 
 crawling about the floor. In its clutch was a toy en- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 225 
 
 gine, the placating gift which Nella always brought as 
 a pretext for a visit to Miss Granny s. 
 
 The little old woman was shrill with astonishment 
 at the presence of the two women in the kitchen door. 
 She wrung her red hands from the suds, wiped them 
 on her apron, scolded the clucking parrot, and came 
 to greet them with a timorous courtesy. 
 
 "Yes, yes " she answered; "but Mr. Hammy isn t 
 here. He s been here so little the past month, only us 
 ing his rooms once or twice. And now there s trouble, 
 trouble." 
 
 "Do you know where he is, Nella ?" 
 
 The girl started as her name came from Miss 
 Wayne s lips ; she moodily shook her head and rubbed 
 her high French heel against a crack of the floor. "I 
 expect he s at Eddie s mother s. The papers wrote 
 some fierce stuff about me and Eddie. They said he 
 loved me and I dragged him down. Hammy s trying 
 to explain." 
 
 "Trust Hammy trust Hammy," murmured the lit 
 tle old woman, rubbing her thin hands. "O, it s bad, 
 but he ll do what he can !" 
 
 Miss Chatom looked from her to the girl; then at 
 the parrot in the window, whisking crumbs down on 
 the ragged little hyacinth bulb which struggled through 
 the damp earth in its pot by the window opening on the 
 air shaft; and at the yellow-haired child with its red 
 engine, a spot of color in the mean obscurity. 
 
 "How did you sleep, Nella?" asked Grace Wayne. 
 It seemed that she, with the other perfectly gowned 
 woman in the doorway, was held aloof from some 
 tragedy at Cranberry s. "Did you sleep ?" 
 
226 THE DAY OF. SOULS 
 
 "Pretty bad." Nella caught the child s hand and 
 dragged it into the hall. "I don t want to talk!" she 
 retorted. "Babe, let s go see Unc Pop." 
 
 The two women watched her defiant flirt through the 
 hall. By the stairs she met the Captain. The old man 
 straightened up, grasping his cane, peering cautiously 
 through the gloom, twisting his stained imperial. 
 When he saw he had encountered a woman he bowed 
 grandly and stepped back for her precedence. 
 
 "Good morning, Madam good morning!" he said, 
 but he waited until she and the child had gone out. 
 The Captain distrusted women, their chatter, their 
 lightness they couldn t understand; but then one 
 could have for them the manner of the old South. 
 
 "Hush," said Miss Cranberry, "don t ever let him 
 know of things he s been a soldier, and it s all fine. 
 Mr. Hammy s paid most everything for the Captain 
 since Larry went away." 
 
 "Paid?" echoed Miss Chatom "O, I see for his 
 lodging." 
 
 The old lady screwed her mouth to discretion. "And 
 you should see how grand they salute each other when 
 they meet! It s just a play! But it s wearing on the 
 Captain he s waited so long for the troops to come 
 back. He pretends to us, he doesn t care !" 
 
 "I ll leave this note for Mr. Arnold," said Miss 
 Wayne. "I wish to see him. But we must go." She 
 glanced at Edith Chatom. 
 
 The old woman saw them courteously to the door. 
 When they had gone, she flew to Nella, consumed with 
 curiosity about these elegant women. The departing 
 visitors saw the girl, the child, Miss Cranberry with 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 227 
 
 her apron over her head to keep off the sun, and the 
 red engine a patch of color on the balcony against the 
 gray wall of the Family Liquor Store. 
 
 "And that s where he s lived!" murmured Miss 
 Chatom. "It s queer." 
 
 "I think they all rather depend on him," answered 
 Grace Wayne. "The girl s nothing to him," she added, 
 "but the old woman couldn t keep her house if he 
 didn t lodge here. And the old soldier well, Mr. 
 Arnold is a strange blunderer, isn t he ?" 
 
 They looked at each other with more friendliness. 
 Miss Chatom held forth her hand as they parted. 
 "You showed me a curious light on myself and on 
 him. He was my childhood s friend. Will you let me 
 know how things come out ? I shall call on you." 
 
 "Perhaps we can do something," said the other. 
 
 The day seemed rather empty to Grace Wayne after 
 the return from Cranberry s. She had been accus 
 tomed to read and walk in the afternoons, but now she 
 thought of this house of hazards, of the Captain bow 
 ing with old-fashioned chivalry, the little old woman 
 wringing her hands from the suds to fetch a chair, 
 Nella Free kneeling to clean the mouth of the waif. 
 From the tawdry run of the day s life, lacking hope, 
 uplift, light from a bright and finely ordained world 
 they never knew, they yet found for one another the 
 ineffable human radiation of whatever courage, gaiety 
 or good each had. Spiritual transcendencies might be, 
 but here in the surge of denying and common life the 
 priestess of a mystic modernity wondered at this char 
 ity her hands had been unsoiled with it all ; she had 
 been concerned with the infinite that needs no concern. 
 
228 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Arnold came to her apartments late in tHe day. 
 They were both a trifle self-conscious after the half- 
 illumination of that first contact in the night. But he 
 was dragged and tired after a day with his dead 
 friend s affairs. 
 
 "I *was at the house," he said. "It was pretty hard 
 to be treated as if I were his best friend, instead of 
 his destroyer. Well, his mother took it that way. He 
 was short in his accounts with his firm, but she ll never 
 know. We covered it eight hundred dollars. Eddie 
 killed himself over eight hundred dropped to the book 
 makers !" 
 
 "Who replaced it?" 
 
 "We did." 
 
 "You mean you did." 
 
 "Well," he smiled, "I won more than th at on the 
 race. And the boys down the line are paying the 
 funeral expenses it s all we could do. But his sis- 
 ter ll have to go to work now. Eddie was their only 
 guard. Now they re against the game raw Stella 
 and her little mother." He was still, and then laughed 
 briefly. "My God, you make me smile you and all 
 these nice, clean, respectable people who never went 
 wrong in all your nice, clean, respectable little lives. 
 You talk of souls ! O, how easy it is !" 
 
 "Be still," she answered calmly. "You must not 
 give way to this." 
 
 But he rose to walk nervously the length of the 
 room, fretting against the bond she wove about him. 
 His corroding mood broke forth : "Tell me, O, Priest 
 ess!" he mocked. "Give us the perfect way give us 
 the light down here where it s raw and red." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 229 
 
 "You re breaking fast." She, too, rose and came 
 before him, and then cried, with a brilliant eagerness, 
 leaning to him: "Some men can live by half-truths 
 and compromises, but you can t. You ve tried and 
 failed you re not even a capable crook. O, you can t ! 
 You re rising through it all !" 
 
 Her dominance stilled him. In the doggerel wit of 
 the cafes he could mock and confuse and forget, but 
 in this silent room he had to face clear issues. "Ah, 
 well," he muttered, "you don t know. I ve tried to get 
 my father out of San Quentin. I tried all ways, fair 
 and foul and sometimes I ve tried to keep straight. 
 You can t know how everything can be lined up 
 against a man money, social forces, class hate, the 
 law. When once you re down everything is focused 
 to break you and keep you there. I know I m a tool, 
 but I paid a price to win and lost." 
 
 "I know," she came to him, her gaze direct and 
 level with his own. "It s well to lose that way. 
 
 " . . . Like the man who hath mightily won 
 God out of knowledge, peace out of infinite pain, 
 Light out of darkness and purity out of a stain. " 
 
 "Lanier?" He smiled grimly. "I used to know 
 that. I used to read I m not all the rounder." 
 
 "In your rooms once I noticed Maeterlinck and 
 Stevenson s Child Verses," she went on. "I wondered 
 what sort of man was beneath it all. John Arnold, it 
 seems that I have waited." 
 
 "Waited?" his voice echoed, with some surprise. 
 
 "For you," stie went on calmly. "I was at your 
 
2 3 o THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 place this morning. I saw them all there the old 
 woman, Nella and the child. It seems as if I saw 
 something that I had never dreamed of. Perhaps " 
 she hesitated. "You re teaching me much that there s 
 a world s work to do different from all I ve thought." 
 
 "The world s work seems to be done by people with 
 aching heads and sore hearts and bloody hands," he 
 muttered. "Yes, and you re above all that so far, 
 so high." 
 
 And then he left her abruptly, as if sick with some 
 resurgence. 
 
 She stood long alone, calm ; though out of the serene 
 seas of her life a storm was beating, a confusing com 
 plex from her womanhood, from her soul. What 
 blind faith brought this lawless spirit to her own? 
 Was it love linking his unworth with her complete 
 ness love, stained, bloody, common with the world s 
 use, but now crowned above the life of the spirit ? 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 Sammy Jarbo, the laundry wagon poet, had ever 
 been beset by two ambitions embarrassing enough to 
 dwell with on nine dollars a week. One was to write 
 a poem as long as The Eve of St. Agnes, and the 
 other was to own a top hat. The hat must be size 
 seven and an eighth, and the poem one that should 
 clear his turgid, subconscious harmonies to acute, visi 
 ble form of beauty. Always the poet lived alert for 
 his inspiration some day it must come, fecundating 
 his mind until he was heroic with poignant utter 
 ances; it might be while he was on his wagon, or 
 dining at Sedaini s, or idling with his sweetheart on 
 the beach, or alone in his hall bedroom at Granny s, 
 staring at the scrimply wall-paper over his head 
 some day the divine afflatus should sweep his soul, the 
 dreamed ecstasy, and after that nothing would matter 
 much, even though he still had but nine dollars a week 
 and could not, therefore, marry Mary Mellody. 
 
 In his spare hours the poet would tramp over the 
 hills to the public library in the city hall, where, 
 absorbed in rapid and omnivorous readings, making 
 copious notes, scowling over his pencil chewing, 
 rumpling his red hair an eruption of sighs and mut- 
 terings behind the rampart of huge volumes he got 
 about him he searched and awaited his divinity. 
 
 The public library of Old San Francisco was a cold 
 231 
 
232 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 place; the reading-room close under the eaves, near 
 the top of high arched windows, through which the 
 sea fogs streamed, was sodden with damp, and the 
 trade winds scuffed the cornices. All day, beneath 
 the staring gas, one sat and shivered it was a moving 
 tale that warmed you there; and yet on the shelves 
 were meat, drink, kind hearts and a forgetting, and 
 one could write wittily of millions on the hungriest 
 day. There, with his collar upturned to his freckled 
 ears, the poet gorged. 
 
 Sammy turned down from the promenade of the 
 city hall one evening at six o clock and met John 
 Arnold outside the office of registry watching the 
 fleeced air dim the street lamps. Sammy looked at 
 his friend with some hesitation ; they had had little to 
 do with each other of late. The fine old days were 
 done ; the student nights when they had argued verses 
 with a jug of wine at Sedaini s, or wrangled politics 
 with Fred Weldy, the job printer, over a mug of beer 
 at Unc Pop s back bar, or loitered in week-long idle 
 ness about the town. Arnold had now gone far in 
 the blaze of its life, but Sammy remembered the broth 
 erhood; his friend looked forlorn under the mist- 
 filmed gas lamp, the bleak, twilight gray. 
 
 "Hello, Ham/ said the poet. 
 
 "How are you, Sammy?" answered the other. 
 
 Coming nearer, Sammy saw a smile in his friend s 
 eyes, a gentleness he had not seen for months, but 
 which was like him in the old days. 
 
 "Where are you going to eat?" continued the poet. 
 "It s a fifteen center with me." 
 
 "That s about my limit to-night come on." The 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 233 
 
 friends went across Market Street to a low-roofed 
 saloon, where, for ten cents, you got the wieners and 
 rye bread, the frijoles and the beer. 
 
 "What s the matter ?" queried Jarbo, still in wonder. 
 "You ain t broke, are you, Ham?" 
 
 "Not quite. I just wanted to get away with some 
 body I used to know in the old days when we were 
 all free and could laugh together at anything. I 
 wanted you, Sammy, you damned simple-hearted fool ! 
 I ve been wandering around to-day in a sort of 
 dream, in and out of all the old places and familiar 
 streets saying, good-by. " 
 
 The other stirred and looked up. 
 
 "Good-by? You re going to leave? Where to?" 
 
 "I don t know, and it doesn t matter. I m going to 
 quit the town that s all." 
 
 Sammy marveled at trie quietness of the other s 
 mood. He was, indeed, neither loftily fortified with 
 liquor nor merely impersonal with cynic coolness, as 
 he had been at times. This was a new reserve. 
 Sammy studied him for an uncertain period. 
 
 "Well, I m glad," he said, at length. "I don t know 
 why, but I m glad. Maybe you ve come to the end of 
 things. There was Eddie " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Is that it?" 
 
 "Part of it. And something grips me that I don t 
 understand. Only I m going." 
 
 "Where?" 
 
 "I told you I didn t know. I ll store my stuff, or 
 sell it, or give it away all the things in the rooms at 
 Granny s except my army stuff and some pictures. I 
 
234 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 spent the afternoon packing some of them some of 
 my mother s things." 
 
 "Packing?" Sammy leaned to him in surprise. 
 "You ain t going right away?" 
 
 "Yes. There s no compromise for me, Sammy. I 
 couldn t live in San Francisco and be straight any 
 more than you could live in hell and be crooked. It s 
 just in us that s all. I m going to-morrow." 
 
 "To-morrow !" 
 
 "Yes. The town would break me if I stayed now 
 if I quit the game and tried to live differently. I d 
 be the wounded wolf and the pack would jump me. 
 I ll have to go." 
 
 Sammy sat irresolutely back. He never could 
 understand the rattle-brained fool never! 
 
 "I guess you re right," he muttered doubtfully; 
 "only there s Granny and the Polacchi kids and " 
 
 "We sent them out to Scifoni s Louis and I. 
 Pietro s going to keep Theresa in school, and Angelo 
 will help in the flowers it s better for the kids than 
 Chinatown. And Granny well, I m going to find a 
 lodger to take my old rooms." 
 
 The poet was silent a long time, watching Arnold s 
 dark face, the mobile mouth, with its nervous play of 
 weakness and humor and reserve the bar-room 
 jester, the wit of the tenderloin, who had never, even 
 there, seemed to fit. 
 
 "Leaving San Francisco !" the poet mused. "You ? 
 Why, somehow it seems the soul of the town s in you. 
 O, San Francisco ! All that it could mean !" 
 
 "There re great things to do, maybe, but they re not 
 for me. I m going to the hills. I punched cows up 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 235 
 
 on the Hyampoom once for fun now I ll do it for 
 something else. I m going to fight my way back. 
 Sammy, I ll tell you something I never told a man in 
 all the world I m sorry." 
 
 "Yes," his friend murmured; "I thought the day 
 would come. And I think that girl started it. You ve 
 never been the same, try as you might." 
 
 "Maybe." Arnold smiled sadly at him. "I suppose 
 every fellow thinks that women could keep a man to 
 the best in him if they tried but most of them never 
 tried with me. I was good to laugh with and at when 
 the lights shone bright, but when the dark days came 
 well, a good many times I thought I loved them, 
 but when the dark days came I saw how it was. Once, 
 long ago, I thought I cared, and I tried to live decently 
 for a woman, and then when the game got me at last 
 I went to her for help just a cheery word to help a 
 fellow through. It was Christmas, and I traveled 
 five hundred miles to see her and broke the last dollar 
 I had in the world to buy her a single rose. I thought 
 it would mean something, but she took it and held it 
 up against the furs and the amethysts and the pearls 
 that others had given her, and smiled the same smile 
 I once saw on the face of a Mexican dance-hall girl 
 when they told her that a man she wanted to get rid 
 of had killed himself. Eh, do you understand ? Well, 
 I just turned away. For a good many years after that 
 I could afford to laugh at them, and drink with them 
 and forget them. Seems like I d given much and got 
 back little. Now something s different. I can t tell 
 you, but there s some big hope ahead it dazes me to 
 know to feel" He stopped, and after his thought, 
 
236 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 in a quiet voice, resumed: "Well, how s Sweet Mel- 
 lody and the old crowd over the hill ?" 
 
 "Things are pretty quiet. Mary s not well. Ten 
 hours a day at Solinsky s is pretty tough. I ve been 
 thinking of what you said, Hammy ; sure I have." 
 
 "Eh?" said the forgetful one; "what s that?" 
 
 "O, nothing much. Only if I ever get Pizarro s 
 Quest done and fix up that thing about Spring in 
 Arcady, I d be thinking about it." 
 
 "About what?" 
 
 "O, sort of getting married. But here s Pizarro " 
 
 "Pizarro be damned ! You get married. What are 
 you earning fifteen a week?" 
 
 "Nine," answered the poet dismally. "And, besides, 
 if I get married, it s all off with the big stuff. I might 
 kick out a love sonnet now and then, but it wouldn t 
 be the big stuff." 
 
 "Look here. Mary Mellody loves you, son. Now, 
 if I was straight and a straight girl loved me, I d back 
 Pizarro and Arcady off the map." 
 
 "You d be a rum poet," murmured the other, and 
 then he sighed. "Ah, well, I wonder if love is the big 
 stuff?" 
 
 "Have you asked her?" 
 
 "Not explicitly you see " 
 
 "Come on ; we ll ask her now !" 
 
 "Now !" gasped the poet. 
 
 "You can be married to-morrow." 
 
 "What?" 
 
 "Before I leave town. Here, now, don t object! 
 I m trying to put through a great many things that 
 I ve neglected." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 237 
 
 And to the Cranberry lodgings they went in the 
 dusk, the poet still pop-eyed with dismay. He was 
 weak at the thought ; he protested. 
 
 "There s a light in Mary s window," retorted 
 Arnold. "You go in. I ll tell Granny of the wedding 
 to-morrow. Now, run along." 
 
 "But, Ham" 
 
 "Sammy, must I go and ask the girl for you?" Mr. 
 Arnold was imperturbably businesslike. 
 
 "No, I ll do it. Love? Love is the master felicity 
 when love gets a-hold of you " 
 
 The other man swung him about in the hall, and 
 then went on to Miss Cranberry s kitchen. The little 
 old woman was among her pots and kettles by the 
 grimy window, when Arnold whispered to her. 
 
 "Yes, a wedding," he repeated. 
 
 "Bless us !" gasped Granny. 
 
 "For Sweet Mellody," continued the man, "and here 
 and to-morrow." 
 
 "O, Mr. Hammy!" she cried. "Is it true is it 
 really true?" 
 
 He backed out of the kitchen, with a warning finger 
 raised to her cackle. 
 
 But the little old woman could not work, for her 
 eagerness. It had come, then the romance which 
 she had always dreamed she should some day shelter, 
 touch and know ? The young life, the fragrant breath, 
 the wondrous ways here in the choke and squalor, in 
 the commonness of the day s work, in the gray and 
 ceaseless path, the delicate flower had bloomed, its 
 perfume filled the air. 
 
 The old woman busied herself vainly over her 
 
238 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 dishes; she could do nothing for her trembling, her 
 fluttering pulses. Once there had been a young lieu 
 tenant of Old New Orleans who had gone off to follow 
 Walker into Nicaragua but that was long, long ago ; 
 and fifty years of the gray wolf town had been leaping 
 at her throat since then. 
 
 But now, here, in the dusk, in the silence of the 
 dingy kitchen, forgotten, unrequited, her tears were 
 falling through the incommunicable pathos of life a 
 love song lingered. 
 
 A timid knock came at her door presently, and the 
 lame girl entered. Miss Cranberry looked at her, her 
 heart beating, her breath short ; she could not dissem 
 ble her eagerness. Mary Mellody s face was pale, her 
 eyes shining, her voice came low as the flutter of doves* 
 wings when she tried to speak. 
 
 "Never mind never mind " faltered the little 
 old woman ; "there " 
 
 The girl nodded. Granny suddenly gathered her 
 in her long arms, the rough hands about her ; and in 
 the dusk they cried, with only the clucking parrot to 
 break the silence. Then Miss Cranberry released the 
 girl with brisk energy. "There, dear, we must tell 
 them all!" 
 
 The lame girl could not answer because of her 
 throbbing heart ; the triumph that had beset her was 
 dissolving now to a softer happiness, choking her 
 voice, stilling her eagerness. Her fingers crept closer 
 into the old woman s hands ; they stopped again in the 
 hall, thrilled by the pressure of each other s arms, by 
 the exquisite sympathy disengaged from one to the 
 other. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 239 
 
 So Sammy found them, so with shining eyes they 
 looked on him, laughing in happy foolery ; and so they 
 came on John Arnold before the door of his room. 
 
 He had been about to enter, but he turned gravely 
 on Mary Mellody s little drama, the climacteric of her 
 years of loneliness, of labor, of hopeless outlook, her 
 lame struggle against the ruthless foot of that society 
 which gibes at the girls of the poor when it can not 
 buy them. 
 
 "I m glad," the young man said. "You children 
 you ll have to hang together and fight through a tough 
 old game, but you ll have each other, and that is some 
 thing maybe the only thing, Mary, worth anything 
 at all." 
 
 The lame girl falteringly reached her hand to his. 
 
 "I know," she whispered ; "but, O, you always make 
 me sorry so for you!" 
 
 "Now, now," the old woman cluttered, for she 
 always held the world back from the wounds of her 
 flock, protecting and dissembling as she did her own. 
 "Now Mr. Sammy can write poetry now there ll be 
 some great things!" 
 
 "Because you love him, don t you, Mary?" said 
 Arnold, and the girl laughed shyly. "Of course he ll 
 do great things when a woman loves him so." 
 
 "Love?" murmured the poet. "I wonder if love is 
 the big stuff, after all?" 
 
 Sweet Mellody laughed again. 
 
 To her it was glad days. 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 Arnold went back to his rooms and was busied with 
 a confusion of books, papers and clothing about a 
 packing-case in the middle of the floor. He looked 
 over the disarray, working slowly and in some doubt. 
 There had been a strangeness about the day, and now 
 the night and the silence of his rooms oppressed him 
 more curiously. The familiar corner shadows haunted 
 him; the piano, with its oriental brazier, and the 
 months old rose stems, sere and dried; the white 
 figure of the marble Marquise defined with a patrician 
 elegance in the gloom that the shaded lamp but accen 
 tuated; even the faded tinsel god on the far wall 
 seemed to question. 
 
 After a while he sat by the littered table and watched 
 the well-known and variant objects ; with each, in all 
 the indifferent jumble, was some remembrance. His 
 eyes wandered to the saber and saddle on the wall 
 across from him ; he could see the mud dried in the 
 interstices of the buckles dirt from the campaigns of 
 Mindanao and Luzon, of the free days. 
 
 It was the first night of the winter that he had been 
 in his rooms, that he had not idled about town after 
 the races, around the bars and cafes and later the unob 
 trusive clubs, where he had played stud or faro from 
 midnight until seven in the morning. Clean, well- 
 
 240 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 241 
 
 dressed, inscrutable, smiling that was what the town 
 had seen in him. Occasionally gently, wittily drunk, 
 but never unfraternal a good fellow "down the line." 
 
 To-night the old life seemed far, detached, a show 
 of small, bright pictures, dissolving one into another 
 to distant melodies. His impersonality suddenly struck 
 him as odd, here in his rooms, in the dusty light, amid 
 the familiar smell of tobaccos, dried flower leaves, 
 books and leather. 
 
 "It was never me, * he mused. "She s right Grace 
 is right." 
 
 He lingered on her name, vaguely guessing at the 
 hope it gave him, the remembrance of unspoken prom 
 ises. And with a sense of guilt he tried to evade his 
 imagining that she loved him it must be this ; it was 
 as if a brilliant star had flashed within his sight, and 
 he faltered, stood back, exalted, but afraid. He put 
 her by to think of Sammy s bride her pale face 
 recurred in the dusk, and her words : 
 
 "O, you always make me sorry so for you!" 
 
 That was curious about all the women he had 
 known, laughed with, loved and left. What, beneath 
 the uncaring of his life, had they believed in, idealized, 
 and turned from in sorrow? Well, it was done now. 
 To-night, in the silence and the completeness of the 
 ruin, he waited to be free. "I ll tell them to-morrow 
 and then go," he mused. "There s nothing in all the 
 town to hold me." . 
 
 About the quaint old sideboard that had been in his 
 father s house and now was the receptacle of all sorts 
 of things, the half-grown dog shook himself and came 
 out at Arnold s voice. The master watched it, and as 
 
242 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 always, in welcome to the rooms, it sidled forth and 
 thrust its black nose to his hand. 
 
 "I don t know, lad," the man muttered; "you and 
 the Cookhouse Kid. You I well, I promised to see 
 you through, didn t I?" The dog from up-in-back 
 brought Arnold s somber mind back to Sylvia and the 
 North, to the summer he had known her, when it had 
 seemed, as it had seemed with Grace Wayne, that all 
 that he knew of worth and goodness was fighting for 
 his soul and had lost. Well, let that go, too ; he could 
 make nothing over from the past. 
 
 A sound came to him from the chamber beyond. He 
 listened and went nearer. In the dimness he saw some 
 one rising from the divan; a woman came out where 
 the red and green bands of the Mexican serape about 
 her figure made an astonishing picture in the doorway. 
 She had newly awakened, rubbing her eyes, and the 
 man watched her in surprise. 
 
 "Why, Nel, what s the matter?" 
 
 She turned her face toward him sleepily. 
 
 "I lay down on your bed at six I wish I hadn t 
 I feel like the devil now. I d been drinking pretty 
 hard to-day, Hammy!" 
 
 She laughed, pressing a handkerchief to her eyes. 
 He saw her white lips move inaudibly, her swollen 
 face grimace with weariness. 
 
 "Look here " Arnold began, but her little, defying 
 laugh cut him short. 
 
 "I ve broken away," she added mechanically. 
 "Harry hit me and I quit him. I told him that Eddie 
 Ledyard had cared for me and he laughed ; and then I 
 said all you sporting men and politicians were thieves 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 243 
 
 and liars and murderers. He hit me and I just took 
 my diamonds and left." 
 
 "Yes," said the young man quietly. 
 
 She laughed again and on his bed tossed a little 
 chamois bag with a flirt that scattered her jewels over 
 the counterpane. They lay here, there, in a dozen 
 spots ; two big solitaires, a marquise ring of diamonds 
 and rubies, a diamond cluster set in a barbaric native 
 nugget and half a dozen other trinkets. At her throat, 
 holding his beflowered robe, was the great pearl but 
 terfly that she loved best of all. 
 
 "O, well," she murmured, in her old careless humor ; 
 "it s all in the day s work. Eddie s dead, and I ve 
 quit Harry for good. One man s much like another, 
 and I ll break even with this town some way. I ve 
 held back from a good many things, but now damn 
 you all you men!" 
 
 She paused by the pier glass, her white arms raised 
 to put back the hair from her small neck; the lamp 
 cast an aura upon the rustling silken sleeve, as she 
 moved and talked. "I just drifted all day with Myrtle. 
 Some big mining man loaned us his machine, and we 
 smashed it at the Beach. Then I jumped a car and 
 came down here to buzz you. I want your advice. 
 That mining man wants me to go to Goldfield. He s 
 a friend of Tex McLane and Senator Fairchild. You 
 see, there d be nothing too big for me to go after up 
 there." She turned, with her warm little laugh. 
 "Hammy, tell me, would I make good?" He did not 
 answer, and she demanded sharply: "Tell me. And 
 here I want a cigarette!" 
 
 Arnold extended his case. The girl sat back in the 
 
244 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 great leather chair and her eyes roved about the walls 
 to the student sketches and studies in fading oils, 
 the photographs of camps and marches, the weapons 
 of savage islanders, Mexican ware, the silver and plate 
 and furniture that had been once in his father s house, 
 the careless disorder of the music and magazines on 
 the piano, the inextricable, close confusion of every 
 thing in the two apartments. Nella s face was pretty 
 in the light s softening, in the negligee of the oriental 
 robe; her smart clothes no longer obsessed and 
 obscured her girlishness and she was but twenty-two. 
 
 "Have you been down-town?" she asked. "I won 
 der if Harry left any word with Fergy for me or 
 anything," she added vacantly. 
 
 "No, and he won t. Nella, he s through with you. 
 I know I" 
 
 She played with the ivory paper-knife on his table. 
 "Maybe," she put in indifferently. "It s all in the 
 game. I damned him good and hard about Eddie I 
 damned you, too. I told Harry he had made a thief 
 of you. I don t need any of you. I can get along. 
 I ve got my kid sister at Notre Dame to take care of, 
 but / can get along !" 
 
 He looked at her, her prettiness, her uselessness, her 
 frail drifting through the red sea of life that had 
 crushed thousands wiser, stronger than she. Life 
 had nothing for her; she would be the joke of 
 love as money is of honor. She had done her best 
 with the light given her, though that best be worse 
 than nothing. 
 
 "Kid, you d better not," he muttered. 
 
 "What else?" she idly said; "tell me?" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 245 
 
 "Nella, you re a fool." 
 
 "So are you, aren t you?" 
 
 He watched her through the dusk of the quiet room. 
 "Stay here a while. You can help do something." 
 
 "Take care of the kids; sweep the halls for the old 
 lady?" Nella raised her arm indolently above her 
 red-brown hair. "It would drive me wild and, be 
 sides, a girl needs so many things. My bills last month 
 were three hundred and forty dollars." 
 
 The young man went to sit on the broad arm of her 
 chair ; he took the girl s fingers, raising them to watch 
 the glint of the marquise ring, which she had put on 
 the rimming diamonds and the exquisite rubies. 
 "Yes," he said; "I ve nothing to say we re both hit 
 pretty hard, aren t we?" 
 
 Arnold rose and went to the window. "My God, 
 what s life? We brought you here, didn t we we 
 men? But I m breaking with it, Nel I m shot to 
 pieces this business of Eddie and " 
 
 "O, well!" she retorted; "we ll plunge on and for 
 get ! You ve done it before. Hammy, you re the most 
 dangerous man I ever knew because you re good to 
 people and they like you. There was Eddie and here s 
 Fred, and there was that country girl you brought 
 down here and robbed." 
 
 He turned swiftly on her, but his voice was gentle. 
 
 "Now, don t," he muttered. "Nel, I m leaving 
 it all." 
 
 She raised herself higher in his great chair, her 
 eyes widened. For the first time she noticed the pack 
 ing-case beyond the table and his clothes scattered 
 about the floor. 
 
246 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Going?" she repeated. "Why, Hammy!" 
 
 "Yes, North." 
 
 "To stay?" 
 
 "Yes. Someway, or other, I m going to save my 
 self." 
 
 She idled with her diamonds, watching their glint. 
 "You ve been queer ever since that girl quit you or 
 you her. Perhaps you cared " She laughed nerv 
 ously. "It s different when one cares and somebody 
 else cares. A woman can keep straight and go on, if 
 somebody cares." 
 
 "Yes, Nel, it s a fierce game, isn t it? But some 
 where things are getting clearer for me. I m going 
 North and ride range and forget." 
 
 She watched him placidly for a time, and then a 
 sudden enthusiasm swept her. 
 
 "Hammy, you go it ll be grand ! You ll straighten 
 things, and get brown, and drive those little lines from 
 about your eyes. O, the country I never thought of it 
 for you !" 
 
 "Look here," he answered, after a pause, "what are 
 you going to do ?" 
 
 She laughed with her trifling good-humor. "O, I ll 
 get on ! Things have broken with me, too. I m going 
 to pay Granny two weeks rent and just look around. 
 I ve got to have money. I ve got Jessie to take care 
 of at the convent but I m all right. And I ll go in to 
 make good big, now. I can go to Europe any day I say 
 the word." 
 
 She sat higher to look in the glass, restlessly human, 
 loosening the robe at her throat to see better its flute- 
 like contour. The man saw the lure of the town in the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 247 
 
 white hand raised to her turquoise comb ; He spoke idly 
 after a time. 
 
 "I told Eddie, once, that I d look after you, Nel. 
 He begged me to help you, when the day came." 
 
 "That s like the boy," she retorted simply ; "but I m 
 all right. And you " she added shortly "Hammy, 
 you go make a man of yourself." 
 
 "Look here, Nel," the man paused in his pacing of 
 the room and stood before her, "I m going, and I want 
 you to cut all this. You ve broken with Harry and 
 now, I want you I want you " he stopped, his voice 
 filled with uncertain trouble "I want you to cut all 
 this. Nel, I m sorry for you." 
 
 She sat forward with a slow intake of breath, 
 laughed in confusion ; and then, beneath her parleying 
 humor, a flash of bitter energy came at some look on 
 his face. 
 
 "Sorry? For me! O, my God you you sorry 
 for me ! Why, I m better off than you are I m better 
 than you are !" 
 
 She twisted up from the chair and stood before him. 
 "Go on!" she cried. "Don t preach to me! You go 
 quit it all but don t you try to make me different. 
 You men made me !" 
 
 She flashed past him in the dusk. Her laugh came 
 to him, hot, reckless, shrill in its taunting. "You 
 made me !" she cried. "O, go leave it all !" 
 
 He turned from the table to find her before the long 
 glass, rubbing her hot cheeks with the chamois. The 
 action interpreted itself. She went to the hall door, 
 loosening the flowered robe at her throat. Arnold fol 
 lowed her and barred the way. 
 
248 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Where are you going?" he demanded, as she turned 
 on him for egress. 
 
 "To get my hat and things in that spare room." 
 
 "It s late you ve got to stay, Nella. Granny has 
 a place for you to-night." 
 
 "No." The girl fought to get past him; he held 
 her against the wall, his forearm across her throat, but 
 she stared at him defiantly. "You can t go," he mut 
 tered. "You can t I won t have you on the street 
 you shan t !" 
 
 "Well " the girl watched him a moment, then re 
 laxed her tense body and crept from beneath his arm. 
 "Just because you re stronger, eh ? What ll I stay here 
 for?" 
 
 "You can t go," he repeated gravely; "you can t!" 
 
 She watched him a long time, and then her old care 
 less laugh broke out with a puzzled note in its good 
 humor. 
 
 "What are you after ? Do you want me to love you, 
 too?" 
 
 "Nel," he whispered, "be still ! Do you want us to 
 drag each other farther down ?" 
 
 His voice and eyes stilled her playing. They did 
 not belong to the fellow of old, his whimsical gravity 
 and self-sufficient uncaring. 
 
 "I told you I was breaking away, Nel," he went on. 
 "There s only one thing more to do. I m going to 
 San Quentin and tell the old man that I ve given up 
 the fight something keeps saying to me that dad 
 would rather serve his time than have me get him out 
 by the crooked work I ve done. And I m going to ask 
 him I ve a sort of fever to ask him to have him tell 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 249 
 
 me to be square, so that I could stand clean before his 
 soul ! Then I ll go away." 
 
 She was silent with surprise ; perturbed and marvel 
 ing at him. She could not understand, and looking 
 steadfastly into her eyes he knew. 
 
 "Hammy," she laughed, "you re so funny now !" 
 
 The girl slipped back to the chair and sank in it 
 while he sat down by the table across from her. And 
 again, as he stared at her, her careless laugh rang out. 
 
 "Give me a match," she said. "O, you fool ! There s 
 nothing to care for or about !" 
 
 The young man raised himself to watch her long 
 and steadfastly. 
 
 "Nel, did a thought of your soul ever come to you ?" 
 
 She gathered herself closer in the luxurious comfort 
 of the leather chair a small heap of color in the ori 
 ental robe under the lamp glow, looking at him, her 
 blue eyes expectant with wonder. 
 
 "My soul?" she repeated, "why, no. I just drift on 
 like a leaf in the storm." 
 
 "Yes," he added somberly, bewildered by some vision 
 of himself fighting back from the dark enveloping her, 
 "a leaf in the storm !" 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 Arnold was turning about the deck-house of the 
 Tiburon as she lurched through the tide-rip, with a 
 wind shrilling over her funnel that beat all the waters 
 from Alcatraz to the Golden Gate to a green-white car 
 pet, when he came on Assemblyman Weldy. The 
 legislator was on the fore-deck, his collar upturned 
 against the cold, watching the sea fog tumble above 
 the cliffs about the harbor and stream shoreward to 
 eat away, bit by bit, the western glimpses of the city. 
 Arnold also had come forward to pace the deck in the 
 fresh weather ; for none other, he thought, would brave 
 the exposure, and he wished to be alone. He took off 
 his hat, and allowed the gale to tug at his hair, watching 
 Weldy, meanwhile. When the latter turning, saw him, 
 he shook his brown derby and laughed a greeting. 
 
 "Took the round trip for the ride," said Weldy, as 
 their hands met. "I saw it was going to be a squally 
 afternoon, and I sort of wanted something to tumble 
 me about and blow through me. Ain t it cold, Ham 
 for May?" 
 
 "Fine ! Look at that old windjammer trying to pick 
 her way past the Heads ? Wouldn t it be great to be 
 putting out for Tahiti or the Marquesas or anywhere 
 four thousand miles away !" 
 
 "Ten thousand!" retorted Fred. "God, yes; the 
 farther, the better !" 
 
 250 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 251 
 
 "If I didn t have wife and babies," continued the 
 printer, watching the last glimpse of the illimitable 
 Pacific, for Fort Point filled the gap as the steamer 
 swung nearer the city heights, "I d cut out I d go to 
 Australia or New Zealand. I d go to work and study 
 the cooperative commonwealth again. I d throw my 
 self in, and get enthusiastic and do something. Ham, 
 I ve made an awful failure, ain t I ?" 
 
 "Fred, you re only thirty. What business have you 
 talking that way ?" 
 
 "Well, here s yourself, old man!" 
 
 They stared into the darkening west, the green-gray 
 mystery of the sea fogs blotting the world. A single 
 bar of yellow smote up from the buried sunset; the 
 steamer, hastening through the turmoil of wind, was 
 bearing them toward the string of wharf lights as 
 tonishingly clear along the city front. The silence be 
 came long and eloquent of introspection. Arnold 
 sighed at length, turning his face with the damp hair 
 blowing about his eyes, to his friend. There was a 
 trace of gray about Fred s temples ; and Arnold s curls 
 were thinning. Each man s face had set graver the 
 past year yes, they were growing older, and, watch 
 ing each other, it seemed the same thought held them. 
 
 "We ve played it pretty hard," said Weldy. "Ham, 
 the little lines about your eyes tell a good deal." 
 
 The other studied him as if he were seeking com 
 mon ground of understanding; when he spoke, there 
 was an explosive relief in his tone ; he turned with di 
 rect simplicity on his friend. 
 
 "Fred, you ll think I m crazy when I tell you what 
 I ve done." 
 
252 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Done? Lord, no one could keep track of you! 9 
 
 "I ve been to San Quentin," continued Arnold. "I 
 saw the old man." 
 
 Fred turned doubtfully and looked up the wild north 
 shore. Over the waters the lights of the prison town 
 were beginning to ride out in the gusty dusk. "I 
 thought he wouldn t ever let you see him there ?" 
 
 "I didn t ask him I just went. I met him in tKe 
 warden s office. They re pretty easy on him. He just 
 keeps a few records and files, and they treat him all 
 right. But he s looking old and worn, Fred. He ll 
 never be the big plunger again, and he knows it. Dad 
 was quiet and peaceful; yes, it surprised me so just 
 quiet and peaceful." 
 
 "It s pretty tough," murmured Fred ; "pretty tough." 
 
 "Well, I don t know. Do I look any different now ? 
 I feel queer. Fred, I went up there to tell the old man 
 the whole story !" 
 
 "The whole story ? What s the matter with you ?" 
 
 "I mean the way I m mixed in things. I was going 
 to put it all up to dad all I d done, all the fool I ve 
 made of myself. And then I met him, Fred, and I 
 hadn t a word to say. You see, he received me so dif 
 ferently. He was as peaceful as old Captain Calhoun, 
 waiting up there for Larry. I couldn t understand for 
 a time ; and then he said : You re being pretty straight, 
 aren t you, son? I want you you re all I ll have 
 when I get out, and I want you clean, John I want 
 you clean ! " 
 
 "Yes," muttered Weldy, "I know." 
 
 "Fred, after that after he talked on, and I saw how 
 he was waiting for me to make good I wouldn t have 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 253 
 
 had him pardoned and out of the pen to-day for the 
 biggest bank-roll in the town ! I thought he d fight and 
 fret for that pardon, and to get his name clear, and 
 have a dash at things, and the old man never mentioned 
 it he simply wanted to know if I d been square! You 
 see where it put me, don t you? He just straightened 
 up and put a hand on my shoulder and said: I m an 
 old man now, and things won t matter much. They ll 
 forget me, but you, son I want you as you were when 
 we used to ride over the hills and through the big 
 camps, and watch the work; a clean, fine, brave little 
 chap, you were P >: 
 
 The two men on the ferry deck were still for a while, 
 each with his hat off, blown and buffeted by the wind, 
 as they stood shoulder to shoulder. 
 
 "Yes," said Weldy, again, "I understand!" 
 
 "Don t talk any more queer work to me," Arnold 
 went on at length. "I m through. They can break me 
 but I m through. I ve been fighting for years; but 
 now that I ve lost, I m glad. That s queer, isn t it ?" 
 
 "Yes and what are you going to do ?" 
 
 "I ll quit the town. I m going to break away and 
 start anew somewhere and have things different when 
 he comes out. He ll be old and peaceful, and he ll 
 never quite know, if I go away now and let the town 
 forget me." 
 
 The legislator looked moodily off at the city. "God s 
 sake !" he muttered, "I wish I could ! You re leaving 
 me in it all !" 
 
 The two friends were silent in the tugging breeze. 
 
 The boat was sheering off the ferry slips, feeling the 
 ebb-tide for the run in. 
 
 

 2 5 4 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "I passed you money, didn t I? I think we were 
 both drunk." Arnold laughed briefly. "I m pulling 
 out of that, too. Fred, I want it back." 
 
 "What do you mean ?" retorted Weldy. "You want 
 it back? Christ s sake, Ham, will you take it?" 
 
 The other man nodded to Weldy s staring eyes. 
 "Ham, I pass it up," muttered his friend. "I ve carried 
 the money around all this time I ain t spent a cent of 
 it. I m in a tight place, but I ain t touched it !" 
 
 "Give it to me," said Arnold, and as Fred fumbled 
 under his overcoat, his hand went under it also and 
 their fingers clasped, tightened and held each other s 
 over the bribe money. The steamer was plunging in 
 between the lines of wave-lashed piles; through the 
 doors, from the brilliantly lighted cabin, the passengers 
 were pouring as the moorings were made fast. In an 
 instant the throng was about the two silent men clasp 
 ing hands, their bodies touching each other, their faces 
 averted. 
 
 "Old man old man " whispered Fred. "O, you 
 don t know can t tell! Don t leave town Christ s 
 sake help me through it all !" 
 
 "We ll fix it somehow here, now " They were 
 borne along under the ferry arches by the crowds, 
 stumbling through the rush of life under the staring 
 arcs newsboys, hotel runners, police, suburban com 
 muters rushing for boats, arriving passengers swarm 
 ing to the half mile of cable-cars worming into the 
 turn-table. All about were the cries and tumult of the 
 dusky gray city, the swinging glitter of the city; and 
 now, in the shelter of an arch, they turned to each 
 other. 
 
THE DAY OH SOULS 255 
 
 "I got to go home," said Weldy. "I want to see Lil- 
 lie. I got to go to the capital to-morrow but I want 
 to go home. I suppose " he laughed nervously "you 
 want me to be square, Ham ; to make the best fight I 
 can!" 
 
 "Square!" whispered his friend; "it s strange! 
 What s on us, Fred ? You ve got your fight, and I ve 
 mine!" 
 
 And they laughed in a sort of gladness, as their 
 hands tightened on each other s in the surging crowd ; 
 then Fred, his broad figure above the pack, was swept 
 toward the gates of the Oakland ferry. 
 
 Arnold walked up Market Street to stop at the 
 Rococo saloon, idling alone and thoughtful, his elbows 
 on the bar, a heel on the foot-rail, heeding nothing of 
 the gabble the races, the fights, the graft. Amid all 
 this banal smartness of the town s night, the garrulous 
 shift and play and comment overlying the businesses 
 of men, he went now with a satisfied seriousness. Yet 
 he was troubled; he took out the two hundred and 
 fifty dollars which Weldy had returned him, smoothing 
 the crinkly bills. The balance of the five hundred 
 given him to bribe the legislator, he had spent on his 
 own devices. And now he would have to raise the 
 amount somehow, and give it back. He must rid him 
 self of this thing now, if it was ever to be done, if he 
 was to meet "the old man" clean-hearted, when San 
 Quentin s gates swung open if his soul was ever to 
 awaken. 
 
 He went to the Washington Street lodgings early 
 that night. The Polacchi children were gone ; Sammy 
 and his bride were wedded and in the country for a 
 
 . . ^^ * ;: 
 
 
 
256 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 week s honeymoon. There was room a-plenty, for 
 Granny s house was running slack these days; in the 
 little kitchen, where the old woman usually sat nod 
 ding until ten, there was no light. The place was quite 
 forlorn. 
 
 In his own apartments, curled in the big chair by the 
 lamp, Arnold found Nella Free reading listlessly a nov 
 elette that had to do with lords and ladies and intrigues 
 the only sort of story that Nella knew existed. The 
 girl greeted Arnold with drowsy interest, one arm 
 raised lazily to fasten a comb in her tumbled hair. 
 
 The past two days had been dull enough ; she had not 
 left the lodgings, and had pestered the old woman 
 morning long with idle and commonplace questions. 
 
 "I wish that crazy Sammy and the lame girl he mar 
 ried would come back," she said to Arnold. "It s 
 fierce here I don t know why I ve stayed around. I m 
 just drifting." 
 
 The young man sat down, rolling a cigarette in 
 silence. 
 
 "Boy," she murmured, "you must be getting poor, 
 to come down from Egyptiennes to brown paper !" 
 
 He held up his self-made cigarette. "Nel, there are 
 worse days coming!" His slow smile had the tension 
 of trouble. "I need two hundred and fifty pretty badly 
 to-night." 
 
 "Look here. Are you playing the races again so 
 soon after that?" 
 
 "No. I took a piece of money last week to put a 
 deal through and I spent it. Now I ve got to get it 
 back. Nel, I m in earnest I m squaring up." 
 
 She laughed again out of her idle knowledge of the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 257 
 
 town s ways; she did not question him as she looked 
 indolently through the golden-linked bag hanging to 
 the chair. "I ve forty-five dollars," she said, "if it ll 
 help." 
 
 He shook fiis Head : "I need two hundred more to 
 shove that bribe money back to Harry. I ll get it, Nel 
 I ll rake the town to-night." 
 
 "If you re going to break with them, you d better 
 not. They ve got you pretty tight now," she smiled. 
 "You see, I know! You ll have to stay away you ll 
 just have to change everything everything!" 
 
 Arnold s eyes sought hers with their little worry 
 lifted by an eagerness he did not conceal. 
 
 "I know. Everything s got to be different ! I can t 
 go away with things half done. Kid, I wonder if you 
 know if you feel if you felt as I do, what you would 
 do?" 
 
 Again her confusing laugh rose. 
 
 Drawing a silver case, she took three rings and idly 
 tried them on. Exquisite with pearls, turquoise and 
 diamonds, she held the largest so that it trembled won- 
 drously. Then she tossed it across the room to him. 
 
 "Take it anywhere but Levy s," she said carelessly. 
 "He d know it, for I pawned it there the time that 
 Stanford student passed the bad check at Skelly s, and 
 we girls got the money to keep his family from hearing 
 about it. You d not want Levy to know, would you ?" 
 
 The young man took the ring : "You want to call it 
 a loan, Nel you mean ?" 
 
 "No to pull you out square that s all." She looked 
 at him with nonchalant confusion. "O, we ve all been 
 broke, and we ll all be broke again !" She spread her 
 
258 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 small hands to watch, admiringly, the remaining jew 
 els. "There ll be diamonds when we re both dead." 
 
 He looked from the splendid stone to her, idle, use 
 less, uncaring cast by the storm an instant into a 
 quiet pool. Indeed, a jeweled bauble was all she had 
 to give. 
 
 A step came to the hall, a hand fumbled at the door ; 
 and the Captain came. He blinked uncertainly in the 
 light, as Arnold rose and touched his arm. Gravely, in 
 the old wordless play always honored by them, they 
 saluted, each with his ringer to his eyebrow. 
 
 "I heard your voice, sir?" began the Captain. "It s 
 been days since I saw you, and no one seems to know 
 of this affair the regiment at Bamboang. A stranger 
 I talked with in the Square had not heard of it." 
 
 "Well, it wasn t a big battle. But all the army people 
 know that s what counts. The honor of the service, 
 Captain." 
 
 The veteran nodded sagely. He was more weak and 
 blind, but with Angelo Polacchi to guide him, he could 
 reach Union Square and sit sunning himself, straining 
 his eyes at times up to the bronze Victory triumphant 
 above the city, above the evil roll of life, a symbol of 
 the older republic, of the uncorrupted fathers and the 
 fighting fellows. There were no such men now ; they 
 bred a money-race, gabblers and secret-workers; the 
 women squab-fat from gorging on their wealth, the 
 men lean, harsh, their souls eaten hollow from its get 
 ting such had his America become. 
 
 Ah, well ! Through it all one could patiently wait ; 
 it is something to have a son wounded on the firing- 
 line! 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 259 
 
 The Captain turned to Arnold with the usual ques 
 tion ; his eyes, under their bushy brows, blinking at the 
 sparkle of the diamonds on the woman s ringers. "But 
 have you heard, sir ? Next month the troop-ship will 
 sail, will it not?" 
 
 "Surely. But it s a long ways around the world " 
 The dissembler suddenly had a curious foreboding of 
 the day the troop-ship would arrive with the Third Bat 
 talion of the cavalry what then should he tell the 
 father of this dishonored trooper sleeping in Samar ? 
 
 But now he hurried on : "Ah, it was great ! Larry ll 
 get the honor medal a hero, Captain !" 
 
 The old man drew himself up with dignity this was 
 cheap talk, this of heroes it was enough to have 
 served. 
 
 Nella s eyes started from their idleness. 
 
 "A hero?" she murmured. "Larry is he hand 
 some?" 
 
 The men looked disconcerted ; the Captain frowned, 
 his hand going to the livid scar above his eye. 
 
 "Why, it isn t much to be a soldier," the girl re 
 sumed indifferently. "Those boys only get thirteen 
 dollars a month, don t they ?" 
 
 "But the honor medal from congress" the young 
 man shielded the Captain from her with a gesture 
 "when you save a comrade on the firing-line, Nel, they 
 give you a medal." 
 
 "The honor of service," said the old man; "that s 
 what counts." 
 
 From the door he saluted gravely. 
 
 When they heard the tap-tapping of the cane die 
 away on the upper stair, the girl turned to Arnold : "I 
 
2<5o THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 think he s sort of crazy, don t you ? Who s this Larry ? 
 Is he good-looking is he an officer?" 
 
 "He was my bunky." Arnold faltered a moment 
 with a smile before her intent, wondering where he 
 should limit the heroic vision he had called up for the 
 father s eyes. 
 
 "Is he a lieutenant?" 
 
 "Yes he ll be a lieutenant after this affair at Bam- 
 boang. But it may be years before Larry gets home " 
 
 "Then what are you lying for ?" she retorted. "That 
 old fellow s waiting for him" the girl shook the 
 young man s arm and drew him closer to the table, her 
 eyes bright "and just suppose he does come ? A lieu 
 tenant witK a medal of honor !" 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 On one of those rare San Francisco mornings when 
 the Pacific, ceasing for a space its bufferings, sucks up 
 the odors of the South Seas and pours them on the 
 California coast blending with the clean north to make 
 a perfect day, Arnold came to walk with Grace Wayne 
 to the northern slope of the city sunning itself in this 
 peace. He had asked her this with serious, authorita 
 tive directness and she went smilingly. From their feet 
 the blue bay rippled, the sun lighted an opal land be 
 yond, the Marin Ranges of ridge and canon showing 
 adventurous beauties never seen save as now when the 
 sea curtain lifted. 
 
 They walked far in this morning peace, Grace se 
 rene with it, and Arnold self-absorbed. From Russian 
 Hill, where they finally sat on the browned grass, they 
 watched the gaudy wedge of an Italian fishing sail beat 
 through the Gate. They had talked familiarly of com 
 monplaces ; she had come to feel a pathos in his confi 
 dences in little things, when within him he was strug 
 gling to find a greater way. 
 
 "Well, I ve done a deal since I saw you," he broke 
 in, at length. "I went to see my father and it was as 
 you said. I came away with the idea that nothing was 
 as important as to break with all this" his hand swept 
 over the stretch of roofs from the hillside. "Yes ;" he 
 laughed uncertainly. "I got the bribe money back 
 
 261 
 
262 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 from my friend. It was the sign of revolt and the 
 fight s to come." 
 
 "I told you you shall not fear," she answered grave 
 ly, "nor live half things nor do half deeds. You can t, 
 and go the higher way." 
 
 He watched the town, wondering if from its common 
 life there rose one note to the transcendent heights of 
 her indwelling. "There are many things to consider. 
 There s the old house where I ve lived so long and 
 the Captain we ve carried on a sort of show. I never 
 knew before how things seemed to depend on me." 
 
 "The things of your soul s freedom are greater." 
 
 "But it s hard," he pleaded, trying to grasp the sim 
 plicity of her view in his complexity. "A fellow 
 doesn t know how to turn. I m lonesome," he laughed ; 
 "I ve stayed from the old crowd, and I m lonely al 
 ready !" He went on slowly : "You see there s no stuff 
 of heroes in me not even a conscience none of that 
 kind of thing. I m just tired, that s all just like a child 
 gets tired of its play and wants to crawl off and sleep." 
 He raised his head to watch her : "No conscience nor 
 regret just dumb and sick with it all. I m not 
 changed nor reformed just the same fellow." 
 
 "I tell you you are making clear the divine thing in 
 you." She leaned to him with a sudden brilliant eager 
 ness: "You re all that I have denied that I have 
 evaded and hardened myself against, and you you 
 have broken through. O, you don t know what you 
 can do or be !" 
 
 He rose on the dusty trail among the lupines. "I m 
 just hammering away," he smiled "that s all I know 
 the big fight and the losing fight," 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 263 
 
 She wondered at his gentleness, his commonness ; 
 she wondered if he knew that to her a light had come ; 
 that with him, a fellow of the gross earth, denying 
 grimly and apart, ruthless to her world of the spirit, 
 she found a sweetness of the earth she had passed by. 
 But in the bigness of his doubts and trouble he seemed 
 uncaring. 
 
 "You ll go gloriously," she whispered, and surely 
 her eagerness was telling him ; "I want you to win 
 gloriously and then " 
 
 "Then?" 
 
 "Come to me," she answered simply. 
 
 His eyes were steadfastly on her face. 
 
 "See, here," he began, "I ve known you less than 
 two months I ve seen you in all, perhaps ten times. 
 I ve defied you. I ve sneered at you and turned you 
 away, and you have been neither angered nor afraid, 
 nor have you surrendered. There s something fine 
 about it all to have you so and to have you tell me 
 to come back to you." 
 
 And again with her old impulse, a directness, half- 
 command, half-caress, she laid her hand on his sleeve : 
 "I mean for you to come," she said simply. "Do we 
 need to speak of it ?" 
 
 Then he divined clearly, her surrender the mystery 
 of it stunned him for a moment, her challenge and her 
 daring the completeness of her standing forth for 
 him. Again he knew a soul had touched his own ; out 
 of a world as distant from his as the stars, as little to 
 be hoped for as that their rays should warm him, she 
 had come with her unfearing revelation. She had 
 looked on him his best and worst from a sphere un- 
 
264 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 thinkable to him ; she came to look with honest eyes 
 she loved him. 
 
 Out of the fullness of it all he could not speak. She 
 had said there was no need of speech. 
 
 But presently she went on gravely, with her serene 
 resolution. "I can t tell you all you ve shown to me 
 down through the deeps you made me follow you, to 
 listen, to try to understand you and the others. 
 There was something I had not dreamed of there 
 seemed a splendor in it all so much of faith and try- 
 ing-" 
 
 "You know now the worst about me," he put in 
 simply. "I ve never done a friend, though I killed 
 Eddie. And there isn t a woman walks this town that 
 can say I dragged her down. When I could I tried to 
 help." 
 
 "No, not that," she answered ; "I could not forgive 
 that!" 
 
 "Never that," he went on. "Perhaps it was you 
 somewhere in the dark days that stopped me." 
 
 "I told you once," she touched his arm with a new 
 overarching sweetness that stirred him as nothing yet 
 had done, "that I had been with you long ago that 
 the face of a man who loved me seemed to come again 
 in you the saintliest man I ever knew. In you, John 
 Arnold, your lawless uncaring soul !" 
 
 "You loved him ?" he said and stared at her. 
 
 "I was touched by it. I was never awakened then ; 
 I have gone all my life alone until now." 
 
 His hands went slowly down to tighten over hers ; 
 the first act or word that had seemed to answer her. 
 "Ah, God it s wonderful! I m going back. If 
 there s anything would bring a man back, it s to know 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 265 
 
 at last that a woman cares that above all the wreck 
 and outrage he has made, she s waited and believed in 
 him!" 
 
 And at his new exultance, his sweeping awakening 
 to this miracle, she became half-frightened, turning 
 breathless from his touch, the passion of his eyes ; for 
 she had not known this she had walked apart from 
 the common lot, its littleness, its sweetness. Now she 
 stood in a fear at her ineptitude and ignorance before 
 the spell she had evoked. This was to be love, then, 
 as the world knows it love, the common instinct, 
 unheeding and unlovely, that keeps the human scheme 
 running, that breeds, spawn-like, in the sun, and which 
 men and women, concealing the ruthless law that 
 scourges them to it, pathetically glorify in its squalor, 
 which they dissemble as the gift and the end of living. 
 And from her soul she fought to believe more than 
 this, to find a way about the barrier she had built life 
 long against the thing. Love had come to her out of 
 the common world and she would glorify it, too, as a 
 symbol of the infinite and eternal. 
 
 So to his sudden great hope, the firing of a splendid 
 courage in his eyes, she tried to keep her defense, and 
 then, laughing, in a happiness beyond all she had imag 
 ined, she again surrendered : "O, don t ask me ! Only 
 go on always on. You shall you shall be all I 
 .dream and believe for you !" 
 
 Her fluttering eagerness, the breaking of her seren 
 ity to this shy uncertainty, unknowing how to love, 
 how to stand before him, the confused wonder of his 
 eyes, was odd in her her proud, tall womanhood 
 unbalanced and finding need of the dainty artifices, the 
 
266 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 allurements of the sex, which she had all but put by. 
 So, now it was a common laughing happiness, as of a 
 comradeship discovered, that they went hand in hand 
 down the trail of blue lupines. The light in her eyes 
 was as he had seen but once in women, and that he 
 had crushed, forsaken. 
 
 But now he was caught up in a great light, finding 
 a promise of courage and gladness that dazed him, 
 coming after the mordant satire of his yesterday. Yes, 
 now there would be a way, there would be a place for 
 him somehow, sword room to strike back and to 
 achieve. When he went from her at the hotel he was 
 high with this ardor ; he ran down the steps and away 
 as if now, on this moment, depended great issues as 
 if the tide of his youth flowed back, the fervor of years 
 gone drowning mightily the wreckage and disorder 
 of the shores of his failed life. 
 
 Grace Wayne passed the afternoon in a reverie. At 
 five a caller was announced. She met a stranger in 
 the parlors, looking at him with impersonal interest. 
 She was accustomed to whimsical interviewers, curb 
 stone theorists drawn by her discourses. Here was a 
 big man, with hard hands and the clean, homely garb 
 of the country an unwonted figure to her. 
 
 "I ve heard you preach," he began, his blue eyes 
 fixing her grimly. "You preach of souls some kind of 
 way and I seen you twice with the blackest cur in 
 this town. I followed you once you smiled at him. 
 I m from th Nowth. My name s Banway." 
 
 "Yes?" Miss Wayne spoke slowly, studying his 
 implacable calmness. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 267 
 
 "I wonde d how you d account fo it," he went on. 
 "It don t fit with you preachin ; though I can t make 
 out all you preachin ." 
 
 "Why? Tell me?" she asked eagerly; "I don t un 
 derstand you." 
 
 "Will you come with me ?" he retorted, with gather 
 ing vehemence. "I want to show you to tell you. I 
 won t ha m you I m a woodsman from Humboldt; 
 I ll treat you faih, but I want to show you." 
 
 The woman looked about the parlors. His voice 
 was rising, he was a striking figure. "Wait I ll walk 
 with you," she said. "What is it?" 
 
 They went out and along the street, the man silent 
 until she questioned him. Then he answered, more 
 calmly : 
 
 "You know this Arnold you saved his life the 
 other night. I was waitin to kill him. I followed 
 him an ? you along a ways, but I didn t get a clfiance 
 with him alone." 
 
 "Tell me," she said calmly. "I don t know in the 
 least what you mean." 
 
 "I m taking you to see a girl fie brought down here 
 robbed of ten thousand dollars, promisin to marry 
 heh an turned heh to the street." He broke out 
 swiftly as she stepped back. "You know what I 
 mean!" 
 
 "No," she answered clearly. "That s one thing he 
 couldn t do!" 
 
 "That s what he stands fo his whole life. It s 
 what the city stands fo , and I wanted to ask you you 
 preach of souls an befriend him !" 
 
 She shook her strong shoulders, drew in the sun- 
 
268 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 filled air, again herself complete. "I don t believe 
 you," she said; "nothing." 
 
 He laughed furiously. "Come! Lord God, I don t 
 need to talk!" And then he saw some pitiable fear 
 breaking on her face. She crushed the revolt and 
 turned away. "God s truth!" the big man whispered 
 and hurried after her. 
 
 She was dulled by his passion; it convicted her, 
 damned her, and at last she cried, unheeding him: 
 "No I don t believe!" 
 
 "I came from the Nowth to get heh. She was the 
 preacheh s girl. The mate of the Nelson told me, fo 
 she neve wrote what happened. She came to marry 
 Arnold last Novembeh he robbed heh, and she s been 
 in a little Jew shop workin . I found heh, but she s 
 too crazy sick to tell me all of it now. But I under 
 stand ! Here s the place." 
 
 They were before a house in a block of common 
 residences and petty shops. Under the bay-window 
 was a dreary little garden, a patch of thin grass 
 between walks of rotted brick, with a cluster of calla 
 lilies dirtied by the sweepings from the door, which 
 was under the stairs leading to the first floor. 
 
 Through this basement entrance Banway went 
 along the dark hall. They passed a door through 
 which Miss Wayne saw dark-skinned girls bent over 
 a dozen sewing-machines, each operator heaped about 
 with cheap, stiff clothing. On a long table piled with 
 unfinished basted stuffs sat a thin-faced young man, 
 the boss of the finishing shop, where the clothing, cut 
 and measured at a "ten-dollar tailor s" down-town, 
 was put together under contract with the tradesman. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 269 
 
 The floor was strewn with clothes and remnants, tailor 
 ing apparatus and ironing boards, work-boxes and 
 tag-cards; the air above the snarling machines was 
 thick with lint and dust ; the operators, packed side by 
 side, working in the thick light from the single win 
 dow, were in a blur, and the chemic smell of the cloth 
 stung the nostrils. 
 
 The sallow foreman glanced up from his cross- 
 legged posture at the visitors, then went to measuring ; 
 the girls at the machines shot furtive looks. Through 
 this apartment went the woodsman to another, win- 
 dowless, and piled with clothing, bolts of stuff, boxes 
 and tawdry furniture indistinguishable in the gloom, 
 and beyond this was a rear room, with two windows 
 facing a court. This, too, was choked with boxes, 
 furniture, disordered household stuffs. The light from 
 the sunless yard showed a bureau, a bed, mean and 
 thin, girt in with trunks, washstands and rolls of cov 
 ering; and beyond a narrow cot hidden by the barri 
 cade of stuff hedging it about. 
 
 The man paused. On the cot, under the tumbled 
 coverlet, indistinct in the light from the yard, was a 
 girl s figure. By her head, on a trunk, was a glass 
 covered with a flat-backed hair brush. 
 
 "They let heh sleep here/ said the woodsman sol 
 emnly. "Fou of the girls sleep here, fo a dolleh a 
 week from each. An* here I found heh Sylvia, who 
 had all God s out-doo s fo a home in the country-up- 
 in-back." 
 
 The girl stirred and looked up feverishly bright at 
 the woman who bent over her. 
 
270 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "It Hurts my eyes the light," she said vacantly, 
 and brushed the hair from her cheeks. 
 
 "I brought a a friend, Lei," said Banway awk 
 wardly, "just to see you." 
 
 The girl turned listlessly to the window ; she began 
 to talk with incoherent swiftness, rambling on until 
 they lost the thread of it, and Banway turned to the 
 woman. "This is heh ! Now you believe ?" 
 
 Miss Wayne held the girl s hand and watched her 
 cheeks color rise to her wide eyes. "I don t know 
 I" 
 
 Banway caught a picture from the dresser. "You 
 don t know him who s that ? Theh s his name signed 
 he gave it to heh up in the Nowth fo he lured heh 
 to the city." 
 
 Miss Wayne looked on the face in the photograph. 
 Arnold wore the khaki uniform of the army in island 
 service, carelessly at ease, the silken guidon of the 
 troop in his gauntleted hands, his campaign hat tilted 
 back. The picture had been taken five years ago by a 
 native in Iloilo; a handsome, daredevil license was 
 about the pose, the lithe figure, the thin face the 
 adventuring soldier of fortune, the debonair call of 
 youth on mysterious quests was there. The very 
 print, exhaling a subtle, oriental odor, like sandal- 
 wood, the queer studio mark, had the romantic lure of 
 strange distances, days of danger and nights of mys 
 tery. It was evocative of all that one beloved would 
 dream of, treasure, hold in idolatrous fondness and 
 across it was written : "To my Little Girl in Blue." 
 
 Grace Wayne s hands relaxed. The sick girl caught 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 271 
 
 the picture anti field it close to tier breast. "It s all 
 right all right," she murmured. "Boy!" 
 
 "He was going to marry you, wasn t he ?" said Ban- 
 way, with abrupt, soft melancholy. "And he brought 
 you to the city." 
 
 "I know. He said we d have a little home some 
 where, with roses, and then he got worried." 
 
 "And he took your money and kept it " 
 
 "Don t," the girl muttered, plucking restlessly at 
 the coverlets. "It s all right I know he cared I 
 know he did !" 
 
 Miss Wayne rose. "Be still," slie said, to the man s 
 intent pursuing; "let her be." 
 
 "You believe?" 
 
 "Yes. Come ; we ll have to get her out of this place. 
 Telephone for a carriage, will you, please ?" 
 
 The woodsman stared at her uncertainly. The 
 woman went to the front room. "I ll take her to my 
 apartments," she said quietly. "She needs care and 
 friends I don t suppose she s so very ill." 
 
 When Grace Wayne returned from the telephone, 
 Banway was holding Sylvia s hands, watching her 
 with fond intent. The foreman and one of the machine 
 operators looked at them curiously, but when the 
 woman spoke, obeyed with the silence of the underling 
 apt to orders. "Gather her things," said Miss Wayne 
 to the Jewess, and the other went about among the 
 musty furniture and heaps of cloths, assorting the sick 
 girl s belongings. 
 
 When the carriage arrived Grace Wayne pointed to 
 the cot. "Carry her out in those clothes as she lies." 
 
272 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "To your place?" asked Banway. "Will he be 
 there?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "He won t see heh ?" There was menace in his tone, 
 a challenge to her and her kind. 
 
 "Never at my rooms." Grace Wayne s eyes met 
 his steadily, and he did not doubt. 
 
 Banway lifted the girl in the coverlets and went 
 through the dark hall. In the afternoon sunlight of 
 the street she shrank closer to his arms and sobbed. 
 "See here," growled the big man, "you don t care for 
 him damn him you don t care, do you ?" 
 
 But the girl cried. In the carriage he held her as 
 one would a child. 
 
 They were driven slowly over the cobbles, and pres 
 ently the carriage stopped before the Albemarle apart 
 ments. With a brief direction to Banway, as he 
 carried the sick girl to the elevator, Miss Wayne paused 
 to pay the driver; when she turned she met Nella 
 Free by the curb, looking at her with suspicion and 
 surprise. 
 
 "See here that s a girl I ve seen," said Nella. "Do 
 you know her?" 
 
 "I have just discovered her." 
 
 Nella watched the man carrying the wrapped form 
 through the door. 
 
 "It s a funny thing," she muttered. "I just saw 
 you passing I couldn t help wondering, I was so 
 startled." 
 
 "Nella," retorted Miss Wayne, "do you know about 
 this girl?" 
 
 "Not much," Nella s laugh was an easy evasion. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 273 
 
 The other woman watched her searchingly the trim 
 figure in its smooth, light furs, the violets falling with 
 Gipsy-like carelessness from her bodice, the small face 
 piquant, vacantly good-humored. 
 
 "Will you come up with us ?" Grace asked, after her 
 intent study. "Perhaps you can help." 
 
 Nella glanced about. "There are men in this place 
 who know me," she said. "Will you take a chance ?" 
 
 "Come," answered the other. They overtook Ban- 
 way and his burden in the hall. The sick girl mur 
 mured incoherently as the elevator ascended. At the 
 door a small boy in buttons approached. 
 
 "A lady to see you," he told Grace Wayne; "Miss 
 Chatom she said she d wait at your rooms." 
 
 Miss Wayne looked at Nella a trifle disconcerted; 
 then she opened the door. 
 
 Edith Chatom rose in some surprise, her eyes on 
 Banway, who paused with the sick girl in his arms. 
 She turned to Miss Wayne in the rear chamber, her 
 hand on the white counterpane of the bed. 
 
 "I wanted to see you further about John Arnold," she 
 (had begun. "Watt wants him to go to Tuolumne 
 next month it would be the thing " 
 
 "Hush," answered Miss Wayne. 
 
 The sick girl had turned breathlessly to them, her 
 head on Banway s shoulder. "O, I just couldn t find 
 you, Jack," she said ; "at first I thought you d left me !" 
 
 They were so still that the silence was interpretive. 
 Miss Chatom came nearer. 
 
 "I ve heard " she whispered. "Has he something 
 to do with this ?" 
 
 "To this room, please " Grace Wayne directed 
 
274 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 Banway to the bed "y es > he has had everything to 
 do with it. It s perfectly useless for you to know, 
 but well, perhaps you can help to straighten things 
 in some fashion." 
 
 Edith Chatom nodded. The air was surcharged 
 with the significance of the thing. The rich man s 
 daughter followed the man and woman to the rear 
 apartment. Nella Free stood alone in the front room, 
 listening to the preparations in the chamber. The two 
 women were stilling the girl s delirium, heightened by 
 the stir of her removal; Nella could hear the quiet 
 voices, but she did not move. They took from Sylvia 
 the soiled blanket of the finishing shop, threw it with 
 out in the hall, prepared a bath, and finally closed the 
 sliding doors, shutting the man out in the sitting- 
 room. He stood with his hat in his hand, listening to 
 the voices, the sound of running water, the girl s fret 
 ful interruptions, looking now and then at Nella by 
 the door. She had not moved. 
 
 At length Miss Wayne entered from the other room, 
 searching for some article on the center-table. Ban- 
 way was facing the window, blowing the dust from 
 the cylinder of a blue revolver, which he now dropped 
 back in his side pocket. The woman came directly 
 to him. 
 
 "Here," she said quietly ; "I understand P 
 "I don t know how town people look at it," he mut 
 tered. "Out on the range, or in the big trees, we d 
 kill him." 
 
 "Yes. See here you cared for the girl ?" 
 The tall man raised his blue eyes, looking steadily 
 into hers. "I loved heh. I neveh told heh. I was 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 275 
 
 only a woodsman head fallen at Nine an* I was 
 rough. I knowed heh befo heh fatheh died an I 
 neveh said nothin !" 
 
 "And you love her now? You don t care for what s 
 happened, do you? You ll love her and take her now 
 when she can go?" 
 
 "Would I?" His wondering eyes resented the 
 doubt. "If I could take heh to the country-up-in- 
 back if she d stop thinkin o him. an this hell-town 
 whe h he belongs " 
 
 "She will some time." 
 
 "First, I ll get him " 
 
 "No, that would spoil everything expose her 
 ruin her whole life with the people up there 
 wouldn t it?" 
 
 "He can t live he s too bad to let live. He s all 
 round a crook I ve asked a heap about him." 
 
 Nella came before Banway and watched the bitter 
 ness of his eyes. He watched her with steadfast con 
 tempt, and spoke with crushing deliberation. 
 
 "He s you kind yes, we see that." 
 
 Nella eyed him steadfastly. "I don t believe it." 
 She turned to Grace Wayne: "Do you?" 
 
 "There is nothing else to believe." 
 
 The woodsman broke in between them. "Look here 
 you re a religious woman, his friend. I told you I 
 would kill him. But will you promise me, if Sylvia 
 stays here with you, you ll neveh see him?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Neveh speak to him?" 
 
 "Never fear. He shall not come here. Never !" 
 
 Nella stirred from her curious apathy. 
 
276 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "And you Hammy was sort of depending on you. 
 I can t make it out, but you seem to draw him on. 
 .You re a good woman and he needs you." 
 
 "This does not require discussion. No man could 
 have done this and have hope of redemption." She 
 turned away, fighting down a passion that they could 
 not see. 
 
 "He s too bad to live," continued Banway, with 
 implacable calmness. "I promised not to kill him, but 
 I don t guess I can let him go." 
 
 Nella turned to Grace Wayne s averted face, mutely 
 catching at some faith and strength before undreamed 
 of, struggling back to stand in their eyes and plead. 
 
 Then she began, with a strange dignity, a clearness 
 above the uncaring of her life : 
 
 "Listen. He s bad but there s something above it 
 all. He s tried to do some things well. I know, for 
 I ve lived the life. See here," she turned again to 
 Grace Wayne, "he depended on you, some way. You 
 preach some sort of high religion that no one under 
 stands and this fellow comes from up North, and 
 what does he know? I know the town, and what it 
 does to men, and you don t either of you. Things 
 are good and simple with you you in your land of 
 souls, and this man up in his clean north country. It s 
 different here life smashes men, and drags them 
 down. Banway, a man meets more temptation in one 
 day of the street than he d meet in a hundred years of 
 your peaceful little life in the country-up-in-back. Any 
 man can pitch hay, or roll logs, or drive cattle all 
 that s just play. But down here a man s got to fight 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 277 
 
 everything. That s the way it is in the city ! Just do 
 his best that s all." > 
 
 They stood quietly before her words. The girl s 
 eyes brightened beneath the isolating rebuke of their 
 silence ; she turned and went away, leaving them star 
 ing after her. 
 
 Banway sat by the window, looking out. Grace 
 Wayne went to the other room to sit with Edith 
 Chatom, one on either side of the bed, listening to the 
 sick girl s delirium. Through the long night she ram 
 bled on in endless repetitions of his name and her love 
 for him. 
 
 At daylight Miss Chatom went away, relieved by 
 the nurse they had summoned. 
 
 "We ll care for her together," she told Miss Wayne. 
 "And he well, I ve wanted to do much for him, but 
 this this " 
 
 "I know," retorted the other. "I have been brought 
 face to face, at last There s nothing beyond this for 
 a man s soul to come to ! Yes, it s the end !" 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 At fifteen minutes to twelve o clock the first relays 
 of the five hundred clerks, stenographers and em 
 ployees from the departments of the great railway 
 system were beginning to stream from the Security 
 Building into Market Street for the lunch hour. Joy 
 ous young fellows rattled down the stairs, impatient 
 of the crowded elevators, and through this rush of 
 noonday life Arnold made his way to the floor on 
 which were the law offices of Chatom, Bence and Com 
 pany. He had been at the Maplewood seeking Still- 
 man, then at the latter s club, only to gain word that 
 the police commissioner was at his down-town office. 
 But here a clerk said that Stillman was in Sacramento, 
 and would not be back for forty-eight hours. 
 
 Arnold idled in the corridor for a while. Then he 
 went to the main offices of the great law firm. A 
 stenographer said that Barren Chatom was in and not 
 engaged, and the young man was shown at once to the 
 attorney s presence. Chatom greeted him with a cer 
 tain surprised cordiality ; they had not met this winter, 
 by reason of the lawyer s absence in the East, but 
 Chatom s unerring memory prompted at once the rea 
 son of the visit. He had long been appraised of some 
 understanding affecting Selden Arnold s pardon 
 that always, in many channels, the son had been inces- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 279 
 
 sant in importunities for the governor to act on the 
 application. Yet now the attorney was not sure how 
 the matter had been left. 
 
 The senior member, therefore, sat back in his chair, 
 his index fingers, together, pointing skyward, smiling 
 with the ease of the successful man, out of an assur 
 ance of power. He had known Selden Arnold as a 
 man who ruined himself by his inexplicable folly in 
 sticking to the fortunes of a political aspirant whom 
 the railroad found it essential to destroy; he felt 
 vaguely that the son had a like waywardness. As to 
 the pardon, it was hardly possible now ; certain "inter 
 ests" were opposed, and sentiment or old friendships 
 had no place in the matter. 
 
 Barren Chatom, the railroad s candidate for the 
 United States senate, the personal figure of a system 
 that dominated the state industrially and politically, 
 and consented to the farming out of the city to the 
 lesser boss and the agents of the boss Chatom, the 
 man of the "conservative" interests, church-going, of 
 social weight and family connections, member of the 
 leading clubs, professional philanthropist, chief 
 speaker at important civic meetings, merchants ban 
 quets, development schemes, honorary committeeman 
 on all occasions, from welcoming a convention of 
 bishops to entertaining a sybaritic Russian prince, 
 director on the boards of all the corporations that 
 prostituted the city with bribes and placated it with 
 licensed evils Chatom, representing the dynamics of 
 a cohesive, yet infinitely variant social organization 
 that drew its irresistible power through every level of 
 life, from gutter dance-halls to the United States sen- 
 
280 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 ate, now looked complacently, benignly across at the 
 quiet young man by his table. 
 
 Cool, wily, astute, indomitable, unscrupulous he 
 looked none of these; he was merely a middle-aged 
 man, fat, but not obtrusively so, with a kindly lulling 
 friendliness, an apparent broad, altruistic observance 
 of his fellow-men. 
 
 Young Arnold was here inevitably to further his 
 father s pardon; he must be soothed, enlightened and 
 sent away to resume his place in the ranks, for Barren 
 Chatom had a great interest in young men ; he was a 
 power in raising money for their associations of all 
 sorts, and in addressing them at the colleges ; he had 
 a hearty commencement platitude that the future of 
 the nation was with them. Certainly if all the cool- 
 faced young men in America, like this one sitting 
 across from him, ever rejected the teachings and the 
 examples of him and his kind, the foundations of the 
 republic would move, the grip of money, of tradition, 
 of conservatism on the life of the people, even the hold 
 of the fathers and the constitution, would loosen. 
 
 Yes, the future was with the young men, society 
 was with the young men, the genius and ideals of the 
 race were with the young men it was a great thought 
 he was dwelling on it now, and he would tell the 
 young men of it at the associations and colleges. 
 
 Barron Chatom began by a happy inquiry as to 
 what Arnold was doing, adroit and general questions 
 in a reminiscent, genial glow; then he asked for it 
 was nearing lunch time directly after his father in 
 San Quentin. "I suppose, John, that s why you re 
 here. I understand that the application for the par- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 281 
 
 don about which, unfortunately, nothing could be 
 done last year has a lot of new signers, and you will 
 send it to the governor ?" 
 
 The great attorney smiled in anticipatory concilia 
 tion; a young man would like this frank directness, 
 even though he got nothing from it. 
 
 But John Arnold, the son of his old friend, smiled 
 back with serene abstraction on this point. "No," he 
 answered, "I ve given the pardon up. It ll be only two 
 years and a little more, and we can wait. I saw father 
 the other day, and he s all right. No, I won t bother 
 you any more about the pardon." Barron Chatom 
 knit his brows in some perplexity as Arnold went on : 
 "No, I came up here to see Stillman they said he 
 might be in his office. He isn t, but you ll do." He 
 looked the railroad attorney over with quiet sureness. 
 "Here," he added, and on the table laid five hundred 
 dollars in new bills. 
 
 Barron Chatom looked calmly at the money. 
 
 "Yes ? Do you wish to leave it here for Mr. Still 
 man?" 
 
 "I do. It s the money he gave me to bribe Weldy 
 to vote against the race-track investigation " 
 
 Chatom whirled back from the paper as if it reeked 
 death. His brow darkened as he glanced at the outer 
 office, which seemed deserted. 
 
 "Bribe?" he whispered. "What are you talking 
 about?" 
 
 "I m through." 
 
 "What? Why did you bring this to me?" 
 
 "That s all right it s yours. You and Stillman are 
 protecting the g;ame, aren t you ? You re going to the 
 
282 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 senate, aren t you? The race-track and the railroad 
 are both behind you in the legislature." 
 
 Chatom gazed at him ; then, with a trot of trepida 
 tion to the door, he closed it and stood wiping his 
 brow, again looking back at Arnold. 
 
 "John, are you insane?" he said. "Take that stuff 
 away! I don t know anything about I ve nothing 
 to do with it !" 
 
 "I know. Stillman s tHe man who does the dirty 
 work. You just suggest the framing up in the back 
 offices and committee-rooms, and all that. It s all 
 right. I m giving the money back to you. I ve thrown 
 off on Harry that s all. Just tell him that I m not 
 responsible any more for Weldy and what he does." 
 
 "John !" The great man was shaken, after all. No 
 one else could have come so close on him as Seld 
 Arnold s son. The younger man was moving to the 
 door. 
 
 "Good-by. I m not going to squeal, Mr. Chatom. 
 I don t know anything or anybody of all I ve seen and 
 done. I m not responsible for the town or you or 
 society. I ll have enough to make myself straight now. 
 I don t amount to a damn I m only a fellow away 
 down at the bottom, that the money you represent has 
 smashed. You ve smashed a million all over the coun 
 try. But I m not kicking. I m just crawling out 
 that s all !" 
 
 The candidate for the United States senate came 
 nearer, wiping his brow ; he was calmer now. "Take 
 that away!" he muttered, pointing at the money. 
 
 Arnold shook his head. "No I ve quit it s the 
 last stuff I handle." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 283 
 
 The attorney lifted a copy of the constitution of the 
 United States, which happened to be on the desk, 
 opened it and softly placed it face down upon the 
 bribe money. He put one hand on the back of the 
 chair and sighed. A semblance of his benign smile 
 hovered on his lips, and then he sighed again, and came 
 nearer to rest a hand on the other s shoulder. 
 
 "My boy," said he, "there are some things that 
 seem ordered by a different law than that which moves 
 most affairs of men. Life is still a grinding together 
 of elemental forces only half-harnessed, and not 
 directed at all, and in the crash a lot of damage is done 
 to lesser bodies. The greater ones are not subject to 
 the laws that smash your schemes and mine, per 
 haps," he smiled. "The world doesn t wait on our 
 moralities and philosophies, does it ? Neither have the 
 men who do things." 
 
 "I don t know I know one thing first to do, and 
 that s to fight myself free. I ll have to do that before 
 I can help anything else." 
 
 "John," said the other, curiously intent, "what s got 
 into you ?" 
 
 "Nothing. Only I m going away, and I wanted to 
 fix things back where they used to be, much as I can. 
 But that isn t much." He laughed briefly. 
 
 The maker of governors and legislators looked at 
 him. He was really a man of thought underneath the 
 sufficient wisdom of his hour and place. "You would 
 like to make things over," he smiled; "so would I. 
 It s a bad scheme, John. I don t often talk as I am 
 now to you. I ll admit we re all ignorant tinkers at 
 
284 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 the thing. My God, where did we come from ? Where 
 are we going? Why are we here?" 
 
 Arnold held up a ringer in the doorway. 
 
 "I don t know. But I know I can do differently. 
 If every man did differently well, it seems all the 
 hard things would be simple." 
 
 Barren Chatom grasped his hand at the door. The 
 older man s smile was coming back; it had now a 
 touch of philosophic sadness that made him solemn. 
 "Nothing is more sure!" he murmured, his hand 
 tightening over the other s, "nothing!" 
 
 Arnold went out in the noon sunshine of Market 
 Street and walked far, studying the last look on 
 diatom s face; he became aware that he was pitying 
 the man, and this presentment slowly seemed to en 
 compass the street, the glow and hurry of life, the 
 tumult and the din ; familiar corners were unreal, as of 
 another city; some thought not clear to him effaced 
 him from the people, so that he seemed watching all 
 serenely, dispassionately, but removed. 
 
 He started into a familiar saloon, and then hesitated 
 on the step. 
 
 "The break s come," he mused. "Now for it I ve 
 quit." His eyes wandered to the corners of the towm ; 
 dear and familiar at the last it seemed. The Street 
 had been his play-place, his battle-ground. In seven 
 years he had seen no man s home; here had been his 
 crucible. It appeared that he saw himself now, not 
 the noted figure of the underworld, but as he had 
 been, only a pitiable bit down under the inordinate 
 crushing of the social structure, nameless, nothing. 
 He turned from his haunts of the night and went on 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 285 
 
 presently, climbing the hills along the bay. At times 
 he was filled with fears and then prophetic strength 
 came to him. He found the dog at his heels in the 
 summer sere grass ; in office buildings and on curb it 
 had, as always, waited for him. 
 
 He picked it up in his aimless striding. "Old pup, 
 we ought to be glad, hadn t we ? But if we only had 
 some one to laugh with some cheery, decent people 
 to see. Lad, we d make good, wouldn t we, if we 
 could get back and forget?" 
 
 And then, stopping with the dog under his arm, 
 looking down from Russian Hill at the immensity of 
 the waterways hemming the city, he felt a desperate 
 loneliness nowhere, in all its life, was there place for 
 him, no man s hand to which he could turn none. 
 But his doubts fell before strange hopes; he laughed. 
 "O, you fool! Why, there s Edith I can face her 
 now. And Grace she s waiting " He stopped in 
 wonder that he had seemed, filled with his own little 
 nesses, to forget. "There s Grace she cares. Good 
 God, that woman loves me ! Man, what have you been 
 at all your life to leave them out, these good women ?" 
 
 Yes, the wonder of it that, after all, he had 
 escaped. He, with his blindness and his blunders, his 
 seared heart and mordant soul somehow, he had 
 escaped the law that must hold to punish, to measure 
 evil with evil. Yes, he had been able to step aside 
 and let the hurricane blow by, and before him a fair 
 land lay. He had beheld it through a woman s love 
 for him her guidance, her faith, her power. "The 
 wonder of it," he muttered ; "a woman loving you a 
 decent woman loving you! Old lad, think of that!" 
 
286 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 And it seemed, as it had been in his brief moments 
 with Sylvia, that all that was high and brave was 
 fighting for him ; that the hill on which he stood above 
 the town that had defeated and dishonored him was a 
 symbol of his real self arisen and unfearing. For the 
 second time he stood above the wolfish city, a victor 
 and at peace. He looked down through the dusk to 
 the great bay, the islands peaked in clear pools among 
 the rippled spaces, the mountains to the north he 
 who had walked unseeing saw with a strange self- 
 pathos this loveliness. And presently he came down 
 the slopes, overriding all doubts, in a brimming expec 
 tation, and went through the twilight to Grace s rooms 
 at the hotel. He visualized how she would look, listen, 
 smile as he eagerly told her what he had done that 
 indeed he had cut himself off from the life he had 
 lived. When she opened the door, this happiness was 
 upon him, an illimitable new thought; and then she 
 stood, a white apron over her gown, before him. She 
 nodded in silence and stepped out in the hall, closing 
 the door. But before it shut Arnold saw beyond a 
 bearded man busy at a physician s case on the table, 
 and by a bedside Edith Chatom. He smiled buoy 
 antly at Edith. Now, whatever came, he could be her 
 friend, as she had generously wished, and as he had 
 stubbornly denied that, too, would be different. 
 
 And then Edith saw him; she looked steadily, piti 
 lessly at him, with a disdain impossible to misinter 
 pret. From that stare she turned her back on him. 
 Miss Wayne closed the door, leaving him gazing 
 blankly at the panels. 
 
 "Well?" she queried, and the tone slew the bigness 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 287 
 
 of his mission, the great accounting he was about to 
 give her. "No, you can t come." 
 
 "Come? In there? But I only wanted to tell 
 you 
 
 "You shall tell me nothing. You can t come here 
 any more. I can t see you." The coolness of her voice 
 broke to little inarticulations as she watched the light 
 die in his eyes. "Do not ask you should know !" 
 
 "Know? What?" 
 
 "That girl- Sylvia. I couldn t think that of you ! 
 It s true?" 
 
 "Sylvia? Yes, it s true, but I see here can t I 
 see you, tell you " 
 
 "No. Never nowhere." She fought down the 
 storm lashing her, as he did not offer to resist the mat 
 ter, to rescue her last faith in him. "Never," she 
 retorted steadily, now in command; "I shall not see 
 you." 
 
 She closed the door, leaving his eyes haunted as 
 they had been the night he dragged Eddie Ledyard to 
 the cushions of the gold room. He went down and 
 to the street, so confused that his steps unconsciously 
 led him over the hill and up the stairs to his lodgings, 
 where he mechanically lighted the gas and then went 
 out to sit on the balcony rail, debating and construing 
 and defending, gathering his forces after this defeat. 
 Yes, the fool he had believed himself above the law 
 of recompense; that he could escape the measure of 
 his evil from requiting fate the lone wolf betraying 
 the pack could slip back through the hunters line. He 
 had been fool enough to believe but for the second 
 time he had lost. The clean world had rejected him; 
 
288 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 he, with his crippled will for good, his dead soul, was 
 face to face with the reckoning. 
 
 From where he sat he saw the lamps down the street 
 through Chinatown and across Kearny, where the 
 cars and people made a blur of motion. There was 
 his life, his place the gods knew better than he. And, 
 after all, what of his battle? It, too, was a sort of 
 mimicking, a grotesque endeavor to realize some mum 
 mery of priests and fakirs for which he cared nothing. 
 He needed no interpreter of mysteries, nor a God. 
 
 He had come back to his own now; within the 
 grimy kitchen down the hall he saw Miss Cranberry 
 bustling about at the cooking, her gray hair under a 
 soiled cap, the Captain neatly brushed, the Loyal 
 Legion button in his lapel, rehearsing his heroic story 
 to Nella idling by. She indolently held up a white 
 finger to look at the wondrous light of her diamonds. 
 
 The man on the balcony turned from them ; he saw 
 again the down-town lamps. The night pulse of the 
 city quickened, its laughter, its resurgent lure, mad 
 dening him now, demanding oblivion. Yes, this was 
 his place, it had him he was the perjurer, the briber, 
 the tfnderling of cunning contrivances, the fetcher for 
 his mistress, the City ; for her he had sold his youth, 
 humbled his manhood to her bonds. They had been 
 as rose petals now they were steel. 
 
 He rose, struggling to end his troubled debates. 
 "Well, it s done now. Sylvia I couldn t undo that 
 I didn t love her I can t. And Grace I thought 
 she d help. Well, I had my chances but they re done, 
 too." He paused, coming slowly back to his resolves, 
 fighting for them with a somber sense of losing, his 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 289 
 
 strength spent, his weapons broken. "But I can go, 
 now," he whispered, and picked the dog up from the 
 damp of the boards with his old trick of talking to it. 
 "We can make a way yet by God alone ! We don t 
 need them, old man none of them, good or bad. 
 We re young we re free we can go alone." 
 
 He paused, hardening himself to it, the retreat from 
 the battle line. And then he saw again the glow of 
 the kitchen, the old woman at her cooking, the father 
 less child, the Captain nodding over his splendid 
 vision, the girl s fairness over her oriental robe a lit 
 tle outpost cut off in the wilderness of the city, com 
 rades gathered by a fire from the hostile dark, the en 
 circling drift of the storm. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 Miss Cranberry s rent day fell on the fifteentfi of the 
 month. 
 
 In the meantime several things had happened. The 
 first was that Weldy, of the city delegation in the legis 
 lature and on the special committee to investigate the 
 bribery charges, had voted with the "farmer members" 
 and against his political backers. Therefore, events 
 occurred which one on the inside might have seen curi 
 ously correlated. 
 
 One of these sequent happenings was a padlock on 
 the door of Unc Pop s grocery and bar on Washing 
 ton Street. The old man had been called "on the car 
 pet" before the police commission, his license being 
 due for renewal, and an assiduously formal inquiry 
 made into the character of his "side door" patronage. 
 The amazed uncle of Legislator Weldy protested and 
 explained, but he might well have saved his breath 
 before the high-minded commissioners, for his license 
 was peremptorily revoked. He was at once ruined, 
 for the bar privileges denied him, the wholesale grocers 
 to whom he was indebted at once attached his other 
 business. 
 
 The closing of Unc Pop s establishment hurt Miss 
 Cranberry s lodging-house. Its patronage had been 
 dwindling for months, new and modern houses farther 
 down the hill getting the transients ; and the old room- 
 
 290 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 291 
 
 ers cleared out one by one, after the padlocked door 
 of the Family Liquor Store deepened the forlorn aspect 
 of the corner. 
 
 But between Granny and Arnold the rent was paid. 
 The latter had not yet forsaken the ancient gable over 
 the hill. A dozen things had hindered, turn and hasten 
 as he might. He had a grave kindness for the little 
 old woman these last days, though he had told her 
 nothing of his resolve. Neither had he told Nella 
 Free, it appeared, though she watched the slow down 
 fall of the house in a careless, good-humored quarrel 
 ing with Miss Cranberry ; and a furtive bewilderment 
 at Arnold s preoccupation. She said nothing of her 
 hour at Grace Wayne s rooms. 
 
 Arnold had been summoned to a back room confer 
 ence at the Maplewood saloon, the day after Assem 
 blyman Weldy voted against the race-track interests, 
 and had come away with a smile. He sauntered back 
 that morning, and sat on the balcony railing above 
 Happy Alley in the sun. Here he met Nella, a towel 
 about her head, her freckles showing plainly in this 
 fresh light, cleaning his hair brushes, while Miss 
 Cranberry was making the beds. 
 
 "I ve had a session," mused Arnold, "Stillman and 
 I. I laid it out to him, and he blamed the fiasco at 
 Sacramento on me. He urged and pleaded and 
 damned and bluffed he said he d send me to San 
 Quentin for the limit for perjury." 
 
 "He wouldn t dare!" muttered Nella, tapping the 
 military brushes on the wood. 
 
 "You never can tell bigger men than I have been 
 railroaded to the pen, and they didn t get a chance to 
 
292 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 talk so that it would hurt. You see, I couldn t prove 
 anything with the city hall against me, and if they 
 swung me before one of the push judges, I d go up, 
 of course. But Harry got pretty reasonable. I told 
 him I d quit that was all. I wasn t going to open a 
 fight I d just quit the graft that was all." 
 
 "You must," murmured the girl ; "you got to. You 
 go on it ll be just grand." 
 
 The young man watched her in silence, her face pale, 
 not pretty in the morning light, her mechanical laugh 
 ing, her idle ways. He had always indifferently 
 evaded the direct fact of her life ; she had been simply 
 one woman of the sort among whom his years had 
 slipped away; he had liked her for her common hu 
 mor, her lack of complexity and pretense; she had 
 drifted lightly, and troubled no one with accountings. 
 But now she seemed a different being; a sentient 
 human with a problem to be worked out, though how 
 he did not know, and she would never care. 
 
 "When you go, I suppose the old lady will close this 
 house," continued Nella. "The Japs are taking this 
 block fast, and the big Chinese company has been try 
 ing to buy the corner for years. Now it ll go." 
 
 "I don t know why any of you should leave," mur 
 mured Arnold. "Things will run on some way." 
 
 "Yes," she laughed, "they always do!" 
 
 He thought her look on him had a strange intent 
 beyond her careless humor. The day had oppressed 
 him ; it had not been easy to face the new ways. He 
 had stayed from the down-town ; last night he had 
 wandered on the North hills until midnight, thinking 
 on the new turn to his resolves ; finding no solace, and 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 293 
 
 lonesome as he climbed the stair to the lodgings which 
 had sheltered him so long. 
 
 He had no money ; he had lost his "pick-up" at Sac 
 ramento the six-dollar-a-day income from the state 
 treasury was cut off the moment he broke with Com 
 missioner Stillman and the track lobby. Within a 
 week this fellow to whom money had been a matter 
 of no concern, now thought the lack of money the 
 most troublous thing in the world. He helped pay 
 Granny s rent and then had nothing. The querulous 
 old woman knew little of his entanglements about the 
 town, nor his new resolves that had begun so fair and 
 come to nothing; she saw in him only what she had 
 always seen : the whimsical jester, gravely kind, lawless 
 and master of his self. It was not for her, this hate 
 and hubbub out of which he had come for years to 
 her lodgings ; it was enough that she could smooth his 
 pillows, and let the sunshine flood through the win 
 dows of his rooms of absent mornings. But she cried 
 when, with an air of careless munificence, he paid the 
 overdue rent for her dwindling lodging business. 
 
 "Never mind, Granny," he assured her, "one way 
 and another I owe more than this to you. Seven years 
 Fve been here, isn t it? How many nights have you 
 helped me to these rooms drunk how many times 
 been patient with the wild crews I used to gather here? 
 And the Captain it s as if we d been on the firing- 
 line together." 
 
 But in her cap and black silk, kneeling at Trinity 
 ChurcK next Sunday Miss Cranberry prayed as for 
 seven years she had done for his unregenerate soul. 
 
 But as "the weeks passed, John Arnold s soul, what- 
 
294 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 ever its hauntings, gave no sign. He had no friends 
 save the street politicians, the petty hangers-on of the 
 city s life, and these he evaded. He saw Louis Fer- 
 reri once and the parting left the slot-machine man 
 bewildered as it did the others whom, with a sort of 
 insolence, he put aside. And through the days the 
 great loneliness grew on him the lone wolf cut off 
 in the open that could turn neither back nor onward. 
 
 At times he caught Nella staring at him, it seemed 
 with a secret fear and knowledge, but he invited no 
 confidences. He looked back on Grace Wayne, the 
 days of his strength with her, with an inner grim 
 satire at the grotesque suggestion of himself, the re 
 pentant. And the renegade was more lonely; he was 
 glad when Sammy Jarbo and his bride returned from 
 the honeymoon which had been unexpectedly pro 
 longed at a country ranch near Monterey. 
 
 They had the tang of the country on them, the 
 brown, dusty sweetness of the California oak-hidden 
 roadsides winding through canons to the sea. Granny s 
 hall was blocked with suit-cases, parcels and wilted 
 wild flowers that morning, and in it all Sammy and 
 Mary relating the great story. The shop-girl was fired 
 with color from the month by the sea and under the 
 stillness of the pines ; she laughed out of pure happi 
 ness at all their friendlinesses ; she had haphazard gifts 
 for each ; a fern on a bit of moldy wood for Granny, a 
 string of cones for the Cookhouse waif, and eyes shin 
 ing for Arnold when he took her hands. Her love- 
 weeks had been perfect. She was no piteous drift now 
 of the department stores, the victim of the age s gross 
 commerce, but a woman achieving destiny, triumphing 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 295 
 
 and completing, proving the puzzle of why she was to 
 live. 
 
 Amid this clutter of arriving the poet took Arnold 
 aside. He drew from his pockets scraps of bills, dog 
 eared margins, disemboweled envelopes. 
 
 "Nixy on the epics for me," he began; "Listen to 
 this, Ham. I was sitting on the beach holding Mary s 
 hand and all of a sudden the whole business hit me this 
 way: 
 
 " Never a bird s song, Sweetheart, 
 
 In the gladsome summer morn 
 Never a dainty blossom 
 
 Whose breath on the breeze is borne ; 
 Never a flower at morning 
 
 Rustling with Heaven s dew, 
 Never a thing of beauty, 
 
 But, Sweetheart, I think of you/ 
 
 "Ham," continued the poet profoundly, "I got it out 
 of my system at last, and it s the real goods." 
 
 "Sammy," said his friend, "that s putting them right 
 over the plate !" 
 
 Cranberry tumultuously seized the author s hand 
 and swung him about. "Lovely! just like real 
 poetry !" 
 
 "Like real poetry?" quavered trie poet injuredly. 
 "Thunder, of course it s real poetry did you think it 
 was a laundry advertisement ?" 
 
 And that reminded him he had stopped at his em 
 ployer s office on the way home and they gave him a 
 big surprise. He was promoted. He was to take* 
 
296 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 charge of the Oakland branch of the concern super 
 intend the drivers, and have twenty-five dollars a 
 week! "Wouldn t that freeze you?" said the poet, 
 "me!" 
 
 "It s fine," answered Arnold, "only well, you ll live 
 in Oakland, won t you ?" 
 
 "Yes. I ll rent a cottage a whole yard for Mary. * 
 
 This was much for the rattle-brained poet. Who 
 would ever have predicted it ? But Arnold was rather 
 quiet. He had depended on Sammy. They had been 
 great, good friends in days before friendships and the 
 simpleness of things had been blotted by the town. 
 Now he was groping about for a friend s hand, and 
 Sammy would not be near. But he smiled. 
 
 "All right, little man. It s simply great! Only I 
 hate to have you leave just now." 
 
 Cranberry s had thus a new sensation, but the old 
 woman wondered who would take the small rooms the 
 two had had. When Sammy and his bride departed, 
 it seemed a little less sunshiny to the dwellers on the 
 hill. 
 
 The usual crowd no longer dined at Sedaini s. Fer- 
 reri did not come, nor the silent piano player ; and with 
 the poet and his wife gone, the dreary little restaurant 
 was blank enough. Bernice Murasky came once and 
 took Nella Free to the Italian s. The Jewess gave a 
 new impression of restlessness, but not of her former 
 sullen disparagement of her surroundings. She looked 
 the other girl over critically, noting with" direct eyes 
 the little things that marked the change of which she 
 knew in Nella s circumstances her dressing, her sub- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 297 
 
 dued if careless tone. "Where s your rings that big 
 solitaire?" she asked suddenly. 
 
 "O, I don t wear them mucH now," evaded Nella. 
 "What s the use ? I just hang around the old woman s 
 every day." 
 
 "I should think you d go crazy after all you ve had ! 
 I went to see Du Barry last night Louis took me." 
 
 "Ain t you working ?" 
 
 "Not steady. I m going to study type-writing 
 Louis s going to get me a job with the slot-machine 
 house." 
 
 Bernice s voice had the greedy little lift of triumph 
 with which women erase the kindliness from one an 
 other s hearts. Nella stirred "I ain t seen you much 
 lately." 
 
 "No, I ve been pretty busy having a good time." 
 She lifted her shoulders with a laugh. "I should think 
 you d go just crazy since you quit Harry. You don t eat 
 at any of the swell places any more, do you? Louis 
 and me was at Marchand s last night." 
 
 The other girl was silently breaking Sedaini s sour 
 bread to bits on the flimsy cloth. 
 
 "This place is getting fierce," continued Miss Mu- 
 rasky. "Come down-town Thursday and we ll all eat 
 at Green s you and me and Louis." 
 
 "I can t." 
 
 "Can t?" 
 
 "O, I m just sticking around," she laughed, "for a 
 while." 
 
 "Kid, you re getting little lines around your eyes. 
 What s Ham doing ? Is he making any money ? The 
 
298 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 bunch at Jack Morgan s said he was down and out 
 he d have to quit town after all this political talk about 
 the races and all. Say, Kid, your neck s kind-a thin. 
 Ain t you well?" 
 
 "O, pretty good !" 
 
 "You been washing dishes? Look at that little 
 blister!" 
 
 "I burned it with a curling iron. Say, you seem to 
 be getting wise is the Spreckels Building still on 
 Market Street?" 
 
 Miss Murasky sat back idling with a sunburst at her 
 throat at which Nella s eyes had been for five minutes 
 as Miss Murasky intended they should. She minced 
 over the dinner, criticizing each course, displaying 
 wisdom of menus and methods; finally getting her 
 curiosity back to the other girl s diamonds. "Gee, why 
 don t you wear em ? You ll only be young once, Kid ; 
 then the town ll throw you hard." 
 
 "I know only I m kind of tired of them." Nella 
 rose. "Let s get out I don t want this coffee." 
 
 Miss Murasky paid the bill. The pock-faced pro 
 prietor smirked and bowed at the door. "My las 
 wee-ek," said he. "I clos-a da Saturday." Sedaini s 
 face was sad. "No beeziness no one com-a da hill 
 now. Ol days done all Japs com-a ove* da hill !" 
 
 "It ll be a lonesome corner," said Miss Murasky, 
 when they were outside. "I should think you would 
 go crazy with that old woman and the kid. Say, did 
 you see this sunburst? It cost four hundred dollars." 
 
 "Sure," retorted Nella, on the steps, but she did not 
 look back, and the other girl departed with a sense of 
 the incompleteness of victory. Nella went to the lodg- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 299 
 
 ings. At the table in the hall she found Arnold and 
 the Captain, the old man bent over a ragged news 
 paper map of the Philippines on which, following 
 innumerable pin pricks that marked a gallant cam 
 paign, his uncertain eyes were fixed. 
 
 "It was here," he muttered, "they crossed the river, 
 and then it must have been a good thirty miles to 
 Bamboang and the transport would be slow, would it 
 not, sir?" 
 
 "Yes," answered the younger man, "and the roads 
 well, it was desperately slow among the rice paddies, 
 the fellows tired and feverish " 
 
 The Captain had a finger on a ruddy spot. "Here 
 the reserves were held, I think and there the skir 
 mish line was thrown forward. It must have been 
 damned rough, sir, on those hills in the night !" 
 
 The girl watched them, the Captain with his sriaggy 
 white head, the young man grave and dark. "And 
 along the road before they came to the church, was a 
 fence of bamboos. It was a devil of a thing to take in 
 the night, sir, when the charge came !" 
 
 Arnold looked wonderingly at the old man folding 
 his map. The Captain had brooded long, evolving a 
 fine theory of Bamboang; he had talked it to the 
 lodgers, to the hangers-on at Unc Pop s, to the police 
 man down the block and to wondering strangers in the 
 Square; it was thus and so, with military terms and 
 great manceuvers in the darkening portals of his 
 mind the brave, red picture hung. 
 
 The veteran put away his worn map. He could see 
 little, but he divined a woman s presence. With a bow 
 
300 THE DAY OF SOlJLS 
 
 he moved off, feeling for the staircase, and as Arnold 
 went to help him, turned with his grave salute. 
 
 "The honor of the service, sir." 
 
 "The honor of the service, Captain." 
 
 "Tell me," muttered Nella, when the old man had 
 gone, "will that Larry get a medal and when s he 
 coming home ?" 
 
 "Next montH, maybe I don t know." Arnold 
 evaded her uncertainly. 
 
 "He ll be a great man, won t he?" the girl said. 
 "How in the world can we put him up in this hole? 
 But you won t be here, will you ?" 
 
 "Will you?" 
 
 The girl laughed. "O, I don t know. I don t know 
 what I ll do! This is a queer house. I d like to see 
 that fellow, though that Larry who saved his friend." 
 
 "Look here, Nel, don t bother about Larry." 
 
 "Why, he must be grand. Ham, why do you stick 
 about the town? Why don t you get away and do 
 something like that? My God, if I was a man!" 
 
 He did not answer, and she wondered, idly after a 
 time, if she had hurt him ; he had been grave enough 
 of late she wondered if his thoughts ever went back 
 to Sylvia Spring, if he knew any part of the sorry 
 ending of his evil and if, to her, he would ever tell 
 of it. 
 
 Through the window they watcHed the moonlight 
 on the bay beyond the city. In the silence the Cap 
 tain s voice came down the stairs, telling a hero s story 
 to the dark. The Captain had a grand phrase of life, 
 it seemed to the younger man it rose above the slang 
 and gabble. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 301 
 
 A steamer s wake lay through the shining 1 water all 
 palpitant as a bird s flight, and with his eyes on this 
 Arnold s mind went back to the old days the mist on 
 the rice fields, the jungle plazas, the smoke above the 
 nipa nuts, the brown-throated soldiers with the dark- 
 skinned island girls along the moonlit shores. It had 
 been youth s care-free adventure, hot, blue seas, treach 
 erous cities, palm lands ; and he, a lover of the wide 
 world, her days of danger and her magic nights, was 
 now hemmed in, broken, held here by a shrill-voiced 
 old woman, a blind man, a restless girl and an aban 
 doned child here, amid the kitchen smells and the 
 bed-making, the clutter and the gossip. 
 
 Well, he would get away he was finding himself 
 thank God, he was young yet, even if the triumph of 
 youth was done. He would go away ; there was noth 
 ing to hold him nothing ! 
 
 In the silence, Nella heard him stir and turn to her. 
 
 "I wonder," he said, "if curious little cobwebs get 
 into your brain, too ?" 
 
 "I know I just go wild with nervousness some 
 times!" 
 
 But he knew that she did not understand and never 
 would. 
 
 "Where s your lady friend?" Nella queried after a 
 while, as he did not continue, "the religious woman - 
 she s not been around of late, has she ?" 
 
 "No. She turned me away, Nel." He sat closer to 
 her and went abruptly on as if the need of telling was 
 great to him. "She heard that old story about me, 
 somehow about the girl, you know. I was depending 
 on her, and she broke with me over that. Everybody 
 
302 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 believes it, Nel. Even Granny I can see it sticking 
 in her old eyes thinks I robbed that girl and sent her 
 home. Well, you know what every one said of it." 
 
 Nella said nothing. She had never heard before 
 this tumult in his voice the swift rise of feeling. It 
 was nothing like Hammy Arnold of the town, but per 
 haps the dark was shielding him. 
 
 "Well, I can t blame them," he went on. "There s 
 been nothing about me but what looks crooked. But, 
 Nel, I didn t that country girl went back to the North 
 from me as good as your little sister is at Notre 
 Dame." The stillness troubled him. "I didn t harm 
 her," he went on. "Nel?" 
 
 "What?" she muttered. 
 
 "Do you believe it?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because you told me it isn t true." 
 
 "Why, I might lie to you." 
 
 "Why should you lie to me ? What difference could 
 it make to me whether you were straight or not? I 
 just believe you that s all." 
 
 His mood was lightening; not "in joy, but as a man 
 adrift on the ocean watches the coming day, glad at 
 least that it is not dark. 
 
 "No," he muttered, "we don t need shams, Nel 
 you and I. We know we ve faced it all. I ve come 
 to find how far I ve drifted and to wonder what s 
 beyond it." 
 
 "Sometimes I wonder," she answerecj simply; "but 
 it puzzles so. I d go crazy if I tried to find a reason 
 for anything. But, Kid, you ve changed." She 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 303 
 
 turned to him intently. "Seems like things hurt you 
 so now." 
 
 He stirred at her guess ; not to himself, all his life 
 long, had he admitted that beneath his mordant play 
 lay acute sensitiveness, a receptivity, a power of feeling 
 hurts. These it had been needful from the first to 
 deny and jest with he had told himself long years 
 ago that he had succeeded well. 
 
 "Changed?" he smiled. "I m tired. No one thing 
 has led me to it but just everything. And, Nel, I want 
 to go to break with things. You can t see, but seems 
 that life lays before us, waiting like a black rat. And 
 I want it different somehow." 
 
 He wondered if she knew the hollowness he felt, his 
 crippled will, his confused good ; it struck him as odd 
 that he should try to guess at Nella s mind he who 
 had evaded her with gentle indifference the years of 
 their friendship, who had accepted her always for what 
 she was, as he had done all his world. "I want it 
 different," he went on. "Sometimes I think a woman 
 could have made me it takes a good woman to hold 
 a man out of what I ve lived. But I had my chance 
 two chances. I ve never told you, Nel, but there was 
 Sylvia, and then Miss Wayne. You don t know what 
 they meant for just a glimpse of what I might have 
 been. I can t forget that s why I m going away. To 
 make myself what they would have liked in a man 
 that s why I m going." 
 
 She had risen in the dark with his recital, the con 
 fused vision that he tried to have her see, groping to 
 make her know. He heard now a glass clink on the 
 sideboard as she set the decanter back. Then she filled 
 
304 THE DAY OF. SOULS 
 
 the glass again, with a smothered cry. He rose and 
 caught her hand, so that the liquor spilled down their 
 sleeves and on the marble of the sideboard. 
 
 "Go slow, Nel," he said. "Here half of that!" 
 But, eluding him, she drank the whisky with a sob, 
 and wrenching" free, left him brushing the stuff from 
 his coat. 
 
 Nella went swiftly to the kitchen. Miss Cranberry 
 was down the block at Wilson s delicatessen and the 
 child was asleep. In the dingy hall the gas burned 
 dim. 
 
 The girl, clinging to the door-frame, saw the sodden 
 window opening on the shaft, the cheap lace curtains, 
 the dishes piled in the sink, the dirty clothes on a chair. 
 The cooking smells assailed her; the window-panes 
 were grimy ; from the gloom beyond, fearsome shapes 
 were pictured. A desperate fear clutched her heart. 
 Yes, she would come to this a parrot, a dying hya 
 cinth in a lodging-house kitchen window; her hands 
 huge, knotted ; her hair gray, frowsy ; her back bent 
 toiling over the stairs of days with great swashes of 
 water, crawling out to a mean purchase of tea and 
 soup; at night lighting the dim hall jets under the 
 hideous wall-paper for drunken lodgers, washing her 
 dishes from a lonely meal to this this, she would 
 come! The years would crush her all that brief 
 youth gave, all her pitiful life held ; her beauty faded, 
 her vivacity dulled, her pulses yellowed she possessed 
 one thing only one thing and that she was offering, 
 laying down uselessly in this brute dirt and squalor. 
 
 Yes, like a black rat it would come. 
 
 "Already she was feeling old; and raising up her 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 305 
 
 white hands she shrieked fearfully in the silence 
 shrieked and reeled, falling over the table, so that the 
 young man rushing from the hall, seized her, moaning, 
 and dragged her from the kitchen. 
 
 "What s the matter? are you hurt?" he cried, and 
 she could only sob and moan, sinking lower, until, lift 
 ing her, he carried the limp form to his rooms, and 
 laid her on the couch. 
 
 "What is it, Nel? What s the matter?" 
 
 "I don t know I don t know !" she shuddered, clos 
 ing her blue eyes tight, clenching her hands. "O, my 
 God let me go !" 
 
 But, kneeling, he held her wrists tighter, and she 
 had to turn to brush her wet eyes against his coat. 
 
 "Never mind be still," he murmured; but getting 
 an arm loose she raised it about his neck and drew 
 him closer until her full, hot lips were against his 
 cheek. 
 
 "Don t you care !" she whispered, in fier sobs. "It 
 don t mean anything, Hammy from me! Only I m 
 adrift now- all adrift !" 
 
 "Never mind," he repeated, holding Her closer on the 
 couch. "Don t you mind somehow, Nel, you re 
 brave." 
 
 "I m just a leaf in the storm," she whispered, with 
 the tug and falter at her swelling throat "but you go 
 on you got to go on! I keep thinking of the Cap 
 tain s Larry with his honor medal for saving that other 
 fellow. You got to be as fine as he it would be grand 
 to think of you that way !" 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 Arnold came on Fred Weldy at the Star printing 
 house in the closing days of the legislative session. 
 The German greeted him with an awkward laugh, 
 holding out a newspaper. He pointed to his picture 
 among a row, the committee of investigation, and the 
 members accused of accepting bribes in the racing 
 scandal. 
 
 "Lillie says I look like a con/ " said the printer, 
 "but I don t feel that way. I may be a dead one in 
 politics, Ham, but I feel right!" 
 
 "That s a whole lot," laughed Ham. "I expect it ll 
 hurt your business ?" 
 
 "Sure," mused Fred. "My partner s scared to 
 death, but Lillie says to buck it out. I m the worst 
 hated man at Sacramento. I never knew that every 
 body jumps a man as soon as he tries to be square. 
 Shucks, what a row we raised, Ham, or you kicked 
 me on to it! And I guess you re dead you couldn t 
 referee a dog fight in this town now!" 
 
 "I know." Arnold looked genially at him. "Fred, 
 can you get me a job?" 
 
 Fred stared at the immaculate Ham. Never had he 
 heard of Ham working. He hesitated ; the matter was 
 painful to his simple loyalty; he floundered and 
 choked. "Work? I know a big printing shop that 
 wants a hustler" he took a card from his case -"but 
 you? Work? why you funny old skate!" 
 
 306 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 307 
 
 Arnold rubbed his dark chin and laughed. "I ll take 
 this, Fred and thank you. No more velvet for me 
 I m down and out, but the only thing in a race is the 
 finish! I m broke, and Nel s broke, and Granny s 
 broke even the blue pup s busted !" 
 
 There was, indeed, sore need at the old house on the 
 hill, for, since the closing of the Family Liquor Store 
 and Sedaini s, most of Cranberry s pitiful revenues 
 from lodgers had gone. No more came the shawled 
 wives and bareheaded girls to the grocery, nor the 
 clerklings and mechanics to sit at Unc Pop s back bar. 
 He had gone across the bay to live with Fred Weldy, 
 and Sedaini had been swallowed up in the Latin quar 
 ter. The corner came to be a house like Always Sun 
 day, the mean little windows curtained, the padlock on 
 the grocer s door, the sedate cleanness of the stairs 
 leading above to Cranberry s lodgings and the silence 
 in Happy Alley where once all the kids had played. 
 The block below was deluged in the rising tide of ori 
 ental life ; Japanese students, shoemakers, employment 
 agencies swarmed, and the renting agent told Miss 
 Cranberry that the corner could not long resist the in 
 vasion. 
 
 As the days passed, Arnold s idea of leaving town 
 grew vague. At the end of the first week he had six 
 dollars and fifty cents from his soliciting, and sitting 
 on the balcony rail with Nella in the cool, shifty sum 
 mer evening, they had laughed. Nella s eyes were 
 heavy, she was dulled by the close rooms ; she had lost 
 her alluring luxuriousness, bespeaking now the lodg 
 ing-house woman. 
 
 "Who sewed my sleeve ?" Arnold asked, holding his 
 
3 o8 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 smoking jacket to the light. It was a bad job, indeed ; 
 the stiches long and slovenly. 
 
 "Pretty fierce, isn t it?" the girl muttered, and then 
 defiantly : "I get wild with nothing to do. I wonder 
 why I stick around here! I just have to sweep or do 
 something, Ham." 
 
 He looked at the lamentable stitcHes; caught one, 
 and unraveled the seam. Nella snatched at the sleeve. 
 "Of course it wouldn t stay I never sewed anything 
 before. But you re away all day, and you look awful 
 tired, Ham, in that ragged coat when you get home. 
 Take it off I ll try again !" 
 
 "It is rather bad," said he. "But I m no captain of 
 industry myself. In fact, I m a good deal of a shine 
 when it comes to business, Nel. I can talk the money 
 out of men s pockets at the track, but I can t go into 
 their offices and face them, trying to sell them some 
 thing they don t want. I never felt so cheap in my life, 
 and that s queer, seeing that I m giving them a straight 
 deal." 
 
 "Well, you keep on," she retorted, "keep on!" 
 
 He went forth to another week of hopeful but dis 
 piriting effort. Arnold was indeed a failure at busi 
 ness ; there was no place for him in the keen thrift of 
 traffic. By Saturday his commissions amounted to 
 five dollars and seventy-five cents. He showed the 
 money to Nella and they both forced a laugh. 
 
 "I wore out a pair of eight-dollar shoes getting five 
 dollars worth of business," he told the girl with a 
 humor of dismal exaggeration. "It s bad." 
 
 "Never mind," she retorted. "You tried it s just 
 grand!" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 309 
 
 But the next night she met him with a curious dif 
 fidence in her careless eyes. 
 
 "I sold the little ring I got forty dollars the land 
 lord s agent was here to-day. Now, what ll we tell the 
 old lady ? that we won it at the races ?" 
 
 "Tell her the truth that we re broke/ he replied; 
 but the girl demurred, and lied indolently to Miss 
 Cranberry when she paid the rent on the first of the 
 month. 
 
 Nella had settled down to a strange content at Gran- 
 berry s, restless and idle as she was. She seemed 
 waiting for the turn of fortune, careless, vacant of 
 mind in her droll humors. The old lady was perplexed 
 and doubting but who was to judge and who con 
 demn? She puzzled her weary old brain and then 
 passed it by. She had done her part: she had cared 
 for the fatherless, she had been patient with the 
 drunken men, and given refuge to erring women. 
 Surely her God would know. At any rate her path 
 was easier for the doing. 
 
 Arnold quit the printing firm for a clerkship in the 
 water company s office which paid fifteen dollars a 
 week, and came home in high feather one night, his 
 arms filled with groceries. 
 
 "What s the use of being rich when you can have 
 everything you want?" he cried cheerfully, and the 
 sharp-eyed old woman and the heavy-lidded girl 
 smiled. Hammy was hard to understand these days of 
 his labor. His nights were spent with the Captain, 
 and they discussed the wars in Samar. The four of 
 them would gather about the table, when the cloth was 
 cleared, and over the ragged map of the islands the 
 
310 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 dissembler built up tHe story of Bamboang. The Cap 
 tain listened sagely, his fingers trembling with palsy, 
 his soul aflame with brave artifices and phrases. At 
 times, with easy mendacity, Arnold brought what pur 
 ported to be telegrams and clippings, and the blinded 
 veteran listened with many oracular throat-clearings 
 and wise corrections. 
 
 But one night after he had gone to bed, his temples 
 throbbing with a charge of the troop, which the liar 
 had evolved in the great campaign, the three looked 
 after him in a sort of fear. 
 
 "He s not so well," muttered Granny. "Suppose tHe 
 troop-ship didn t come ?" 
 
 "If it did," retorted Arnold, "things would be 
 worse." 
 
 Nella stared at him. "What do you mean ? Won t 
 we all be glad to see his boy a lieutenant with yellow 
 stripes and a medal of honor ?" 
 
 Arnold looked back at her startled; he Had not 
 dreamed that the deceit had grown so big. "Why, 
 Nel," he muttered, "you you " 
 
 She laughed. "Seems like I know this Larry! I 
 dream of him. Wouldn t it be fine to love a man like 
 that? I ve listened to you and this crazy old soldier 
 talk, and I can just imagine him. Hammy, when s he 
 really coming home ?" 
 
 The young man looked again at her what splendid 
 vision was he building also, in this careless soul, with 
 his great campaign, his triumphs and heroic deeds of 
 the troopers over-sea? "Nel, don t you mind," he 
 said. "Next month, I suppose, he ll come." 
 Meantime he was trying lamentably to be a clerk in 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 3 11 
 
 / 
 
 the water office, though his penmanship was abomi 
 nable, his arithmetic a farce. The second week the 
 secretary looked over his glasses and said : 
 
 "Arnold, are you the chap who was before the grand 
 jury last fall?" 
 
 "Yes," answered the clerk. 
 
 "Indeed ?" the other smiled. 
 
 The new employee worked long hours, sometimes 
 collecting about the city in the dusty afternoons of the 
 cool summer. He met old familiars of the town with 
 enigmatic smiles or jesting indifference, but avoided 
 them where he could. And the harlequin street forgot 
 the renegade for other diversions. He was not one 
 given to conscience ; to himself he said he was tired 
 no more. Of Grace Wayne, as of Sylvia, he thought 
 with curious weighings of impersonal sentiment. "No 
 matter now," he would muse. "The card s wiped 
 clean everything s got to be nezv!" 
 
 Nella came one evening, to find Miss Cranberry in 
 the hall barricaded with ancient hat-boxes, lavender- 
 smelling cases and clothes flung from closet and attic, 
 agog with excited energy, dashing orders and protests. 
 A miracle had come indeed ! 
 
 A wandering brother, sojourner of North sheep 
 camps, unheard of for fifteen years, had broken his 
 leg. He wrote from Victoria, and sent Granny fifty 
 dollars, and would she come succor the luckless limb ? 
 Doubt, pleasure, dismay seized the old lady. For forty 
 years she had not crossed San Francisco Bay. She 
 was aghast at the adventure, then her kind heart re 
 bounded to the lamentable brother. Yes, she would 
 go but the house? Mr. Hammy s laundry, the Cap- 
 
312 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 tain s breakfast, the Cookhouse Kid? She looked 
 askance at Nella s assurance a girl whose idea of 
 keeping house was to wash a handkerchief and stick it 
 to dry on the window ! But her telegram she must 
 get to the brother at once. 
 
 The neighborhood women chiefly Mis Wilson, 
 who kept the delicatessen sniffed at Granny s confid 
 ing the lodgings to Nella. They retired with head- 
 shakings, and this decided Granny at once. All her 
 fervent loyalty to her own flashed out: Nella it 
 would be ! 
 
 But she had a prodigality of cares to leave behind. 
 "Now, dearie, will you remember this?" she would 
 cackle over her packing the milk bottle must be on 
 the stairs, the scavenger man paid Wednesdays only, 
 and the side rooms beyond the portieres were to rent 
 for two dollars and fifty cents the week in the rear, 
 for two an infinity of directions. She paused once 
 to bring forth the Japanese student s stunted hyacinth 1 
 which should have bloomed months ago. 
 
 "It s coming, dearie," said the old woman, "slow, 
 but see here, and there, pushing bravely through the 
 mold ! I m going to leave it with you, and if I m not 
 back by Mr. Hammy s birthday on the twenty-sixth, 
 you must give it to him from me. Surely it will be 
 in bloom then !" 
 
 Arnold found them in this gabble and throwing- 
 about ; the girl sitting on a trunk ; the old woman, all 
 her intense nature at once rebounding at this adven 
 ture, to her ears in clothes and stuffy accumulations. 
 He was at once assailed with perplexities the whole 
 scheme of living for the four weeks Miss Cranberry 
 
THE DAY OE SOULS 313 
 
 would be gone was dinned into him rote and rule 
 such as she had evolved through the adjustments of 
 an intricate poverty of fifty years. 
 
 Even then, it was with doubts that Miss Granny de 
 parted the next day on the Victoria steamer. Arnold 
 saw her off, seated in her state-room, her black silk 
 mitts folded in her lap and the place reeking lavender. 
 
 Arnold went directly to his work of collecting the 
 water rates after Miss Granny put to sea; it was late 
 when he came up the Washington Street hill. Nella 
 was in the tiny kitchen, which was a haze of blue 
 smoke, her sleeves rolled up, a gay turban on her red- 
 brown hair. The young man watched her for a mo 
 ment before He came to speak cheerily. She looked up 
 flushed, pleased, but a trifle anxious. 
 
 "The old fellow up-stairs isn t coming down. He 
 don t feel well, and he s asking why the papers don t 
 have any news about that battle. Let s go up to see 
 him after dinner he only wants some tea." 
 
 With the flaxen-haired child the two sat at the 
 kitchen table. The meat was overdone, the canned 
 tomatoes thin, the macaroni soggy. A curious con 
 straint was on the group, though Arnold praised the 
 cooking extravagantly, causing Nella to laugh, silly 
 over his whims. But they missed the old woman s 
 shrewd gossip ; it was as if a place were vacant on the 
 firing-line ; the forlorn outposts drew closer, as though 
 they stood in the dark, cheering one another through 
 doubtful hazards. 
 
 The young man looked gravely at the girl across the 
 table, at the waif by her side, at the dim gas above in 
 Granny s kitchen. 
 
3 i4 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Nella, you must get out of doors more you re 
 losing your color. You must be in the air, and not 
 have this dismal old place on your mind." 
 
 "Where ll I go?" she laughed. "I can t go around 
 town, and I d be frightfully lonesome at the park." 
 
 "Haven t you any friends girl friends, some 
 where?" 
 
 "No. You know how women are! I got to stay 
 away. I m all right this place ll keep me busy. I 
 feel more contented, some way or other." 
 
 "Sunday you take the kid and go across the bay to 
 Sammy s you need the outdoors, Nel." 
 
 "No I don t want to. The country makes me 
 lonely, and the old man s too sick. When ll his boy 
 come back ?" 
 
 "I don t know," muttered the dissembler, discon 
 certed. 
 
 "I fixed a room for him the big east one looking 
 over the harbor where he can see the transports off 
 the Mission. Do you really think he ll care to live 
 with us an officer with a medal? The east room s 
 pretty. I put in the best rugs and your lounging chair 
 for him." 
 
 "Nel !" he retorted, startled "for Larry Calhoun !" 
 
 "It s fine," she answered gaily. "I wonder what 
 he ll think of me. Can t you hear a word from him? 
 There s a letter come for you." 
 
 Arnold opened the envelope she gave him. It was 
 brief. His services with the water corporation would 
 not be required after the coming Saturday night. 
 With a smile he handed the type-written sheet to the 
 girl and watched her face harden beneath its import. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 315 
 
 "Damn them!" she muttered, her eyes bright on 
 him. 
 
 "Don t you care," he put in slowly. "I was looking 
 for something of the kind. You see, the record I ve 
 got around town kills me with the big business houses. 
 There s nothing said, but it s turned me away from a 
 dozen situations, Nel. The company just discovered 
 that I am the same Arnold who was mixed in the 
 grand jury business that s all. I m a crook with 
 them that s merely a reasonable view of it." 
 
 "I know ! Well, no matter what are you going to 
 do now ?" 
 
 "I ll have to find something. And I ve pretty well 
 gone through the white-handed jobs. It isn t easy to 
 find things I can do." 
 
 "I thought you were going to leave town ?" 
 
 He looked uneasily at her, at the child, at the win 
 dow of Cranberry s kitchen. "Yes. But well, I 
 don t know. You see " he stopped in some confusion 
 before the intent of her eyes "O, we ll get along 
 all right. They can t keep me out of everything, you 
 know." 
 
 "You said you were going to the hills?" 
 
 "I am." 
 
 "Look here," she retorted, "you go, Hammy. Don t 
 let us be a drag on you. We can all get on." 
 
 "The house can t run without money." 
 
 "O, money ! Money is easy. Here s these diamonds 
 and my furs they don t mean much, somehow, any 
 more." 
 
 "No no. I thought I d sell the old piano and some 
 of that china in my rooms." 
 
316 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Your mother s pretty things ? No ; we can get on 
 fine." 
 
 She rose and clattered the dishes with a laugh, push 
 ing back her reddish hair which had tumbled about 
 her brow. "Money / can always get money don t 
 ever bother about that ! You go to the country and be 
 square." 
 
 "Go? Kid, did you ever think how alone we are? 
 You and I up on this hilltop with a blind old man and 
 a baby?" 
 
 She laughed in some confusion and hurried about 
 the work. 
 
 After a while, in the silence, Arnold went to the 
 attic rooms above, under the ancient gable. 
 
 The old man was asleep, the moonlight, through the 
 window, aslant on his bushy brows, the scar above 
 his eyes. The younger watched him a while intently ; 
 a wistfulness had come to the veteran s face this 
 waiting was surely long, the ending vague ; and slowly 
 the light was darkening. Only one thing stood in a 
 splendor to the Captain s soul, and that was how the 
 young fighting fellows had held the line at Bamboang. 
 The other man had fed the story to him piece by 
 piece; the veteran could describe it vividly as though 
 he, the field marshal, had stood on the heights and 
 directed the action. But it had become a thing that 
 was sapping the imagination of the creator; Arnold 
 felt at times that his soul was eaten hollow with the 
 deceit a mere shell of dreams. 
 
 Arnold went back to his apartments. Fred Weldy 
 had asked him to go to the theater to-night. He came 
 on Nella in the kitchen, and watched her, still the rest- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 317 
 
 less and good-humored. Yet her youth was going 
 the gilded halls of light and laughter, of great imagi 
 nations, had darkened ; they had become a hovel that 
 encompassed her. 
 
 The black rat drew nearer. But rarely would she 
 see ; to her had been given lightness. 
 
 The man looked down on her. The motherless child 
 had tramped in a flooded gutter that evening ; its feet 
 were wet and the girl had only now discovered it. The 
 dim hall of the lodgings was still ; there had been for 
 three days no roomers except themselves. Arnold 
 looked at his watch he was to meet Weldy at the 
 Columbia at eight o clock. But he stayed irresolutely. 
 
 "Nel, I haven t touched the piano for seven months 
 I ve hardly sung a note. You know my voice failed 
 long ago. But suppose we get some music out of that 
 dusty corner and just try it." 
 
 She looked up with a laugh, always her aimless, 
 good-humored retort to the world but he saw the 
 pleased gratefulness in her eyes. 
 
 He went to his room and lit the lamp, which cast it 
 into warm shadows ; the marble Marquise on the piano 
 vivid, white in the gloom. He searched among the 
 music and went again to the hall seeking the girl. 
 
 She was still with the child, taking off its shoes and 
 kneeling to wring the stockings, the dirty water drip 
 ping through the diamonds on her fingers. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 The following week Arnold found a place on the 
 water front, as tally clerk for a shipping firm. It 
 would pay him eighteen dollars a week, which now, in 
 the needs of the house on the hill, seemed munificent. 
 
 He came away under instructions to report the fol 
 lowing day, and oversee the checking of pnxfuce as it 
 arrived on the boats from up the Sacramento River. 
 It was to be long night hours on the wharves, but he 
 told Nella Free of his luck with enthusiasm he had 
 been about the town a week looking for work in vain. 
 
 For the first time in his life, Arnold had come face 
 to face with the hostile social aspect the complacent 
 impudence of rebuff which the suppliant for bread- 
 labor ever meets from the vestigial tyranny of men s 
 minds, for the dignity of labor is but a snug and easy 
 platitude. The man who possesses may glut the cru 
 elty the dumb races learned under the whips of forgot 
 ten kings on the man who must ask the same fat 
 soft hand that gestured to the slaves beaten to death as 
 they shoulder-strained at Cheops blocks waves com 
 placently at the bread-needy to-day. 
 
 Arnold, in his need and inutility, reaped to the full his 
 idle sowing he had no weapons for these new hazards 
 of fortune against which he now tried to make head 
 way. The town, it seemed, within the month had for 
 gotten him. He was now facing its indifference and 
 
 318 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 319 
 
 suspicion with nothing but his new simplicity of mo 
 tive, and he saw how he had builded on nothing, 
 had nothing, gained nothing. The friends of his other 
 life could give him no aid in this; references would 
 have damned him where they would not provoke a 
 smile. But he kept on with the troubled seeking; at 
 the house he had a droll cheerfulness, so that night 
 after night they came to watch for him, the waif ex 
 pectant near the head of the stairs, the Captain at the 
 table, his hands crossed on the head of his cane, and 
 the girl turning her face from the murk of the kitchen, 
 with her idle laugh. 
 
 The old man disconcerted him one night; a hand 
 trembling with palsy laid a smudged newspaper by 
 his plate. "On the thirtieth they will be here," said 
 the Captain calmly. "The Sherman sails this week 
 from Manila, the Third Battalion is on board my 
 son s troop is coming home." 
 
 The younger man stared at the paper. Nella listened 
 with curious absorption. It was a brief cablegram 
 among the despatches to the war department ; the Sec 
 ond Cavalry was returning. The veteran was quiet in 
 his faith and surety. 
 
 "Lawrence is coming on the thirtieth," he repeated. 
 
 The Captain had been wistful these many weeks, pa 
 tient with his brief questionings, eager in his recon 
 structions of the campaign ; but wistful for a voice out 
 of the silence. Now it had come. 
 
 "A stranger in the park gave me the paper," he 
 added. "I could not see it, sir my eyes are not so 
 well. But they re coming home those young fellows 
 who did so well at Bamboang." 
 
320 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "And he ll be a lieutenant?" queried Nella. "Do 
 you suppose he ll be in the parade up Market Street, 
 like they always have with a band ?" 
 
 The Captain nodded, pleased, but rebuking. This 
 was nothing this woman s way of seeing things. Ar 
 nold went to his rooms leaving them discussing the 
 matter, the Captain lofty, the girl in absorption, chat 
 tering, and then in fitful dreams. Alone, the graceless 
 liar studied the matter. He had created a heroic 
 presence in their minds and now he faced an inex 
 plicable dilemma. 
 
 What would he tell the Captain when the troop-ship 
 was in the bay what evasion offer Nella when the 
 squadron rode the street ? 
 
 After the old man had gone to bed, Arnold went to 
 find Nella at her dishes. She was scarcely pleased at 
 his telling of the position he had found. 
 
 "That s hard business, Hammy. It s a come-down 
 for a fellow like you. I wish you could get away as 
 you wanted to do. See here when are you going?" 
 
 "Nel, you know I can t quit you and the Captain 
 and the old house " 
 
 "But you d better." Her blue eyes witK their care 
 less quizzing fell from his face. She went on in an 
 altered voice : "You d better something may happen." 
 
 "What do you mean ?" 
 
 "O, I don t know. Ham, yesterday the agent for 
 some sort of society that takes care of stray kids was 
 here he was put on to us by that Wilson woman and 
 those others in the block who look at me so. They 
 have their suspicions of us, I suppose. That agent 
 
THE" DAY OF SOULS 321 
 
 talked about taking the kid away if it needed a home 
 or anything. He was polite, but I knew !" 
 
 His face was serious as she went on : "You see he 
 came spying around, and he caught me bad I was 
 smoking, and I guess I looked the part. Maybe," she 
 laughed, "I m not the sort to have charge of a baby !" 
 
 "What did you tell him?" 
 
 "I told him to go to the devil, and backed him out 
 the door." 
 
 The young man stared at a little sweater the waif of 
 the woods had worn ; from another room his breathing 
 came through the silence. He looked about the hall. 
 The old house had a sort of Gipsy abandon ; Nella was 
 a happy-go-lucky housekeeper, a miserable cook; she 
 idled most of her days over novelettes and theatrical 
 magazines, rubbing her rings with her cigarette- 
 stained fingers, but she had been watchfully kind to the 
 Cookhouse waif, playing with him in the halls and on 
 the porch, dressing him fantastically, and laughing 
 over his serious, childish perplexities. 
 
 "Ham, I shan t give him up," she broke out; "I d 
 go wild without something to do. Sometimes the old 
 man up-stairs talks so crazy, and I take Bill and skip 
 down to the alley and sit in the sun. This house is 
 spooky and you re away so much !" 
 
 He watched the girl s restless hands. The third fin 
 ger of the right was tied in a cloth. He caught her 
 arm and drew her nearer and asked : "What s the mat 
 ter ? another burn ?" 
 
 "I just cut it a bit," she laughed, and the clumsy 
 finger-stall fell off, showing the red scar. The young 
 
322 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 man looked gravely at the finger, where, last night, one 
 of her rings had been. 
 
 "Kid, you ve sold the opal with the two diamonds, 
 haven t you? You ve paid some more of the bills, 
 haven t you ?" 
 
 "O, not much. Only that groceryman was here I 
 think Wilson got him excited about us as though we 
 were going to move or beat him some way. I just 
 raised twenty on the opal I have the ticket, and we ll 
 get it back. And if we don t, it s all in the game. Who 
 cares?" 
 
 He went down-town without further comment, and 
 she wondered if he was angry. She sat up late to see 
 him when he returned, but he came back to his rooms 
 by the outside stairs, and went away in the morning 
 before she had risen. 
 
 At wharf nine of the city front a small stern-wheel 
 steamer lay with a line of stevedores crawling up the 
 plank from her forehold under a cluster of electric 
 lights. Jute bags of potatoes and onions, crates of as 
 paragus and produce from the island farms of the Sac 
 ramento delta, they brought out, wheeling them away 
 to the recesses of the covered dock. A curt manager 
 had explained Arnold s duties, and at eight o clock the 
 same night he reported to stand by the plank and 
 check off the stuff as it was unloaded from the Juanita. 
 
 It lacked a few moments of eight when he arrived 
 to relieve the other tally clerk, and he lounged against 
 the sacked stuff on the wharf, watching the laborers 
 trot in the dust from the hold, as the steamer slowly 
 heaved on the tide Italians, Negroes, Hindoos and 
 
THE DAY DF SOULS 323 
 
 Mexicans a mongrel breed, dulled and sweat-smell 
 ing. Among these, he, a fastidious fellow of the town, 
 had come to be his world had easily forgotten him, 
 and to the new way of life he was untried. 
 
 He looked at his watch and turned to go along the 
 wall of sacks past the office to the boat. A man came 
 from the office to pass him in the narrow way; then 
 stopped, his shoulders stiffening, his eyes lightening 
 with an intent challenge. It was Banway, the Hum- 
 boldt woodsman, whom Arnold had not seen since 
 what was to have been his wedding-day. 
 
 The big fellow watched him in silence for a time. 
 Then, with portentous quietness, he said: "I wonde d 
 if I d eve see you !" 
 
 "I m working here," answered the other. "How are 
 you, Louisville?" 
 
 "Don t talk friendly to me! I came down here a 
 month ago to kill you." 
 
 "Yes? But you can t understand. And Sylvia 
 couldn t explain. Do you see her up there ?" 
 
 "Trinity ? She s neve been home." 
 
 "Never been home ? I sent her back where is she !" 
 
 "Where would she be?" The woodsman s eyes nar 
 rowed malignantly. "You threw heh off ! Where was 
 there fo heh to go ? home, robbed, disgraced ?" 
 
 "Where is she?" repeated the town man steadily. 
 "Here, keep back " the other was pressing on him 
 "I tried to explain." 
 
 "Arnold, I d have shot you, only I promised I 
 wouldn t! I been fumin round weeks thinkin how I 
 could get at you God knows, I give it up short o 
 killin you. It d only be fool-like to curse you !" 
 
3 2 4 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Yes, there s nothing to say. I m sorry that s all." 
 
 "Sorry !" 
 
 "Banway, how is she tell me ?" 
 
 "She s gone insane, here in the city where you left 
 heh! Mo , she ll die." 
 
 They stared at each other, the one whitening to his 
 lips ; the other flaming, rubbing his hands together to 
 still their desire. 
 
 "No," whispered Arnold, "you re fooling she s 
 not " The other s misery convicted him. "Where is 
 she?" 
 
 "At a good woman s she was you friend once. 
 Maybe you know." 
 
 "Miss Wayne ?" His swift thought went to the night 
 she had dismissed him had it all happened so long 
 ago? "I know, now " he said mechanically "O, I 
 know, now !" 
 
 The other advanced on him in inextinguishable hate. 
 "What s it to you?" he cried. "Heh soul s dead, an 
 what s it to you ?" 
 
 The town man turned aside. He wondered why he 
 was muttering that he was sorry what, indeed, could 
 words do? The woodsman watched his face harden 
 in the shadows it seemed a cynic s indifference. 
 
 Arnold heard a step on the planking a blow on the 
 cheek sent him against the wall of sacks. From the 
 impact he recoiled, crouched like a fighter and met the 
 next rush with hammering lefts and rights, clenching 
 and bruising the Northerner s face with short-arm jabs 
 which the untrained man was powerless to avoid. But 
 Banway burst through the boxer s defense ; again they 
 clenched and twisted in the narrow way between the 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 325 
 
 wall and the dock s edge, silent, except for the strain 
 and choking draw of their lungs, reeling, struggling 
 nearer the water. Arnold s strength was spending. 
 Though he had split Banway s lip and eye, the woods 
 man was lifting him mightily, shift as he would ; and 
 then, crushed in each other s arms, they went over the 
 dock by the steamer s bow into the plunging flood-tide. 
 
 Arnold had an indistinct recollection of striking an 
 iron-bound splicing of the head-line as they sank. He 
 struggled in the woodsman s grasp, and then felt the 
 big fellow sinking limply through the water as the 
 tide heaved them in the space between the dock wall 
 and the ship. Down this space came the shouts of men 
 running on the plank, and kneeling to look into the 
 darkness. From the confusion of electric lights, rafters, 
 men s faces on the gang-plank, a rope shot down ; Ar 
 nold grasped it desperately until a mighty pull swung 
 them against the piles, where he clutched at the slime 
 and mollusk incrustations, still holding to the other 
 man, who began to struggle as his bleeding head came 
 above the water. Instinctively he, too, caught the rope, 
 and with his enemy, hung in the swing of the tide. 
 Men were scrambling down the piling. 
 
 "Got a-hold?" some one shouted. "Ready, up there 
 heave!" 
 
 They hauled the woodsman up until he stumbled be- 
 wilderedly across the plank to the dock. He beat the 
 water and mud from his clothes as Arnold came after 
 him, and grimly they watched each other, with no 
 softening nor approach. 
 
 "God s sake, Louisville," exclaimed the mate of the 
 Juanita, "what you fighting about ? who started this ?" 
 
326 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "It s the new tally clerk," whispered a young man 
 from the office. 
 
 The mate, the manager of the shipping firm, and 
 the stevedores, looked on the two wet and bleeding 
 men, staring savagely at each other. 
 
 "Who started all this?" demanded the manager. 
 
 "I did," growled the woodsman. "I d a-killed him 
 sure it s fo a girl he knows !" 
 
 They looked again on the combatants. The mate 
 spoke to the manager, who regarded Arnold, soaked, 
 bruised and dirty, with rising suspicion. He was 
 harassed, peevish, the hour late, and he had not been 
 to dinner. "Who is he? where d you get him?" he 
 demanded of the subordinate. 
 
 "Some bum came along," whispered the clerk. "Mr. 
 Bacon hired him I dun-no he was kind of a well- 
 dressed bum." 
 
 Never in his dilettante theatricals had Arnold a bet 
 ter make-up. He looked the part. And the dock-men 
 knew Banway of the lumber schooner trade. 
 
 "Here, what you got to say?" cried the manager 
 angrily. 
 
 "Nothing " retorted the young man, "not a word." 
 
 "You git off this wharf we don t owe you nothing 
 yet. I don t want no fighting around here. You git !" 
 
 Arnold glanced from the manager to the curious 
 faces of the stevedores ; he had a strange sensation of 
 being thousands of miles away, in a foreign port 
 alien, friendless, alone to him would be dealt an 
 alien s justice. He looked over his clothes, the only 
 decent suit he had of late, now smeared with slime, 
 dock-dust, wet, torn and bloody, his hat gone, his col- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 327 
 
 lar ripped from the band yes, he was the bum now, 
 penniless, without a hand to grasp or a place to turn. 
 
 The friends he had had were the friends of debon 
 air dressing, of the light ways of the town, the smiles 
 of women of the cafes, or idling sunny afternoons on 
 street or race course. But these he had given up in 
 some foolish way or other now, he was the ragged 
 and hungry water front bum, out of a job, kicked off 
 the docks. He turned from them and went to the street. 
 
 Through the deserted wholesale quarter, and then 
 Chinatown, his steps led to the house on the hill. 
 Above the turmoil of the fight, above even the bitter 
 ness of Banway s contempt, because of Sylvia Spring 
 and her suffering at his hands, came the thrust of 
 failure. Yes, he was down now ; he had led the gray 
 wolves of the town, dragging down their man here or 
 there to the killing but he had come to be the rene 
 gade, and the pack had leaped to throttle him. He had 
 turned, seeking what might be fair or of worth, and 
 these had rejected him; the city had requited his evil 
 with evil. 
 
 When he reached the untenanted corner he leaned 
 against the forlorn window of the store and wiped the 
 slime from his face. The water drained from his 
 clothes, but he did not feel the chill, even in the bleak 
 wind ; the tumult of blood and his thoughts racked him 
 hot. He tried to visualize Sylvia as insane, dying; he 
 tried to say, as he had said, that it did not matter, to 
 brutalize his soul and smash out the picture so much 
 of mean and melancholy failure had since come that 
 he must forget all together. But through the humility 
 of his heart there shot a new suffering, a desperate 
 
328 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 grief. She seemed now the one actuality of light he 
 had ever known, a soul peering at him through a veil, 
 but in no reproach. She had loved him purely. 
 
 As he stood acute with this memory Nella called 
 him and he did not answer for a time. When she re 
 peated it, he said : "Yes, but don t come down I ll be 
 there." 
 
 His voice betrayed him ; he was wont to come with 
 a cheery greeting to them all. She appeared on the 
 stairs and he must explain something. 
 
 "Nel, I ve lost the job. I ve had a fight, too." 
 
 She had never seen him so gripped from within, but 
 she only said : "Boy, you re hurt. Come on home." 
 
 He shook off the touch on his sleeve and started 
 away : "Don t wait for me. I ll be late." 
 
 But she hurried after him. "What s the matter? 
 Have you killed some one ?" 
 
 "Go back !" he retorted and roughly left her. But 
 though he almost ran to evade her, to be alone with his 
 remembrance, the girl followed and came on him across 
 the street from the Albemarle. He looked at the yel 
 low-curtained windows of the cafe, the lights on the 
 table, the clean people at this cheery affair of dining. 
 A year ago he had been as well-ordered to this tolerant 
 life as they. And he looked about at her, at himself, 
 wrecked, alone with this girl who clung to him, who 
 had neither an understanding heart nor spiritual 
 strength. She had become unkempt with the ways of 
 the lodging house, unpretty with a pallor stealing on 
 her, useless, weak a leaf in the storm. And with a 
 resurgence he saw her the symbol of all he had lived, 
 made for himself, the satire of his talents prostituted, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 329 
 
 of ambitions crushed failure he had made of it all 
 and this girl was the symbol. 
 
 Her voice came to his fever : "Let s go. What s the 
 use of this ?" 
 
 "Nel," he muttered, "you knew this and you never 
 toldmel" 
 
 "Yes. What good would it do? They were against 
 you all Miss Wayne and your friend who wears such 
 stunning clothes they re a thousand miles above it, 
 and no matter what you tried they d never understand." 
 She took his arm again in her pleading: "But don t 
 you mind you can go on O, you must, and to the 
 North like you said." She tightened her hand: "See 
 here you must have loved her." 
 
 "No. It was something more than that. I caught at 
 her, trying to get back. I never could raise myself 
 alone. Well, you can t understand !" 
 
 No, she couldn t understand./ He couldn t fight the 
 city ; he had been one to drift with its pleasuring, the 
 lilt of young life through its amazing intricacies, eager 
 for its adventures he had lived it all and now was 
 done, but it had broken his man s will, shaken his 
 courage, beaten him. Yes, he had jested too long, un 
 caring of the better way ; now the path back was lost. 
 
 "No," he went on, staring at the lights, "what can 
 you know ? What can any one know ?" 
 
 But with little inarticulate endearments, brushing the 
 slime from his bruised cheeks, smoothing the hardness 
 from his mouth, she clung to him, glad for this word 
 after the terror of his repression. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 Nella went about the small duties of the house the 
 next week more silent, curiously watching Arnold s 
 moods, more gentle in her haphazard caring for the 
 moonfaced waif and the old man. But at length she 
 could again laugh 112 her Gipsy abandon to him when 
 he came back from his fruitless answering of adver 
 tisements for mean clerkships and canvassers positions 
 in suburban towns for which he had neither aptitude 
 nor experience. He had gone to the superintendent of 
 the Mutual Bank Building and asked for work, he told 
 her one evening. 
 
 "You ll have to have better clothes in a bank/ she 
 said doubtfully. 
 
 He smiled. "It isn t built yet merely a hole in the 
 ground. I tried to get a job mixing cement and they 
 said I couldn t I didn t belong to the union." 
 
 She laughed, marveling at the thing, however. 
 "We re in for it. Here s the soldier man coming back, 
 and anyhow by the fifth we ll have to move. A big 
 Chinaman has bought this corner to make it over to 
 a gambling-house." 
 
 The young man looked at the rooms crowded with 
 the stuff from his father s one time home and to which, 
 in his years of army service, he had added the loot of 
 Philippine towns and of Peking, along with the accu 
 mulations of later years. 
 
 330 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 331 
 
 "I think I ll sell the furniture that sideboard is 
 heavy stuff it ll fetch something." 
 
 "It was your mother s, wasn t it ?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And all those pretty things the silver and china? 
 No no don t you !" 
 
 "Nel, I m broke." 
 
 "Well," with her elbows on her knees she looked at 
 him, "I can do something. I know a girl at the White 
 House store ; maybe I could get in there !" 
 
 "No, you ll have to stay a while. Who ll take care 
 of the Captain and the kid?" 
 
 "That s the other thing I was going to tell you. 
 That Wilson woman, who tells everybody I m tough, 
 got the officer of the Home Finding Society up here 
 again to look us over. He asked all about the kid and 
 me, and where Granny d gone, and he s going to make 
 a report or something. He mumbled something about 
 the court, and all the old hens in the block got around 
 him on the corner." 
 
 "Don t worry. They can t take the kid. When 
 Granny gets back, we ll make some new arrange 
 ments " he broke off, staring doubtfully at her puz 
 zled face. If Granny did not return what then? 
 "Nel," he muttered, "what ll you do when the old es 
 tablishment here goes to pieces ?" 
 
 She thrust out her small foot, twisting the brilliant 
 beaded slipper so that it sparkled in the light. "I never 
 bother what s the use of thinking about myself? I ve 
 been funny lately, Ham. I ve been just happy here, 
 trying to cook and listening to the Captain growling 
 away about the battles. He s getting so he isn t 
 
332 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 pompous with me, and thinking women are foolish 
 he s blind and can t tell whether I rouge my cheeks or 
 not ! To-day I took his skinny old hand and put it on 
 my face and asked him if I did. It made him laugh 
 the first time I ever made the old soldier man laugh !" 
 
 She swung her foot restlessly from the table top, 
 still admiring the beaded slipper, and then looked with 
 disdainful pity at the cuts on her hands. She had 
 smiled through this disastrous experiment, her eyes 
 burning, her fingers soiled in the greasy kitchen ; 
 through a thousand failures fretting her temper, dull 
 ing her youth. 
 
 "We re nearing the end," Arnold answered irrele 
 vantly. "I m broke. But, Nel, I ve been offered a place 
 worth a hundred a month." 
 
 She cried out with a child s joy, "Where?" 
 
 "Playing the piano at Sheehan s. I met Ferreri to 
 day he can fix it." 
 
 The girl got from her perchi and came to him with a 
 hard grimace a new, surly look, a cat cornered and 
 feverish to fight its hates: "No," she growled, "no!" 
 
 "Nel, I m drifting back. Something s taken the heart 
 out of the fight. I thought things would help a fellow 
 to be decent, but nothing does. I was with the old gang 
 to-day the race-track crowd and they cheered me. 
 I tell you, I ve failed at trying to be decent." 
 
 She suddenly put her hand on his shoulder with a 
 brilliant, intent study, her blue eyes narrowing. "A 
 piano player in a dance-hall? No, you don t. I ll go 
 on the town myself first !" 
 
 He turned to her a face as hard as her own. "I d kill 
 you." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 333 
 
 She relaxed seriously from his hands and stared 
 down, her brow wrinkling. She bit one of her small 
 scarred fingers, and then laughed joyously. 
 
 "O, boy, let s not care! I can drift, because things 
 can t hurt me. But you it s different. You got to be 
 like I dream of the Captain s Larry the fellow who 
 got the honor medal. Honest, Hammy, I m in love 
 with him !" 
 
 The dissembler started as he always did at the por 
 tent of this obsession in her and the Captain. He drew 
 Nel to him, holding her hands. "I wish you wouldn t 
 talk that way. I wish there was a Larry if there were 
 only some one you would care for !" 
 
 "Yes," she muttered, "everything s different when 
 there s some one to care for!" Then her old mood 
 came back. "O, who the devil cares about our souls ? 
 We don t need to be happy. A man can just go on 
 and be square as he can, whether there s any place like 
 Heaven or not. And for me, I m almost happy. I m 
 changing. When Larry comes, maybe it will be a great 
 thing for us all. Waiting for him has kept me straight 
 and kind, maybe. O, it s wonderful to care for some 
 one!" 
 
 The liar sat back, trying to clear the astonishing 
 dilemmas of his creating, this confusion of real lives 
 and phantom faiths about him. 
 
 "You got to go on !" Nel added, laughing in his som 
 ber face. But when he had gone, and the hours drew 
 to midnight in the quiet house, with only the little 
 clock in the kitchen, and the tired child s breathing, 
 she went restlessly from room to room. At last, on the 
 stairs below the Captain s apartment, she sat waiting, 
 
334 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 shivering at times in the chill and drawing her frayed 
 silken skirts about her. 
 
 "It s an awful tangle/ she muttered, "he s beaten- 
 beaten, everywhere. It s so still to-night like when 
 men kill themselves." 
 
 She sat two hours, crouched, staring from a window 
 over the side balcony at the trades fog drift across the 
 sky. The glow down-town made of it huge, twisting 
 ghosts above the city and the silence on the hilltop 
 was acute. 
 
 At three o clock Arnold came Home. He had been 
 drinking for the first time in months. Nella met him 
 with no surprise. She went before him to his rooms, 
 took his hat and the fine top-coat which had concealed 
 his shabby suit ; and then, as he sat before the table, 
 she pushed back the thin curls from his brow. 
 
 "Kid," she said, "what did you do it for?" 
 
 He smiled slowly at her from the confusion of his 
 heated brain and took her hand from the table s edge. 
 
 "I struck a queer crowd to-night," he answered 
 quietly. "Did you ever hear of Oregon Slim?" 
 
 "Is he that big con man who s doing time at 
 Folsom?" 
 
 "He s out now and back in the old hang-outs where 
 Stillman and I used to .have him line up some of the 
 Pacific Street vote. Well, I met him to-night. He was 
 surprised to see me down and out and he made me a 
 proposition." 
 
 "Yes," Nella said, with the same intent. 
 
 "Do you want to know?" he demanded. 
 
 She was silent and he laughed briefly. "A hold-up. 
 He knows when his man will have the goods and has 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 335 
 
 planned a getaway. I told him I d consider and let him 
 know to-night." 
 
 "Well," she retorted, "the town s broke you when 
 you ll stop to listen to that!" She slipped from the 
 table, came to him, clasped her hands about his shoul 
 der, looking up attentively. "Yes, that s the way we 
 go. You just drift down and nothing stops you. I 
 knew you were ready for any desperate game and I m 
 not straight myself and can t help you." She laughed 
 with forced nonchalance. "O, well, suppose I just go 
 my own way to the devil and you go be an out-and-out 
 crook? Just suppose?" 
 
 "You can t do that," he muttered. "I didn t say I 
 was either." 
 
 "But it s creeping on you. And, O, you re not a man 
 for that ! You got to keep on square, somehow. I ve 
 been sort of proud of you ! Just proud, like you were 
 my brother only that !" 
 
 "Nel," he whispered, and put his arm about her 
 slender shoulder, in his eyes a brother s gentleness, 
 "I ve never cared a deal for women but they re all 
 splendid somehow!" 
 
 "Am I ?" she answered, a curious hesitance to her 
 laugh. "No one ever told me so in all the world !" 
 
 Then laughingly, in one of her wilful whims, she 
 caught up the hand of the North woods waif and 
 trailed the child from the room. "Come, Babe, don t 
 mind that man. I ain t afraid for him after all he 
 couldn t just for you and the old soldier man and me, 
 he couldn t!" 
 
 That night at bedtime she hung about the child s 
 neck the little silver crucifix that her young sister had 
 
336 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 sent her from Notre Dame the sister she had not seen 
 in six years and who knew nothing of her except that 
 badly written and brief letters with money came at 
 uncertain intervals to the convent s head. 
 
 Arnold discovered the trinket on the child s breast 
 the next day, and covered Nel with confusion by his 
 query. 
 
 "What do I want with a fool cross like that?" she 
 retorted. "Crosses and little gods made out of silver ? 
 It s all right for your religious friend she used to be 
 impressive in that black silk robe with the little gold 
 cross on a little gold chain. Do you remember?" 
 
 "Let s forget," he answered quietly. "That s done, 
 too." 
 
 His tone drove the lightness from her, but she went 
 on. "I don t know. You re thinking of her, Hammy 
 of her and of all the decent women you ever knew 
 women who can laugh without fear of anything. Yes, 
 you re in a sort of dream of them. And it s all a mys 
 tery to me. Sometimes I think you loved one of them 
 that Sylvia, or Miss Wayne. Or maybe it s just be 
 cause they re different something that might have 
 helped and you think is lost to you." 
 
 "Yes, I think that s it. A man needs that He s got 
 to think of women that way if he s ever to get back a 
 better way." 
 
 She looked at his introspective mood. "There were 
 two good women," she went on. "And one or other 
 of them you can t forget you loved her." And then 
 she laughed in her old refusal to be held to a sober 
 mood. "O, well, I can t help I m just careless Nel !" 
 
 She slipped away, leaving him with a sense of that 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 337 
 
 meaningless pathos in women, the myriad procession 
 who found nothing and as meaninglessly passed, their 
 laughter echoing through the ages, hiding the inex 
 orable tragedy, the infinite hunger of their souls. 
 
 Another night, after the Captain was asleep, Arnold 
 came to sit by the cleared supper table where the girl 
 was sewing. 
 
 "What s that?" he asked presently. 
 
 She laughed flutteringly. "O, just a little spread for 
 your dresser! To take the place of that dirty thing. 
 I m learning a new stitch from Kohamma, the Japanese 
 shoemaker s wife, down the hill." 
 
 He took the linen, cheap, handsoiled, miserably 
 worked even his man s eyes recalled much better 
 things in the tawdriest shops. The girl had pricked 
 her finger, her red-brown hair was over the cloth, and 
 he saw the net of lines woven below her lashes. Her 
 hands were small, unequal to the clean gripping of the 
 world of work. She suddenly laid one beside his own 
 and laughed aimlessly. Then she lifted his ; across the 
 palm were purple abrasions. 
 
 "What have you been doing to-day?" she whipped 
 out, keen as a fox. "This?" 
 
 "Got a job at the new bank building I m a cement 
 mixer s helper." 
 
 The girl sprang up and away to survey him. "I no 
 ticed white on your clothes. Why, you dear old fool 
 I won t have it !" 
 
 But looking at him, she came again to lay her 
 kitchen-roughened hand by his; and suddenly, in a 
 burst of laughter, she kissed his brow, the tears in her 
 blue eyes. 
 
338 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "O, don t mind me ! I m just Nel, who s happy when 
 it s sunny, and every one s good-humored!" 
 
 Outside the night fog thickened, the hill was dull. 
 After a time they heard a sound, a fumbling, and the 
 Captain, his coat open, showing his hairy breast, 
 groped in. The old man s eyes were turned brightly to 
 them in the lamp s glow, but Arnold sprang up with a 
 cry for four days the veteran had not left his bed for 
 sheer weakness. 
 
 The soldier warned him with a prophetic ringer. 
 
 "Hear that ? The troop-ship s in the bay !" 
 
 They heard the moan of the siren through the 
 silence. The old man saluted. 
 
 "Sir," he added, "will you have my sword for me to 
 morrow ? Will you go with me to meet the boy ?" 
 
 "The Sherman will not be here until Thursday, Cap 
 tain. That s only the fog-horn off the Point." 
 
 But the Captain shook his head. "It s the troop-ship s 
 whistle. I have listened now, three days. To-morrow 
 we ll go meet them those young fighting fellows who 
 did so well at Bamboang." 
 
 He turned triumphantly and went to his room. 
 
 "Thursday?" muttered Nella, her eyes brilliantly on 
 the younger man. "As soon as that? An officer with 
 yellow cavalry stripes what ll I wear for him ?" 
 
 Arnold s face darkened ; he was gripped with form 
 less doubts. Night after night he had held them, raised 
 them, creating the roles and playing the parts in the 
 drama of Bamboang first recklessly, ardently; then 
 wearily, in confusion, before the old man s eagerness, 
 the girl s absorption. The reckoning had come the 
 dream fortress where he had fought for them so long 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 339 
 
 was crumbling. His mind was busy with futile inven 
 tions. What should he say when the troop-ship lay at 
 anchor in San Francisco Bay ? 
 
 Nella brought a letter to the table, tossed it to him. 
 "What do you think ?" she said idly. "Granny says her 
 brother s laid up for a year and she can t tell when 
 she ll be back. She said we d better give up the house 
 and sell everything for her and do just the best we 
 could." He caught her eye roving over the familiar 
 walls. "It sort of hurts me, Kid," she muttered. "This 
 is more like home than I ever knew !" 
 
 He nodded. Yes, it had sheltered them, the grim 
 ghost of a house on the hillside ; around it the fogs and 
 rains had battered since the town had stood. It seemed 
 that of late no one came there, few passed the decay 
 ing block they were cut off, clinging to the place as 
 to a gray rock watching the menace of the sea. 
 
 "Home !" he said. "It s been like that." 
 
 The round-faced infant waddled to Arnold s chair; 
 he drew it up to the arm and sat it there. "You little 
 devil I wonder what the tough old game s got for 
 you some day? Who ll play square with you and see 
 you through afterward ? Somehow, he likes me, Nel 
 he and the pup." 
 
 "Who don t?" she murmured apathetically. "It s 
 like when you used to stroll into the old places, the 
 gayest and the best-dressed of them all they d all be 
 glad just because you d come." 
 
 He wondered at the sweetness of her praise ; He won 
 dered what faint ray he might have cast from his life 
 to other lawless spirits in the darkness, what good he 
 might have flung away that had found lodgment. 
 
340 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Just glad because you came." Perhaps that was some 
 thing. In the silence the girl stretched the silly little 
 cloth across the table. "I wish I had some clothes 
 left," she said listlessly. "I ll be a fright to have a man 
 like that around the house an officer with the medal 
 of honor." Then she threw her shoulders back and 
 laughed : "Tell me, Hammy, am I as pretty as I used 
 to be?" 
 
 "Prettier," he answered. "Seems like there s some 
 thing new about you. Nel, it s strange we re here 
 you and I caring for an old man and a baby. Do you 
 know what day this is it s the Burns Handicap. 
 Just a year ago to-day I placed a bet for you and 
 brought the winning ticket back to you in your red 
 machine sixteen hundred dollars and that night 
 you flung a thousand away on Kid Brannan s first big 
 fight." 
 
 "Gee!" her old baffling laugh rang out, "and to 
 night we re broke! O, what a game! And it just 
 seems like I d been happy here !" 
 
 "That s the strangest thing," he answered ; "just to 
 watch you to try to believe it s Nel Free and yet I 
 can t see you ve changed. Good God, what a game! 
 I wonder where we re drifting? Nel, if you only cared 
 for some one !" 
 
 "I m in love," she mocked ; "that lieutenant with the 
 medal. It s grand to care for some one it s the great 
 est thing in the world !" 
 
 She looked over some waists and hats the next 
 morning, musing in doubt. Some she threw aside, but 
 one she studied over. "But it won t do. I wish I 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 341 
 
 hadn t pawned so many things. If I only had one de 
 cent street gown !" 
 
 At ten she went to Bernice Murasky s apartments at 
 the Clifford. The Jewess had greatly changed,, dress 
 ing indolently in an alcove off her sleeping-room. She 
 had never looked so well, so contented, wearing an ele 
 gant wrapper. On her table was a mass of wild lupine, 
 smelling of the sea, lightening the clean wall tints and 
 the pink and white bed. 
 
 Nella looked apathetically about this place, sweet 
 ened by the sun, perfumed; exhaling and completing 
 the soft allurement, the daintiness that suggests to 
 women s fancies, the cupid arch over the ineffable 
 presences of love. 
 
 Bernice was surprised: she had not seen Nella for 
 weeks. She was suspicious, as women are, when their 
 kind come with obvious, but inexplicable motives, con 
 cealing it with patronizing interest, but ferreting out 
 surmises of each other. 
 
 Nella was ill at ease. She asked and replied to ques 
 tions, each hovering about the other s furtive defenses, 
 alert against reprisals. The visitor s eyes fixed on a 
 jewel-box of heavy silver ; and then on a great beetle 
 of diamonds against a black velvet bodice, which had 
 been thrown over a chair from last night s wearing 
 a thing bigger than the pearl butterfly she had once 
 owned, and which had been sold long ago from the 
 house on the hill. 
 
 "Bernice, you ve got some lovely things. I saw 
 Mannie once, and he said you and Ferreri were going 
 to be married." 
 
 "Maybe this fall. Louis is making lots of money. 
 
342 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 He s got a new machine. His company has got the 
 supervisors cinched, and the saloon men scared to 
 death. They re all customers now. He and Stillman 
 are pretty thick that s it. You still living with the old 
 lady ? They say Ham Arnold s gone all to pieces. He 
 was a fool to quit politics when he did just when 
 Stillman got the town all tied up. Where s Ham now ?" 
 
 "O home!" 
 
 "Some one said he was with the Mutual Bank 
 down in the foundations," the Jewess laughed, "work 
 ing from the ground up !" 
 
 Her inflection, the lift of her shoulders, the suspi 
 cion of a luxurious, cat-like content were each lent to 
 that subtle under-wisdom of satire with which women 
 bite one another. Nella turned restlessly away; she 
 would have sold her soul if the chance had offered 
 rather than broach her errand another moment and it 
 would be impossible. 
 
 She burst abruptly on Miss Murasky s solicitude. 
 
 "Look here, Bernie; I m having a new gray suit 
 made at Calleau s, but I can t get it until Saturday. It 
 cost ninety-five, but that s all the good it does me now. 
 I want to go down-town to-day and I m kind of short 
 of things. Could I take that blue street dress for the 
 afternoon ?" 
 
 "It s gone long ago. But you need something? Kid, 
 I ve got pretty stout, but say how s that etamine" - 
 she was searching in the closet "this is tight for me 
 it s old anyhow. Can you use it?" 
 
 The other girl examined the gown: "Yes yes 
 can I? And if I had a hat " 
 
 "Here s this black you d look good in it if you only 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 343 
 
 had more color. You didn t used to have to put on so 
 much rouge. Now it sort of sticks out on you. What s 
 up got something on to-night ?" 
 
 "O, I m just going down-town ! I got a friend an 
 army fellow I used to know. Maybe we ll eat at 
 Paul -,." 
 
 "Kid, you re getting thin. You re a fool, Nella. 
 You used to have everything you wanted. Now, what 
 are you getting out of life ?" 
 
 "I m all right. You ought to see that swell jray I m 
 having made. Can I keep this until Sunday ?" 
 
 "Sure. As long as you want. Do you need any 
 thing else?" 
 
 "No, I m all right." The visitor was rolling her 
 treasures in a paper, speaking with a difficult humility, 
 for this subordination to her dependent of old days sud 
 denly crushed her as no other revelation could have 
 done. "Why don t you come over the hill and see us? 
 It s awful quiet at Granny s." 
 
 "I m pretty busy I go somewhere with Louis ma 
 chine, most every afternoon, or else some of the girls 
 come in. I should think you d just go crazy alone in 
 that tumble-down old house !" 
 
 "O, we have fun ! When I get that tailor-made " 
 "Come over and dine with me some night. We ll go 
 down to Green s and see if any of the old crowd hang 
 out there now. Wally s got a new song published and 
 he made a lot of money out of it this time. Every 
 body seems to have got on, of all that old bunch, ex 
 cept Ham Arnold." 
 
 Miss Murasky was shaking out the black velvet 
 with the diamond beetle so that its gleams were in the 
 
344 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 other girl s eyes as she turned at the door. "Will you 
 come over ?" 
 
 "O, sure." But each knew that she would not it 
 would be too conclusive a triumph if Bernice could 
 flout her shabby friend about the midnight cafes where 
 once the shop-girl had been the dependent. "Bernie," 
 went on Nella, "do you ever go to the shows and 
 operas like you used to be so wild about in the old 
 days?" 
 
 "Do I?" Bernice held the door as the other girl 
 paused in the hall. "Nel, I m as crazy as ever. I blow 
 every cent I get on the theaters. I heard Melba last 
 week in concert every one of them. It was just like 
 a silver string covered with pearls and diamonds fall 
 ing from her lips. O, if I could sing that way if I 
 only could!" She smiled brilliantly from the door. 
 "O, we d be happy and we d be good if we had every 
 thing we wanted I" 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 The Sherman s coming had been anticipated for a 
 week. Public committees had planned a great recep 
 tion for the troops returning from the Philippine cam 
 paigns ; already the city was decorated. Market Street, 
 up which the soldiers would march from the water 
 front, was forested with banners, while huge buntings 
 overhung the cross thoroughfares, and the buildings 
 were resetted with medallions of the republic. 
 
 The gray, slurred street was now brilliant, bizarre, 
 palpitant above the kaleidoscopic crowds dissolving and 
 re-forming along the roped curbs, craning and peering 
 past the police down the distance to the ferry under the 
 red and starry tumult of the morning. 
 
 Through these throngs these good-natured, mercu 
 rial San Franciscans, for ever young, for ever hopeful 
 and easily amused, eager for motion, fascinated by col 
 ors, attuned to the unusual, as generously alert to the 
 largeness of the heroic as they were careless of its com 
 mon duties Arnold and the Captain made a slow way. 
 The old man had passed a sleepless night. He was up 
 early, groping about the room for his sword with the 
 faded sash, his coat with the brass buttons and the 
 high-crowned hat with its tarnished cord. They could 
 not quiet the veteran s excitement ; protesting, in a se 
 cret bewilderment, the younger man consented to lead 
 him to the parade. The troop-ship had come from 
 
 345 
 
346 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 quarantine at daybreak ; at nine o clock the soldiers had 
 disembarked. 
 
 Arnold went to his rooms before they left for the 
 event. He found Nella before his dresser where was 
 the best mirror in the house. She laughed extenuat- 
 ingly, rubbing a delicate color to her cheek; her lips 
 were full and rosy, her eyes bright. She brushed out 
 the last suggestion of a freckle, shrugging her shoul 
 ders and smiling in the glass. 
 
 "Will he be here by dinner?" she asked, between 
 the pins in her mouth. "I d better get a good roast, 
 eh?" 
 
 "Nella, suppose he should not come? The Cap 
 tain s worked up so that I don t know exactly what to 
 tell him." 
 
 "Shouldn t come? Why shouldn t he come?" 
 
 "You see a wounded man well, you can t tell any 
 thing about it in this army business." The liar turned 
 dispiritedly away. "Where are the Captain s gloves 
 the ones with the gauntlets? He won t start without 
 them." 
 
 On the street the long sword impeded the veteran s 
 progress. He stopped. "It might expedite the march, 
 sir, if you would carry this." He unclasped the webbed 
 belt with its tassels of the Civil War. "I am not so 
 sure so strong thank you, sir. Now, we shall ad 
 vance." 
 
 They came within hearing of the crowds along the 
 line of ropes and the old man stopped again, his mus 
 taches twitching, his eyes staring. 
 
 "It seems that I can see a little clearer. It s only a 
 blur of color but isn t that the flag, sir?" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 347 
 
 "It s only an awning, Captain. We can t get much 
 nearer the street ; the crowd s too dense." 
 
 But the Captain was satisfied to stop by a corner in 
 an eddy of the clamor. "You can tell me when he 
 passes. He should be with his troop and not with the 
 invalided men." 
 
 "Captain, suppose he did not come with the troop 
 his wound, you know " 
 
 "An arm gone? A mere scratch. He wouldn t 
 leave the squadron those young fellows who did so 
 well at Bamboang !" 
 
 Arnold turned wearily away. 
 
 Erect the Captain stood, leaning his sword between 
 his clean, square-toed shoes, the button of the Loyal 
 Legion in the lapel of his blue coat. 
 
 Under his gray brows, with the scar of Kenesaw, 
 his eyes blinked at the brightness. The passers looked 
 curiously at them the old man in the uniform he had 
 worn in the triumphal march past the capitol in 65, 
 the young man holding to his arm quietly listening to 
 the fine morning life. Down the street, under the for 
 est of banners and medallions, alive in the breeze and 
 sun, the burst of the march drew nearer, a fitful theme 
 on the wind, now lost, now clear, over the press and 
 shuffle of the crowds, until its gladness rode high and 
 far, meeting the roar of the cheering as the surge of 
 the sea grapples the ebb-tide at a river s mouth. 
 
 The Captain was silent in the throng. Arnold drew 
 him to a lamp-post and then clambered to the flange, so 
 that he could see over the people. By his face was the 
 brown foot of a boy clinging above, his toes twisted in 
 the iron work. The young man could see the police 
 
\ 
 
 348 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 platoon, a smooth machine fitting between the massed 
 curbs as in a groove, passing ; and then the vibrating, 
 slurred opaqueness of the drum heads before the flag 
 of the republic and the blue standard of a regiment of 
 state infantry. Behind the mounted officers a tall lieu 
 tenant marched at the company s flank, as the ranks of 
 dirty khaki, the scruffed, gray leggings in quick ca 
 dence, licked up the asphalt of the street. 
 
 Silent, erect, elbows close in company front, their 
 burned faces grim under the rakish hats, the sun 
 aglint on the ugly little rifle tips, came the Californians 
 back from this last Argonautic expedition of the rest 
 less West, the high, final crest of the wave of the white 
 races circling the globe against the dark the outpour 
 ing of the Aryans through dim ages and from mysteri 
 ous spaces, here, now, finding as some American sen 
 try paced a lonely island shore peering through the 
 moonlight toward the coast of Asia the end of the 
 adventure, for there stood the portent of the East. 
 
 "The shouting, sir? what is it?" The old man was 
 clutching Arnold s leg. 
 
 "The infantry, Captain. Wait here they come 
 the Second my old squadron! There s Bemis of 
 Troop B!" 
 
 The dark-faced fellow was shouting in the roar of 
 voices to a swarthy corporal of the cavalry. Another 
 rider saw him, lifting a gauntlet so that his yellow 
 chevrons flashed in the sun it was Creedon with his 
 pranks and wit! And back to Arnold the old life 
 surged, the sights and sounds and smells of camp and 
 barrack and outpost Samar, Cavite, China and the 
 Forbidden City the guidon colors and the bugle-calls, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 349 
 
 the sweated leather and the good sea. He saw again 
 the white curve of the surf on warm beaches, the nipa 
 thatches and the spread of canvas along opal-skyed 
 lagoons; old friendships, fights and loves through 
 tropic days and luminous nights, youth fervent and 
 far-wandered. And now the troop had passed him by ; 
 he was alone with the town that had cracked his bones, 
 licked his soul hollow of great dreams, fattening on his 
 needs and weaknesses. O, but he was young, he would 
 go back he would live again ! 
 
 The old man was tugging at his knee, his blinded 
 eyes upturned. Very patient he had stood in the 
 tramping and the blare, old marches and forgotten 
 songs beating an immemorial cadence in his heart, 
 though the splendor long had darkened. 
 
 "Did you see him, sir ?" the Captain quavered, for he 
 knew the riders had passed. "Who led the squadron ?" 
 
 Arnold looked away as he felt the father s touch. 
 The regulars were far along, infantry again were pass 
 ing, the low forest of black little muzzles tilting 
 through the cold hard sunshine of the San Francisco 
 street. He saw the crowds engulfing the rear of the 
 last company. 
 
 "Captain, I suppose He s with the hospital men. But 
 I told you he might not come his wound, you 
 know " 
 
 "Only an arm, sir? He should be with his troop 
 for this last march." 
 
 "Well, we ll see. Let s get out of here we can rest 
 a moment in the park." 
 
 He led the soldier from the throngs a block to Union 
 Square where they found a seat along the sward, with 
 
350 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 the swallows twittering in the acacias about the Sol 
 diers and Sailors Monument. The old man s step was 
 heavy; he laid his sword across his knees and wist 
 fully strained his eyes up to the bronze Victory rising 
 from the marble shaft. "He can reach the house in an 
 hour from the Presidio, can he not, sir ?" 
 
 "Yes," muttered the younger man, in fear at some 
 change in the father s face. "We ll go home we ll 
 await him there." 
 
 The Captain sighed peacefully. An hour is nothing 
 when one has waited a lifetime ; one can give that to 
 the honor of the service. 
 
 He was submissive on the way back to the lodgings. 
 As they left the car and climbed the hill he said to the 
 other : 
 
 "Isn t it darker, sir ? A cloud over the sun ? I seem 
 to see shadows." 
 
 "It s only one o clock, Captain, but it s been a hard 
 walk for you. Now you ll have to lie down. I ll get 
 Nella to fix that medicine the young doctor left for 
 you." 
 
 "Yes. I ll rest. Lawrence should be here before 
 night. I m going to make a bit of ceremony of it, sir. 
 You see, we parted in rather bad blood. My son was 
 a wild fellow, but after Bamboang well" the vet 
 eran twisted the worn leather and faded silk about the 
 scabbard "I m going to present him his father s 
 sword. I wore it, sir, at Kenesaw." 
 
 He would not undress, but lay quietly on the bed in 
 his long blue coat with the double row of buttons. 
 After a while the young man stole to the bed with a 
 blanket, laying it about him. The old man stirred. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 351 
 
 Thank you. I am content. You will awaken me if I 
 should drop off when he comes ?" 
 
 "Yes. But, Captain, maybe he s delayed you know 
 I said, perhaps " 
 
 "I ll wait, sir. He should be here before dark." 
 
 The young man turned away: "Yes, yes I sup 
 pose!" but in the hall he murmured, "I ve done it 
 now I ve done it !" 
 
 He went to his rooms at the front. The sunlight on 
 the balcony was bright; the afternoon trade winds 
 were rising with a fillip of dust in the cool streets, lac 
 ing fog into the purple mountains across the Golden 
 Gate. Moodily from the windows Arnold watched the 
 North. The day had curiously tired him ; he felt de 
 tached, alone, with the sense of failure. lie had not 
 worked to-day, after a week with the cement layers in 
 the foundations of the bank building, because yester 
 day the union men had objected, and the contractor 
 had laid him off, saying he should be sent for if the 
 matter was adjusted. Arnold had applied for member 
 ship in the union for the time he must work, the 
 household being at an extremity. 
 
 He remembered the Captain s medicine and went to 
 the kitchen at the rear for a glass of water. Nella rose 
 hurriedly as he -entered. He stared at her and con 
 sciously she glanced down over her borrowed finery 
 the brown silk skirt, the lace of the ill-fitting waist a 
 bit soiled. Her eyes were very bright, her cheeks more 
 full, the lips arched. Under the hat of black plumes 
 and beaded stuff she was pretty. 
 
 "Why, Nel !" he started from his survey of this new 
 
352 . THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 setting for weeks he had seen her in nothing but hap 
 hazard house gowns and gay kimonos "Nel !" 
 
 "Has he come ?" she asked intently. 
 
 "Who?" 
 
 "Larry?" 
 
 His start, the significance of the look in his eyes, 
 stirred her to a sharp advance on him. 
 
 "He hasn t? Good God, is that old man disap 
 pointed again ?" 
 
 "Nel, you dressed for him his coming?" 
 
 "Why, yes I looked a fright. I borrowed this of 
 Bernice. I just got wild thinking of how I d let every 
 thing go this summer. But where is he ?" 
 
 The young man did not answer ; he appeared to be 
 listening at the attic stairs. 
 
 "Come to my rooms," he said, and she followed him, 
 the borrowed silks rustling in the stillness. 
 
 He took her hands and looked at her so gravely that 
 she was in confusion. "See here Larry Calhoun is 
 ttead." 
 
 She shrugged Her shoulders as if in pain. "Dead? 
 Does the old fellow know?" 
 
 "No. Nel, I ve made an awful tangle of this. Larry s 
 been dead a year, and he s no hero. He was as wild a 
 chap in the service as I was, and no one ever picked me 
 for promotion or honor medals." 
 
 Nella checked a sharp little laugh ; she turned away. 
 "Well, I might have known of course it was some 
 thing !" She sat down and took off the plumed hat and 
 smoothed out the borrowed skirt. "Yes, everything 
 goes that way." 
 
 "I should have told you long ago," Arnold added, 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 353 
 
 "but I never dreamed it would come to this the old 
 man waiting and you caring so !" 
 
 "I suppose you think I m crazy," she went on apa 
 thetically, "telling you I loved a man I never saw! 
 And a dishonor man, you say? Well, somehow, I 
 might have known !" 
 
 He started at the hardness of her laugh. 
 
 "Don t you mind," she went on, "only most every 
 thing I ever cared for went this way. He was so real 
 and brave to hear you tell of him. That s all. What ll 
 we do with the old man now ?" 
 
 "I don t know. He s played out to-night. To-mor 
 row some way or other." 
 
 "It ll kill him, .Hammy. We d better get the army 
 people to take him to the Presidio hospital. O, I m 
 afraid you ve muddled things, boy !" 
 
 He answered sadly : "I know." 
 
 "Well," she went on, "after all, it doesn t matter. 
 Only I waited for that soldier fellow. It kept me here 
 and quiet when I was miserable. Seems like all my 
 life I ve been trying for something or some one just 
 trying, and nothing came of it. First, there was Eddie, 
 and he killed himself " she shook off the tremble in 
 her voice. "O, well now I can drift on !" 
 
 "No," Arnold retorted, and it drove the pretense 
 from her eyes ; "you ve been true for eight months to 
 what? Something you thought was fine, an ideal a 
 dream a love." 
 
 She shivered. "Don t it scares me he s dead 
 and lie wasn t a hero anyway." She went on petu 
 lantly : "You can go talk that way to other women, but 
 not me. I m like yourself something s dead in me 
 
354 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 nothing matters." She rose witH her old Gipsy aban 
 don, her careless laugh rang out. "O, don t mind me, 
 boy! You ve been square with me always. I d have 
 thought all men were sneaks if it hadn t been for you. 
 And I wanted to do something for you, too ; you tried 
 your best for me. That means a lot to cling to, to 
 fight back with what little good there is in one like 
 us." 
 
 He watched her, marveling at her truth. Yes, they 
 knew the way of the beaten ; always they would have 
 to go the lower path, try what they might with aching 
 hearts and sore hands and weary heads that would be 
 the fulfilment of their lives. One can not bring back 
 the luster to the lily windwhipped to the earth. 
 
 As he watched her unanswering, there came a sound 
 of metal struck. It came again as they listened. "Per 
 haps his sword has fallen," Arnold said and tiptoed to 
 the hall. Then he went above. 
 
 The girl went to the balcony. Down the street she 
 saw a crowd of children, a slattern wife or two, and 
 hastening from them Kohamma, the wife of the Jap 
 anese shoemaker, in whose charge Nella was wont to 
 leave the waif of Cranberry s when she went out of 
 afternoons. The little brown woman held her own 
 sloe-eyed infant, but Bill, the Cookhouse Kid, was not 
 with her. Nella ran to meet her in some alarm, con 
 scious that down the street the neighbor women leveled 
 at her the hostile eyes of the bourgeoisie always they 
 had hated her, always isolated her in scorn. "Look 
 here," she cried to Kohamma, "my boy they they 
 took him?" 
 
 "Tey come," the Japanese woman nodded frighten- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 355 
 
 edly, "law man officer. Tey look for you tey read 
 papers tey take baby." 
 
 "The kid!" Nel flashed; "I knew!" 
 
 "Law man say you come court tomallo nex week 
 mebbe. I dun-no." She held forth a document, a 
 court order directing that the woods waif be taken over 
 by the Home Finding Society until an inquiry could be 
 made as to the fitness of its guardians. Nella s eyes 
 went to the triumph of her enemies in the street in 
 long hate, then she seized the papers and without a 
 word ran back to the rooms. 
 
 They were cleaner than they had ever been, in honor 
 of the absent guest. This week she had given long 
 hours laughingly, in a sort of dream, to the care of the 
 house the woodwork and the glass shone with a grim 
 expectance, stealthily watching her from wall and 
 angle. In the hallrack was the blue sweater of Bill, the 
 woods waif. 
 
 The girl looked at it in some trouble. "Well, it s 
 best maybe. Everything s going now. The Captain 
 to the hospital to-morrow, and then Hammy North to 
 the range. Well, it s all in the game, and I can quit, 
 too." 
 
 The little pot with the hyacinth bulb which Frank 
 Arasaka had given Miss Cranberry last winter stood in 
 the kitchen window ; it had never blossomed. The girl 
 took it to Arnold s rooms and set it on the table by the 
 greenshaded student lamp. "Granny said to give it to 
 him when it bloomed." Then she added, "Well, maybe 
 it tried and hadn t a chance." 
 
 In the man s apartments she had, that day, set a 
 small table for two, with the choicest silver and most 
 
356 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 delicate cups from his collection. About them was 
 trailed a wisp of wistaria which she had stolen from 
 Portsmouth Square to array the board for the home 
 coming soldier of Samar. Nella studied the effect for 
 some time ; then she put the stunted hyacinth by Ar 
 nold s plate and wrote, with some effort, on a tablet 
 which she laid near it. Then looking again, with quiet 
 attention, at the wistaria among the silver, she stole to 
 the stairs in the hall and listened. There was no sound. 
 She went to the street. 
 
CHAPTER XXV 
 
 At four o clock Grace Wayne was writing at a desk 
 in her alcove room. It was a day of winds, bleak mid 
 summer, and a fire burned in the apartment beyond, 
 where Sylvia Spring was reading. The woman looked- 
 up. 
 
 "I m writing to Mr. Banway, to tell him that you ll 
 sail on the second. And shall I add a word from 
 you?" 
 
 The girl turned with a smile ; through the weeks of 
 her convalescence she had had the unvarying sweetness 
 of a tired child for the older woman. "Tell him I m 
 coming thank him and all the boys in the camps up 
 there they ve been so good always." She fell to 
 watching the drift of fog through the San Bruno 
 Passes above the Mission ; from this high window one 
 saw the clouds drown the suburbs and flow on to the 
 bay. "And you how could I ever thank you ?" 
 
 Miss Wayne put down the pen and came to take the 
 other s hands. Through weeks of such human service 
 as she had never known, through days and nights, she 
 had listened to Sylvia s brainsick enshrining of John 
 Arnold s memory; long she had studied this fantastic 
 faith until the days of returning reason and acceptance. 
 She wondered at herself, at the patience, the gentleness 
 she had given to this humble duty, this common way, 
 at the happiness she had found in this work of her 
 
 357 
 
358 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 hands the giving all to ask nothing. It was strange, 
 this service to which the mystic had come to give her 
 untried strength. Banway, the woodsman, who had 
 stayed near them in the city until Sylvia s recovery was 
 assured, had parted with her in a prophecy when he 
 went North. "I heard you preach once," he said, out 
 of his brooding tenderness for the two women; "I 
 couldn t unde stand no man could unde stand, fo it 
 seemed triflin an beyond them all. But now I see why 
 men stop to listen to you on the street the grand voice 
 and you face. You had some otheh way to A mighty 
 that s all. You was fitten an you was called." 
 
 She sent him away with a smile he did not under 
 stand a pathos from her own gratefulness at this first 
 praise men had ever given her. She had descended 
 from the infinite that needs no concern to a service of 
 the world and had found its sweetness. 
 
 And now, with a sense of loss for the ending, she 
 went on, to Sylvia s apathetic ear. "I m to go to Seattle 
 and sail for Australia next month. Dear heart I ve 
 come to care so for you, but you d better go. You see," 
 she smiled and continued slowly, "I have no one on 
 earth whom I know particularly no relation, friend. 
 It s hard to tell what you ve meant to me. I m grate 
 ful that you came with your sorrow." 
 
 Since Sylvia s return from her fantasies, they nad 
 not adverted to the tragic year of her life. 
 - "Yes, it s best," the country girl mused. "I m well 
 and I m forgetting, seems like. And up-in-back it ll 
 be pretty when the rains come. You don t know the 
 trails and hills where he where we " She put her 
 hand to her eyes which had now a trifle of her fever s 
 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 359 
 
 vagueness "but up there seems like I could rest just 
 sleep and forget." 
 
 Grace Wayne s strength seemed to have been her 
 refuge; in the days when the phantoms lingered she 
 had come as now to seek the other woman s hands, 
 her cool voice, her serenity. And as they had done for 
 weeks they sat in the quiet room watching the fogs 
 ride through the passes. 
 
 At five o clock the house telephone announced a 
 caller for Miss Wayne. She asked a question, hesi 
 tated, looking back at the girl from the reception-room, 
 and then assented. A few minutes later she admitted 
 the visitor. Nella Free stood in some conscious defi 
 ance at the door, then she went on with directness. 
 
 "Well, I came again. I wanted to know how she 
 was. How is she now ?" 
 
 Grace warned her to a lower voice; the girl in the 
 room beyond had let the book fall from her hand and 
 was gazing out the window. 
 
 "Be seated," the older woman motioned Nella to a 
 chair. "Yes, she is very well. And going home Friday 
 by the steamer." 
 
 Nella stirred. "Yes? And that will end it all?" 
 
 "End it all?" 
 
 The caller had been three times before to ask of the 
 sick girl ; of herself and Arnold she had said nothing, 
 and Grace Wayne had not inquired. Nella went on 
 musingly. "Seems like a pity. She was the only good 
 girl who ever cared for him I think seems to me she 
 could help him on. I tell you, he s tried O, he s tried !" 
 
 She gathered herself against the strength of the 
 other woman and hiding this resolution beneath a show 
 
360 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 of nonchalance, continued : "It s just this he s losing, 
 and he s tried. Everything s slipped away from him 
 somehow everything that held him fighting for us all. 
 And he s not a man who can drift alone I don t think 
 he s ever forgotten Sylvia. I guess he loved her, after 
 all." 
 
 She saw no change in the calm face before her, and 
 went on with a rising appeal : "I thought you d under 
 stand he trusted you, and you threw him off. He 
 seemed to think you d help, but you sent him away and 
 wouldn t let him have his chance." 
 
 The older woman stirred at the recital ; then she an 
 swered. 
 
 "He was beyond redemption. He well, you know 
 the story " she had pointed to the fire-lighted room 
 beyond. "Out of all his life I could have forgiven 
 everything but that." She hurried on as if checking 
 a passional confidence that would rise in her. "He lied 
 at the moment I thought he was most fine most true 
 to the best in him." 
 
 "You believed it all," Nella muttered; "you never 
 let him have his chance !" 
 
 The mystic watched her trouble: "Why did you 
 come to me with this ?" 
 
 "Because you were his chance," the girl retorted. 
 "It would take a decent woman to help him and you 
 were the only one he knew !" 
 
 She could not guess the conflict in the other who had 
 no answer. And for a long time they were still, watch 
 ing each other across the room with no common ground 
 on which to meet the issue. On this silence Sylvia, be 
 yond, by the window, spoke and then came out to them. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 361 
 
 She had a trace of surprise, and then a fluttering cry 
 broke from her. 
 
 "You? Seems like I ve seen you !" 
 
 Grace Wayne s warning hand was too late. "Yes," 
 Nella answered, "you have." 
 
 The other girl put her hand to her head bewilder- 
 edly. "And in that crazy old house seems like things 
 are clearing that have been so confused since I was 
 sick. You I saw you down-stairs you spoke with 
 him!" 
 
 "Yes," Nella retorted, "and now go on you ll have 
 to remember!" 
 
 "What do you mean?" Grace interposed. "That 
 night ? Sylvia, we ve never asked you all." 
 
 "Go on," Nella muttered. "You saw me at Sedaini s 
 and then what?" 
 
 "I remember that old house in the rain and there 
 were two children sleeping in his rooms so he made 
 me a place on a great red and green rug. And then 
 he went away." 
 
 They watched her groping back to awakening mem 
 ory. "And then it was a beautiful morning and I found 
 him asleep on the balcony all wet with dew and I threw 
 my violets on him." 
 
 "Go on!" It was Grace who spoke now, her eyes 
 bright on the other, her breath hard with eagerness 
 "Sylvia! Goon!" 
 
 "That s all. That day something terrible happened 
 he came back to me down-town, stern and white he 
 gave me back my money and left me." 
 
 "Your money ?" 
 
362 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "I didn t take it. I left it with him ten thousand 
 dollars in a little silk case." 
 
 Grace turned from them to find in the darkened win- 
 dor; a vision of a night a drunken outcast picked 
 from the street a silken case that she had tried to 
 secure for him his blithe lying, his rebuffing jest. 
 Suddenly she turned on them crying out: "Yes tell 
 me? Was that all all?" 
 
 The country girl stared at her frightened. "Yes he 
 just left me." 
 
 "I knew," Nella muttered, and she rose grimly tri 
 umphant. "I ve never doubted somehow, I know him 
 so well. And he s been pretty crooked, too." She 
 flashed past them to the hall, drawing her cloak about 
 her with a defiant flirt. "I knew his very worst." 
 
 Grace had come swiftly after her : "Be still. Nella 
 wait!" 
 
 The visitor thrust her chin out with a careless grim 
 ace: "Yes?" 
 
 "Where are you going?" 
 
 "O, drift around." She laughed. "I ve quit up there. 
 There s nothing for me to do." Then she menaced the 
 other with audacious bitterness : "I told you I believed, 
 and you didn t. See here if he loves that girl, you d 
 better be square with them. She d go to him and he 
 needs some one." 
 
 "Nella, I don t think she cares now she" her 
 voice was swept by a feeling Nella had never known 
 in her "O, the fool! the fool to throw away his 
 chance so splendidly! Nel, you re right he came to 
 me, and I turned him away. He believed me and I 
 ah, well he shall know now !" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 363 
 
 Nella looked in astonishment at her vehemence, the 
 outpouring of some high fervor catching up her 
 strength, her purpose, binding to some single resolve 
 all the dramatic personality masked by her soul s 
 serene shield. She could not understand her crossing 
 the outer room to switch the light and stand before her 
 mirror, her eyes more bright, her cheeks flushed, her 
 long body tense with a splendid eagerness, her slim 
 hands up to the heavy masses of her hair. "O, it is I 
 / who failed ! O, Nel, you re teaching me !" 
 
 They watched her, one from within the room and 
 one at the threshold, in wonder ; and then Nella caught 
 at the underflow of this feeling, guessing through the 
 intricate defiles of the other s heart. She turned : "And 
 you? That s why he believed in you ! I wondered O, 
 I wondered why you should hurt him so! But you ll 
 have to bring them to each other." 
 
 Grace turned her eyes on the other in a higK pity: 
 "Did you think I feared? Nel, did you think I need 
 fear?" 
 
 The other girl watched them in misunderstanding. 
 
 Half an hour later Bernice Murasky, at the Clifford, 
 was surprised to have Nella walk in on her wearing 
 the borrowed gown, but carrying a suit-case and a 
 bundle wrapped in newspapers. The caller dropped 
 her burdens on the floor, and sat across from the old- 
 time friend with a whimsical laugh. 
 
 "See here, Bernice, can I stay all night? My propo 
 sition is off for to-night." 
 
 "Sure," the othe^ girl laughed, in return at Nel s 
 
364 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 flash of energy at odds with her usual indolence. "Stay 
 long as you please. Didn t the things fit you ?" 
 
 "O, they re all right. But I just quit Granny s. 
 There s nothing to hang around for now. Have you 
 got any Vermouth ? Let s make a Martini !" 
 
 Miss Murasky eyed her friend with the town s 
 shrewd reading. 
 
 "O, of course, if you ve had any trouble with any 
 one, why, stay with me till you get on. Nel, you used 
 to be awful good to me in the old days. But I ve not 
 seen you for ages you must have been getting re 
 ligion from that preacher friend of Jack Arnold s. 
 Does she ever buzz you about your soul ?" 
 
 Nella laughed. "She says it can t be harmed. Well, 
 if it can t, why, I m all right, I suppose. O, what s the 
 use of wrangling about it, Kid !" 
 
 Bernice joined her merriment. "Yes. We ll go eat 
 at Green s to-night and charge it to Louis. You look 
 good enough in that waist, but gracious, the pretty 
 things you used to have !" 
 
 "Yes," answered the other girl patiently, "and I 
 don t see any use of me looking like a fright for ever." 
 
 Nel went down-town to buy a pair of gloves with a 
 borrowed five dollars while Miss Murasky finished her 
 toilet. She loitered on with the people, feeling a new, 
 buoyant freedom, and stopped before a shop window 
 where a wondrous gown was shown. She needed a 
 dress, and loved pretty things, and looked critically at 
 this. Then she thought of her little sister at Notre 
 Dame she had promised her a white dress for con 
 firmation. 
 
 She idled again before the gown, studying its prob- 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 365 
 
 able cost ; then she saw her face in the mirror beyond. 
 She decided intently that she was, after all, prettier 
 than ever, her cheeks more full, and preened with bird- 
 like twists of her white throat before the glass. Then 
 she noticed the rough places on her hands and rubbed 
 them interestedly they recalled the curious weeks 
 now past. 
 
 "If any one ever cared enough," she mused, "I d 
 love to fix a little table like that, with wistaria among 
 the silver." 
 
 She idled oh from the gown in the window. Pretty 
 things cost money. She drifted on, a leaf in the storm, 
 lost now in the enveloping crowds of the street. 
 
CHAPTER XXVI 
 
 Arnold came to his rooms after an hour at the old 
 man s side. He had thought much and little had 
 cleared ; only it must be things were shaping to some 
 end and soon. The sight of the old squadron had 
 stirred a new and acute sorriness. The soul of other 
 days and great resolves came back with the passing 
 troop ; he must find them all again, somewhere, some 
 how it did not matter so that he again might be sim 
 ple of heart, carefree, lifting his hand to a comrade in 
 the open as Bemis of Troop B had done to-day, pass 
 ing on the march. His crush of impressions had left 
 him dulled, but through them a nameless hope stirred. 
 
 Because of his intent he did not discover, for a time, 
 on the rack near his door, a single rose, red on its long 
 stem. Wonderingly he lifted it to find among the 
 leaves a card. It read : 
 
 I called for you at six. I know now. I am coming 
 again to-night. GRACE WAYNE. 
 
 He stood in some confusion after he had carried the 
 flower to the table, lighted the lamp and again read the 
 message. 
 
 But his mind linked her call at once with Sylvia, the 
 tragedy he had made of this life, and of that he had 
 
 366 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 367 
 
 long refused to think he had convicted himself of it, 
 he was paying for it all. He had made his fight and 
 lost ; never would he find the inviolate peace of the vic 
 tor ; he had passed the dead line from the bright world 
 above. Well, he would go his way, alone that was 
 what he had long told himself ; he would be beyond the 
 need of comfort or support after all, with rough 
 hands and human lapses, a man must build his own 
 temple if it were but a heap of dirt above the plain. 
 
 When he laid the great rose on the table he saw 
 the tablet on which Nella had scratched by the little 
 brown Japanese pot with the hyacinth bulb. 
 
 The girl had written: "Hammy, I m quitting you 
 to-night. If the old soldier goes to the Presidio, as 
 you said, you won t need me. And I m giving you the 
 hyacinth. Granny said to, if it would ever bloom." 
 
 It had not. In the cheap little jar it had no light, no 
 sweetness, no gift of color or perfume the town had 
 killed its soul. 
 
 The young man sat in th*e chair across from the ta 
 ble. He looked at the two messages beside the impe 
 rial splendor of the mystic s gift the hyacinth was a bit 
 of gray choked by the dirt. 
 
 He read again Nella s scrawl. "I don t believe it," 
 he muttered. "She s fooling she couldn t leave me 
 
 so r 
 
 He went to the long windows and looked down at 
 the city, the red interstices of the streets between the 
 monolithic blackness of the blocks. For weeks he had 
 felt cut off, an alien from the surge of its life. All that 
 he had known, lived, fought was there. It seemed, 
 presently, that two paths stretched from him out to its 
 
3 68 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 figuration and beyond, and he knew not which to 
 follow. 
 
 The wind was noisy in the gables. The watcher 
 fancied that he heard a stir without, steps coming 
 lightly along the hall. He started, glancing at the 
 door, at the splendid rose, red with a queen s robing, 
 subduing the room. He listened again for the steps, 
 then with a quick reach, a look at the hyacinth, he 
 tossed the great rose the room s length, to the shadow 
 of the tinsel god. 
 
 "Nella, is that you?" But opening the door he 
 stared into the empty hall. The lodgings were still and 
 expectantly clean. He was puzzled by the stealth, the 
 shadows. After a while he went above and found the 
 Captain watching the last light which to him was a 
 mere dulling of the opaque sphere. The veteran noted 
 his presence. 
 
 "Sir, I have something to say." 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "When we were in Union Square to-day, was it 
 cloudy or was the sun shining? It seemed my eyes 
 cleared a bit I could almost make out the monument 
 of Victory wasn t there something moving above the 
 figure?" 
 
 "Moving? The bronze Victory has a wreath and a 
 trident." 
 
 "No. There was a blur of color above the shaft 
 dazzling as of a sword in the sun. Eh, sir?" 
 
 "Captain, the sun was very bright." 
 
 "Well, well my eyes, I suppose my old eyes. It 
 will soon be taps for me it s best the boy is coming 1 
 home a soldier now, after that affair at Bamboang." 
 
THE DAY. OF SOULS 369 
 
 The old man sank lower on the pillows. By now the 
 room was dark with a filter of young moonlight on the 
 roofs without. After a while he turned from the win 
 dow: "Are you still there, sir? I have something 
 more to say." 
 
 "I m here, Captain." 
 
 "You have been kind to me. I ll hardly need you, 
 now that Lawrence is here, but I wish to thank you. 
 I may have been harsh at times I disliked you the 
 town s light ways the women you knew your idle 
 ness. I am frank, sir but after you came home from 
 the war and Lawrence stayed, you were kind to me. I 
 doubted you and you were patient." 
 
 "Captain, it is nothing. Larry and I were bunkies, 
 and I promised him I d look to you." 
 
 "You have done well." The soldier s ringers were 
 stealing across the coverlet. "My sword, sir will you 
 place it nearer?" 
 
 The watcher closed trie other s hand on the naked 
 steel. One was hardly less cold than the other, but the 
 old man s face spoke peace. 
 
 "Would you mind buckling the belt about me? I 
 wish to be dressed, erect when he comes eh, sir ? The 
 honor of the service !" 
 
 "The honor of the service, Captain." 
 
 "Listen!" The veteran raised his fingers. "Is that 
 the band?" 
 
 They waited. "No," said Arnold, "the wind in the 
 balcony." 
 
 "But isn t there a step in the hall?" 
 
 "Captain, it s only a shingle flapping." 
 
 The old man laid back. "I heard music, sir. A 
 
370 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 march that was played before the capitol. We were two 
 hundred thousand in the line, and I led the regiment, 
 for no man above me had lived to see that day. It 
 seems lighter isn t it nearly morning?" 
 
 "It s only seven o clock. You rest, Captain I ll be 
 back." 
 
 The younger man went below, searching for Nella. 
 He lighted the dim hall gas, wondering suddenly where 
 the child might be. The cringing dog came out of the 
 shadows to his feet. 
 
 "Old lad," Arnold murmured, "where are they? 
 She surely isn t gone. She never failed to be here to 
 get supper for us all the kid and you and me." 
 
 He was hungry, having eaten nothing since morning ; 
 and confused by his sense of defeats. He wanted to 
 ask a way surely a woman could devise a pretext 
 that would avert the tragedy of the Captain s dream 
 to-morrow. The pup thrust a cold nose to his hand as 
 they stood in the passage. It comforted him with a 
 sense of faith remaining. He had reached a hand here, 
 there through the dark to whatever common good was 
 about him, and each human contact had dissolved he 
 had found nothing, bound nothing; he had been 
 stripped to his soul of even the mean gifts with which 
 he had begun. Another day and even the gray house 
 from which he had watched his retreat, step by step, 
 losing his battles at every turn, would reject him ; he 
 would stand alone in the town that had no place for 
 him in all its life, the evil or the good. 
 
 Looking again in his rooms, the little hyacinth a blur 
 in the young moonlight, he went slowly up the stairs. 
 There, by the Captain s side, at least he might find a 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 371 
 
 hand put to his, even the hand of a dying man. At 
 least here he did not fear he could look the old man 
 in the eyes, stand erect before his judgment as he 
 might his father s. So, in the dusk, he went above. 
 
 The Captain was as he had left him, on his back, his 
 hands clasped on the sword hilt on his faded sash. 
 
 But he was dead. 
 
 The younger man watched quietly after the first 
 touch to his hands. The face was peaceful, its familiar 
 frown relaxing, the bushy brows concealing the scar, 
 the gray imperial lending its martial artifice the sol 
 dier s grandeur encompassed the chamber s gloom and 
 gave to the watcher peace. He sat on the bed arranging 
 the sword-knot in the veteran s fingers, smoothing the 
 coat between the little eagles of the republic. A great 
 campaign was ended, a voyage done. 
 
 Through the dark the Lime Point fog-horn moaned ; 
 from the window he saw the thin drift across the cres 
 cent moon. He was alone, indeed ; one by one they had 
 dropped from him, Granny, the children, Nella, Law 
 rence Calhoun s father. He had been a reckless fighter, 
 a careless, jesting leader; and one by one, fate had 
 wrested from him whatever hostages had held him to 
 the faint good in him. Well, no matter he had fought 
 and the long campaign was done. 
 
 For hours he sat alone, the dead soldier s peace on 
 him as a benediction. He grew great with a thought 
 that his leader had come back ; and that with him, an 
 other presence had come in judgment his father, who 
 had put his faith in him and sent him from the prison s 
 gate, content. 
 
 The watcher took the Captain s sword from his dead 
 
372 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 fingers and set it against the wall, where the moonlight 
 fell on it until it was a bar of silver in the dusk. 
 Through his mind there came a thing; he had read, he 
 knew not when, nor where : 
 
 "This man was one of those old fighting fellows 
 Whose soul did choose to follow the Great Captain, 
 
 And so he passed out into the darkness 
 What did he win but darkness? 
 
 Ask the Captain 
 You ll find the Captain out there in the darkness." 
 
 And as he watched through the hours, there came 
 to him a remembrance that this was the festal day of 
 the ancient Samurai, of which Arasaka had once told 
 him the vigil in which only those may face the fight 
 ing men who have made clear their honor The Day 
 of Souls. 
 
 A vision came to his eyes ; he seemed to be with the 
 Captain in the moonlight-flooded square. They saw 
 the Victory rising from its white shaft above the night, 
 immutable, serene, triumphant. 
 
 A sound came from the rooms below. Arnold lis 
 tened by the staircase window, his eyes on the glimmer 
 ing flood-tide through the Gate, and the Marin Moun 
 tains that lay beyond like a heap of crushed velvet in 
 the dark. The floor creaked, and as he went down, an 
 exclamation came from the front rooms. There he 
 found Nella. She was lighting his student lamp, and 
 looked up from it with startled eyes. Then she laughed. 
 
 "I came back," she went on with her usual abrupt 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 373 
 
 lightness. "I went out to Sheehan s and the Beach and 
 danced. There were a lot of us Bernice and Louis, in 
 his car and the boys bought a lot of champagne." 
 Her inconsequent laugh rang out. "But it s funny I 
 couldn t make believe any more, like the old days. I m 
 a fool, I suppose, but I got to thinking who d get the 
 Captain s breakfast and at one o clock I skipped." 
 
 "I was expecting you," he answered. 
 
 "Expecting? Why, didn t the woman preacher tell 
 you I d quit ? And my note ? I came back to get break 
 fast to-morrow that s all. Ham, how s the Captain ?" 
 
 "Come," he said, and took her hand, drawing her to 
 the stairs. 
 
 She did not know until he placed her hand on the 
 soldier s, and then she fell back with a cry and stood 
 staring. 
 
 "It s fine," the young man whispered, "Nel, I ve 
 been here alone five hours." 
 
 "Alone?" 
 
 "Yes. Did you think I d bring a lot of gabbling 
 women from the block to disturb that picture? To 
 morrow we ll tell the Presidio people, and they ll bury 
 him with the soldiers out there. But to-night he s 
 alone. It s fine." 
 
 Nella sat in the window-seat, with the moonlight on 
 her borrowed plumes and the silken skirt. "Kid, you re 
 changed so," she whispered. 
 
 He smiled. "Have I? I ve thought of something to 
 change a man." 
 
 She did not understand : "Then you saw them that 
 preacher woman brought Sylvia to you after all ?" 
 
 He started. "To me? What have you been doing?" 
 
374 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "She said she d bring her to you if she did, I d 
 believe a good deal in religion." She laughed slightly. 
 "But you can t understand, Hammy !" 
 
 He was beyond giving concern to women to-night ; 
 he went on gravely. "An hour ago I remembered what 
 this night meant the old fighting men are coming 
 back. I m not afraid of anything they can ask us." 
 
 His mood frightened her. "Who?" she whispered. 
 "Ask what?" 
 
 "It s an old story, Nel. But we d have to come clean 
 to-night to face the fighting men." 
 
 She shivered in the stillness. But after a while, as 
 they sat long, with the murmur of the city far off and 
 the beauty of the night over the sea and land from the 
 windows, the girl rose and went to the Captain s side. 
 
 She stood for many minutes. "It s grand," she whis 
 pered. "Just peace." 
 
CHAPTER XXVII 
 
 An hour later Arnold heard the wheels of a carriage 
 turn on the cobbles below the balcony. He went to the 
 windows to peer out. On the broad seat Nella slept. 
 Tired out by the excitement of the day, confused by the 
 night s mysteries, she would not have stayed awake for 
 a vision of paradise. Yet her unfearing now, in the 
 room with the dead man, struck Arnold as odd. He 
 left them and went below. 
 
 On the stairs from the street he met Grace Wayne 
 in no surprise, for it could be none other. She gave 
 him her hand with a smile high in faith, as if now, in 
 common understanding, words were little. 
 
 "It s a strange hour to come/ she began, "but you 
 know how I always loved the night its peace and con 
 secration. Will you understand me if I say I ve tried to 
 come in that spirit ? I know everything, now, I think." 
 
 "Nel told me," he answered, and then in a sort of 
 fear, "Sylvia and she she is well, and you brought 
 her" 
 
 "She is here." The woman looked proudly at him. 
 "She did not want to come she seemed to fear you, 
 but I told her it was for something more than herself 
 to clear up much so that each of us could be steadfast 
 so that all pretense could be put away. Do you under 
 stand me ?" 
 
 "Good God," he muttered, starting, "you brought 
 her ! Look here what can I say or do ?" 
 
 375 
 
376 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 "Nel thought you loved her." 
 
 "No," he answered, "she was as far beyond me as the 
 stars. I tell you, I ve got to go another way not so 
 fine a way, but I earned it ; not so pure a way, maybe 
 but I fought for it. I know the cost." 
 
 He could not guess the tumult sweeping her, rising 
 above her own doubts and weariness, stamping in 
 dubitably her faith in him. He only saw her face in 
 the half-light, calm, resolute in tenderness. She went 
 on in this sweet dignity, yet as if humbled before him : 
 "To-night I learned everything from her all she had 
 been to you. I know, too, that I lost her money that 
 night I met you. I have, to-day, repaid her everything. 
 It has freed you freed me. I think we are both more 
 honest now." She smiled in a rare intimacy and he 
 was troubled. "We ve learned much, haven t we, John ? 
 It seems that I have had to come to your life, your 
 world, to learn !" 
 
 He tried to evade her confidence. An hour ago his 
 way had seemed clear and comforting now he wan 
 dered in intricate irresolutions. 
 
 Grace went on clearly : "Well, I brought her. It was 
 for my conscience s sake and yours. She waited in the 
 carriage. Can you face her?" 
 
 "Yes," he said, "after all, I m not afraid." But when 
 he had gone to the street he had a strange dread, for 
 Sylvia stood before him as he had brought her up 
 these steps on that first night, her eyes wide, her girl s 
 face pretty, unscathed, her hand to her hair with the 
 old doubtful trick, as when she listened to the whim 
 sical speeches of his love-making. She brought that 
 summer to him, the North stillness, the secret places 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 377 
 
 of the redwood canons tangling the drift of fog from 
 the Mendocino coast and beyond was the country-up- 
 in-back, the dry smell and quiver of the tawny hills 
 under the sun. She stood now, the beautiful spirit of 
 it all, pure before the stain and tatter of his life. 
 
 He moved as if to take her hand and then turned 
 away. "Sylvia!" 
 
 "You don t want to speak, John, do you ?" she began 
 softly. "Now, let s just forget. I m going home I only 
 came because she wanted me to." The girl came 
 nearer. "You look so changed much older. I m sorry 
 it was intended so, I suppose. And I forgive you." 
 
 He had not looked for this simplicity of courage. It 
 struck him to the heart as no tears nor reproach could 
 have hurt him. "I ve tried," he muttered. "Sylvia, you 
 began it all it was you that first began the fight. Ah, 
 well, little girl, I wish I knew what to say. It would 
 sound cheap to tell you I m sorry. There s nothing I 
 can say you re fine and true " He looked beyond 
 her to the gray house in the dark, that had sheltered 
 him and his sore hurts and failures no, he could never 
 make her understand the gulf between her simplicity 
 and his misrule. He turned away again. "And now 
 you re going home. Sylvia, I wish I could talk more 
 to you, but I can t. Don t you understand something s 
 dead in me." 
 
 "No " she whispered "but see, I m crying and I 
 promised I wouldn t! No, let me go. I ll sail to 
 morrow for the North." She went to the carriage door 
 and turned : "John, let s just be glad that we discov 
 ered we weren t for each other." 
 
 He let her go from him in this show of courage, and 
 
378 TOE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 went up the stairs to meet Grace on the balcony. She 
 watched him expectantly. "It s done/ she said, "and 
 it s best. You ve cut another bond to the old life, the 
 old memories. John Arnold, it s not how a man s lived, 
 nor what he s done but what he brings through it all 
 that counts." 
 
 He wondered at this new faith, or perhaps her old 
 newly seen. Out of her fullness of power, disengaging 
 to him a tenderness he had never felt, it seemed that, 
 after all, she had not been so far from him or his world. 
 But he answered quietly: "Yes. And I ve brought 
 through little. I can show it all so easily. Now, I know 
 I ll never find the highest way, the heights you tried to 
 lead me to. But there s something else for a man." 
 And as she seemed uncomprehending, he added : 
 "Come, I ll show you what I mean." 
 
 She went with him, as Nella had done, to the Cap 
 tain s chamber. She nodded in surprise, after bending 
 above the dead man; then she saw Nella in the win 
 dow-seat. 
 
 "This is the night the fighting men come back," Ar 
 nold smiled to her. "No man dares face them with his 
 soul unclean. See here we ve waited and Nel has 
 even slept and no sign has come. It s been all night 
 just as she said just peace." 
 
 "O, what is in you?" the mystic cried, under her 
 breath. "After all, are you a dreamer, awaiting sym 
 bols?" 
 
 "No," he retorted ; "just a fellow who s finding the 
 way for himself. Not your way nor the way of any 
 faith or creed or system just his own way hammered 
 out and I tell you it cost something." 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 379 
 
 It seemed that her exalted passion sank beneath his 
 mood. They sat in the silent room. An hour passed; 
 the fog drifted from the Gate; the stars wheeled low 
 on the Marin Hills, a spangle of light in a cloudy pass. 
 They thought the day was near at last, yet it was only 
 an expectance in the summer night. After a while 
 Nella shivered in the cool air and Arnold went to throw 
 a robe about her. He found Grace at his side; their 
 hands met in the common service. She smiled. 
 
 "You are a believer in mysteries I told you so long 
 ago/ she whispered. "I tried to plead with you to 
 make that clear then nothing else would have mat 
 tered." 
 
 He saw her face, steadfast in its old tenderness. She 
 could not hide this indwelling triumph this was the 
 symbol of their progression to watch for the new day 
 in this communion on the hilltop. This had been his 
 way, his upward coming through the last doubt and 
 fear he was with her in understanding. He would 
 even know that she loved him that the red flame of 
 his life had burned away her own false barriers, had 
 torn the idle wrappings from her selfness, had freed 
 her for a human service. Yes, he had broken through 
 the splendid hollow globe of her spiritual aloofness, 
 and miraculously his flame of life had burned itself 
 clear. This, indeed, must be their symbol to stand here 
 together in this common work. She looked on him with 
 triumphing faith. But after a while he spoke in serious 
 authority: "It must be toward morning and there s 
 Sylvia waiting for you." 
 
 "I know," she answered, "but this has been a won 
 derful hour for you. And for me for all of us." 
 
3 8o THE DAY! DF SOULS 
 
 He smiled gratefully at her apparent understanding. 
 "Yes, we can go on now. It s like a home-coming to 
 me to Nel and me." 
 
 She watched him go to raise the curtain above the 
 sleeping girl and look off to the East. Some divination 
 came to her. "Nel? I wondered what you would do 
 about her, when you go to the hills to find yourself 
 as you promised me." 
 
 "There s a way," he answered, "and I m finding it. 
 Nel s tried and she s not failed. No, in nothing has she 
 failed," he added. "After this, nothing could matter." 
 
 "I don t understand you, John ?" 
 
 "I ve been working this week. It s at the foundation 
 for the Mutual Bank Building. I m a cement mixer s 
 helper, and I get a dollar and seventy-five cents a day. 
 And those fellows are going to get me in their union, 
 too. It s only a hole, but I can look up and see the sky. 
 Seems like I d been about this town all my life and 
 never knew before how blue the sky is!" He turned 
 to her with a smile. "I m not going to quit the town. 
 And Nel, she s the only woman who could understand 
 she s paid the price with me. And I m pretty weak 
 and wild. Suppose I lost my hold and went down 
 after all who d understand, save Nel?" 
 
 The mystic s eyes did not waver from his face. 
 
 "You mean ?" she questioned, clearly but low. "Tell 
 me?" 
 
 "Nel s only what life makes her and she s tried." 
 
 Slowly the splendor darkened, the faith was hum 
 bled in the other s soul. 
 
 "Is this your way of happiness? John, is this the 
 way for you?" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 381 
 
 "A man does not need happiness. He can make his 
 own conditions, if he s big enough. And I m big 
 enough. A fellow has to fail to understand. Yes, I m 
 big enough, I tell you." 
 
 Grace had turned to watch out the balcony window 
 the transfiguration of the night. She stepped past the 
 girl s form to the cool air. It was, presently, as if she 
 stood alone on the top of the earth, and a new day was 
 born ; as though this peace were a fresh page, on which, 
 in another hour, would be written the drama of the 
 world. Huge, real, exquisite with issues; but through 
 these common lives of men were beaten ways divine, 
 mystic as her own. Yes, there was divinity, human- 
 rough and stained, as there was a Christ who had lived 
 the world s life, and who had died with the weak, on 
 His lips a cry, unfortified by the complacence of the 
 Infinite. 
 
 She looked now on the girl at her feet, on the man 
 beyond. She had come an untroubled traverse, calmly 
 awaiting all the good of life, of all lives and phases and 
 transmutations ; for to the soul awakened, nothing was 
 withheld. And her mystical faith held to him he had 
 risen, he was affined her own. 
 
 But she watched them. They had always doubted, 
 and she had doubted nothing ; their ways had stumbled, 
 while hers was secure ; they had struggled at desperate 
 costs to pitiful gains, while she had lacked nothing. 
 But out of her tideless soul the storm was beating, a 
 passionate certitude claiming him. She saw herself 
 alone as she had always been in the lands and cities 
 and seas of her journeyings, her spiritual adventure 
 alone and with empty hands. Yes, until now, she had 
 
382 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 held herself from life, and, it seemed, had failed. It 
 seemed there was something else needed than the vision 
 of the soul s transcendence, of its mystic mutations and 
 return to Nirvana. It was not for nothing that those 
 shattered, lost in the gulf into which she had curiously 
 looked, cried in their agony but stopped to bind one 
 another s wounds. It was not for nothing that life, with 
 crippled wings, beat a slow way vainly and beyond the 
 pale of the spirit. Now, she saw as she had not seen. 
 
 Arnold s voice came to her widening thought. "I 
 want you to know," he said simply, "how you ve helped 
 me in the tough old fight. Perhaps you were right 
 perhaps I m above all that. The city I hated it its 
 life its men its savage wars yes, all society there 
 was no good in it. But now it seems like something 
 was rising underneath its commonness and corruption, 
 the lies and mobs and pretense. Perhaps you re right 
 there s a soul rising through it all ! I ve never be 
 lieved nor cared I was only a nameless bit away down 
 at the bottom, but look I ve done something ! O, San 
 Francisco! That s what it means, and all America 
 means, and all the fight beyond! We don t die down 
 in the dirt for nothing, do we ? I think I know now 
 I understand all you tried to teach." 
 
 She looked on the light of his face ; and he saw now 
 in her own, a courage rise, a transfiguring exultation. 
 And with an inarticulate cry she took his hand on the 
 railing. "Go on you re teaching me ! And, O, this is 
 like you like you ! What can t you do or be ?" 
 
 "I m going back the way of men;" he muttered. 
 "They ll let me in their union, and maybe some day 
 there ll be something of use for all of them in me. 
 

 Tm going back the way of men/ he muttered. Page 382. 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 383 
 
 Something for what they re after the social brother 
 hood, the better way yes, from me, the lone wolf who 
 hated them." 
 
 Grace looked at him, laughing curiously; she took 
 his hand again with a child s fine gaiety. "Yes yes 
 that is your way !" There was in her a proud and un 
 defeated surety. "And beyond it all, I ll wait for you 
 love you!" With this she left him, going down the 
 stairs. In the street he heard the carriage turn. 
 
CHAPTER XXVIII 
 
 At seven o clock the sun was high, and above the 
 morning damp on the moldered boards and thin grass 
 of the alley, it fell through the window of the attic in a 
 square of yellow warmth on the floor. The breeze from 
 the ocean over hills and housetops streamed across this 
 patch of sunlight, touching the Captain s face. 
 
 The dead man lay alone, untroubled by human min 
 istrations, his fingers stiff in the silken sword-knot, the 
 tricolored button of the Loyal Legion vivid against the 
 dark blue coat. Into this peace a stillness, yet per 
 vaded by the detached and subtle morning hum of a 
 place of people a sparrow swept like a gray arrow 
 through the sunlight, circling the room to the head 
 board of the bed where it lit, jerking a beady eye, now 
 down at the dead man, now up at the window, uncer 
 tain of escape, breaking the silence with its shrill call. 
 
 From the hall languidly came the cat of the deserted 
 Family Liquor Store to sit in the square of sunlight 
 and blink, cropfull, at the scolding bird. Its slit eyes 
 narrowed in the brightness, opening, closing, until, 
 overcome by the warmth and its animal stupor, it laid 
 to watch the sparrow working itself to fury, hopping 
 and chirping on the bedstead. From the bird s ruffled 
 neck a small feather floated down in intricate spirals 
 to rest on the Captain s cheek; and this little drama 
 went on the small, gray bird jerking out its insistent 
 
 384 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 385 
 
 "Chee-it chee-ya!" the cat outstretched, sheathing 
 and unsheathing its claws in the carpet with benign 
 closings of its black slit eyes in their yellow lakes; 
 while on the cheek of the dead soldier poised the tiny 
 feather, its microscopic fronds exquisite, upright, alive 
 in the buoyant, illimitable ether. 
 
 John Arnold came after a while to look on this affair 
 the play of little life about the majestic dead. 
 The calm, the brilliant day, the mischievous and incon 
 sequent portent of the cat and bird promised cheerily 
 of a large simplicity ; they struck down problem and 
 debate, they disdained question beyond the hour and 
 act. So it seemed, one could live, doing away with 
 ghosts and guesses. 
 
 A smell of breakfast getting came from the rooms 
 below. In the front apartment was the little table that 
 Nella had set in the sunshine pouring across the bal 
 cony on the silver and china trailed about with wistaria. 
 Nella, her hair under a white cap, a snowy apron about 
 her, turned with a droll wonder, rubbing her sleepy 
 eyes. 
 
 "See! I set it for the medal man, but it s pretty 
 enough for a bride !" 
 
 Laughingly she ran back to the kitchen in that curi 
 ous pleasure a woman finds in the doing of the small 
 things of a house when there seems above it content. 
 "I m shirring the eggs," she called. "It s as though 
 things were common and they re not !" 
 
 The young man on the balcony watched the banded 
 sky to the west, the bay water like a gray plain of 
 ashes smoking damp, the islands smudged in the levels. 
 "No, they never will be, Nel, if I can help." 
 
3 86 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 She came back with more breakfast things. "I d 
 better put on more for fear they might come early, 3 
 she went on. "Surely, they will be here before the army 
 people take away the Captain." 
 
 Arnold turned to her with a sort of threat. "Nel, 
 they re not coming Miss Wayne and the other girl. * 
 
 "Not coming ? Why, she promised " 
 
 "They ve been here," he retorted, "in the night 
 while you slept. And they went away for good. 
 After all, some things come right." 
 
 She opened her blue eyes more widely still. "You 
 sent them away?" she cried, "you? Why, I was plan 
 ning for you and that Sylvia I thought this table 
 would be pretty for you after all." 
 
 She came to read him shrewdly. "Surely you cared 
 it s best to have some one to believe in even if it 
 isn t true. Here s that soldier and his medal he just 
 kept me from going wild. Yes, it s best for a woman 
 to have some one to believe in somewhere. Sometimes, 
 Hammy, I try to guess at things. It s as if we all sat 
 in the dark wondering about each other : why I should 
 be careless Nel, and you so troubled, and the Captain 
 very brave, and that preacher-woman so serene and 
 all the children down the block so happy. O, I 
 wonder !" 
 
 He looked at Her where, indeed, was there place for 
 this careless soul in the world of the spirit ? She of the 
 earth, the life that bred in the sun and passed and was 
 content ? 
 
 "Nothing that lives and works and gives love the 
 very least of love is less than the greatest. Nel, you re 
 great as the greatest do you understand?" 
 
THE DAY OF SOULS 387 
 
 She looked at him with startled, uncomprehending 
 eyes. "What love?" she answered. "I never have. 
 Love who ?" 
 
 He pointed upward, and after a moment she laughed, 
 a sudden shy gratefulness in her eyes. 
 
 "O, an old blind man and a kiddie that didn t have 
 a home !" she retorted. "What s that amount to?" She 
 went to arrange the silver with hands uncertain in con 
 fusion. "But it s just fine to think so." She crossed to 
 him impulsively, her hands out to the lapels of his 
 coat. "Seems like your thinking so has kept me at 
 it all the time. And now have you given that girl up ? 
 And when are you going to the hills?" She watched 
 him dissembling with her old good-humor. "You know 
 the place is sold to the Chinese we ll have to quit each 
 other and drift somewhere." 
 
 "No, I m not going to have that. Nel, you ll go with 
 me." 
 
 She sat back, and while the sparrows twittered in 
 the breeze, she studied the tip of her finger. Then she 
 turned seriously : "Go ? Live with you ?" 
 
 "Marry me. Look here we ve no need of pretense 
 we know the big old fight. We can keep on trying, 
 chum somewhere." 
 
 "But if we cared," she murmured, "if we only did !" 
 
 "It s curious you think of that. Nel, you dreamer 
 you idealist !" 
 
 The girl was still. Presently she sat forward, watch 
 ing his intent. "A woman must go on and live, I sup 
 pose somehow. But this no " she smiled in a dis 
 tant tenderness. "Hammy, you mustn t mind me. You 
 go to the Sierras as you dreamed, and ride and shoot 
 
3 88 THE DAY OF SOULS 
 
 and be a man, brown and strong and fine. But for me 
 why the woods scare me and I wouldn t wear any 
 thing but a French heel for the world!" She thrust 
 before him her small perfectly clad foot. "Look could 
 that climb a mountain, or ride a broncho? I d make a 
 fine range rider s wife ! O, while you were away some 
 fellow d come riding over the mountains and I d flirt 
 with him " she turned to him with her arch humor. 
 "Kid, I d go wild. I m just contrary Nel and I 
 couldn t leave San Francisco !" 
 
 "Suppose you loved me ?" he answered, and it drove 
 the laughter from her eyes "suppose you did ?" 
 
 "I d climb all the mountains I d ride all the dark 
 nights. I d work my fingers worse than this " she 
 looked at their scars. "O, love that would be the 
 greatest thing !" 
 
 He watched her steadily as she sat on the balcony 
 rail, a heap of color in the sun, laughing her confused 
 failure to meet his eyes, looking off to the last mist in 
 the harbor way. "There s one thing I ve not told you, 
 Nel. I m going to stick to that job down there there s 
 something big to hammer out. The boys are to get me 
 into the union, and I ll stay." To her wondering, he 
 went on : "Chum, here s where we made our fight 
 and lost. And now we ll stay the city needs its men 
 and women. Yes " he retorted to her evasion, "you ve 
 got to stand by me in the big fight Nel, you under 
 stand?" 
 
 Her blue eyes were big with comprehension, grow 
 ing to an exquisite tenderness. "Just to try and love 
 you sometime?" she whispered, her eyes still wide on 
 him. 
 
THE DAY OF! SOULS 389 
 
 to try sometime and go on," he answered. "O, 
 Nel, we can t go far alone !" 
 
 She rose softly and through the door she caught up 
 the wistaria from the table and laughingly drifted it 
 about his head. "O, boy ! Just to go on somehow and 
 let me help? You go be a man down there and let 
 me help? It s grand!" 
 
 And, laughing again, she drew his Head to her breast 
 and kissed his cheek, laughing, and yet shy with 
 pathos, the voyage done, her own long-wandering heart 
 now humble by the one before her. 
 
 In the sunlight they were still, looking in a dream 
 from the height down to the life out of which they had 
 come. But after a while Arnold stirred, leaned to drink 
 in the breeze across the hilltop. "I promised the fore 
 man I d go help on the second shift at ten o clock. Nel, 
 I m going." 
 
 "Yes, you must," she whispered, "and I ll have 
 things pretty for you to-night, when you come home !" 
 
 At noon Grace Wayne was on her way to the ferry. 
 At the transfer corner on Market Street, where the tide 
 of life was engulfed by the kindly sun, men were idling 
 about the excavation of the new bank building, watch 
 ing the descent of a huge steel beam to the foundations 
 of cement where the derrick engine chuttered. She 
 stopped with a sharp intake of breath at the sight of 
 a blue-bloused workman with an arm outstretched 
 above the chaos of steel and concrete. Long she looked, 
 tenderly, triumphantly. The curve of life was fast bear 
 ing them far from this brief contact, but her mystic 
 vision went across the span. 
 
390 THE DAY. OE SOULS 
 
 "He ll know," she murmured. "Beyond this great 
 way he shall see clearer he shall know !" 
 
 And to her it seemed again that she was looking on 
 a sea of faces in the pit of earth, raised above them 
 under the flare of light; but now, to her words they 
 turned in gladness; she had come to them the lower 
 way, telling the kindlier law for the quickening spirit 
 behind the dull metal they were beating to fine ends. 
 To her wondrous consciousness of God few had come ; 
 she had descended to the divinity of all-giving life, the 
 common love she had evaded; and though she went 
 again alone, she was of the great company of those for 
 whom there is no home glow waiting at the end of day, 
 who give all and expect nothing, who love and yet go 
 alone, as the soul must go alone. So, from the dusty 
 roadsides, she found God had come this was her new 
 evolution, from the common love and infinite failures 
 He had sprung. 
 
 The man in the pit of earth looked curiously up in 
 a pause of his work. He saw the blue sky, the brilliant 
 sun shot through with patches of white steam ; he heard 
 the throb of the engine drum, the shrilling whistle 
 above the brawl of hammers; he had a glimpse of a 
 woman passing, enveloped by the crowds, the city 
 swarming, eager with life about the foundations where, 
 with brain and hand, to some mysterious end, from the 
 clean earth, men build. 
 
 THE END 
 
, 
 
YB 33068 
 
 297226 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
illilli