THE 
 
 SIEGE OF 
 YOUTH 
 
 FRANCES 
 CHARLES 
 

 
The Siege of Youth 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 By 
 FRANCES CHARLES 
 
 ( 
 
 AUTHOR OF "!N THE COUNTRY GOD FORGOT'* 
 
 Illustrated by 
 HARRY E. TOWNSEND 
 
 BOSTON 
 
 LITTLE, BROWN, & COMPANY 
 1903 
 
Copyright, 
 BY LITTLE, BROWN, AND COMPANY. 
 
 All rights reserved 
 
 Published May, 1903 
 
 UNIVERSITY PRESS JOHN WILSON 
 AND SON CAMBRIDGE, V. 8. A. 
 
TO 
 MY BROTHER HERBERT 
 
 IN BELIEF AND HOPE 
 
 662736 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PACK 
 
 I. ABOUT A FACE i 
 
 II. A MIDDLEMAN OF ART 13 
 
 III. JULIAN 27 
 
 IV. THE TERRACE 33 
 
 V. THE OWNER OF THE FACE .... 41 
 
 VI. A POINT OF VIEW 46 
 
 VII. HALF-GODS 55 
 
 VIII. ABOUT THE MIRROR OF THE HEART . 65 
 
 IX. WHERE LOVE is SENT 80 
 
 X. STRAY THOUGHTS 93 
 
 XI. SUNDAY 97 
 
 XII. REPARATION 107 
 
 XIII. ON TRUTH 109 
 
 XIV. ON THE APOTHEOSIS OF EXISTENCE . 119 
 XV. DEBORAH'S LIFE 123 
 
 XVI. AND WHAT IT MEANT 136 
 
 XVII. THE TURN OF THE TIDE .... 146 
 
 XVIII. A YOUNG MAN'S FANCIES .... 153 
 
 XIX. REAPING THE WHIRLWIND .... 163 
 
 XX. WHAT THE SUMMER BROUGHT . . 172 
 
 XXL THE RIFT 183 
 
 vii 
 
Contents 
 
 PAGE 
 
 XXII. THE MORN 196 
 
 XXIII. IN THE ALPHABET OF LOVE . . . 206 
 
 XXIV. WHAT THE TERRACE THOUGHT . 211 
 XXV. FRIENDS 218 
 
 XXVI. His LIFE 233 
 
 XXVII. FATUM 241 
 
 XXVIII. HOME 250 
 
 XXIX. HARVEST-HOME 264 
 
 XXX. WHEN THE GODS ARRIVE .... 274 
 
 XXXI. NOT ON THE HOSPITAL STAFF . . 285 
 
 Vlll 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 " ' Give me my sketch,' he cried " . . . . Frontispiece 
 *< Instinctively Jameson raised his hat " . . . Page 44 
 
 " Ludwiga remained at the small piano, which 
 
 made a quaint framework for her" ... 226 
 
 " * You see Suada, the real Suada, is my wife,' 
 
 he said" "261 
 
 " The girl lay on her bed, and the man sat with 
 
 his hand on her pillow, as if afraid to stir" " 292 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 i 
 
 ABOUT A FACE 
 
 "TT7 HY did Julian refuse the offer?" 
 
 ^y^y Jameson asked the Art Editor. 
 
 New forces entered Lewis Jame- 
 son's life after this question. He had lived a 
 great many years, but it had not been conscious 
 living. He had been a young man who worked 
 for his daily bread and incidentally for leadership. 
 
 Both occupations had kept him pretty busy 
 until this December afternoon. Then, as Alfons 
 Strong might have put it, the " i " in existence 
 became dotted ; but Alfons Strong was an idler 
 and his speeches were not necessarily golden ones 
 of wisdom. 
 
 "Why did Julian refuse the offer?" Jameson 
 again asked the Art Editor. 
 
 The Art Editor's reply was characteristic al- 
 though enigmatical. 
 
 " Woman is the root of all evil," he remarked, 
 crossing one leg over the other and looking up. 
 
 Jameson stood just where the light fell on his 
 eyes. They had become quiet eyes from the 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 way in which he accepted life on this planet. 
 First he had discovered that bread was a neces- 
 sity, as I have told you, and then that leadership 
 was a luxury ; so every day had meant food in a 
 measure, and he was yet far from satisfied. 
 
 He was a tall man, with a quiet expression, a 
 rather ordinary complexion, and copper-colored 
 hair, which last was the only warm effect about 
 him. 
 
 " Oh, if you want to be evasive or cynical about 
 it," he said to the Art Editor now, " it is a fine 
 opportunity to air your wits, I suppose, but I am 
 not in a particularly appreciative humor." 
 
 " I am neither cynical nor evasive," the Art 
 Editor responded. "In fact, I am worldly wise 
 at a great risk, considering my condition. It is 
 never safe for a married man to air his wits in 
 this way, however great the glory. The only 
 loophole I could find, if detected by my family, 
 would be that the remark is solely personal to 
 Julian." 
 
 " I don't believe Julian is local in his worship 
 of the fair sex," Jameson replied, not taking the 
 view very seriously, but allowing a certain amount 
 of truth to enter these superficial opinions. cc He 
 falls in love so regularly that I have ceased to 
 worry very much about it. It is some girl in 
 the street-car now, this evening a soprano at the 
 opera, and the next morning some pretty maiden 
 
 2 
 
About a Face 
 
 who has chanced under a becoming light during 
 morning worship. Women are not individuals 
 with Julian so much as a part of his education, 
 and curls and lines and ankles are the same here 
 as in Liverpool or Vermont.*' 
 
 The Art Editor sat still, as if he were thinking 
 it over. 
 
 " There would be a discussion in that," said 
 Jameson, " if one were not too hungry. I am 
 sorry it is so near dinner-time. I have a theory 
 that every artist needs two women in his life, and 
 that he will marry one of them. First, there is the 
 woman who creates the physical ideal for him, and 
 then the woman who puts a spirit into his fancy. 
 The real artist needs both, but half of us stop at 
 some marble Venus, and that is the end of us." 
 
 Jameson hesitated. Then he continued, speak- 
 ing naturally, but the brief pause had lent some 
 personal interest to his next statement. He was 
 not aware of this, but the Art Editor was inter- 
 ested in it, as it gave a glimpse into the inner life 
 of this fellow-worker. No one knew anything 
 about Jameson except that he worked in a life 
 and death way, and had no family. 
 
 " Julian has passed the stage of the physical 
 woman, I think," said Jameson. " He used to 
 draw dogs and cats and babies in an utterly 
 impartial way until he met a splendid human 
 animal one night, and he has never done any- 
 
 3 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 thing but women since then. She was a curse 
 to every young fellow she came across, and I 
 think he would have been in love with her also 
 in the same mad way the rest of us were." 
 
 " How did you prevent it?" the Art Editor 
 asked. 
 
 Jameson smiled, a funny, slow little smile, 
 whose mirth involved himself, and himself only. 
 It is not particularly wholesome to confine all 
 our merriment to ourselves. 
 
 " I rescued Julian," he replied. " She was 
 like a burning brand. There was n't anything 
 to do but but snatch her before she ruined 
 him, as she had not hesitated to ruin others. 
 He was very young. He sulked for three days, 
 would n't eat or sleep, and otherwise refused to 
 be comforted. Then he got back to beefsteaks 
 and beds again, and has done better work on 
 the paper ever since." 
 
 " What became of the brand ? " asked the 
 Editor, looking at him. 
 
 Jameson's color did not vary. He looked the 
 man squarely in the face, and said in his own 
 peculiar fashion : 
 
 " Actually to snatch a brand and crush its 
 flame and prevent any further evil from it, is 
 one thing ; but there is a psychological responsi- 
 bility in the metaphor that you are too hungry 
 to hear developed." 
 
About a Face 
 
 He smiled again, then he said in plain, direct, 
 rather lonely English, 
 
 u The woman has remained in my own life 
 
 ever since." 
 
 The Art Editor turned the subject tactfully. 
 
 " If all this is true, then I think Julian has met 
 his Waterloo at last," he said. 
 
 " What do you mean ? " asked Jameson. 
 
 " That he has met the other woman," the Art 
 Editor replied. 
 
 " Impossible ! " Jameson cried, when he under- 
 stood. This meant a great deal to him, and he 
 ended by springing to his feet. There were two 
 things that he did not like about it, the woman, 
 and his ignorance of her. 
 
 The facts were too much for him, however. His 
 own mental processes lent force to them, and he 
 began to see the truth. Even then he did not 
 accept it willingly. He crossed over and stood 
 by the office window, tall, erect, but trembling. 
 
 The Art Editor watched him with amusement. 
 He experienced a keen enjoyment in this little 
 tempest, for affairs had been dull of late, in the 
 office. Jameson's eyes were dimmed with anger. 
 He looked out, but was unable to discern any- 
 thing. The building in which they were standing 
 was a very high one, and all at once some smoke 
 from a roof beneath them curled across his range 
 of vision. It made a dark line against the gray 
 
 5 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 horizon, and somehow helped to concentrate his 
 anger, so his irritation worked into speech again. 
 
 " It is impossible, preposterous ! " 
 
 " There is undoubtedly a woman in it," the 
 Art Editor repeated. He knew Jameson very 
 well, and could afford to take liberties with him, 
 could afford to make him angry, yet could stand 
 up against the anger. He felt that he had noth- 
 ing to fear from its consequences. Again, for 
 his part, he did not see the tragical side of this 
 love affair, even after Jameson's confession. He 
 was very happily married himself, and had a 
 rather domestic opinion of his wife and the sex 
 generally. To him, women were only orna- 
 ments along the pathway of life, not in it at 
 all. 
 
 " What woman ? " Jameson asked, all at once. 
 
 The Art Editor continued as if he enjoyed it. 
 " I am not a fortune-teller," he replied. " You '11 
 have to go to some one else for the information. 
 To tell the truth, I think you ought to be in a 
 fair way to know that yourself. I merely know 
 what I know. We gather facts from various 
 sources, many from experience, but more from 
 our intuitions. Since you brought Julian to me, 
 several years ago, I Ve done the best I could for 
 him, thrown everything his way. Some of the 
 other fellows think I Ve thrown too much, but 
 that is my own affair. At first, it was because 
 
 6 
 
About a Face 
 
 of you, then because of the boy himself, for I 
 like him. In all the time I have known him, he 
 has been angry with me but once, and then it 
 was the kind of anger which a girl and a kiss 
 might have squared at once ; but I happened to 
 be neither girl nor kiss, so had to wait for my 
 forgiveness until this fair Unknown pressed the 
 proper button. It was restoring harmony vicari- 
 ously, as it were." 
 
 " Great Heavens, man," blurted Jameson, " I Ve 
 been living with him night and day ! " 
 
 " Nevertheless," the Art Editor responded, 
 with the same oracular enjoyment (intensified 
 indeed by his very natural pleasure in having 
 announced the discovery), " what I say is true ; 
 there is a woman in it." 
 
 He suddenly fell into silent laughter, then 
 seeing that Jameson had not observed it, could 
 not resist throwing this at the young fellow, and 
 enjoying his puzzled face : 
 
 " I am in dead earnest, Jameson ; I can almost 
 describe her, if you wish. She is young, she has 
 neither fair hair nor blue eyes, I should fancy. 
 She is a contradiction. She has a patient mouth 
 and a cynical smile ; her virtues are endless. By 
 turns she is proud, grave, flirtatious, with an 
 under stratum always of goodness. She runs 
 the feminine gamut from c Mary the First ' to 
 f Priscilla the Puritan Maiden,' with a touch of 
 
 7 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 royalty occasionally thrown in like a decorative 
 color. At times, she is a realization of all the 
 Madonnas. There is one thing I have seen, 
 however, and this might impart some feeble ray 
 of hope to you ; I do not think that she is in 
 love with Julian so far, and I fancy he is pretty 
 far gone." 
 
 " You have seen her then ? " Jameson asked, 
 ignoring the folly. 
 
 " No, merely her picture," the Art Editor 
 returned, with mock resignation. "In fact, every 
 Sunday issue which- we have gotten out lately that 
 has had any of Julian's work in it, has had some 
 phase of her too. It has been a sort of puzzle, 
 and he has not even asked us to pay for it. The 
 Sunday readers must be quite familiar with her, 
 and be able to pick her out in a crowd, by now." 
 He gave another sly glance at the quiet figure, 
 saw that he had gone far enough with his non- 
 sense, and retreated. 
 
 " Don't be too desperately intense, old fellow. 
 I can understand how you feel in a measure, but 
 these things are inevitable with young blood. 
 Julian had a fine career before him, only yester- 
 day, and there is no reason why love, or even 
 marriage, should destroy this as utterly as you 
 think. Give him a little time. Let him have 
 the girl if he wants her, and in a year or two, 
 most likely, the surface will be as clear and 
 
 8 
 
About a Face 
 
 unruffled as if Fate had not thrown her little 
 stone." 
 
 Jameson made a gesture of dissent, almost as 
 if he were suffering. " Don't. Julian is not that 
 kind," he said; "besides this, I took him from 
 his mother." 
 
 " We all leave our mothers, sooner or later," 
 the Art Editor put in. 
 
 " He was all she had," answered Jameson. He 
 put a loneliness in it that the other man did not 
 think him capable of feeling. He knew Jameson 
 was in some measure Julian's sponsor, but he did 
 not know how far the responsibility went, nor just 
 what head it came under, yet just at that moment 
 he had an idea that it was a romance, and remotely 
 concerned Mrs. Joy, Julian's mother, whom he 
 understood to be a widow. He thought that 
 maybe Jameson's interest in the boy was due 
 to his tender attachment for the mother. He 
 had never seen Mrs. Joy, or the whole affair 
 would have had a more laughable aspect than 
 ever to him. She was fifty or thereabouts, and 
 would have been most at ease holding telephonic 
 communication with her son's friend. 
 
 " Well, any way, my dear fellow, you have done 
 all you could do. You secured for him this splen- 
 did opening. Whatever feeling you may have 
 about this, She " (he was so impressed with the 
 idea of a romance that he thought of the word 
 
 9 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 with a capital S) " She cannot but feel im- 
 mensely grateful. There's not another fellow 
 on the paper but would jump at such an opening 
 as the c Satire' offers. It's simply splendid." 
 
 " I have been six years trying to get it for him," 
 Jameson broke in. There was a heart-sickness 
 in the utterance. He had striven to do Julian a 
 kindness, and it had not been appreciated. Lack 
 of appreciation throws us, rather violently, back on 
 ourselves. 
 
 " I should not look at it in that light," urged the 
 Editor, in his kindliest tones. " He did not give 
 me any reason for declining, so that is why I think 
 it is a woman. His refusal is ingratitude to you, 
 perhaps, but of a forgivable nature. After a fel- 
 low 's been married a year or two the world be- 
 comes the same place to him ; but say what we 
 will, there is a time in our earlier history when 
 everything is desperately different to lovers. 
 That see is just what is the matter with 
 Julian, I fancy, he's in love. Some ordinary 
 little mortal has pulled down the marble goddess 
 and mounted insolently to her place. He'll get 
 over it in time." 
 
 " What were his exact words in refusing ? " 
 asked Jameson, after a little. 
 
 The Art Editor smiled again. He was in a 
 gay, good humour that evening, and the whole 
 Affair afforded him a good deal of amusement, 
 
 JQ 
 
About a Face 
 
 Indeed, he had thought it merely amusing, until 
 Jameson's reception of his news added to it some- 
 thing rather dramatic ; but even yet, he had not 
 grasped the necessity for such seriousness on the 
 part of the younger man. 
 
 The whole matter summed up amounted to 
 this : A flourishing Eastern journal had asked 
 for this youth of theirs. The paper spoke for 
 itself, apart from the monetary consideration. 
 As the Art Editor had said earlier in the evening, 
 " Every one knew what the c Satire ' was." 
 There was not a man in the whole department 
 that would not jump at such an opportunity ; 
 yet this lovable young genius of theirs had 
 merely said in his vexed boyish fashion, while 
 a cloud troubled his brow for a passing moment, 
 " Why do they send out here for an artist, 
 when they must have plenty of good fellows at 
 home ? " 
 
 When Jameson heard that, he prepared to go 
 home. He did not care to entertain any bitter- 
 ness in his feeling toward the boy. He loved 
 Julian, and they had been friends for six or seven 
 years, intimate, lenient friends, and before 
 that they had been friends also, as we use the 
 word before we are wholly educated. In other 
 words they had roomed together, lounged over 
 their pipes for hours with all manner of opinions 
 curling into the smoke ; and then there had come. 
 
 ii 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 a time when they hardly seemed two people, each 
 was so used to the other's being around. 
 
 Jameson found his hat and put it on as near 
 parallel to his mood as he could. The Art Ed- 
 itor recognized the slant, but did not know how 
 to sympathize with it, so he sat looking at Jame- 
 son's hands, which were resting on his desk, and 
 were rather tense, as if he were enduring some- 
 thing. 
 
 " I have tried so hard to make something good 
 out of Julian," Jameson said. " I owed it to his 
 father to do it, but it has been somewhat of a 
 pull at times. It has interrupted my own career, 
 it has forced me into the society of uncongenial 
 people ; yet it has been my development as well 
 as his. We have lately moved into a sort of 
 Latin Quarter to please him. The idea was mine, 
 and sprang from a desire to escape social invasion, 
 but the location was his. I do not know why he 
 chose it, nor did I think to ask, as it seemed a 
 self-evident fact that it was to study types. I 
 suppose he has been such a fool as to lose the 
 marble goddess there." 
 
 This seemed final, so the Art Editor did not 
 respond. 
 
 12 
 
II 
 
 A MIDDLEMAN OF ART 
 
 JAMESON went slowly down the steps of 
 the Journal building. It was an old place 
 with discolored plaster and narrow halls, but 
 he had not observed the conditions before, as, 
 prior to this, they had not seemed to him un- 
 suitable accompaniments of fame. Art had been 
 his goddess, and the environment of his worship 
 had become exalted. It had seemed like a temple 
 until to-day. 
 
 Religion, God-worship, is the only thought 
 built on a strong spiritual foundation. If God 
 did not exist, as old Voltaire said, we would have 
 to invent him, because the need for what God 
 represents to us is so great ; but there is no 
 graven image that can attain the security, the 
 strength held by this divine fancy. There is 
 nothing in life or on earth powerful enough to 
 remain on a clay pedestal. We, ourselves, grow 
 taller with time, more equal to judge the false 
 god we have created, or time and circumstances 
 jog it. Then it topples to our feet. 
 
 Jameson had worshipped art, but the altar 
 had been desecrated; and this afternoon he had 
 
 13 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 looked down at the broken pieces of his idol. 
 " Some ordinary little mortal had torn down the 
 marble goddess and had mounted insolently to 
 her place." 
 
 After a lifetime of concentration, of absorption, 
 of illusion in one false line of thinking, it hurts 
 to awaken. For the first time a fear came to 
 Jameson, a realization of every one's impotence in 
 the hands of God, of Fate. Something had of a 
 sudden happened, which he could not under- 
 stand, over which he had no control. Something 
 had interrupted human motive, and personal suc- 
 cess seemed less positive, less possible in that 
 moment than ever before. 
 
 When he reached the street, objects separated 
 themselves in an unusual way. Before this 
 evening, he had walked, but without observing 
 surroundings, shops, people, children, streets. 
 He had been a part of thought more than he had 
 been a panting, struggling factor of this world. 
 It had been as if he were being swept onward, 
 ever onward, along with great forces toward a 
 goal. 
 
 All at once the great stream seemed to be 
 rushing on without him, and he lay wondering 
 on the shore ; and not only wondering, but feeling 
 rather insignificant also. 
 
 His point of view had become more common- 
 place. He was more a resident of San Francisco 
 
A Middleman of Art 
 
 than he had been for years, because ever since he 
 was a boy at college, he had lived more or less in 
 the clouds, thinking of what he was to become, 
 not realizing what he was at the moment. 
 
 The streets became streets to him, as he walked. 
 Formerly, they had been merely a roadway be- 
 tween his office and his bedroom, with Julian's 
 growing body to suggest that both of them eat 
 three meals a day, just to keep things going. 
 
 Having had Julian for a companion meant eat- 
 ing three meals a day and expressing a great 
 many thoughts that otherwise would have re- 
 mained unspoken ; and finding later that Julian 
 had absorbed the food together with Jameson's 
 thoughts, and was on the whole a very successful 
 person. 
 
 Jameson strode on, thinking of all this. It is 
 not a bad time to introduce him more fully to 
 you. He was harmonious to the half-lights of 
 the closing day. 
 
 It was winter in San Francisco, not the pic- 
 turesque winter of the North or South, but a mild 
 and intermediate season, as if the great zones had 
 touched hands, and earth were glad of the friendly 
 feeling. There is no breath from a cold Atlantic 
 to chill the ardor of these thoughts. Our great 
 tranquil ocean lies in majesty to the west. It can 
 fume and fret, but it does so in reason. It does, 
 not lash and storm in vain. 
 
 15 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 We, on the San Francisco shores, grow a bit 
 negligent of seasons. It is a compensation for 
 many ills to awaken some December morning 
 and feel in the air the warmth of summer and see 
 in the foliage the glad green of spring. Children 
 play in the parks, and the sun shines, and even 
 the older folks grow merry. It is good to feel 
 the sunshine when it is not on the programme, and 
 San Francisco provides many such days in the 
 midst of the rainy season. This was a fair sample 
 of such weather. It had been such a day as 
 comes during Indian Summer in other countries. 
 The air had been very kindly, and had breathed 
 nothing but gentleness toward man and vegeta- 
 tion. Toward February people would be out 
 searching for wild flowers on the suburban hills. 
 
 Jameson was not a nature-lover all at once. 
 He took no deep pleasures in his blessings, in 
 the absence of sleet and snow and umbrellas, and 
 even more homely paraphernalia of winter. He 
 merely noted that the electric lamps had been 
 lighted early and showed white against the com- 
 ing twilight. Once when he saw a yellow lamp 
 of gas, it produced a physical aversion. He was 
 in a sensitive mood just then, and needed whites 
 and grays and sober half-tones, but he did not 
 hesitate to court the new and less agreeable sen- 
 sations. They were more educating from another 
 point, along other lines, to him. 
 
 16 
 
A Middleman of Art 
 
 It affected him strangely that he of all other 
 people in the world knew least of this woman 
 whom Julian had chosen to be the leading influ- 
 ence in his life. It hurt his love for the young 
 fellow that he who had wined, dined, and roomed 
 with Julian had a lesser advantage than the most 
 casual reader of their Sunday magazine. 
 
 He walked on and left the city far behind him. 
 There was a time in his journey when shops 
 seemed to end and residences begin. The fact 
 was unnoted usually, but vaguely aided his de- 
 velopment on this occasion. His new frame of 
 mind became less confused. First an outline had 
 merged into long rows of stores, and after a while 
 these became interspersed with dingy-fronted 
 homes that had lost caste and become lodging- 
 houses. They had " To let " signs hung out and 
 were uninviting. A great many people came 
 and went along the sidewalks like black swarms, 
 and now and then this man of ours tried to pick 
 out an individual from amongst them ; but he 
 could not do so satisfactorily, so he gave the 
 thought up after a second and put all his mind 
 on walking. It had been a sort of undefined 
 searching for Julian's ideal. 
 
 There are many districts in San Francisco, 
 each widely different as to atmosphere, however 
 close as to locality. From the centre of the 
 town the suburbs reach out like a great variously 
 
 17 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 colored mesh-work, each district with its own 
 kind of thread ; and from the heart of the town 
 lead tiny cords of characteristic hue to guide one 
 to his destination. 
 
 Indeed, we have but to follow some chattering 
 Celestials and off there is Chinatown itself, with 
 its narrow streets, its sidewalk stalls, its high 
 tenements, and its own peculiar atmosphere ; while 
 this car, with its odor of garlic, speaks of the 
 Spanish and Latin quarters, which lie well to- 
 gether over toward the north strip of bay. 
 
 Imperceptible caste lines divide us, whether we 
 are denizens of the water-front, or shiftless toilers 
 " South of Market," or respectable-looking me- 
 chanics heading toward their instalment homes in 
 the Mission. 
 
 We are not thoroughly American yet. The 
 beautiful idea prevails, and men fight for it, but 
 we are not American in the true sense of the 
 word. We are prone to draw fine lines of dis- 
 crimination in times of peace, and say equality is 
 a very fine thing at political meetings, the while we 
 turn a noiseless lock in our pretty gates. We are 
 a great community, but we are not American yet. 
 
 Jameson's cord led out to the Spanish Quarter. 
 Some old Senoras, their heads covered with shawls, 
 their clothes redolent with the smell of garlic, 
 from time to time shambled across his pathway. 
 They were heavy old women, in worn flapping 
 
 18 
 
A Middleman of Art. 
 
 slippers and uncorseted figures. Jameson did 
 not attempt to analyze his impression. He loved 
 beautiful women, aesthetic things, and once the 
 opposite impression filled him with a resistance 
 almost sickening. These caricatures of their own 
 beginning were contradictions of the beautiful 
 harmony of life. 
 
 " It is time to be old." 
 
 The old Senoras had never heard of Mr. Emer- 
 son, but the God of Bounds must have called 
 to them, and they had butchered his message. 
 With them, this saying, " It is time to be old," to 
 throw down the game like some startled player, 
 and cast one's self on the mercies of the Virgin, 
 had come twenty years or so before it should. 
 The Latin people accomplish such physical trans- 
 lation. There comes a time when they eat and 
 sleep without bodily need of food and slumber, 
 and they unloose their moral responsibilities upon 
 the Virgin. 
 
 Jameson strode on, awakening at last. Once 
 some words slipped from him, and as the quiet 
 voice associated with the steel-like eyes and the 
 copper-colored hair all attained unexpected har- 
 mony. These were the words that broke forth 
 on the heavy-laden air : " I must have been mad." 
 
 He had taken Julian away from his mother, he 
 reflected as he went along: to dedicate him to 
 that most unsatiable of lovers, to the real Queen 
 
 19 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 of Man, the one rightful goddess, to her who sat 
 on the fair throne of Ambition wearing the laurel- 
 wreath of Fame; but he had not taken him away 
 that another woman might have him. There 
 was a jealousy of the affections in that thought, as 
 well as a dumb rebellion against this sudden 
 move from Nature ; for he was fond of Julian, he 
 had grown used to Julian's unconcealed boy wor- 
 ship of him. This worship had made Jameson 
 gentler, and he needed that form of influence, for 
 his own life had developed violently. There had 
 been the innocence of childhood, out of which he 
 emerged with the knowledge that his best friend 
 lay wrapped in the eternal silence: that he had no 
 mother. Then he had gone to a boarding-school, 
 and mourning her in some vague fashion, he had 
 become a boy, with the outward and visible signs 
 of boyhood, but underneath these were also some 
 high ideals. He had no material worries. Did 
 he need a dollar, or even five of them, his need 
 was invariably satisfied. He was too young to 
 stop and question " from whence." Thus the 
 beauty of his thoughts, the rare isolation of a 
 few tender, exalted memories, became corrupted. 
 Unconsciously, he grew proud, arrogant, worldly. 
 Circumstances did their worst for the defenceless 
 and unguided spirit of good, but he was only a 
 child, working out for himself those great prob- 
 lems which men often hesitate to attempt. 
 
 20 
 
A Middleman of Art 
 
 He cherished his high ideals pathetically, the 
 while he committed those boyish mistakes that 
 irreverent companionship demanded of him. For 
 instance, one day he quarrelled with one of the 
 instructors. The man was young himself, and 
 hot-headed, and he had galled the proud will of 
 the boy. " I won't obey you," young Jameson 
 had cried. " You are only a hired coach of old 
 Evans's, and the Jamesons are not paying for 
 insolence this year." 
 
 The young fellow had flushed a dull red, and 
 answered : " No, they are being paid for it. All 
 America is waiting, each man with his penny, for 
 the privilege of blacking your boots, my boy. 
 Hired coaches are not that clever." 
 
 Poor Jameson. He went into the master's 
 study and came out a different boy. He had suf- 
 fered, vital, strangling, transforming suffering. 
 After that all the strength of his lonely boyhood 
 grew into a bitter passion for some success which 
 would compensate for the pain and humiliation of 
 that day. In plainer language, he had no founda- 
 tion for anything. His father had never paid for 
 his schooling since the first one of these lonely 
 years. He was not as good as a hired coach, he 
 was merely a charity pupil. It was miserable. 
 His arrogance, his brilliant promise, his generous 
 allowance, the very meals he ate, were all due to 
 the benevolence of an old man named Joy, a 
 
 21 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 friend of his father, whom Jameson looked down 
 upon because this old man had spilled his soup 
 during their first meeting. It was miserable. 
 
 In subsequent researches into the family his- 
 tory, he made similar discoveries. He found his 
 father's exquisite manner, his inimitable gentle- 
 manliness, even his faultless Prince Albert and 
 many epicurean tastes, were due, each and all, to 
 the soup-spilling philanthropist also. In other 
 words, this elegant gentleman had spent his whole 
 life, after his dissipation of a genteel private for- 
 tune, " climbing other people's stairs." 
 
 The two great elements of Jameson's character 
 had been cruelly shattered. He was proud, and 
 he had believed in good. Had it been the pride 
 alone, it might not have been such a big loss to 
 him. Aided by the belief in good, there would 
 have been a conflict, some pain, and a certain 
 victory. But the good had also received a blow. 
 He stood in the darkness of his disillusions, and 
 it was impossible to prophesy in just what man- 
 ner or in just what spirit he was to emerge. At 
 first there seemed to be but one escape from the 
 taunts and lashings of his discoveries. He would 
 leave the school, but on second thoughts it ap- 
 peared to him cowardice to fly from it all. That 
 night he wrote old Joy about it, and the next 
 month sent his parent the first remittance to 
 which he had a rightful claim. 
 
 22 
 
A Middleman of Art 
 
 He had become an under-teacher himself. It 
 was a very small remittance, over which old Joy 
 said, "Tush," and with which Jameson, senior, 
 had dined daintily, by way of a change, at the 
 club. The younger Jameson had never been 
 able to tear his father away from the luxury of 
 these environments. Having once sold his in- 
 dependence, the old gentleman did not indulge 
 in any rash remorses. He believed in compen- 
 sation, he said ; a man must sacrifice principle or 
 pleasure. It was insolent to expect both. 
 
 He died with the many consolations for his 
 voyage, and surrounded by all that the affluence 
 of his kind friends could give him ; a trained 
 nurse, a fashionable physician, and a frilled night- 
 shirt; then old Joy had said to the tall, silent 
 young fellow standing there : " Give up the 
 school. You are not cut out for a master. 
 Come here, and we will look around for some- 
 thing by and by. This boy of mine swears by 
 you, as it is." Jameson winced. This seemed 
 to mean doing nothing also, a condition which he 
 could not accept ; but he left the school for all 
 that, and allowed old Joy to find him a place on 
 his paper. He liked the field, and he was aware 
 of his adaptability to it. It was a growing jour- 
 nal, and Jameson carried into his work a con- 
 sciousness of his own inherent gentlemanliness. 
 He knew old Joy had a great deal of money 
 
 23 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 invested in the enterprise, but not much gentle- 
 manliness as the world may judge it. So Jame- 
 son put his in as a form of stock for his old 
 friend, in return for that kind old man's mate- 
 rial benefactions. His great debt to this old 
 stockholder was never forgotten, whatever mag- 
 nitude his own individual interest attained in 
 time. 
 
 It was solitary, rather pathetic of him, but a 
 good quality for us to remember about him, as 
 every one is not so grateful. 
 
 Then he commenced his real career. He was 
 a tall, awkward young fellow, who believed in 
 compensation. He did not believe in much else, 
 and he did not care to be like his father ; but it 
 was ironical that his rarest spiritual consolation 
 was a legacy from that despised and miscarried 
 life. 
 
 He worked for money just at first, because that 
 was all that labor represented to him. The money 
 had been an inherited standard also, so he was 
 not to blame. Then, after a month or so, he was 
 working still for money, but working well. The 
 mere effort had provided its own stimulus. He 
 did not realize this at first. He thought that this 
 was all life had to offer, and he thought he was 
 satisfied because old Joy was not ashamed of 
 him. 
 
 With the dull passiveness of a brute that may 
 24 
 
A Middleman of Art 
 
 be felled, he learned a strange, brute-like patience ; 
 and then he was to be spared, and not only spared, 
 but selected for higher labor. 
 
 He received a complimentary advancement. 
 There was no error in his analysis of it. It was 
 to himself, to the self he had believed to be 
 buried, but that, after a struggle, had been resur- 
 rected. There could be no denial. He was glad, 
 in a throbbing, triumphant manner; then life 
 went on as usual. 
 
 He still labored toward the goal, but the 
 motive for success had another incentive. He 
 strove for leadership. 
 
 From time to time good news of him reached 
 the ears of old Joy, telling that he had admirable 
 qualities for the profession, a superiority to any 
 hair-splitting or wearying cases of casuistry ; that 
 he was indefatigable in his work, and had a gener- 
 ous share of that natural polish which proves the 
 most impenetrable cover to any necessary finesse. 
 " He would have a future," 't was said ; so when 
 old Joy fell ill, he sent for this son of his old- 
 time friend. 
 
 Jameson went at once. He went, prepared to 
 see the dying benefactor of his family, the man 
 who had saved respectability for them, and all he 
 saw was a common, kind-faced old fellow propped 
 up on many pillows and attired in a dressing-gown 
 of various colors. It was a terrible dressing- 
 
 25 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 gown. It jarred upon Jameson's sensitive nature. 
 It destroyed the sentimentality of his humor, and 
 he despised himself, but he was unable to regain 
 the grief, so he had to sit-complaisantly through 
 this interview. 
 
 " I am leaving that lad of mine, young and 
 very ignorant, and mothers do not, cannot know 
 what to do. Will you have an eye on him ? 
 See that he learns all that will benefit him. I 
 have never believed we learn from good alone. 
 Point out the pitfalls to him, but do not cover 
 them over, as too many walk in through igno- 
 rance of the dangers. Will you guide him, advise 
 him ? Ah, I knew you would. God bless you, 
 boy." 
 
 Jameson accepted the trust as it was offered. 
 After the good old man had been laid away, he 
 carried the trust from that new-made grave, feel- 
 ing the responsibility with a tenderness akin to 
 that of parenthood. 
 
 26 
 
Ill 
 
 JULIAN 
 
 THAT was the way in which Jameson had 
 spent his life during his earlier manhood. 
 Meanwhile, nurtured in a luxurious 
 home, reared by an indulgent mother, his heart 
 and mind slumbering springs of romance, the boy 
 Julian approached his inheritance. His schooling 
 finished, he sought his vocation. On every side 
 was ideality. Flowers bloomed, the birds sang ; 
 trees and hazy clouds and mountains, the sea, 
 with its never-ending beauty, all led him. 
 
 Presently he chose art. It was his desire not 
 to be material like his father, and I doubt if he 
 could have succeeded but for his money, which 
 lay back of his ambition, bracingly. He devel- 
 oped just enough talent to interest his relations. 
 All prophesied a future for him. Jameson re- 
 sponded to the proper moment, when it arrived, 
 but he had not reflected upon the question 
 according to the boy's temperament. He did 
 not ask himself whether Julian could stand the 
 life of the city as he himself had done. Life was 
 bounded by his own egotistic views, and he passed 
 
 27 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 out from the Joy household, taking Julian with 
 him, into his own bustling life. 
 
 Later he might have hesitated, but just at that 
 time he combated the mother's love in a purely 
 commercial manner. He felt that it was his duty 
 to old Joy, and he was prepared to fulfil the 
 obligation ; but Mrs. Joy's point of view annoyed 
 him in a peculiar manner. His own mother had 
 died when he was too young to analyze this form 
 of affection. Mrs. Joy was not complex at all 
 in her attitude concerning Julian's career or his 
 future. She did not want him to leave her, she 
 said simply, and sat staring helplessly at Jameson. 
 She saw where Jameson had changed himself, 
 and she felt an unacknowledged alarm concerning 
 these changes. It would be terrible if Julian 
 were to come back some day to her, a fine citizen 
 of the great world, but not her companionable 
 young son ! 
 
 Jameson's voice was gentle enough in his re- 
 sponses to her, but firm throughout. He thought 
 less of all women mentally, after this, and Mrs. 
 Joy and her views seemed but echoes of the 
 eternal feminine to him. 
 
 She had said tearfully : " I love him. He is 
 my only child. He has no father." 
 
 She felt that was all that was necessary. She 
 did not think that Jameson could even have an 
 answer for it. 
 
 28 
 
Julian 
 
 Jameson repeated : " You love him. He is 
 an only child. He has no father. Does a career 
 count for nothing, dear friend ? Is art worth no 
 sacrifice ? Is not your duty to him twofold 
 under the circumstances ? " 
 
 She sat like an entrapped mouse. She did not 
 know what to say to him, so he answered himself. 
 It was a crucial moment. 
 
 " It is always so, dear lady. Art and sacrifice go 
 well together. They are synonymous, these two. 
 But success is worth any sacrifice we make for it. 
 Julian will make a success, I am sure. Let the 
 boy go to the city with me, and I '11 make both a 
 man and an artist of him. Art is worth all," he 
 ended, " separation, absence, friendship, love." 
 
 She looked around her luxurious room. She 
 tried to hold her ground against him, but it was 
 useless before the man's will. 
 
 " Cannot I go with Julian ? " she asked, after 
 several moments. She would have gone wil- 
 lingly, gladly, so she awaited Jameson's answer 
 breathlessly. 
 
 He did not keep her waiting long. " No, 
 your very presence would defeat our object. 
 Sacrifice itself propitiates the goddess. Mother- 
 liness, affection of any sort, destroys centralization 
 of our efforts. Let him feel the separation, suffer 
 and absorb the grief, the loneliness, and throw it 
 into art. I '11 help him. He '11 come back a 
 
 29 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 man, still capable of loyalty to you, without the 
 apron-string idea." 
 
 " I shall lose his personality," she cried, " the 
 close touch of some kindred human being. It is 
 all that makes life tolerable to most of us. Is 
 art worth all this?" 
 
 His voice softened. "Art is worth it all," he 
 replied once again. " I owe you and his father 
 a great obligation. Let me try to cancel it by 
 giving this help to your boy." 
 
 He saw that he had not expressed himself well, 
 according to her standpoint, so he amended : 
 " There is a time when our divinity bends and 
 proffers to some lucky mortal the laurel-wreath 
 of Fame." It was the height of eloquence, but 
 Mrs. Joy was literal, and to her it was as if he 
 had said nothing. 
 
 However, Julian went. His mother accom- 
 panied him to the station. The train came, and 
 when it stopped, Jameson, who had been looking 
 another way, saw she was holding the boy ; she 
 had both arms around his neck, was looking into 
 his face, and weeping. 
 
 He smiled. It was a pretty picture, lost to 
 Julian from the fact of his being a party to the 
 artistic effect, but it was not serious. He felt that 
 Julian would have gone to the dogs with that 
 surplus enthusiasm unlocated, so Jameson's act 
 seemed justifiable to himself. 
 
 30 
 
Julian 
 
 He was to think more of this later. The act 
 was to gain in weight, and fall on him like a 
 blow. 
 
 " Jy>" ne asked, one evening at dinner, " how 
 is your mother ? " 
 
 " I do not know/* the boy returned. 
 
 It was the entire unconsciousness of the reply 
 which staggered Jameson. He felt a tightening 
 about his heart-strings. " When did you last 
 write your mother, Julian ? " 
 
 " I do not know,'* the youth answered once 
 again ; " two or three weeks ago, I think. By 
 the way, I want your opinion on this study of a 
 woman. I am going to let the expression name 
 her, as labelling is amateurish these days." 
 
 The creature was floating on some unsubstan- 
 tial cloud-bed, full of limb, fair of hair, wanton 
 of mouth, with none too many clothes on, and a 
 splendid possibility of never having more. 
 
 " She is a woman whom the clubs have for a 
 cocktail just now ; I do not know how much 
 bad or good is in her, but she is half Russian, 
 and all good fun," Julian explained about her. 
 
 Jameson sprang to his feet with an imprecation, 
 muttered curses succeeding it, stabbed as he was 
 by a voice with the undying glory of mother- 
 hood in it : " Is art worth it all ? " 
 
 Julian had never seen him angry before. 
 "What is the matter?" he asked. 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Go ; write to your mother. Is this a new 
 ideal that you are setting above her ? " 
 
 The boy looked sullen. " It is my picture. 
 I want it back/* he cried, coloring. 
 
 " You '11 get it ; do not fret/' Jameson replied. 
 He held the flippant thing aloft, giving a last 
 look to it. It burned a mocking way into his 
 brain, smiling and smiling and smiling. Then, 
 with a sudden angry movement, he tore the hate- 
 ful thing in two, from that time working for 
 Julian's mother, as well as the boy's own worldly 
 success. 
 
IV 
 THE TERRACE 
 
 HE and the boy had become good friends 
 in time. 
 At first it was a responsibility to 
 Jameson; but the boy's gay good humor, the 
 innocence of his youth, the very error of his un- 
 pruned ideas, were oases in the man's life. He 
 came to look for the ready word of admiration 
 of himself; the glad smile of almost son-like 
 welcome that Julian was ever ready to give. 
 It was almost like having a woman around 
 one, and Jameson's heart gave way before it, 
 after a little, like hard earth yielding to the 
 plough. 
 
 In return he kept the boy close to the great 
 ideals. Some day he wanted to stand by Joy 
 senior's grave and feel that he had repaid every- 
 thing, and that their services to each other were 
 equal. " Quit yourselves like men." If he 
 failed with Julian, Jameson felt he would have 
 failed of his obligations ; and he did not care to 
 be outdone in man's honor by this silent, com- 
 mon old gentleman. 
 
 3 33 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 The years had gone by as usual, until the last 
 months of their life together. Mrs. Joy was up 
 in her country home, waiting, but not impatiently. 
 She had grown accustomed to Julian's absence 
 and to depending on his letters. 
 
 But one evening she dropped a few pathetic 
 words in her business missive to Jameson. She 
 said that " she trusted dear Julian would not 
 work too hard. Jameson must not let him do 
 it. As for herself, she could stand her part of 
 the sacrifice (Jameson stared at this and then 
 colored) so long as the dear boy just scratched 
 ever so few words in his own writing to her ! " 
 
 " Is n't that just like a woman ? " Julian re- 
 marked, smiling, when he glanced through it. 
 " Women always want the earth and then make 
 believe they are perfectly resigned at not getting 
 it. Women are the most self-evident tricks I 
 know. They are absolutely transparent. Dear 
 little mother! " 
 
 He read on with proper emphasis : 
 
 " c So long as the dear boy just scratches ever 
 so few words in his own writing to me ! ' she will 
 be satisfied. Oh yes ! and all that letter is written 
 because I have n't had time to get off my usual 
 volumes to her these evenings, and so have got- 
 ten down to souvenir postals. I thought the 
 souvenir part a fine idea, but they have failed to 
 delude her." 
 
 34 
 
The Terrace 
 
 " You have n't been killing yourself with work 
 lately." 
 
 " I tell you this much," Julian returned posi- 
 tively, " I have n't had time to write mother or 
 to shave decently for months. Some evening 
 I '11 find myself at some swagger banquet with 
 either a postal to mother in my hand or your 
 razor. It's work all day in town and then out 
 every evening, and sometimes just time enough 
 in the morning to change my clothes and imagine 
 the rest " 
 
 The " rest " appealed to his ready wit after it 
 was uttered. He looked weary, but produced 
 some of his effervescent mirth. 
 
 " That is an unpremeditated pun," he re- 
 marked, leaning against the casing of the door 
 and looking as if he enjoyed the support it 
 gave him. " I am so dead tired, my wits are 
 worn out, and I 've had to rub up any old 
 thing to say to my partners at dinner. I am 
 glad my brain has not gone out of business, 
 after all." 
 
 Jameson stared. 
 
 " We 've been perfect fools," he exclaimed, all 
 of a sudden. " We have been neglecting art and 
 devoting our best forces to a few vapid, tinsel 
 functions. I 've been worse than you, for I 'm 
 older. What good have these people whom we 
 have met done us ? None at all." 
 
 35 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 They said the same words later to each other. 
 It became a crisis in their lives. They said that 
 a man could not be popular with two or three 
 muses ; that he had to bury himself socially or 
 endure mental burial. If they, Jameson and 
 Julian, did not settle down to business, they 
 would become second-rate and stay so. They 
 meant marrying an average wife, rearing an ordi- 
 nary family, and after a while enjoying their own 
 deterioration. 
 
 A whist club or a cotillon had all the horrors 
 of the plague after this awakening of the celibates 
 to their dangers, so Jameson and Julian cut short 
 their social careers. 
 
 One day Julian came in. " Jame," he an- 
 nounced, " I 've been out hunting rooms, and 
 I Ve found a fine place for us. It 's way out of 
 our own district of town, where we won't have 
 even a shadow of social temptation. It is in a 
 sort of little court which lies through the centre 
 of a steep old hill. Tenements are just thick 
 every side of it, and in the very midst is that 
 funny little spot, like a smile, really. Some- 
 where I have read a phrase, and it haunted me as 
 I looked at this little terrace, c Yonder alleys 
 green. Yonder alleys green/ ' 
 
 He repeated it in a dreamy fashion, as if his 
 mind were afar off in this glad half-acre of 
 Arcady that he had just discovered. 
 
 36 
 
The Terrace 
 
 " There is an Irishwoman who has some lodg- 
 ings to let, Jame," he went on presently. " We 
 had better take them, had n't we ? " 
 
 Jameson just looked up from his writing. 
 
 " You know what we need, my boy," he 
 replied. 
 
 That was an end to it. They packed their 
 effects and took Mrs. O'Byrne's rooms. She 
 was a stout Irishwoman, whose very unintel- 
 ligence had been her chief charm for them. 
 Here, under her kindly wing, the friends would 
 have good dinners, sleep in peace, foster art as 
 they had anticipated. There would be no 
 more hotel parties, imitation gayety, middle-class 
 friends. 
 
 One evening, soon after their arrival, Julian had 
 come in, dreamy-eyed. It was a familiar expres- 
 sion to his friend, as Julian always allowed dreams 
 in his eyes when he felt the strength of those 
 invisible forces that are commonly called Fate. 
 
 " Jame, do you remember Antonia Vlor ? " he 
 asked. 
 
 Antonia Vlor was the firebrand already re- 
 ferred to. 
 
 " I have had no occasion to forget her," Jame- 
 son answered literally. " In fact, she does not 
 give me occasion to forget her, as we see each 
 other periodically." 
 
 Julian hesitated. 
 
 37 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Yes, that is it, if it is n't ! She does n't give 
 one occasion to forget her, someway, as other 
 acquaintances do. She never becomes past to 
 us, but keeps right on in our lives. Do you 
 remember Alfons Strong, Jameson ? " he asked 
 next. 
 
 " Oh, Great Heaven ! Is there anything about 
 Antonia that fades, as you say ? Strong is the 
 fellow who was before us, before everybody, is n't 
 he ? The discoverer of Antonia ? " 
 
 " Well, he lives in the Terrace here," Julian 
 remarked. 
 
 Neither spoke at once; then Jameson said, 
 wondering why this fact that Julian had an- 
 nounced seemed at all unpleasant : 
 
 " Well ? " 
 
 " Nothing, except it brings all of us rather 
 close," Julian returned, still dreaming. " It 
 seems to join our lots in some way, yours, 
 Strong's, and mine." 
 
 " I don't see how," Jameson uttered doggedly. 
 " I have often seen the man in town, ridden in the 
 street-cars with him, met him here or there. I 
 can't see why your and my living in this Ter- 
 race makes our relations toward Antonia Vlor's 
 first lover any different." After a second, he 
 asked, 
 
 " Did Strong come here to forget society too, 
 
 Joy ? " 
 
 38 
 
The Terrace 
 
 " No, he lives here/' Julian replied. " I think 
 he has always lived here, since those days when 
 he made a fool of himself because of her beauty, 
 ' even as you and I.' ' 
 
 " I do not know that I ever did that," Jameson 
 interrupted decisively. 
 
 " Well, we might have done it then," Julian 
 replied. 
 
 They sat a while silent. 
 
 " Jameson," Julian broke out after a while, " is 
 love only an influence, a developing influence, do 
 you think ? I remember the time when Strong 
 nearly died because Antonia threw him over 
 for some richer fellow. Now he just lives here 
 and does n't seem to remember her at all, or 
 that period of his existence. Why is it all, 
 Jameson ? " 
 
 " I am not an arbiter of human destinies," 
 Jameson answered dryly. 
 
 " Jameson, do you remember that story we 
 once heard about Strong, that he had a sister, 
 and that she was heartbroken over his affair with 
 Antonia; and that she saved him from Antonia, 
 after a while ? I remember I used to think that 
 she was a middle-aged signorina, with the sus- 
 picion of a moustache." 
 
 He sat waiting. 
 
 " Would n't you have thought that, Jameson ? " 
 he asked. 
 
 39 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " I never thought at all," said Jameson. " I 
 never thought of Strong's sister at all." 
 
 The boy did not seem to mind. He had 
 ceased dreaming, and sat smiling sweetly all to 
 himself. 
 
 That had been their introduction to the Terrace. 
 
 40 
 
THE OWNER OF THE FACE 
 
 JAMESON had never doubted the social at- 
 mosphere of the Terrace until the evening 
 after his talk with the Art Editor. He did 
 not know much about it, in fact. He had been 
 unusually busy at the office, and had hardly 
 known where he roomed. Still he had subcon- 
 scious opinions in regard to it. He knew Alfons 
 Strong was a gentleman, and that Alfons lived 
 there just as they did ; but he had not had time 
 to discover why. 
 
 Until this evening, it had appeared the kind 
 of place whose inhabitants celebrated Saturday 
 nights, and made a popular enjoyment of Sunday 
 excursions. There had not been many signs of 
 gentlefolk around, as they are judged by money 
 value. 
 
 But to-night all was changed to him. As is 
 often the case in our Western city, the high hill 
 which he was forced to mount cut the white fog 
 as it swept in from the cool ocean, and let it pass 
 either side like great shifting walls. The air was 
 moist but clear, and there was even that gentle- 
 
 41 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 ness in the moisture which so deceives one that 
 he unbuttons his top-coat, and allows some 
 coquettish cold to embrace him. 
 
 This night, everything was reversed to Jame- 
 son. Thus, when he reached the Terrace entrance 
 at last, it did not lay wrapped in its habitual silence. 
 It mocked him. It laughed out the wonderful 
 fact of life which we are so insolent to ignore, 
 the fact that life is full of invisible obstructions, 
 which lie across our pathway like jolly strings 
 upon which the children of the gods play, and 
 procure innocent enjoyment from us. 
 
 There had been a cleft that relieved the monot- 
 ony of tenements on the slope of the hill, and 
 here the Terrace was inserted. To-night, it took 
 on an optimistic air; there were two rows of 
 little houses in it facing each other, with a garden 
 between. The houses were painted white, and 
 had clean, common little curtains beautifying their 
 homely fronts. He had not studied the subject; 
 he had not known that cleanliness could beautify 
 common things, and that this was one of the com- 
 pensations of poverty. Jameson was awakening ; 
 he saw the place in a new light, he felt for the 
 first time how a mind like Julian's might deal 
 with its confessions and its alleviations. Deli- 
 cately and even tenderly the boy would appreciate 
 such redeeming points. 
 
 The garden, enclosed in its picket-fence, con- 
 42 
 
The Owner of the Face 
 
 tributed its offering to the sunset. The man 
 inhaled its sweet scents. He had not smelled 
 geraniums for years. They were like women all 
 at once, a contrast to the splendid conventional 
 creatures to whom he was so well used, with their 
 odor of hot-house violets. Some women had 
 spoiled violets for him by wearing them. He 
 smelled verbena to-night, old-time roses and 
 geraniums. 
 
 He was lost in discovery, and was barely notic- 
 ing whither he went. In this way, he all but 
 stumbled upon a woman who was silhouetted 
 against the foliage. Just for an instant or so, she 
 remained a part of his fancy. She was like a 
 personification of Good in a garden of sweetness, 
 and simplicity and beauty. Then his fancies re- 
 solved themselves into facts again ; a child had 
 fallen on the splintery planking, and the woman 
 was kneeling, trying to comfort it. It was quite 
 a little child, uncertain as to tears, so amid the 
 doubt, it had yielded a tender little palm to the 
 woman's lips. 
 
 Jameson observed the plainness of her gown, 
 the little tired stoop to her shoulders, the uncon- 
 scious, half-foreign manner. Had she been more 
 richly clad, he might have discovered even then 
 that she was not a Terrace woman, but he did not 
 do so until she raised her face. It was as nega- 
 tive at first as a colorless Madonna's, but his 
 
 43 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 glance effected a transfiguration, and the color 
 slowly mounted to the soft, sunless hair. 
 
 Jameson had long been searching for a face, 
 and this one satisfied his desire. It seemed a 
 response from the great world to him, but he did 
 not connect it with Julian's sweetheart. One could 
 not deal with this face as if any one else had a 
 claim on it. It was a strange countenance, strong 
 as a woman's yet tender as a child's, and could 
 be the result of but one union that of people 
 of different nations. All light was going out of 
 the day, but darkness was afar off, and the girl's 
 face was a pleasing element in the semi-gloom. 
 Such a face to meet in a lowly Terrace where the 
 people are supposed to go on Sunday excursions ! 
 A girl's face bereft of the youth it should have 
 had, that above all ; a girl's face with the treas- 
 ures of deep womanhood incongruously supplied 
 with a calm less constant than that of girlhood, 
 as if a lonely heart called its sunniness inward ; a 
 face with the mark of the heel of the world upon 
 it, marring the ecstasy of its smile ; and the eyes 
 instinctively Jameson raised his hat. 
 
 When he found himself inside the door of his 
 own room, he hesitated. The girl's eyes had 
 come in with him. They were haunting, won- 
 derful pleading eyes, which mirrored the clear, 
 kind spirit she called her soul. Light had all 
 but departed, he said to himself; but had light 
 
 44 
 

The Owner of the Face 
 
 gone altogether, and did all earth grow dark 
 around her, Jameson felt that those bright lamps 
 would still burn as lights in some cottage window. 
 
 He went up the steep little staircase slowly. 
 It was uncarpeted, and the sound of his feet 
 jarred upon his hearing. He went into his own 
 room first. It was a room untouched by the 
 hand of woman, or even by that of a tasteful 
 man. There was the atmosphere of cleanliness 
 which Mrs. O' Byrne imparted to it, when she 
 spread the bed and dusted the bureau, but other- 
 wise it was masculine. There was a collar-box 
 on the chiffonier, there was a sofa-cushion which 
 Mrs. Joy had given him, and as he did not 
 know where to place this, it stood on the top 
 of his table. From underneath the pretty ruffle 
 it is not surprising that the painted lady smiled 
 bewilderingly over her unfeminine predicament. 
 
 He moved here and there, did Jameson. He 
 did not think of Julian's career, nor of the girl 
 who seemed to check it, according to the Art 
 Editor. In truth, he did not think of Julian 
 at all, but of that face he himself had seen in 
 this quiet Terrace. 
 
 The eyes had been such beautiful eyes. 
 
 After a search, he found his pipe, and then 
 went into the room where Julian was dressing. 
 
 45 
 
VI 
 
 A POINT OF VIEW 
 
 WHOLLY unprepared for the knowledge 
 that his friend had acquired since their 
 last meeting, Julian did not look as 
 desperate as a man might feel after toying with 
 his own great chances. The affair did not seem 
 to be causing him any large regret, or even any 
 small misgiving. 
 
 He stood before the mirror, struggling with a 
 refractory tie, but turned at the sound of Jame- 
 son's entrance. 
 
 " Well, old man ! " he exclaimed, and went 
 on with his occupation. He was evidently in 
 harmony with existence, and looked radiantly 
 satisfied as well. 
 
 Jameson stood near the doorway, silent. He 
 was taking everything in. It was almost pain- 
 fully jarring. He absorbed the unornamental 
 surroundings, the brown paint on the cheap 
 floor, the unfeminine chairs and tables placed 
 here and there. Every uncurtained window was 
 wide open, and a smell of tobacco, which had 
 not taken advantage of the open windows, per- 
 meated the apartment affectionately. 
 
 46 
 
A Point of View 
 
 Julian was a singularly beautiful boy as he stood 
 there, in years perhaps three and twenty. He 
 was tall, pale and spiritual as to looks, beautiful 
 as the dream of a poet, but with a look so like 
 unto heaven, that as a stout Irishwoman had 
 once said of him : " It would be well if he too 
 drank whiskey, if it made one lusty like gay 
 Mr. Alfons." Jameson had known him since 
 he was a little child. For the first time in their 
 lives, the masterfulness of manhood seemed to 
 have taken the place of the youth's former sweet, 
 unsettled boyishness. This change had come as 
 swiftly as the spirit of prophecy might descend 
 on a prophet. At another time, Jameson might 
 not have noticed this, but the experience of the 
 evening enabled him to receive these new im- 
 pressions without surprise. 
 
 Again, Julian's first words were singularly rele- 
 vant to the approaching crisis, although they 
 fluttered with the boy's usual joyousness. " I 
 wish I were married," he said. 
 
 " How long have you been saying things 
 like that ? " asked Jameson, as if he had re- 
 ceived a dash of water in his face. The two 
 friends had formerly believed women to be like 
 kittens ; pretty enough as a promise, but best 
 drowned. 
 
 Julian answered literally, because, for one thing, 
 he liked to tease, and, in the second place, he 
 
 47 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 imagined that Jameson was still as ignorant of his 
 secret as he had been all along. 
 
 "Two months and three days, exactly," he 
 replied. Then he turned back to the glass and 
 smiled, because he could not help it ; the smile 
 of tentative love, still glorious and full of gla- 
 mour. Out of it a deep joy may grow, but it 
 is a beautiful fancy in the beginning, similar to 
 that state of mind when we have not yet slipped 
 from the unreality of glowing dreams. (For two 
 months and three days and several hours they 
 had been residents of the Terrace.) 
 
 Jameson watched the smile also. " Why do 
 you wish to be married ? " he asked. 
 
 " If I had a wife," the boy returned, " my 
 collar-buttons would be safe in a little silver- 
 topped box on her dressing-table, and not under 
 that couch over there, or in your linen. Then 
 when the tie act was coming on badly " (here 
 he made a sweeping gesture to accompany 
 the thought), " she would appear, and, presto ! 
 domestic equilibrium would be restored." 
 
 Jameson ceased to watch him. He went and 
 stood again at the window. " What is the deco- 
 rating for ? " he asked at last, for he thought it 
 time to repair his lame intelligence. 
 
 " I am going out to tea," Julian explained, 
 throwing him a glance. " It is a crime against 
 my body, committed in the name of Love." 
 
 48 
 
A Point of Vieiti 
 
 (This was hyperbolical, and amused him.) " I 
 feel like a knight or a crusader, or say a suit of 
 armor." He made another boyish gesture, and 
 it was as if he drew a sword from its scabbard, 
 his joyousness glistened so. 
 
 " Where are you going to tea ? " asked Jame- 
 son. 
 
 " Oh, her name is really Murphy, but here we 
 do not know people that way. They call this 
 person the Bachelor Woman, and she lives in the 
 lodging-house across the street." 
 
 " I did not know you were associating with 
 these people," Jameson exclaimed. He did not 
 betray the real state of his feelings, at once. 
 " You never told me before." 
 
 " Never told you ? " echoed Julian. " I never 
 told you before ? " It had a strange sound that 
 required forgiveness. "Why, I have talked of 
 nothing else, in the evenings, for two whole 
 months, two whole months and three days of 
 evenings," and at this addition he laughed again. 
 Nothing could destroy the joyousness of that 
 mood, just then. 
 
 " Then I was not listening to you," Jameson 
 replied. It did not relieve his position, but it 
 made amends for his sense of self-defeat. Julian 
 stared. 
 
 "You were not listening to me," he repeated, 
 as if he enjoyed the words. "You were flat 
 4 49 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 enough in the role, believe me, but you are posi- 
 tively stale and unprofitable now. You tell me 
 things that I have been railing against for weeks, 
 and tell them as if they were not merely news, 
 but a scoop. It is not my fault that you have 
 no taste, nor manners, nor even civility, Jamie ; 
 your parents were to blame. Besides, there is a 
 time in our lives when we have to talk to some 
 one, and if you had not been sitting at the table, 
 or snoring behind the evening paper, I could 
 have talked just as cheerfully to the cat." 
 
 He stood in the centre of the room before the 
 mirror, tall, handsome, self-satisfied, willing to 
 explain. His gestures were very winning. 
 
 Jameson's color changed at this. "In plain 
 every-day language," he asked, " how far have 
 you gone in this business ? All I have gleaned 
 from your conversations was that you were con- 
 verting these people into currency, into carica- 
 tures." 
 
 The boy picked out the offending word : 
 " Business," he echoed, " business ! " Oh, 
 the beautiful disdain of fair youth ! Then he 
 said, barely sneering : 
 
 "Your vocabulary is limited, my dear Jame- 
 son ; this is an affair of the heart ! " 
 
 It was gentle as May outside. There was no 
 sign of a harsher season. A thin sliver of a 
 moon had appeared, and had become more 
 
 50 
 
A Point of 
 
 powerful by degrees, as the sky grew darker. It 
 seemed responsible for a light full as pure and 
 pale as Julian's passionateness. This was beau- 
 tiful, rare, and yet masculine. 
 
 " I thought you came here for business ! " 
 exclaimed Jameson. 
 
 At this, the great Transformer of mere men 
 and women softened the pale face of the boy. 
 There was an exquisite rebuke in his manner. 
 
 " Why, I came here O Jameson, life is as 
 beautiful to me here as it could be in Arcadia ! 
 Life is full of wonders, and why I came here, that 
 is the most wonderful of all." 
 
 He hesitated, half trembling. Jameson stepped 
 forward, away from the window, with a swift, irri- 
 table motion, and, reaching upward, lit the gas. 
 The act rescued them from the sentimentalism of 
 those last words. They stood revealed in the 
 glaring light, two young men with the marks of 
 a strenuous life on their faces. 
 
 " Julian, I think you are mad," Jameson said, 
 assisted materially by the light, which seemed to 
 restore his speech. 
 
 The boy took a step backward. It would 
 have been easy for him to laugh, but he restrained 
 himself from any audible manifestation. Other- 
 wise, it was all more joyous than mere merriment. 
 " You err, but not so hopelessly this time, Jame," 
 he cried. " I am mad, but with love. And I 
 
 Si 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 did come here on business. It is to be a life 
 partnership. I am conservative, also," he con- 
 tinued ; " it is worship, too, as idyllic as Francesca 
 da Rimini could wish, yet as sound as our old 
 bachelor religion for Riesling and beefsteaks." 
 
 Then from the superiority of his new educa- 
 tion, he reached out and gave the stolid chest 
 before him a boyish thrust. " It is paganism to 
 believe so in the deism of beefsteaks, as we used 
 to, Jameson fanatical paganism." 
 
 " In nineteenth century language," Jameson 
 interrogated coldly, "you came here to study 
 types, and she is one, I suppose ? " 
 
 The boy's voice alone combated the disap- 
 proval. The note of truth in his tone grew 
 stronger, and his smile steadier ; but he continued 
 in his jesting manner, " She is not a type, old 
 man, but an angel." 
 
 The word is commonplace and bathetic, unless 
 one is in love too. Its utterance expressed all 
 the encomiums which Julian would have indulged 
 in if he might thereby have accomplished Jame- 
 son's conversion. To him, it seemed to express 
 the girl, so he said no more. We are misers, all 
 of us, in such matters. We whisper an eloquence 
 fit to be proclaimed from the housetops, into one 
 pair of pretty ears, and rejoice over the limited 
 beauty of our accomplishment. Strange indeed 
 is human ambition. 
 
 52 
 
A Point of View 
 
 The next few moments he employed finding 
 his top-coat and departing. 
 
 Jameson, left in the empty chambers, tried to 
 quarrel with his pipe. He said to himself that it 
 was a poor thing or it would have improved in 
 the time he had had it. 
 
 "She is not a type, old man, but an angel." 
 It hovered over the commonplaceness of his and 
 Julian's eight years' friendship. It seemed as 
 ludicrous one instant as it seemed sacred the 
 next. 
 
 " I wish I had asked him what she was before 
 she evolved," Jameson muttered, and then he 
 continued smoking, almost violently. 
 
 Off at his tea-party, Julian broke into smiles 
 once when he was in the very midst of tuning a 
 violin which no one owned and yet which every- 
 one played on, of occasions very badly too. 
 
 It was a very becoming instrument to the 
 young artist, especially when he merely held it; 
 but he laid it down this time, and arose from his 
 seat beside the piano, crossing to where a young 
 girl sat with her dark head against a bold blue 
 background. 
 
 " What do you suppose I was thinking ? " 
 Julian asked. 
 
 " I know a great many things about you," the 
 young girl replied, " but I cannot read all your 
 thoughts yet." 
 
 53 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " I was thinking of Jameson, my room-mate, 
 you know. He came home to-night asking all 
 sorts of questions about the Terrace people. He 
 had found out about you ! It is great fun to me. 
 He thinks that you are some ordinary little mortal 
 with blonde hair and a noticeable waist." 
 
 She sat looking up at him. She did not follow 
 his meaning as quickly at times as other girls had 
 done before her. It was as if she were not up in 
 all the idioms of his language, but this was not 
 so, as she was an American, born and reared in 
 San Francisco. The difference lay in association, 
 for she had not had many young friends, especially 
 startlingly honest young artist friends, such as this 
 one. 
 
 " What did he find out about me ? How is it 
 great fun to you ? I am an ordinary little mor- 
 tal, but why would he think all that other, 
 Julian?" 
 
 " Oh," answered Julian, " you ought to sit be- 
 fore bold backgrounds forever, and talk as if you 
 came out of silence. I could paint you and get 
 into the Louvre before I am four and twenty." 
 
 After this they both smiled, and it needed no 
 interpretation, as joy is a universal language. 
 
 54 
 
VII 
 HALF-GODS 
 
 E~FT to himself, Jameson continued think- 
 ing about Julian's love affair. Such an 
 interruption as marriage just now might 
 check Julian's mental and artistic growth forever, 
 leaving him merely a bright young man with a 
 marble goddess shattered throughout his career. 
 There would be pieces of her all along his life 
 journey ; but the pieces would be few and far 
 between, so that he would be unable to put the 
 wonderful bits together. 
 
 Such a Julian as that would be was easy for 
 Jameson to imagine. He would be a Julian with 
 the ready smile on his shaven lips, the boyish 
 word, and the easy manner. He would be ever 
 the kind friend, living " in simpleness and gentle- 
 ness and honor and clean mirth," a courtly and 
 genial gentleman ; but he would not be known as 
 a genius. Jameson believed him capable of becom- 
 ing great if he practised concentration ; but Julian 
 would never gain fame through matrimony. 
 
 He would spend all his valuable time leaning 
 over a baby's crib, or he would waste his glorious 
 
 55 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 art making cherub studies of it, or creating Ma- 
 donna figures of his baby's mother. 
 
 " He must not marry her," Jameson thought. 
 It was a hard problem for this sober-lived young 
 man, whose copper-colored hair was the most 
 lively thing about him. It was such triumphant 
 hair, as if all the spiritual fires that he had seemed 
 to quench were not to be extinguished altogether. 
 
 It was a hard problem, as I say. Jameson did 
 not know what to make of it; so he sat on and 
 smoked. He did not believe in love, so it was not 
 heartless of him to oppose the boy's happiness. 
 In fact, Jameson did not believe that happiness 
 was involved in the situation ; not at all. 
 
 He believed that men could live by themselves 
 and be very happy so doing. It was terrible of 
 Julian to become an apostate to this creed just 
 when he might have felt the real richness of celi- 
 bacy and its strength. And why was it strong ? 
 Because its great force was undivided. Jameson 
 believed in celibacy. He and Julian had often 
 said that the strength and weakness of matrimony 
 lay in some great civil law like this : that a wife 
 could not accompany her husband if he were 
 captain of a great human- freighted steamer. 
 
 It was such a positive illustration. Why could 
 she not do so ? It was the man's work, his heart 
 work perhaps, his honor; a brave, fine man, no 
 doubt, when he was a captain, responsible for any 
 
Half-Gods 
 
 number of human lives. He would die with the 
 ship if it need be, go down last ; but out of two 
 thousand women appealing to him for aid, let but 
 one be huddled amongst them who had the power 
 to reach down to him, below his eyes, and no man 
 on earth could answer for the consequences. 
 
 Bah! 
 
 So far Jameson believed all this. He was 
 sincere in his position, but it was not necessarily 
 a correct one. He had had no mother, so to 
 speak, no sister solicitous about his coming or 
 going; about the rent in his coat, or the shadow 
 in his life, or the way that he brushed his hair. 
 No woman had ever touched his hair as mothers 
 or sisters often do, fondly, proudly, sympatheti- 
 cally ; so if he did not believe in women, maybe 
 we should be lenient and say gently : f< May he 
 learn more of good women and the joy and peace 
 they are to us. He does not know." 
 
 Jameson's social life had not reflected any of 
 the depth and breadth of woman nature. His 
 knowledge of the fair sex was superficial, while 
 the women with whom he had smiled and talked 
 were only figures to him. When he entered the 
 mental room which held them, it was like a visit 
 to the pleasant parlors of an artistic modiste. 
 
 The only woman with whom he had more 
 than a passing acquaintance was a stormy-hearted 
 Bohemienne to whom he had once tendered the 
 
 57 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 price of a meal. He had tendered it as he would 
 have done to a man who was hungry, only more 
 delicately. It had seemed an ordinary act to him, 
 but it had established a strange bond between him 
 and the woman. The woman was Antonia Vlor. 
 
 This Antonia was the same brand that he had 
 plucked from Julian's young path, so she was not 
 so much a woman after all in Jameson's life, as an 
 accident. 
 
 She had not entered his life, as woman will, but 
 had occurred in it; and in that light she remained. 
 He had not sought her, so her coming had been 
 rather violent, and a thing to be remembered. 
 He did not investigate the subject, or he might 
 have found it dangerous for Antonia to " remain " 
 so long ; but he was very busy, and did not give 
 the possibility any thought. That was just like 
 Jameson, yet if Antonia continued to be his friend, 
 it made her more and more powerful to him, es- 
 pecially if she had no rivals. He never thought 
 of marrying Antonia, but he liked her off and 
 on. She was a little more strong of brain than 
 the hotel-women, and more soothing than men. 
 Yes, guided by her intuitions, Antonia was far 
 more soothing than men, who at best communi- 
 cated their sympathies by a hearty slap on his 
 shoulders. Antonia would have turned the lights 
 low, or given some such convincing proof of her 
 being at heart a woman. 
 
Half-Gods 
 
 Jameson's introduction to this strange creature 
 had been quite as interesting as its subsequent 
 development. 
 
 Antonia had been a " toast " in those days. 
 She was very beautiful, and had a way of re- 
 sponding to these overtures so gracefully, that 
 men forgave her all her offences, and laughed, 
 drank, and flirted with her, then went home not 
 any better for her company, nor leaving her any 
 better because of theirs. She was a beautiful 
 thing, like a cup of champagne, and often she 
 provoked a subtle thirst for intoxication. She 
 was not a good woman, but no man in her life 
 had ever regarded that phase of it, save to his 
 own advantage. They did not owe her a duty, 
 of course, such as they did to their sisters or 
 their wives. In fact, they never spoke of the 
 latter in the same breath with her, because she 
 had unclassed herself; and from the masculine 
 point of view one of the methods in accomplish- 
 ing this had been literally to lay her soul in 
 the hand of the devil, while they helped to close 
 the hand afterward. They said that they found 
 her after she had been a toast at club dinners, so 
 " it was none of their business what she had been 
 before." There is a masculine dealing with mor- 
 als here which is interesting. 
 
 The way in which Antonia occurred in Jame- 
 son's life was this : 
 
 59 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 One night Julian and he had chanced to meet 
 her at a Bohemian spread, which some one (who 
 did n't care) had given for his few chosen friends. 
 
 " Don't go," Jameson had said to Julian. " I 
 have to. We all have to at times. The fellow 
 is in a position to assist me." It was one of his 
 well-accepted philosophies, dry and not good, yet 
 not bitter. But for once Julian had rebelled, so 
 in that way they had gone together, and Antonia 
 had dawned on the young artist like a " mock 
 sun." The immorality of it struck Jameson 
 sharply. He was not the Jameson of to-day. 
 Life was more complex to him, honor more 
 worth while, falsity of purpose more hateful ; so 
 when he saw Julian losing his head to Antonia's 
 witcheries, and calling it all art, he had said, " I 
 am going home, and damn you," and he had 
 gone armed in his moral anger, leaving the man 
 who " was in a way to assist him " stupefied with 
 astonishment. When, a few days later, he had 
 caught the boy with a sketch of his faulty god- 
 dess, he had torn the thing in two. Only once 
 after that, when Julian had some exquisite roses, 
 he had come out of his own life with passion. 
 " Where are they going, boy ? " 
 
 " To her," fiercely. 
 
 " The same woman ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 " Then I am going to take them for you ; 
 60 
 
Half-Gods 
 
 a better messenger than you could pay for, all 
 except the cap and brass buttons." 
 
 Thus he carried to Antonia her roses. He 
 had left Julian swallowing his pride like a de- 
 tected boy; and he found Antonia beautiful, 
 dangerous, but reasonable ; for in that one act 
 she acknowledged her master, willingly. 
 
 There was no subterfuge, such as women prac- 
 tise on themselves. Women of Antonia's type 
 are the more honest when it comes to the point, 
 their honesty being of a more primitive nature. 
 She loved Jameson from the first, and his indif- 
 ference to her bodily charms increased her ad- 
 miration for him. He had nothing much to 
 risk in those days. There was no social harm 
 she could do him, so from time to time he called 
 on her. They were strange, perfunctory calls, 
 and he carried her ever a spiritual hope that she 
 might become a better woman. He was not in 
 love with her; he simply hated the thought that 
 womanhood should be smirched. Other men 
 carried her bon-bons and flowers. 
 
 At any rate, on these occasions he saw the 
 best of her God-forsaken life, and during the 
 time she was under his influence he had every 
 reason to believe that she had begun to regard 
 virtue as an accomplishment ; for, one by one the 
 lovers and the gay times became more infrequent. 
 They were both poor then, rather Bohemian, 
 
 61 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 strictly Platonic, yet with his knowledge of her 
 attempt at reformation there had come no intoxi- 
 cating sense of egotism, such as other men might 
 have felt. He was good in those days, and lived 
 well for Good's own sake. 
 
 One night he went to call on her. 
 
 " I have reason to believe that you are hungry. 
 Will you take some money from me ? " 
 
 She was hungry and she had taken it. She had 
 wondered how he would act under such circum- 
 stances. Then time went on. 
 
 Another evening he had dared say to her: 
 " Will you go to work ? I should like it if you 
 would go to work. I could find it for you, 
 some honest employment." 
 
 All the patience and sacrifice of his friendship 
 failed to save her after that. It had been too 
 sudden. 
 
 Her name became coupled with that of a rich 
 nobody. With his old sense of justice, Jameson 
 had verified his failure with her, then he had 
 ceased to call. There was a disappointment, but 
 nothing personal about the disappointment. It 
 was just general. 
 
 Until Julian had said one day, coldly, " She is 
 only trying to make you jealous," he had not 
 known that men and women stooped to such play 
 or to such trifling means, in their friendships. 
 
 All this assisted his education. 
 62 
 
Half-Gods 
 
 Then several years elapsed. One day (of 
 apoplexy, most likely) the rich nobody died. 
 She was much better off. Gradually a mad sense 
 of her possible power led her to seek Jameson 
 again. 
 
 " You look more successful," she said disap- 
 pointedly, at first. "I " 
 
 " Oh," he answered, smiling slightly, " was 
 there not much room for improvement in those 
 days ? " 
 
 " Do you still eat beefsteak-pie at generous 
 restaurants, as we used to ? I remember it was 
 beefsteak-pie the evening you asked me to go to 
 work." 
 
 He looked at her, still smiling. " Those were 
 my besetting sins, always, honesty and an 
 appetite. I was foolish." 
 
 " Will you come to see me ? " she replied to 
 this. 
 
 " I am changed," he answered. " I would not 
 do you the same good, nor am I yet so worthless 
 that I care to do past illusions any harm." 
 
 " It has been a long, long time to wait for 
 nothing," said the woman. 
 
 Then he went back to his work, but gradually 
 they drifted into the old singular friendship 
 again. 
 
 It was into this man's arid life that Ludwiga's 
 eyes had penetrated. 
 
 63 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Jameson sat on in the dark alone. Once again 
 he said, half aloud, half to himself: 
 
 " Assuredly Julian must not marry yet. I 
 wish I knew more about women. I wish I even 
 knew who this woman is that Julian is such a 
 fool over. I wish " 
 
 He got to his feet abruptly and relit the gas. 
 It came through a modest chandelier that had brass 
 figures twined about it, solemn-faced St. Josephs, 
 hugging brainless-looking lambs. There was the 
 same religious form with a good deal more color 
 in the centrepiece from which the chandelier was 
 suspended. 
 
 " 'Pon my word," Jameson said, when the light 
 illuminated the apartment, " I had forgotten all 
 about Alfons Strong ! Strong will tell me who it 
 is that Julian is so lost on. I must ask him to- 
 morrow. I have gotten ahead of the young 
 duffer after all." 
 
 He stood a bit, smiling, and then he proceeded 
 to go to work at a cluttered table. 
 
 64 
 
VIII 
 
 ABOUT THE MIRROR OF THE HEART 
 
 WHEN the light from Lewis Jameson's 
 window fell into the Terrace below 
 him, a man who had been leaning 
 against a dark post, smoking, stirred indolently. 
 He was rather bored by himself and anxious for 
 some one with whom to converse. 
 
 It was a beautiful evening also, and rather 
 early, perhaps eight or so. The man made no 
 sound which could give any sign of his presence. 
 He simply stood in the shadow, silent, indolent, 
 now making curls, now sending forth a succession 
 of graceful rings into the cool evening air, all in 
 an enjoyable manner. As he stood so well in the 
 gentle shadow, he was barely discernible or recog- 
 nizable. By the light of the lamp his goodly 
 portions were magnified until he resembled a 
 Roman god in a pagan frieze, this effect being 
 heightened by a distorted lattice railing, which 
 cast lines and inter-lines across his reproduced 
 figure. He was not aware that he had made an 
 artistic silhouette. He merely smoked, barely 
 thinking. He was a half-Florentine, who lived 
 
 5 6 5 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 next door to the friends. He was not so remark- 
 able for being a half-Florentine, as he was for 
 being a half-Florentine with a German name. It 
 was symbolic of his disposition, and afforded a 
 special delight to any one who came in contact 
 with him. Julian had said that the young man 
 dwelt with his sister, and Jameson had supposed 
 her to be stout and middle-aged, as he had heard 
 various kind stories about her. She also bore a 
 German name, which emphasized the idiosyn- 
 crasy until it demanded an explanation. 
 
 In Hawthorne's unique study of Wakefield, 
 he concludes : " Life is an immense course of 
 systems. By stepping aside for a moment, a 
 man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his 
 place forever." 
 
 There had been a time when Alfons Strong 
 had allowed himself to step aside, and this step 
 was to affect years of his existence. He now had 
 no place, and the fields on either side of the 
 straight and narrow path that he had left were 
 very wide and pleasant. He was not intense and 
 he was not over-brilliant, but his nature was 
 capable of enjoyment, and this capacity eclipsed 
 every other motive. Such a temperament often 
 is capable of much suffering, although one would 
 not think it from looking at this young man. 
 Were he a man in a strong light and not a huge 
 black silhouette merely, it would be seen that his 
 
 66 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 face expressed little suffering. It was gay, kind, 
 good-natured. There was not one feature or 
 expression of it which was evil, except its weak- 
 ness, and even that was a form of evil which was 
 pitiable. 
 
 He stood alone a short while, smoking, and 
 then smiling at the gray rings that curled into the 
 dim, sweet air. Then he spoke quite aloud, like 
 a person who was no company for himself and 
 seldom thought as you or I might do. 
 
 " I think I shall drop in on Jameson," he said. 
 
 Going in without knocking, he climbed Jame- 
 son's and Julian's staircase leisurely, until he 
 reached the upper landing. All his movements 
 were slow, graceful, un-American as we have 
 come to know the typical qualities. 
 
 Jameson was very glad to see him. 
 
 " Strong, 'pon my word," he said ; " do you 
 know, I was just thinking of you," and he remem- 
 bered that he had used the same words earlier in 
 the evening. 
 
 He got up from his seat and placed an easy- 
 chair for his guest, and after this he went over 
 and took a box of cigars off their mantel and 
 proffered it to the young man too. Some things 
 fell off the mantel when Jameson moved the box 
 of cigars. 
 
 Young Strong looked at them. 
 
 " I do not know how you get on without 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 women," he said ; " who picks those things up 
 to-morrow ? " 
 
 They both stared at the articles in question. 
 
 " Oh, Mrs. O'Byrne," Jameson replied, feeling 
 rather lonely somehow. 
 
 " I think one of my most inexcusable qualities,*' 
 Alfons returned, " is to upset things around my 
 sister. Her head looks so pretty when she is 
 picking them up." 
 
 He said it without the smallest ingredient of 
 contrition. His love for his sister did not pre- 
 vent him from making her suffer. 
 
 Jameson did not know how to commence his 
 conversation with Alfons. They were casual 
 friends. Years before, they had met off and on 
 in town, not knowing much about each other, 
 but feeling acquainted because of the length 
 of time during which they had heard of each 
 other, as well as the knowledge Jameson had 
 of Antonia's figuring in Alfons's early life. 
 
 They had become comrades of a sort lately, 
 comrades of smoke. There had been evenings 
 when Julian was away when Alfons had " dropped 
 in" on Jameson, just as he had now. Some- 
 times they had talked a* great deal on news- 
 paper topics, sometimes they had merely sat and 
 smoked, but they had never been personal with 
 each other. 
 
 They had even met night after night in the 
 68 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 quiet Terrace, and smoked their last cigar for 
 the day together, pacing slowly to and fro ; but 
 Jameson did not even know where the young 
 man lived, in what house or in what apart- 
 ment. He knew nothing at all of his daily 
 life except that he was not a great success in 
 the financial market, and that he had a sister 
 who had saved him from Antonia Vlor, after 
 Antonia had all but drained the last drop of 
 his very blood. 
 
 " I was down in the Terrace," Alfons said in 
 preface, " when I saw your light so I came 
 up." 
 
 Jameson was innately honest. He was thinking 
 of the desired information, and he did not care to 
 temporize about it. He understood finesse, and 
 practised it sometimes when it was elaborate and 
 unnecessary ; but with such an open nature as this 
 unmoored young man possessed, he employed 
 a simple medium of expression that would have 
 been winning in any one less dignified. He had 
 approached closer to Alfons, and sat on the cor- 
 ner of their cluttered table, after clearing a rather 
 too diminutive edge. 
 
 " Strong/* he commenced, the yellow gaslight 
 showing all the life-marks on his earnest face, " I 
 want to ask you something. That is why I was 
 so glad to see you, so glad you happened to drop 
 in. I am worried about Julian, and I thought 
 
 69 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 perhaps you could set me right some way, put 
 me on the right track about him." 
 
 Alfons looked carefully at his cigar. 
 
 " I am willing to do anything I can to help 
 you, Jameson," he replied, " although I must 
 confess it is a new role for me, but noblesse 
 oblige." He glanced up at that, flashing his 
 faint and almost continual smile. 
 
 "Julian has fallen in love," Jameson went on; 
 " Julian has fallen in love with some one." 
 
 He caught a gleam in his listener's fine dark 
 eyes, and continued, far more in earnest : 
 
 " It seems a simple thing to make a fuss 
 over " 
 
 " A very every-day thing," interposed Alfons, 
 dryly. He had often been in love himself when 
 he was three and twenty. It had been a certain 
 form of innocent amusement. 
 
 Jameson worked more emotion into his quiet 
 voice. 
 
 " It is not the same, Strong," he said. " Julian 
 is not the same as other fellows. He has a career, 
 you know, and just now is the very crisis of it. 
 An interruption at this time would be to undo 
 the discipline and labor of all the 'prentice years 
 when we just wanted him to amount to some- 
 thing, but were not sure of it. I have n't been 
 paying much attention to him lately. I thought 
 he was working unusually well, because yesterday 
 
 70 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 an Eastern paper offered him a splendid advance- 
 ment. It shows he had climbed from the local 
 field, and could be on the great highroad if he 
 only cared to, and now " 
 
 Jameson leaned over a little farther. 
 
 " He has allowed some ordinary little mortal 
 to spoil his chances after all. Think of it, Strong ; 
 think of what it means to to his mother, to 
 the world. He does n't seem to care what it may 
 mean to himself." 
 
 " At what part of this confession am I to play 
 mentor ? " asked Strong. 
 
 The smile was more certain now. There was 
 no curve to it; it was merely a fine, faint line on 
 his thin lips. 
 
 " I want you to find out about her for me. 
 See what kind of a woman she is, and if you 
 think the influence lasting. A great deal de- 
 pends on that. Can you think of any woman 
 in the Terrace who might be this influence, 
 Strong? It is even generally known that Julian 
 has a great deal of money coming to him some 
 day. A great many would be influenced by that, 
 besides " 
 
 He hesitated. After an almost imperceptible 
 pause, he added, " One is not even sure of her 
 being a lady." 
 
 The young man before him sat looking up. 
 His eyes never left Jameson's face now. 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 "So much depends on one's point of view," he 
 replied, "on what one calls a lady or a gentle- 
 man. It reminds me of Mrs. O' Byrne, your 
 landlady. Her husband works on the police 
 force; he is quite a celebrity, a sergeant; and 
 they have one child, for whom they are saving 
 up all sorts of money, as the poor little brat is 
 blind. Mrs. O' Byrne's ideas on ladies and gentle- 
 men are certainly original, and perhaps having 
 dwelt so long in her vicinity, we have imbibed 
 more or less of her spirit. I can remember my 
 little sister, who died, once saying to Ludwiga, 
 who is my living sister, you know, c Could our 
 mother make jam tarts crusty ? ' and when 
 Ludwiga was forced to reply in the negative, she 
 voiced her doubts on the situation by asking inno- 
 cently if mother were a real c lady ' like Mrs. 
 O' Byrne ? I think it was wonderfully expressive. 
 She was a very weak little thing, so Mrs. O'Byrne's 
 arms must have been heavenly to her, and she 
 made an apotheosis. Whenever I look at Mrs. 
 O'Byrne now, I can hear the child, and see her 
 lying against the window working out her little 
 problems. My sister let her do very much as 
 she pleased, and let her play with her thoughts, 
 if you can understand that. That is Ludwiga's 
 way. Almost the last words the little one said 
 were about my mother, containing the same 
 doubt. She wanted to know if mother ever wore 
 
 72 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 a bonnet covered with peas and a rose, and a 
 dolman that one could n't lift. 
 
 " I have never been much of a snob since 
 that," young Strong continued. " What that 
 little dying child expounded was what Socialism 
 tries so hard to teach and generally fails in doing. 
 You see it was almost like atheism to the child, 
 because she had been reared in an orthodox wor- 
 ship of our mother; but this little truth which 
 she had found out for herself was too strong, too 
 powerful to die without expression. 
 
 " You see my mother was an Italian," he went 
 on. He had never mentioned any of his family 
 or his ancestry, or his personal life before, but it 
 seemed the right time to do it, so he produced 
 the pathetic little history very naturally. It meant 
 nothing to him in a personal sense, but was to 
 convey some news or some simple lesson to 
 Jameson. 
 
 " Our mother was a Florentine lady, belonging 
 to one of the oldest Italian families. She was a 
 young girl fresh from a Roman Catholic convent 
 when my father met her. He was an American 
 physician of the old school. She loved him from 
 the first, deserting home, friends, even religion 
 for him. She was an exotic, and she did not long 
 survive, but she left an atmosphere with us, which 
 I cannot describe to you. My father was an old 
 man then. He was many years her senior, and 
 
 73 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 had been an old man when they married. He 
 loved her devotedly throughout her life, and after 
 her death reared us to honor her every word, her 
 slightest memory, as if all had been the Lord's 
 prayer." He sat quiet a second. " It is a form 
 of love, I suppose.'* Then he continued simply : 
 " When the time came for my father to die also, 
 he told us children a strange story ; that our 
 grandfather had died in Florence, leaving us his 
 money, on one condition : that we once more 
 accept the faith of our fathers. We were poor at 
 the time, our little sister was delicate, and very 
 much in need of care, but even in the face of such 
 misfortune, my father trusted us to refuse the 
 patrimony. We were in the grip of a worship 
 which filled us so entirely that there was no room 
 for an alternative. It was very beautiful, but 
 pagan. It would have been better for the girls 
 had they accepted, instead of refusing a religion 
 and a fortune, rather than impugn the motives 
 of her who was dead. My father died soon after, 
 and we were left alone in that atmosphere of sen- 
 timent, left to face the every-day life of stern 
 facts. Then little Grace died. She was the 
 second sister. It was a pitiful death at the time ; 
 but so life goes on. She had been reared with 
 the same idealities that have influenced our lives, 
 yet her scepticism of my mother's claim to being 
 a lady is one of the things that I delight to think 
 
 74 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 of; it comes to me in a dark room, at times when 
 I am alone with my conscience and a cigarette. 
 We have never left here, Ludwiga or I ; she 
 calls Mrs. O' Byrne c mother'; we have been 
 here for years and years. As for the child," he 
 concluded, as if it were a part of the story, " it is 
 compatible with our finite ideas of Heaven to 
 feel assured that God set her doubts at rest when 
 she once got her feet inside those gates." 
 
 He smiled, and got up on his light, restless feet 
 and walked up and down, while Jameson sat there, 
 on the edge of the table, looking at him. 
 
 " I suppose I understand it all," Jameson said, 
 and stopped, not knowing how to say any further. 
 The young man who had worshipped his mother's 
 life came over and halted before Jameson. He 
 had a fine classic, handsome face, with a rich, 
 tropical glow of health, and he had eyes that 
 were large and dark and very gentle. 
 
 Jameson started when he looked into them. 
 They were familiar to him, almost startlingly so. 
 They had the Southern beauty of some eyes that 
 were haunting him in a triumphant, wonderful 
 subconscious manner; but he just sat there 
 absorbing this, uncritically. He did not think 
 to connect the two pair of eyes by a family 
 resemblance. 
 
 " I had an extra glass of Burgundy for dinner. 
 It must have loosened my tongue and made me 
 
 75 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 sentimental ; and then when I came up here you 
 were ignorant about ladies and gentlemen and 
 caste and what not, so I wanted to tell you what 
 the Terrace really thinks," Alfons remarked. 
 
 He stood laughing. " Then you see," he said, 
 still with the simple manner which was so utterly 
 devoid of self-consciousness or any reason for it, 
 "you see, I thought the whole story might 
 tell everything to you, for I think Julian is in 
 love with my sister." 
 
 He lost the smile, and then he changed his 
 mind and concluded that he had been earnest 
 long enough. Besides this, he did not like ear- 
 nestness when it was too literal. The story had 
 answered Jameson's doubts very delicately, any- 
 way, so far as practical information was concerned. 
 Julian was in love with a little mortal, but not an 
 ordinary little mortal, even as Americans may 
 judge. She was in poverty, perhaps, but of such 
 noble blood that she had been able to refuse a great 
 fortune as if it were no more than a bow for her 
 quiet hair, because principle was involved in it. 
 It is a pretty offering to the great republic, Flor- 
 entine cream like that. 
 
 " I have made a mess of the whole affair," 
 Jameson exclaimed apologetically. 
 
 " Oh, no, you have n't," young Strong returned. 
 " Oh, no, you have n't not at all. I am amused 
 by it. You asked me with whom Julian might 
 
 76 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 be in love and I knew my sister must be the one, 
 must be Love's elect, for there is no other person 
 in the Terrace capable of such youthful folly. 
 We have all outgrown it, Mr. and Mrs. Mamma 
 (the O'Byrnes), ould Casey and I while Deb- 
 orah scorns the tender passion." 
 
 " Who is Deborah ? " Jameson asked. 
 
 " Not to know Deborah," Alfons returned, "is 
 to have in store for yourself an acquaintance which 
 will never lag in interest, any more than the En- 
 cyclopedia Britannica does, if one cares to read it. 
 Deborah is a school-teacher who rooms across 
 the way. Her name is Miss Deborah Murphy. 
 She is of unknown age and known opinions. She 
 judges people as if they were domestic accounts ; 
 straight little profit and loss columns. She be- 
 lieves that there is a golden rule concerning one's 
 grocery man, and that as we do unto him, so we 
 may be relied upon to do toward all creation. 
 Ludwiga has imbibed some of these principles. 
 She is positively moral and simplex in her atti- 
 tude toward our grocer ; but if there is one person 
 more moral, more simplex than my sister, it is 
 Deborah herself. She is the sort of a person who 
 probably has a pair of scales, and weighs everything 
 she buys. There is a comfort in the belief that 
 Deborah's father was a corner grocer ; for other- 
 wise, like the famous mot, she is her own ances- 
 tor. I believe if one's father has been a corner 
 
 77 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 grocer, one is most likely to remember the neces- 
 sity of the scales." 
 
 The humor delighted him, although he had 
 produced it. There hovered his continual self- 
 appreciative smile. 
 
 " Thus Deborah is not merely a resident of the 
 Terrace, but she is its most positive element. The 
 rest of us seem but as shadows beside this woman. 
 She knows, and acts, and does. There is never 
 a moment when she does not understand herself, 
 and there are few moments when one has the 
 presence of mind or the courage to resent 
 Deborah's understanding one. We call her the 
 Bachelor Woman because she is so opposed to 
 men. She has even a unique occupation, and 
 coaches dull young men whose fathers wish them 
 to go through college. In the general and ir- 
 relevant ingratitudes of life, there never has been 
 any feeling of envy for these gilded sons of 
 fortune. I cannot imagine a worse fate than for 
 a young man with his head full of foot-ball to fall 
 into Deborah's hands. She would make a sena- 
 tor of him before he knew it, and you can imag- 
 ine the incongruity of hearing the plaudits of 
 the crowd one minute, and slipping behind a 
 screen the next, to shake your fist at Deborah's 
 memory for being the cause of your ennui." 
 He ceased speaking, and drew himself up. " You 
 must n't stand aloof from us and our little pleas- 
 
 78 
 
About the Mirror of the Heart 
 
 ures in the Terrace, Jameson," he said ; " some- 
 time won't you come in and meet them all with 
 me?" 
 
 " I should like to meet your sister," Jameson 
 found himself remarking. 
 
 "Any evening, then," returned the young 
 man. 
 
 79 
 
IX 
 
 WHERE LOVE IS SENT 
 
 THE next evening Jameson met Alfons 
 in the Terrace. 
 It was a mild night, just as the other 
 had been, and the half-Florentine was again 
 smoking. Jameson was getting home late from 
 the office, and it occurred to his volatile young 
 friend that it was an excellent occasion for him to 
 fulfil his promise, so he took the older man up- 
 stairs to call on his sister. She and Miss Deborah 
 Murphy were at home, he said, serving tea in 
 little cups which made a man feel too big for his 
 body, and his body too big for a parlor, and 
 so on down Jameson went with him. Love's 
 elect, as her brother called her, lived behind the 
 door with the fine knocker, which Jameson had 
 noticed off and on. The knocker had a history. 
 
 Alfons called it a fine Roman knocker that he 
 had once bought at a curio shop to conciliate the 
 woman of his household, and had taken home to 
 her, saying : 
 
 " The fellow said that he thought you would 
 like it ; at least he said it matched those Roman 
 
 80 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 guard dogs we bought last year. He said it was 
 live hundred years old if a day. Funny marked 
 Cleveland damn the fellow, did Columbus 
 discover Cleveland five hundred years ago or 
 not?" 
 
 She had been rather young at that stage, barely 
 out of short dresses and pig-tails, and had not 
 known exactly how to accept either his gift or his 
 remarks, so she had kissed him and said very 
 sweetly, very simply and politely: 
 
 "Thank you, Fons," waiving the deeper 
 question until she had learned about it. 
 
 It was very pathetic, considered from a higher 
 plane ; but when he was wont to come home, 
 after his jolly times with his gay compan- 
 ions, sometimes moved by wine, and look into 
 her great solemn eyes, or notice the singular 
 soberness of her mouth, he did not think 
 much of the tragedy in it. She was so solemn 
 and wide-eyed that he used to make Bacchanalian 
 addresses such as that, merely to shock her, and 
 he called her " his little scapegoat of Bohemia " 
 too. He was artistic in his bestowal of the title. 
 It was such a funny, such a deeply humorous 
 name to give a colorless, deep-eyed little thing 
 with an alpaca dress on, standing like a cast of 
 Silence. 
 
 As they ascended the stairs together, Jameson 
 felt a difference between the atmosphere of his 
 6 81 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 and Julian's house and this one. There was a 
 warmth and kindliness of welcome even in the 
 humble hall, while their place seemed always bare 
 and smelled noticeably of tobacco. 
 
 This place smelled of smoke also, but it was 
 not in the same jealous and unyielding way that 
 Lady Nicotine ruled their household ; here a man 
 might have smoked after dinner, his mind at peace, 
 his feet encased in home-like slippers. 
 
 This same cleanliness and cheeriness of impres- 
 sion characterized everything as they progressed. 
 
 When they reached the head of the stairs, they 
 went into a small room off the dark hall, a room 
 though small yet brightly lighted, where a girl 
 with white supple hands was playing one of 
 Mendelssohn's "Songs without Words" on a 
 small upright piano. The girl was not making 
 labor of it, even pleasant labor, she was playing 
 well, yet without any effort, just as, according to 
 her face, she might have acted. It was not a 
 plain face, so much as one which was nearly 
 negative, and wholly neutral, and not a young 
 face. It evidently was not a new piano either, 
 for as the two men stood at the door a moment, 
 an infirm brass candlestick, which served to throw 
 light on its mellow keys, toppled over, and Julian 
 sprang to the rescue; but before he could reach 
 the piano, a girl in a terra-cotta gown had stepped 
 forward and put it to rights again. She had been 
 
 82 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 leaning near, absorbing the melody, an unnoticed 
 figure, but the ready act forced her into a livelier 
 recognition. Also, it suggested a vivid contrast 
 with the fair-haired performer, who was of that 
 class of Americans which retains the distinguishing 
 feature of its ancestry. In many peoples this is 
 never entirely obliterated, a Celtic lip, a Gallic 
 mouth, or a Southern skin, is often passed through 
 more generations than is quite welcome to the 
 descendants. 
 
 The girl who had righted the candlestick was 
 of foreign birth, and would always remain so, but 
 the musician might have passed for a German, 
 had she not lacked all that rare musical absorp- 
 tion which marks the Teutonic peoples. Then 
 her calm was of the British sort, and the sudden 
 rare smile she bent on her friend, wholly Irish ; 
 so after a little study she became an American, 
 undeniably an American. 
 
 Alfons stood back a little, still with that in- 
 scrutable smile. 
 
 " The girl at the piano is Deborah," he whis- 
 pered. During all the time that Deborah's song 
 kept on, the home-like little group did not vary 
 its position. They all stood there listening. 
 Julian had smiled at Jameson when they ap- 
 peared, and then he had sunk back again, with a 
 rapt fine air, and with half-closed lids, responsive 
 to the message in the music. 
 
 83 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Deborah's hands grew still. It was then, as 
 Alfons stood by the door, that the other girl 
 turned her face toward them. She was a young 
 girl, her age not yet lost, as might be said of Miss 
 Deborah Murphy's. She approached the young 
 men naturally. When she came quite near, 
 Alfons stretched out an affectionate hand toward 
 her. 
 
 " La Belle Dame sans Merci, Mr. Jameson," 
 he said gravely. It was the only introduction 
 they had, and she did not understand it, but ac- 
 cepted it as she did the many mocking jests of 
 her brother. Other than this welcome from 
 Alfons's sister, Jameson's appearance did not 
 produce any very noticeable stir in the parlor. 
 Deborah bowed distantly from the keys, and then 
 turned again to them. The pale profile was 
 without expression, for all seemed to go into the 
 music. Julian listened, and Alfons Strong went 
 nearer to listen also. Jameson did not seat him- 
 self. After he had placed a chair for Ludwiga, 
 he stood somewhat near her, keeping his eyes on 
 her almost as if he were studying her face. The 
 gaze did not seem to disturb her, as she kept her 
 own eyes raised to him, while her entire manner 
 was free from any self-consciousness. It was as 
 if her short life held no thought or act that would 
 not bear the light of day. Jameson had flushed 
 a trifle at Alfons's jest, but all the time the girl 
 
 84 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 talked to him there was none of that facial play 
 which was so characteristic of herself and her 
 brother. The calm never seemed to break nor 
 the self-reserve yield to any occasional ripple of 
 emotions. 
 
 After a certain lapse of time, Jameson realized 
 that neither had spoken, and although he laid the 
 omission to Deborah's music, he said : 
 
 " I saw you last evening in the Terrace. I re- 
 member your eyes." 
 
 Her expression changed swiftly. In her full 
 face she was more like the Diirer conception of 
 women, as if the Italian type had been changed 
 by an international marriage, although it was the 
 contour that had been affected more than any in- 
 dividual feature. 
 
 " I saw you too," she answered. " I have 
 seen you nearly every evening for two months." 
 
 " If I were conventional," he replied, " I sup- 
 pose I should tell you that I saw you two months 
 ago also. It would not be truthful, but women 
 don't often care to go below the surface." 
 
 " Maybe you knew that I am too clever for 
 that one speech," she replied. " Every evening 
 you looked as if you were walking in your 
 sleep." 
 
 She did not realize until his next remark that 
 his words had been merely a continuation of the 
 study he had been making of her face. 
 
 8s 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " No," he said, " I did not defer any pleasantry 
 because you were so clever as to know all about 
 me before I called. I really wanted to see if you 
 did not dislike truth a little bit after all, like 
 other women." 
 
 " That is making me very good, I think," she 
 answered simply. " I do not deserve all it im- 
 plies exactly, because the only reason I dislike 
 compliments is that I always believe them." 
 
 " Most women like pretty speeches," he filled 
 in, "because society demands perfect harmony 
 of ear and eye and senses. They do not care 
 how much truth is in them. What do you 
 like " 
 
 She smiled with that faint expression of her 
 brother's in her face. 
 
 " There are times when I might confess to the 
 pretty speeches, but just now, as I am looking at 
 you, I think I prefer your kind of truth, so we 
 were only acquainted from last evening." 
 
 He went over to the piano after her. She had 
 spoken simply, with no attempt at brilliancy. 
 The little conversation had been child's play to 
 the ponderous thoughts from many minds that 
 were dry as dust of late to him. He played 
 Atlas to a great journal, and he was thrown in 
 contact with more or less notable intellects, but it 
 was all like the ball-room compliments. Much 
 of the output of the best mental force is either a 
 
 86 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 fencing-match of wits, or a filling in of space with 
 no motive for human good lurking beneath the 
 empty phrases. He had liked his study of her 
 face. It had come in beside Antonia's, and was 
 to represent to him the great power in the world 
 that can be wielded by women for good. 
 
 Again he felt singularly acquainted with her, 
 long after realizing it was a vicarious acquaintance. 
 Julian had been telling him of her for " two 
 months and three days of evenings," and facts 
 came back to Jameson now for which there 
 was no other explanation, facts which he had 
 absorbed those nights when he had not seemed 
 to be listening. It was all conscious now, in one 
 rush, like revelation. He knew that she lived 
 next door, and that she believed in compensation, 
 and one night when she was bitterly downcast over 
 her brother or something "blue," was what 
 Julian called it, she had believed in compensa- 
 tion still ! in good and in silver linings. And one 
 other night, when compensation was rather slow 
 paying dividends, she had made over a last year's 
 hat, " with her own hands, Jameson ! " (Just to 
 be cynical I put that in, lest we have forgotten 
 what we may have said during that tender period.) 
 
 Jameson could not forget this ; for had not 
 Julian, coming man of art, and so forth, leaned 
 forward that same night in their own apartment 
 and said, as if life or death depended on it, 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Some wings were missing cant a man give a 
 girl wings for her hat ? " 
 
 A man young Julian ? 
 
 Then another day, when they were taking a 
 good masculine lunch together, Julian had leaned 
 across their little table, his knife deep in an un- 
 poetic beefsteak : 
 
 " The girl works sometimes in a dirty office, 
 and takes her lunch in a piece of brown paper 
 imagine the girl there, Jameson ! " 
 
 And so on, and so on, without end. 
 
 Alfons, relieved of his social duties, had gone 
 over and appropriated the position made vacant 
 by his sister at the piano, beside the half-Irish 
 girl. He was now himself an idler, an observer, 
 a beautiful handiwork of the Creator, as yet out- 
 side the intense, earnest purpose of creation. He 
 was not moved by Deborah's music, as his sister 
 had been, but by Deborah's interpretation of it, 
 rather, her performance of it, I should say. She 
 had changed now, and was producing the music, 
 much as water ripples, of its own accord, merely. 
 Thus, with Deborah's ability, it was a perfection 
 of the mechanical, often carrying none of herself 
 with it. 
 
 " Why are you playing? " asked Alfons, after 
 a second or two. 
 
 " Oh, there is nothing else to do," she replied 
 in an even voice. 
 
 88 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 " No one is listening," he remarked yet again. 
 
 "You are," she replied in the same precise 
 accents. 
 
 "That is very praiseworthy," exclaimed the 
 young man, "and indicative of your careful 
 attention to details ; but you are mistaken ; I was 
 not listening to the music. I did not even know 
 what you were playing ; I was admiring you." 
 
 She went on playing persistently, nor seemed 
 to mind him, but after a little she said, just as 
 impersonally, " my skill." 
 
 He accepted the correction without demur. 
 " Yes, your skill. I was wondering from what 
 wonderful source it came, such a flow of sound, 
 such genius." 
 
 They often indulged in pleasantries about her 
 birth, as he felt it was the only theme that kept 
 them acquainted ; for without this bond they 
 might have become strangers all over again, after 
 each interview, as there was little of common 
 interest between them. Deborah received his 
 words in the usual spirit. His tone was light, 
 it is true, but he had meant the utterance. 
 
 " You were wondering, I suppose, which of 
 my ancestors was an organ-grinder," she said to 
 him. " The flow of sound is analogous to a 
 barrel-organ, clearly so." 
 
 " Your remark is clever also," he returned 
 politely, but at the same time twisted his mous- 
 
 89 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 tache vexedly. The girl had a gown that sat on 
 her with good grace, and this appealed to him in 
 her behalf. It was light, rather too like her 
 hair and face, but the general colorlessness was 
 harmonious. 
 
 He was fully aware that Deborah did not 
 approve of him, nor his life, nor his morals, and 
 in return, he thought she was totally uninterest- 
 ing, save through that same dislike. It was 
 the only interesting quality which she seemed to 
 possess, and it piqued him. 
 
 Failing to circumvent it, he found himself face 
 to face with her disapproval, yet submitting to it 
 because he was too vain to turn away and leave 
 her opinions of him undisturbed. In other words, 
 failing to trap his foe, and having no ammunition 
 strong enough to vanquish it, he contented him- 
 self with small shot in its direction. This con- 
 soled the vanity of which I speak, but he was not 
 always pleased with the result. 
 
 He observed to-night that the lines of her face 
 were colder, the skin was less exuberant of bloom 
 and texture than Ludwiga's. Ludwiga was like 
 one of those silly flowers growing in the shade, 
 nurtured by the great beliefs and purposes of life, 
 believing implicitly in all of them. If these 
 waters should be denied her, she would not get 
 enough nutriment from the soil, and would fade 
 and die, but this strange Deborah ! She would 
 
 90 
 
Where Love is Sent 
 
 grow in an arid plain like a cactus, she would 
 need no rain or bloom or sun around her, she 
 could live so, on to the bitter end. Perhaps she 
 would even put forth a gorgeous flower, and 
 thrive on the desert, though starved within, just 
 as she lived in this dull Terrace, playing her 
 wonderful arias and nocturnes as if they were the 
 multiplication-table, nothing more or less to her. 
 
 He wondered if she really were as starved of 
 love and hope within as the cactus would be of 
 its form of food, proper soil, and moisture. 
 
 She was so unsympathetic, so incomprehensible, 
 so unreachable. 
 
 Jameson came up, as he was engaged in this 
 introspection, and in looking over the selections 
 of music thrown carelessly on the piano, chose 
 one and placed it in position for her. He did 
 not study the performer, but appreciated the 
 accompaniment. The piece was " Zu Deinen 
 Fussen " (At Thy Feet). 
 
 The half-Florentine still stood with his gaze 
 concentrated on a spot between the brass candle- 
 sticks, then inspiration toward speech came to 
 him. " Had I asked you to play that for me," 
 he remarked, when no one seemed to be listen- 
 ing to them, " what would you have done, 
 Deborah ? " 
 
 " Oh, I should not have played it," she re- 
 plied, quite as gently as he had asked it. 
 
 9' 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " It is a sorrowful habit to be an old bachelor," 
 he quoted back to her, " else I might be moved 
 to say, then do not play it for any one else." 
 
 He turned away, so she lost the trembling 
 earnestness in his eyes ; but that night, when 
 she was leaving, Deborah collected her music, 
 piece after piece, " Zu Deinen Fiissen " upper- 
 most. 
 
 Once home in the neat little apartment where 
 she dwelt, she hid it again in the middle of the 
 others, but changed her mind and placed it again 
 on top. It seemed to haunt her, but at last she 
 folded it neatly and put it away ; so that it might 
 never, never be used again. Poor Deborah ! 
 We have all done these things ; but 
 
 In the cold unsympathetic light of the morning 
 she tore the leaves of " Zu Deinen Fiissen " into 
 shreds, and life for her went on as usual. 
 
 92 
 
STRAY THOUGHTS 
 
 JAMESON had gone out from the Strong 
 parlor a different man from the one who 
 had entered it that same evening. 
 
 He did not know where the change was. When 
 they once more stood under the St. Josephs on 
 Mrs. O'Byrne's chandelier, Julian had inquired 
 abruptly, " Jame, do you like the girl ? Here 
 they call her the girl who was born a lady." 
 
 " She has evidently kept herself one as well, 
 under rather trying circumstances." 
 
 " Say, that is fine ! It is splendidly put of you, 
 old fellow. Of course, you do not think she is 
 pretty ; no one does. Even an artist would not 
 think her pretty, unless he loved her!" 
 
 It was perfect egotism, that, the state when 
 there are only two people in the world, and you 
 are a part of the delusion. 
 
 " There is a way to her hair which is pretty of 
 itself," Jameson answered. 
 
 " I never noticed her hair very much," Julian 
 returned, his voice gone rather flat of a sudden. 
 " I think she has some fine features taken sepa- 
 
 93 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 rately, but not set so as to make the best impres- 
 sion, and she can wear an old serge in a Florentine 
 humor, which is style of a sort, Jameson ; but I 
 never noticed her hair or the way of it." 
 
 He used Jameson's own phrase as if it hurt 
 him, then stopped talking, somewhat abruptly, 
 and thought about it. He wished he had noticed 
 the way of her hair also, and it would have con- 
 tributed to his development if he were versed in 
 telepathy and could have known of Jameson's 
 discovery of a line near her mouth, which her 
 husband would some day want to erase with kisses 
 and loving kindness. 
 
 When Jameson was all but undressed that 
 evening, Julian appeared at his bedroom door. 
 " When the girl walked toward you this evening, 
 it was as if Love and Italy were producing an 
 exquisite cameo " 
 
 cc Confound you," Jameson cried, throwing a 
 shoe toward him. It lay there after the boy had 
 withdrawn, for he made no effort to stir. He 
 sat on the side of his bed, and once he asked the 
 furniture around and about him : 
 
 " If she is Julian's girl, if each man has just 
 the one woman, why did I think of that too ? " 
 
 In the other room Julian was whistling. It 
 was like a canary singing in the middle of the 
 night. 
 
 The man went back to his dismal office, but 
 94 
 
Stray Thoughts 
 
 some atmosphere, not an outer one, was changed 
 for him. Life was more endurable. He had 
 something beautiful to conjure when he was sick 
 unto death of the office, of a certain number of 
 pigeon-holes which represented his past life to 
 him, and a certain disordered pile that seemed to 
 represent the thirty-five years which were still 
 coming to him according to the Old Testament. 
 He thought it might be caused by having met 
 such a musical genius as Deborah. She seemed 
 to have filled all life with sound and melody. 
 
 About Friday of the same week, Julian went 
 into the man's inner office. He looked so boy- 
 ish and so handsome that he did one's heart 
 good. He had on an old coat decorated with 
 ink ; in fact, it had evidently been used for a 
 pen-wiper; but when he leaned over Jameson's 
 desk, his wavy brown hair, his clean-shaven face, 
 and buoyancy of spirit dispelled material impres- 
 sions entirely. 
 
 He laid a coin on the desk, smiling. " I '11 
 give you that fiver if you will tell me of what 
 you were thinking when I came in," he said. 
 
 Jameson pocketed the coin. " I was thinking 
 of life," he replied, " of life as we have known it, 
 of people who were not earnest or honest and did 
 not care whether they were or not, and then I 
 thought of one girl trying to stay the mad crowd 
 of Bohemia." 
 
 95 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Julian laughed outright at him. 
 
 " If she were n't my girl," he exclaimed, " you 'd 
 have to buy a marriage license." 
 
 Before he went out he said, " When you re- 
 turn that five, I will give it back to you for an 
 inspiration." 
 
 Jameson went back to his work, while off in 
 his own room Julian drew the figure of a woman. 
 She was slight and stood with uplifted hands. It 
 was as if in the midst of eternal ways she stood 
 with those small hands raised in protest, staying 
 the mad, surging crowd of Bohemia. In her eyes 
 was the strength God unaccountably gives us who 
 are faintest hearted and would otherwise "flee 
 from the cross." 
 
 96 
 
XI 
 SUNDAY 
 
 SUNDAY is a great day in the Terrace. 
 All over the city those people who have 
 labored throughout the week turn out in 
 many-colored masses Sunday. They crowd the 
 street-cars and cross the quiet bay in heavily 
 freighted ferry-boats, or they may be seen lying 
 on the beach out where the waters of the Pacific 
 creep up the sand to them, friendly, smiling as 
 seems everything just then. Toward evening 
 many have drunk more than is good for them, 
 most likely, and there are sharp words or blows, 
 or some unrestful happenings ; but during the 
 day it is all relaxation and enjoyment. 
 
 Naturally this flitting toward the suburbs 
 leaves many home districts silent and deserted. 
 The Terrace is in this class. The last persons to 
 join the happy world were Mr. Papa and his son, 
 both clad in their Sunday garments and shining 
 morning faces, as well as red cravats. (Mr. Papa 
 always wore red cravats just three or four shades 
 brighter than his kind, warm complexion.) 
 
 It was on Sunday that Jameson, in his own 
 room, suddenly was brought face to face with his 
 7 97 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 own thoughts. He still believed that Julian 
 would ruin his own life if his pursuit of art were 
 interrupted, but Jameson had lost interest in the 
 boy's career somewhat. He did not feel the 
 same violence of grief and disappointment about 
 Julian's position in the matter ; and as for Mrs. 
 Joy, he had forgotten that she was in existence. 
 
 He was arguing with himself the reason of this 
 state of mind when Mrs. O'Byrne came in on 
 her morning rounds, as care-taker. This mental 
 condition, he had concluded to himself, was be- 
 cause his emotions for other people were worn 
 out to some extent. He would do just as much 
 for them, of course, and do it just as conscien- 
 tiously as ever ; but Julian had evidently drained 
 the supply at last. 
 
 It was characteristic of him that he did not 
 pursue the subject further. He had given all he 
 possessed to the boy, and to the goddess for 
 Julian, and now he had done all he could ; but 
 personally he had no bitterness about Julian's 
 way of receiving this long-continued kindness. 
 If you can understand the thing, it made him 
 and Julian more equal, not bound by the same 
 tender tie of love and obligation as formerly. 
 
 Mrs. O'Byrne was a kindly woman. She 
 spread their beds and otherwise tidied up their 
 rooms, and then she surprised Jameson. She 
 paused near the copper-colored hair and said 
 
 98 
 
 
Sunday 
 
 briskly, " Why don't ye go up to the sun attic, 
 Mr. Jameson, where the young people be? " 
 
 He looked up almost in a startled way. 
 
 No one had ever thought he was young, even 
 when he was so, and a feeling of surprise came 
 over him, there being an element of gratitude as 
 well in the emotion which was new to him. 
 
 " Oh, they do not miss me," he answered. 
 " I 'm an old fellow to be around young people." 
 
 Mrs. O' Byrne gave a hearty laugh. 
 
 "O'Byrnewas six years older nor you, no less, 
 when he discovered a red rose in a woman's bon- 
 net," she replied with a rollicking hopefulness to 
 her tones ; and she shook her duster at him, in the 
 exuberance of the recollection. 
 
 He sat quite still, his eyes looking up, but his 
 figure still bent over the paper. 
 
 " Up in the attic," he asked her, " what do 
 they do?" 
 
 " The sun is coming in, and on these cool days 
 it warms one, through and through," she replied, 
 smiling gladly throughout her portrayal of this 
 mental picture, "and sometimes my silly little 
 laddie is downstairs with his accordion, and the 
 sounds come up between talk with them, at which 
 Miss Deborah winces because of the fine way she 
 plays them same tunes. Our little lad is blind, 
 you know. Mr. Fons lies on the couch and 
 smokes, and when he wants to stir himself he 
 
 99 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 teases Miss Deborah, who is reading or writing. 
 He has a gay tongue, well hung in the middle, 
 has Mr. Alfons. Then, off a bit" (here she 
 winked again in her hearty fashion), " Mr. Julian 
 makes as if he were drawing for dear life, and 
 Miss Ludwiga a-helping him. An* once when I 
 was dusting, did n't I hear her say to him : c You 
 keep drawing the one face over and over. It is 
 not progressing, Julian dear ! ' and him to answer 
 that earnest as if he believed it, the bonny fellow, 
 that it was some great painter chap he was after 
 following, to draw one head until he had that 
 perfect ! " 
 
 She put her hands to her hips, and shook with 
 merriment at the thought of it, merriment quite 
 as kindly as it was merry, and which beamed from 
 her eyes past all mistaking. 
 
 Jameson rose to his feet, placed a paper-weight 
 on his unfinished work, closed his ink-bottle, and 
 did those careful little things which men in a 
 measure neglect. Then he asked: "Where is 
 the sun attic?" to her intense enjoyment, for 
 she pointed it out to him, and then went down- 
 stairs longing to tell it to O'Byrne. She forgot it 
 for hours, and ended by nudging him when he 
 was taking his most peaceful sleep, as he worked 
 on the night force; and when he was but half- 
 awake, she called into his ear : " I '11 be buying 
 organs wholesale, after a little," for she thought 
 
 100 
 
Sunday 
 
 every respectable young married couple should 
 possess one ; this being also a joke to O'Byrne 
 (both to his taste and his pocket), as he approved 
 of her liking to see all the young people marry. 
 It was a pleasant reflection, and compensated for 
 any broken slumber. 
 
 The sun attic was a long room of glass which 
 topped the blind baby's inheritance. It was a 
 room cramped as to roof, now I come to think 
 of it, and suggested, "Why should the spirit of 
 mortal be proud ? " for it bent one's head all of 
 a sudden, and but narrowly prevented more fatal 
 denouements to one's existence. Julian's opinion 
 joined the unanimous verdict, but his exuberance 
 did the rest. The lights were poor, he said, and 
 the ceiling antagonistic to genius, but an artist 
 and a studio should fraternize. It was more 
 shoppy. 
 
 There was no gainsaying that; so here it was 
 that Lewis Jameson found them. He found 
 Alfons executing Beardsley effects with his foot, 
 Deborah poring over some accounts, and Lud- 
 wiga and Julian at the far end of the attic. They 
 were too distant for him to hear what was said 
 or to see what they were doing. He found a 
 seat, and tried to be interested in the two young 
 people nearest him. 
 
 " Do none of us ever go to church ? indeed, 
 101 
 
T ( t I ( 
 
 The Siege of Youth 
 
 yes," answered the irrepressible brother of Lud- 
 wiga, " Deborah does. She goes to early Mass, 
 in her best gown, which is gray and white like a 
 Puritan maiden's, and once there, she prays, 
 such prayers ! " with a side look at her as he 
 talked ; but Deborah smiled not, nor spoke, nor 
 stirred. 
 
 When he continued, it was a little Italian 
 prayer he had picked up somewhere : " ' I pray 
 that I may never be married. But if I marry, I 
 pray that I may never be deceived. But if I am 
 deceived, I pray that I may not know it. But if 
 I know of it, I pray that I may be able to laugh 
 at the whole affair ! ' " 
 
 He smiled once more as he thus concluded, but 
 the girl did not. She sat with that pale calm on 
 her fair skin, undisturbed, as if she had not heard 
 him ; but this did not disconcert the young man 
 in the least, for he presently continued : " Evi- 
 dently, I am not in good form with my compan- 
 ions this morning. Julian wanted to do me up 
 as a Spanish gladiator of some description, as far 
 as I could learn, like a barber-pole, but my self- 
 esteem opposed it. Then they fell into a dis- 
 cussion on some man with inharmonious eyes, 
 and after one had contended that his hair should 
 harmonize with his eyes, and another that his 
 eyes should harmonize with his hair, I tried to 
 pour oil on the troubled waters for them, and 
 
 1 02 
 
Sunday 
 
 suggested that the sympathy was doubtless es- 
 tablished between his eyes and his soul. But 
 still they were not grateful ; envious, rather, of 
 my greater intellectuality. Such/' he concluded, 
 " is human nature." 
 
 Deborah raised her eyes with a certain pretty 
 grace to Jameson. She would not have smiled 
 at Alfons for the world, but she was by turns 
 angered, bored, entertained by him. She spoke 
 much as she would to one of her athletic pupils, 
 when he grew a bit tiresome. 
 
 " Perhaps Mr. Jameson does not think that 
 question any more vital than your incongruous 
 name, Alfons. Their father had two dear friends," 
 she explained to Jameson, " both Germans, and 
 in the early days of their friendship he prom- 
 ised to name his children after them. It is 
 quite correct and euphonious too, but I have 
 often wondered what he would have done had 
 the second Herr been named Heine, or Johann, 
 or Augustin." 
 
 Alfons smiled at her, but he was vexed. He 
 spent half his time rallying Deborah : but at any 
 polite retaliation on her part, he was cast into an 
 utterly inexplicable state of vexation. Still, he 
 said, as if he were not in earnest, " Signorina 
 Heinette Strong, Eureka Terrace, San Francisco, 
 California, United States of America. The Eu- 
 reka is not municipal, Jameson, but it is historical, 
 
 103 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 and was given by a former resident of our dwell- 
 ing, when he discovered his keyhole one early 
 morning." Deborah did not approve of this 
 either, but it did not affect the young man, as 
 he was aware of her disapproval before he had 
 spoken. 
 
 Jameson went across the room where the 
 younger couple were talking. Julian sat grace- 
 fully at a table, drawing, while the girl stood by 
 an open window. 
 
 " Julian was drawing something fine and classic, 
 Mr. Jameson," she said. " He has drawn a tiled 
 wall, and under a very effective Latin border he 
 is to put a woman's figure " 
 
 Julian glanced at her quickly. She caught the 
 same look in Jameson's face that had been there 
 the other evening when he had discussed truth 
 during his study of her. 
 
 "Julian is to put Deborah in," she ended 
 gently. The gentleness came in just where it 
 should have, where other women might have 
 employed pretty glances, coquettish words, or 
 any more veiled form of the fine art of flirta- 
 tion. Julian flashed her a grateful smile and 
 went to work on the inspiration. It was a fine 
 way to waste time, this putting Deborah, with 
 her Celtic lip and her pedagogic air, under a 
 Roman border, but he did not want the girl 
 to tell an untruth for him. 
 
 104 
 
Sunday 
 
 " She is so sweet, so good," he thought over 
 and over, smiling, and sketching into this stiff- 
 backed Deborah a certain amount of half-Latin 
 grace. 
 
 Jameson went over to the girl. " It is Sunday," 
 he said. " I came up here to ask you what is 
 truth ? " 
 
 She raised her eyes. 
 
 " Is it the thing we have done or may do ? " 
 he continued. 
 
 " Oh, it is the thing we should do," she an- 
 swered quickly, and stood there looking up at 
 him. 
 
 " If I kept on looking into your eyes," he said, 
 " I think I should learn all about truth, all about 
 right and good, but nothing about sham and 
 convention." 
 
 She shrank from him delicately. 
 
 Itwas a motion accomplished before she thought, 
 and did not mean anything offensive to either of 
 them. 
 
 " I don't deserve it all," she said, " but after the 
 other night I think you would not tell me that 
 if you did not mean it." 
 
 Some conversations, apparently of slight im- 
 portance, make the world seem wholly different 
 afterwards. 
 
 Julian sketched on at his table. At the window, 
 Jameson's eyes were on a pair of hands. He 
 
 105 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 had observed but one other woman's during his 
 thirty odd years of existence, and those were soft 
 hands which one could crush like velvet; but 
 these, on which he was now gazing, might be 
 easily put out to " strong things." 
 
 106 
 
XII 
 
 REPARATION 
 
 THE Irish school-teacher and the half- 
 Italian young man were just as Jameson 
 had left them. 
 
 " It is Sunday," Alfons said ; " I wish to say 
 something pleasant to you. It is a beautiful 
 morning." 
 
 She smiled after a second and answered in his 
 own vein, " Yes, it reminds me of the country." 
 
 " Were you ever in the country much?" he 
 asked. " You look as if you had not lived very 
 much in the country, not often enough." 
 
 She put her hands unconsciously to her face, 
 as if wondering where this evidence appeared. 
 
 " Only once," she replied. " Once, when I was 
 very ill, they packed me off there, and I wanted 
 to drown myself in the wheat when I grew better, 
 just as every one else does, I suppose." 
 
 " Conventional people do not think that," re- 
 marked Alfons, polishing his glasses, " only wharf 
 rats, my dear Deborah." 
 
 " Otherwise," she continued seriously, " I had 
 only gone on occasional suburban excursions and 
 
 107 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 eaten the wrong things and suffered the inevitable 
 headaches, as most people do." 
 
 " Do not defraud me of my purpose, Miss 
 Deborah Murphy," he returned mockingly. 
 " There is a question I have to ask you were 
 you ever a wharf rat reducing some fresh air 
 fund ? I have just had a vision of you gam- 
 bolling over some festive hills, eating those cold 
 delicacies which never fail to end in the manner 
 described by you." 
 
 He ceased speaking very abruptly, for Deborah's 
 eyes had filled with tears. The next instant he 
 had arisen and offered her his hand. He felt he 
 had jested for many years with her, but trespassed 
 at last. 
 
 That night Deborah fell asleep over a crumpled 
 paper inscribed with some lines in verse. It had 
 been handed to her that afternoon by the heir 
 presumptive of the O'Byrne tenements, and it and 
 the writer were so incongruous to the sender that 
 she would have laughed had she been able. 
 
 " Then dost thou come of noble blood 
 Disgrace not thy good heritage, 
 If lowly born, so bear thyself 
 That gentle blood may come of thee." 
 
 As it was only the second kind thing he had 
 ever done for her, she could not laugh. 
 
 108 
 
XIII 
 ON TRUTH 
 
 IT was in the Spanish restaurant. Jameson 
 and Julian had gone there to dine. They 
 dropped in frequently, and on former occa- 
 sions had sat with two evening papers before 
 them, discussing some star attraction in journal- 
 ism. Should this be a suicide or a murder, they 
 were wont to ridicule the participants, who had 
 generally committed the deed because of some 
 woman, and after that they would fall into a dis- 
 cussion of the subject, viewing it from every side, 
 much as they would a prize-fight; then Julian 
 was always apt to conclude on these occasions, 
 cc Brown believes in love ! " 
 
 It never failed to entertain these celibates, re- 
 membering Brown at the office, for he was one 
 of the unimportant persons, so unimportant 
 yet one who had placed himself in a remarkable 
 position. 
 
 It was the one remarkable thing about him. 
 He was only a " fill in," nothing more, the kind 
 of youth who would never amount to anything, 
 who would never be recognized or rich, a youth 
 
 109 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 who was ever cheerful and not ashamed of a 
 ragged coat, it only seemed to give him more 
 food for his spirits. The remarkable position in 
 which Brown had placed himself was through his 
 marriage. He believed that the reason of his 
 own personal cheerfulness and his being able to 
 lunch smilingly on one sandwich was due to his 
 wife. And it was a tradition in the office that 
 Brown's not caring about the great "why" of 
 existence could be traced directly to his baby, a 
 fat foolish baby which slept when it should have 
 said " How do you do." 
 
 " So long as we live, and cannot help it, let us 
 marry and smile, and eat and sleep and have a 
 baby." They had called that Brown's creed. All 
 was quite a joke, no doubt, but both his optimism 
 and his ragged coat had elements of dignity in 
 them that no man could deny. 
 
 In the old days, they had probably combated 
 Brown's faith by the Articles of Misogamy ! The 
 restaurant was the same as usual. It was not 
 changed in the least. It was a bare, unconven- 
 tional place, famed as to cooking, yet neither ate 
 as much as usual. 
 
 " Don't you care for the spaghetti any more ? " 
 
 " No, I do not care for it," Jameson answered. 
 
 " That is the way with my pipe," Julian said. 
 c< I do not seem to need it as much as I did." 
 
 Each homely phrase was full of pathos, had 
 no 
 
On Truth 
 
 they but known. They sat staring around on a 
 scene that was bright and cheery. The floor had 
 a small coating of glistening sand, and the long 
 line of tables was of whitewood, on which well- 
 filled cruets and jolly bottles of bright Chianti 
 sparkled in a friendly way. A few hungry diners 
 were preparing tempting-looking salads in bright 
 blue bowls. Gay radishes peeped from the folds 
 of the crisp lettuce, and here and there long, white 
 strips of onion were visible. 
 
 A few negro musicians had started to play 
 tinkling music, while some college boys, at an 
 adjacent table, were throwing noisy jokes at them, 
 which the darkies seemed to receive entirely 
 through their shining teeth. 
 
 No the restaurant was in no way different 
 from what it had been other evenings. 
 
 " Jame," Julian suddenly exclaimed, " do you 
 see that couple at the little table to the left, near 
 the door P I think it began with a { date, 1 but 
 now I am sure he is in love with her ; for every 
 time she turns her head, profile, he looks as if 
 he would like to kiss her Louise of Austria 
 cheek. Do you notice how I have apotheo- 
 sized the curve ? I used to call it the dairy 
 maid, but since I found out about the love, I 
 call it the Empress Louise. It is a consequent 
 exaltation." 
 
 " I had been watching them," the man replied. 
 in 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 He had never noticed such things before, so 
 on second thoughts he added, " They are making 
 fools of themselves before the whole restaurant." 
 
 " I cannot see it in that way," the younger 
 man replied. " They are happy and they show 
 it that is all." 
 
 cc The world is not asking them to display their 
 feelings," Jameson returned. 
 
 Julian sat staring before him. His face had 
 the customary pallor, and just now had one of its 
 intense, rapt expressions ; the train of thought 
 must have changed lately, as up to this time he 
 had been merely a boy, with a good appetite, 
 healthy enjoyments, and ordinary opinions, from 
 which source he had produced artistic fancies 
 which sold well. There was now a difference so 
 general that it was past mistaking. Julian was on 
 the verge of his manhood ; although he was not 
 secure, yet soon he would be a man, with a firm 
 footing and established opinions. 
 
 " They are not thinking of the world," he 
 continued. There was a doggedness in his very 
 persistence of the subject, but the voice was not 
 aggressive. " They are only being true to their 
 own instincts, true to truth, as it were ; so, what 
 is there to censure in that ? For the matter of 
 that, what is truth, then, Jameson? The element 
 to be omitted, yet the one eternal chord we have. 
 You yourself have told me that truth is the 
 
 112 
 
On Truth 
 
 most real element of success amongst us, the one 
 note capable of drowning a thousand discords." 
 
 He stared at the man as if seeking spiritual 
 assistance. 
 
 It was sad that Jameson should fail him at this 
 moment, when all the fair illusions of life were 
 needed for the aggrandizement of love. 
 
 The older man pushed his plate away, and was 
 listening. Julian went on : " If all were true ! 
 the murderers, the saints, the jesters ! If we did 
 not hide crime, if we only were not ashamed of 
 good, if we rid mirth of all but enjoyment ! If 
 even sin were true ! Murder stalks through the 
 street steel-armored ; virtue shrinks from her 
 public throne ; while our sense of humor is so 
 perverted, so diseased with the ills we have suf- 
 fered, that we find matter for the funny columns, 
 in even the grand old paradoxes of Christianity ; 
 Voltairians at heart all of us. The world is 
 running that way, carrying us with it c jest 
 with life, for that only is it good/ ' 
 
 He tried to stop at that, but this was wrung 
 from him : 
 
 " If all were true ! But wrong hides its face in 
 masks and dons fancy dress, and " (he broke out 
 passionately) " it is the lies that we cannot forgive 
 in sin " 
 
 The restaurant represented nothing. They 
 two seemed to sit alone in the midst of pale gray 
 8 113 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 aesthetic thoughts, surrounding both like shadows. 
 
 Julian laid his napkin across the table mechani- 
 cally. He was pale, and his eyes, removed from 
 the affectionate couple who were looking love at 
 each other, were regarding Jameson. The lone- 
 liness in them was tender beyond description, yet 
 down in their very depths was a certain gleam of 
 self-reliance that might struggle toward greater 
 strength some day. It was as if Julian had come 
 unexpectedly face to face with a crisis. He had 
 been nourished for eight years on one food was 
 there to be no strength in it ? With a sudden- 
 ness he put this to a test. 
 
 " Those are your own thoughts, Jame ; the 
 most of the man-thoughts in my life I have taken 
 from you, old fellow ! " 
 
 Jameson was leaning back. 
 
 " I do not recognize them then," he replied. 
 " I think I must have outgrown them ; intensity 
 is immaturity in a measure, and exaggeration is 
 a form of youth. Perhaps once I did say all 
 you ascribe to me, but experience, Julian, life 
 itself, is the greatest exponent of views that are 
 less sincere." Julian did not yield. He was 
 leaning forward, his face as beautiful as a woman's 
 when lit with love. Jameson had been a hero 
 to him, and he was fighting now for his own 
 ideals. 
 
 " But they are worthy thoughts, Jame ; they are 
 114 
 
On Truth 
 
 better then we may ever think again ! Should we 
 not keep them all our lives ? " 
 
 " The point of view has changed," Jameson 
 answered ; it was the only answer he could make. 
 Guided by some intuition, it was as if the youth 
 had revealed his old self to him, the self he had 
 once been, and had once imagined he would be 
 forever. 
 
 " The point of view has changed ; we may all 
 hug sexless theories, and make much of them 
 before men, and so exalt them; but there will 
 come a day when we shall stand revealed as souls 
 gone naked of flimsy trappings and artifices. In 
 that day we shall know life, and our eternal accu- 
 mulations for what they are. It will be our real 
 life, not our words, then, Julian." 
 
 The boy got to his feet. " I don't want to hear 
 any more," he cried, with passion in his voice, 
 as of protest. "It is as if they were real treas- 
 ures, and I have been like a woman over dia- 
 monds. I suppose everything is paste His 
 eyes said the rest, they and a sneer on his shaven 
 lips " Oh, my God, what a fraud life is ! " 
 
 " You sha'n't go like that," said Jameson ; his 
 voice had the old quality of control in it, the 
 more powerful when it was low-pitched. 
 
 They stood in the midst of the merry diners, 
 having risen, though they had not yet moved 
 away. They were perfect foils to each other ; 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 both young, but with a difference in years that 
 gave Jameson the advantage of physical and 
 mental virility; moreover, he had lost his im- 
 personal appearance of a week ago, and carried 
 himself with a new and becoming alertness. 
 
 Under its influence women cast swift glances at 
 him, instead of at Julian, as they had formerly 
 done. It was as if he had awakened at a word, 
 and had entered some vast arena. 
 
 " Julian, don't end like that," he said, " there 
 was a time in our lives when we imagined that we 
 knew what truth was, but it was the word alone 
 that we were defining; we had not been called 
 upon to practise the Spartan quality itself. For 
 years and years duty has been the only truth to 
 me, the only reality of truth I have known, and 
 without seeking a change in standards, what if the 
 aspect should become different of its own accord 
 what if a new influence should arrive, what if 
 duty should seem secondary after all these years?" 
 
 Julian stood reaching towards his hat ; he was 
 watching Jameson's face with an absorbed but not 
 analytic gaze. The man was saying these soul- 
 ful things in the hubbub of the lighted restaurant 
 in the same manner as if he were discussing the 
 menu. As Julian realized the effect, he let his 
 lips part in a boyish smile, and then the smile 
 became a deep, silent, wholly enjoyable laugh. 
 " You old temple of a fellow," he cried, " you 
 
 116 
 
On Truth 
 
 old temple of a fellow." He did not try to say 
 any more, but strode down the room toward the 
 entrance of the restaurant. The smile was still 
 lingering on his face, and his fine eyes were glow- 
 ing. Jameson was a great old temple, dear old 
 chap, he thought, lying under the winters and 
 summers of present life as if the goodly seasons 
 were influences only, helping him to grow old ! 
 
 Jameson strode down the aisle behind him, 
 looking neither to right nor left. He was think- 
 ing also. It was not a very relevant thought 
 to their conversation, nor was it consistent with 
 Julian's metaphor concerning his friend. 
 
 "After knocking around year after year at 
 parties, at restaurants, at public places, it was 
 good to look into the eyes of one woman and 
 find rest after one's folly and unfaith and 
 doubt " 
 
 Half-way out the younger man stopped to ex- 
 change greetings with their three young friends 
 from the Terrace. Deborah, Ludwiga, and 
 Alfons were seating themselves at a table, when 
 Julian caught sight of them and stepped over, 
 his fine eyes still glowing ; but Jameson re- 
 mained motionless until the boy returned. 
 
 Julian bent over them all. " I do not see why 
 you are here," he said to the young ladies. " You 
 do not look as though you needed to eat as the 
 rest of us do." 
 
 117 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 "Oh," answered Deborah, "if I were to 'die 
 from lack of nourishment, Alfons would have to 
 go oftener to vaudeville shows for his entertain- 
 ment, so it would be expensive and very cruel of 
 me, don't you see ? " 
 
 The young half-Florentine girl sat smiling up 
 at Julian also. There was no one in all the 
 world quite so near and dear as Julian to her in a 
 friendly way. Once, when they were first ac- 
 quainted, he had made her laugh aloud at some- 
 thing, and life was never the same after ; never so 
 stiff. 
 
 Julian said that living amongst old people and 
 putting so much red flannel on their joints had 
 made her ideas rheumatic also, and it would not 
 do! 
 
 He said sunny things to dispel the disease, and 
 she used to smile back at him, just as she did this 
 evening, with brown, grateful eyes, while Julian 
 enjoyed his brief knowledge of the medical pro- 
 fession, and practised it conscientiously. 
 
 She smiled now, the ready smile that she gave 
 her brother. It was sunshine that Julian had 
 contributed to her life, and this sunshine had 
 warmed the earth in whose bosom lay the seed of 
 self. 
 
 Was it to be quickened ? 
 
 118 
 
XIV 
 
 ON THE APOTHEOSIS OF 
 EXISTENCE 
 
 THE "white fleecy fog" seemed to swal- 
 low Jameson and Julian as they as- 
 cended the steep hill to their rooms. 
 One can learn to love the fog very much. There 
 are evenings when it sweeps across the land, 
 calming, cooling, welcome ; the same solace to 
 our jaded, distorted senses as is sleep. The day 
 may have been hard in its lessons or over-warm 
 in temperature, but this fog, when we have learned 
 to love it, has the quiet touch of a friend. 
 
 " I wish we could go back," Julian said, when 
 they got to their little landing. " I should like 
 to hear Deborah and Alfons argue about the 
 onion in their salad. It is the rock upon which 
 they never fail to split when they find themselves 
 in anything like calm water." 
 
 He was quite right. Deborah and Alfons 
 seemed to develop through excitement. If every 
 other means had failed, I think they would have 
 had to overturn the boat themselves rather than 
 face each other fairly and squarely as ordinary 
 
 119 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 people are wont to do. Thus they had one time 
 seized on the onion in their salad as a genteel 
 rock to use for their humors, and had quarrelled 
 carefully for ten years over an eighth of an inch 
 of the seasoning. With judgment, an eighth of 
 an inch may remain an eighth of an inch during 
 the average lifetime. 
 
 Jameson went up the stairs as usual, into his 
 own room. He was a man, he was not a temple, 
 as Julian had exclaimed. 
 
 He thought of all Julian had repeated to him 
 of his own former opinions on truth and life. 
 He was interested in them, but not greatly so. 
 They had been high ideals to him, but now they 
 were merely words, words, words. 
 
 He had never been much of a man to waste 
 even platitudes on a woman, but that night, when 
 he left the restaurant, it was with a desire which 
 changed into a dull, inconceivable regret. It 
 would not have been inconceivable to everybody, 
 but it was inconceivable to his ignorance. 
 
 He had watched the girl's face as Julian had 
 bent above her, saying his sunshiny thoughts, 
 and Jameson had experienced a desire to be 
 standing above her also, and saying into her 
 eyes, "It has seemed a long time since Sunday 
 morning." 
 
 He recalled Julian's passionate words : " It is 
 the lies that we can't forgive in sin." 
 
 120 
 
On the Apotheosis of Existence 
 
 Jameson sought to be honorable in this mat- 
 ter. She was Julian's girl, he thought, merely an 
 influence in his own life. He would not harm 
 Julian by word or deed, although, if there were 
 some interference, Julian might yet be saved to 
 art. If some one won the girl from Julian, 
 Julian might yet justify their old ambitions. 
 
 He stopped at this ; then went on in the former 
 perfunctory strain again. He did not care to 
 interfere with any of Julian's possessions; he did 
 not even care to weaken Julian's influence by a 
 platitude. He knew that Julian would laugh that 
 same laugh which he had enjoyed in the restaurant 
 if he could hear him. 
 
 " You old temple of a fellow," he would say, 
 " can't you even be civil to the girl just because 
 she is mine, you old ascetic ? " 
 
 Platitudes are idle arrows to be shot into the 
 air. They harm no one, unless some player for- 
 gets the rules of the game and takes aim. 
 
 Jameson felt that his remark that night would 
 be more significant than a mere convention, after 
 his and the young girl's two conversations on 
 truth. He went to bed, and in his slumber 
 there came a triumphant solution of his problem. 
 " Read deep in the woman's eyes and read love," 
 said the message. It was very convincing, and 
 influenced his waking hours vaguely ; for after 
 that there seemed no truth greater than love ; 
 
 121 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 no wrong save that of ignoring; no life save life 
 so revealed. 
 
 Often thoughts are tentative and disturbing. 
 We fret and fume mentally, and yet do not under- 
 stand. It is only when Time has finished some 
 unseen moulding that the full forces of life are 
 given back to our service and we are rendered 
 capable of knowing why and wherefore and when. 
 We have not a large stock of understanding and 
 wisdom, so it is well to know that in the weakest 
 moments of our life Time may have care of our 
 missing qualities, shaping the ego for us. 
 
 122 
 
XV 
 DEBORAH'S LIFE 
 
 DEBORAH was the most important per- 
 son of all in the Terrace, all things con- 
 sidered. Her name was Miss Deborah 
 Murphy, as I have told you, and she taught, and 
 saved her money, as people should. She must 
 have been very poor once, for she saved with a 
 certain desperateness as to cause, as if the wolf 
 were always near. There was the same quality 
 also in all her attributes. All bore the stamp of 
 a want which was so deep it could never be filled. 
 It is not that I mean to detract from her gener- 
 osity ; rather I would add to it. It is the hail- 
 fellows-well-met in life who can lay money in 
 needy hands and think no more about the mat- 
 ter. It is merely taking a half-dollar or twenty 
 dollars from their comfortable pockets, leaving a 
 barely perceptible difference afterward. It is a 
 charity, t?ut one that man cannot judge of. 
 Again, there are many amongst us who would 
 give the more quickly for having felt the bottom 
 of our own pockets from time to time; but, if we 
 have looked very want in the face, as Deborah 
 
 123 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 may have done, we sympathize in a way which is 
 like to pinch our hearts before we are done with 
 it. We want to give, and in spite of misgivings 
 often do ; but at first we are afraid afraid 
 then we go to some quiet spot and think the 
 matter out, and at last, thinking of the time when 
 need was so desperate and help did not come, say, 
 " Every man for himself," and so close our fin- 
 gers over our small portion, trying to think this 
 course will insure us against the future. But, at 
 night at night it is very different. We think 
 then, in the silent watches, that it is better to give 
 even if we are deceived, than perhaps have refused 
 some one whose need might be greater than was 
 apparent. We cannot say words about " daily 
 bread " when we have felt the cruel, cruel need 
 of it ; when we are fearing that now a friend or 
 some friendless creature is battling in the same 
 desperate way. So we go quickly, while this mood 
 is on us, and lay our portion in the hand of the 
 needy one without looking, lest we repent. 
 And God, who loves a cheerful giver, knows 
 and seems to exalt our poor human reason, for 
 the fear grows less. 
 
 Deborah had moved to the Terrace long after 
 the Strongs had made it their abiding-place. She 
 was younger then, but had experiences which made 
 her seem middle-aged even as now. She spoke 
 to no one, looked at no one, kept very much to 
 
 124 
 
 
Deborah's Life 
 
 her own modest room, in the lodging-house kept 
 by the blue-veined landlady, who was a gentle- 
 woman, much reduced as to both purse and 
 person. 
 
 But this seclusion of Deborah's was not to 
 endure. She was young, although she did not 
 look so, and if she had made up her mind not to 
 mingle with her neighbors, and was even ready 
 to stand against her door with arms outstretched, 
 if need be, to bar their entrance, she did not do 
 it when put to the test. 
 
 She was a woman, as well as a victim of circum- 
 stances, and her curiosity was not impaired by 
 her financial vicissitudes, as she was soon to learn. 
 More than this, as the romantic would say, she 
 was in the hands of a fate, which is painstaking in 
 its conquests of our inclinations. We may stand 
 in the very stream of life, facing where we please, 
 believing we will go our own way, shaking what 
 we think are potent hands in the face of the great 
 achiever ; but even as we dream and vow, are we 
 turned slowly, surely, relentlessly, by all-powerful 
 undercurrents. 
 
 Thus, against her will was Deborah forced into 
 the life of the Terrace people. She heard things 
 she did not care to hear, she made discov- 
 eries she did not care to make, discoveries not 
 intelligent just at first. She discovered that it 
 was a little place, and, compared with the large- 
 
 125 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 ness of life in these days, it seemed even smaller 
 than it was. She sat in her own room in those 
 early days, and revelled in the bitterness of her 
 contempt for a world in which she had gained 
 a footing, but a world which had grudged it 
 to hen For her history was a varied one. In 
 neglecting to tell it she made it greater, far more 
 tragic than it really was, because kind people filled 
 in the omissions with surmises, as they are prone 
 to do, with stories at which she would have laughed 
 in her dry way that had no girlhood in it. 
 The simple truth of her history was this : 
 She had been poor, born of such parents as 
 might have gone through long famines in Ireland. 
 These had thought, when they came to our 
 prosperous land, " Everything will be different, 
 this is a golden country." But these golden 
 dreams were not to be realized ; they were poor 
 still, and they and their kind huddled together 
 in tenements where they were too tired to culti- 
 vate the soil of their minds or their morals. 
 They worked one day perhaps, drank and slept, 
 and on the day following perhaps there was no 
 work, so they drank and slept, and continued 
 this course ad infinitum, ad libitum, ad nauseam, 
 and all the other ads. 
 
 And one day, out of the sloth and the horror 
 of such a life God sent a child for the honor of 
 their blood. She was much like the other chil- 
 
 126 
 
Deborah's Life 
 
 dren of their family, save that she lay still more 
 often, perhaps because she bore in her tiny frame 
 that upward power which is so strong, so vital, 
 so eternal that we must call it the seed of 
 resurrection. 
 
 She played on their doorstep just as other 
 tenement progeny did ; but instead of wrangling, 
 she would sit still, fondling the dirty leaves torn 
 out of some old book, even when she was too 
 little to read or understand the contents read to 
 her. 
 
 Later she went to school, and imbibed more or 
 less of the knowledge deemed fit for infantile 
 minds ; but the home atmosphere choked her, 
 and she nearly died. In books, this would have 
 made her conquest more glorious, but she was 
 only a weak, suffering Irish child. There were 
 times when a kind lady from a mission would 
 give her a bunch of flowers, and these assisted 
 her development; or the kind lady would give 
 her a pat on the head, which threw her back 
 on the primal instincts, half-savage, resentful, 
 unbeautiful. 
 
 But her evolution proceeded. She went to 
 work in a cannery, then in families, and one 
 glorious day God smiled on His own, and 
 she knew that she wanted to go to night school, 
 so as to be different from her own people. It 
 was a long, toilsome task, but she came up at 
 
 127 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 last, as it was intended. She came up as a 
 drowning person out of the waters, but with no 
 great faith in their mercy, or in the reason of 
 anything. Her people died off by degrees, and 
 when she was still a young girl, as the world 
 might judge, say nineteen or twenty, she was 
 respectable enough to go to live in the Terrace. 
 She might have gone still higher, but she was 
 too tired, for a while at least. 
 
 You can understand how Deborah carried to 
 the blue-veined landlady's table many storms and 
 burdens behind her modest shirt-front. She did 
 not eat much at times, as the mere food seemed 
 to choke her. She did not know why then, but 
 it was because she was still very young and bitter, 
 and the remembrance of past suffering was still 
 keen. One day, when this feeling had seemed 
 even harder than usual, Deborah rose hurriedly 
 from the table and went over and stood by an 
 open window. She wanted to breathe more 
 freely, and in this sad state of her spirit the poor 
 child also wanted to pray. 
 
 Her people had been Romanists also, but 
 not like the mother of Alfons. The latter had 
 been born in the atmosphere of Catholicism 
 and had absorbed the religion naturally ; but it 
 was not the Bread of Life to her. It was merely 
 an incense, and after a while marriage supplied 
 incenses also, those of love and home and 
 
 128 
 
Deb or alts Life 
 
 children ; so she was well surrounded and 
 content. 
 
 But Deborah's faith was of that seed which the 
 old Church often scatters, and which grows even 
 in barren places. In Deborah's heart lay religion 
 of this nature, dormant, but deep. She felt 
 that God or the Blessed Virgin would come to 
 her aid if she could reach them ; but no suppli- 
 cating words would come. She feared that all 
 the natural springs of the spirit had run dry ; 
 but it was not so. 
 
 While she was at the window that afternoon, 
 another boarder approached and stood beside her. 
 He said, " You are unhappy, little lady ? " and 
 Deborah scowled at him, but could not speak. 
 He continued talking. " I am only an old 
 fellow, wandering through the evening of life, 
 so you must not mind me ; I was young once, 
 as you are now ; one day you will be old too, 
 and will perhaps feel as I do to-night. So we 
 may meet on common ground. You must not 
 be lonely amongst us." 
 
 " Oh, I want to be lonely," exclaimed the girl. 
 
 He was not shocked. He felt glad to have 
 drawn that much from her, so he went on, not- 
 withstanding the rebuff. 
 
 " If you ask Mrs. O'Byrne whether there are 
 any ladies or gentlemen in the Terrace, she is apt 
 to reply there are none rich enough for the title, 
 9 129 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 except old Casey, who lives at the corner ; but he 
 is a silk-purse and sow's-ear sort of chap, I fear, 
 for great is our joy on Sunday mornings, when 
 he comes back from Mass carrying the collar he 
 should wear ; but even in that rough old body is 
 a rare old heart. I want you to know the hearts 
 of these people, and grow to like them, my 
 maid." 
 
 " I do not care to know people," the girl re- 
 plied, " I have no faith in them." 
 
 He knew still better what next to say. " There 
 is much in getting the key to the hearts of those 
 about us," he said, "and then, after sufficient 
 time, there is no sceptic who will not pity or 
 admire. After we learn to pity or admire, we 
 expand, although unconsciously. We cannot 
 help it." 
 
 Deborah thought of her own heart, and was 
 silent. 
 
 "Take, for instance, old Casey," her fellow- 
 boarder said. " You call all these small, plain- 
 fronted houses c similar/ He knows his home as 
 c the wan with the winder where the old woman 
 used to look out of before she wint.' ' 
 
 " I have no faith in people," the girl cried. 
 It was almost an outcry. 
 
 He stood before her, an incongruously gentle 
 figure, with long gray military moustaches, and 
 faded black garments with shiny seams. After- 
 
 130 
 
Deborah's Life 
 
 wards she heard that he was one of that nu- 
 merous class "who never harm any one but 
 themselves." It is such a sad, sad sin, so often 
 gentle, that of drunkenness. 
 
 " I once said that," he replied. "It was sev- 
 eral years ago, perhaps three or four. I should 
 like to tell you about it." 
 
 He had taken out his pipe, and tried to smoke 
 it, but he was somewhat nervous, and it refused 
 to light, thus affording him neither support nor 
 solace. 
 
 " I was very ill, alone, and friendless. It would 
 have been a pleasure to die, I thought, yet I 
 hated to pass out disillusioned. It is not satisfy- 
 ing ; for one likes the little deceptions of love and 
 friendship, after all. So I longed for a hand to 
 hold, or some kind face to look into, that did not 
 belong to a paid nurse. One night they told me 
 I was dying." His pipe had gone out again, but 
 he sucked it in a dry, noisy little way. " I was 
 very lonely, I can remember that, not afraid, 
 mind you, only sorry for the loneliness. It must 
 be the same way with a fellow when he leaves for 
 a long voyage, with no one even to say c good- 
 bye/ I remember I closed my eyes for a mo- 
 ment, and when I opened them, as if in answer to 
 that unuttered prayer, I saw a girl in the room 
 by my bedside." (Then he took out his pipe.) 
 " To this day I can remember just what she wore 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 and how she looked, a half-grown slip of a girl 
 in braided hair, and a dress that seemed to be 
 going down by tucks. At least she had that ap- 
 pearance, but it might have been intensified by 
 similar discoveries I made afterwards. Suddenly 
 I recognized her. A new family had moved into 
 the Terrace, a father, son, and two daughters. 
 The father was the old doctor who had called on 
 me that day in consultation, and she was one of 
 his daughters. 
 
 " c Father says you are very sick,' she began, 
 c and I came in to see what I can do for you. 
 I am very used to sick people. My little sister 
 is sick all the time.' 
 
 " c I should like to have you sit with me 
 a while,' I answered, c if your father can spare 
 you.' 
 
 " I can see her again this moment, sitting down 
 like a child well used to obey ; and, just in that 
 manner she took my hand in her own little warm 
 one, and time began to pass. 
 
 " There were many thoughts for those moments, 
 waiting, increasing weakness, wonderment, and 
 above all, peace. I began to die deliciously, it 
 seemed to me. She was such a quiet child, the 
 full cowardice of dying before her did not strike 
 me till long afterward. We just held on to each 
 other, and I was keeping my eyes on her face, 
 waiting for the end, when (this is the funny part 
 
 132 
 
Deborah's Life 
 
 of it) she leaned over and whispered something, 
 looking at the clock as she did so : 
 
 " c Guess where I am going at eight. To a 
 party ! ' 
 
 " She wanted me to let her go, but I could not. 
 I must have been very weak, with the cowardice 
 needing human touch overpowering me, for I 
 held on, and she stayed. We often laugh about 
 it now, and to this day I can hear the little voice 
 losing note after note of hope. 
 
 " ' The only party since I was a little girl ! It 
 won't take me long to dress, of course, not like it 
 was a new dress. Brother must be tying his own 
 cravat about now. It is half-past seven. People 
 go in late sometimes ' 
 
 " Just in the same voice in which she said, 
 hours after, when I still lay, now waking, now 
 sleeping, but coming back from the Valley, * My 
 hand is very tired, but do not disturb him, father 
 dear/ " 
 
 When her new friend gave a side glance at 
 Deborah, he saw that she had turned away, and 
 was resting her head on her arms, and was not 
 looking at him, so he said, " You are not going 
 to tell me you have no faith now, little lady, be- 
 cause I have lent you some of mine." 
 
 The smile they exchanged was radiant as a 
 rainbow, such wonders had his kind words and 
 opportune story worked in her. 
 
 133 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Does the girl still live here ? " she asked. 
 "Is she as good now as human?" 
 
 " I think she is the most human girl I know, 
 and she lives here still," he returned. With tact 
 and gentleness her fellow-boarder told of the 
 Strongs, of their having come of wealthy people, 
 a family which weakness and indecision had 
 robbed of its powers. Thus he enlisted her pity 
 instead of her cruelty for them, and silenced that 
 note of triumph in which she might have indulged, 
 at the thought that they were coming down while 
 she was going up, and the righteous balance was 
 kept. 
 
 At the end of this conversation he chanced to 
 look out, and pointed across the Terrace to where 
 two figures stood on one of the little stoops. Both 
 were young, a young man Vith a handsome face 
 and mocking eyes, while the girl was slender and 
 had just such an air as would suit the old man's 
 &ory. She had a strange, earnest face, in feature 
 very like her brother's, only it did not impress one 
 as being so handsome. 
 
 " Probably she is only asking him to feel and 
 see if he has a clean handkerchief in his pocket, 
 but I should like to know them," Deborah 
 thought. 
 
 "It was such a good face," she whispered all 
 that afternoon to the wall-paper, " such a good, 
 good face," she said. 
 
 134 
 
Deborah's Life 
 
 She forgot, meanwhile, to feel any warning in 
 the fact that her first impression of the young 
 man was not a favorable one ; she had said to 
 herself: " That is a face to deceive a woman." 
 
 This conversation marked a new epoch in 
 Deborah's life. Enlightened, she began to climb 
 the ladder that she had not been able to reach in 
 the old days. At first she did some labor, not 
 important in itself, but it was mental, and that 
 satisfied her for the present. One day, after 
 months of study, she obtained a certificate to 
 teach in the public schools. This opened the 
 gates of an earthly Eden ; but something of more 
 worth awaited her. 
 
 She perfected herself in the higher branches, 
 one by one, and when she became proficient she 
 resigned the tread-mill existence of public-school 
 teaching. While she was still young, not thirty, 
 she coached wealthy young men whose athletic 
 inclinations had interfered with their studies. 
 
 She was successful in this line of work, had 
 more time to think, and could command her 
 own prices. These she accepted carefully, not 
 over-joy ously, but gratefully, for she had had 
 her share of more strenuous labor. 
 
 135 
 
XVI 
 AND WHAT IT MEANT 
 
 THEN Deborah went back to her church, 
 into the fold, and the gentleness of her 
 life increased. From this time she be- 
 gan to find people better than she had thought 
 them, and she also found that all the oppression 
 of her past life had worked toward this enlighten- 
 ment. There were times when she wondered 
 how this forgiveness had all been granted, but, as 
 I have said, she was weary with her struggle, so 
 did not attempt any analytic research, and waited 
 until the answer came of its own accord. 
 
 One morning, months after her appearance in 
 the Terrace, she felt so happy, so harmonious, so 
 equable in her judgment both of suffering and of 
 motive, that she wandered into church out of 
 sheer thanksgiving towards the pleasures of exist- 
 ence ; and as she sat in the quiet pew, in the great 
 empty church, her gaze resting on pictures of the 
 saints about her, she suddenly thought of Lud- 
 wiga Strong, and the thought was like a vision. 
 
 She had learned to know Ludwiga of late, and 
 had learned to love the soft human touch of the 
 
 136 
 
And What it Meant 
 
 kind hands, and had thawed out under the unfail- 
 ing warmth of the sunny smile. There had been 
 times when she had met the girl in the Terrace, 
 times when she had run unexpectedly into the 
 humble home, times when she knew that the 
 smile was perfunctory and not at all in accord 
 with the owner's state of feelings ; but the light 
 of that smile never failed) her. 
 
 At first she had thought it insincere and shal- 
 low, but that day in church Deborah came to 
 know Ludwiga as her benefactress, and she ap- 
 preciated the benefaction at its full worth. 
 
 Though misfortune had placed Ludwiga in this 
 lowly spot, she was bestowing the advantages of 
 her birth on these humble dwellers in the Ter- 
 race, those gracious fruits of the spirit which long 
 generations of ease and culture had grown in her 
 unconscious heart. She was a poor little outcast 
 Florentine lady, but a lady in spite of place and 
 fortune, and Deborah felt blessed in knowing her. 
 In the half-tones of the Terrace, this girl seemed 
 to stand looking out with her honest, beseeching 
 eyes, and calling out to the darkened souls about 
 her: 
 
 " Good is very fruitful ! believe me, ye of 
 little faith." 
 
 Then Deborah had awakened from her vision, 
 and had gone out from the church to her home, 
 with more practical beliefs, better in mind and 
 
 137 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 body, strengthened for her part in the world's 
 work. 
 
 There is always work that we may do for the 
 world, but like the many other people, Deborah 
 had not found hers easily ; in fact, her position had 
 not allowed her greatscope. She had been prone 
 on her face, but now that she had risen into the 
 sunshine her point of view changed, and when 
 she looked around, the first person of whom she 
 thought, and to whom she wished to contribute, 
 was the Florentine maiden across the way. She 
 wanted to give back some of the beautiful love 
 and faith and strength that Ludwiga was ever 
 unconsciously dispensing. 
 
 But Deborah asked herself: " What can I give 
 her ? She is so happy her brother is so kind 
 they are so like two children together." Still 
 she went to call on Ludwiga, for all that, the same 
 evening. She found her alone in the dark, with 
 her face pressed against the window. 
 
 " I am waiting for my brother " the girl said ; 
 " he is very late this evening." 
 
 " Oh," Deborah replied, " if I had any one to 
 love me so much, I should be here every evening 
 before one could be anxious about me." 
 
 " It may be work," said the girl. 
 
 Deborah changed the subject. " Are you ever 
 unhappy ? " she asked. 
 
 " Often I could be unhappy," the child re- 
 138 
 
And What it Meant 
 
 plied, she was still a mere child in appearance, 
 although she was nearly seventeen that time, 
 "only, I do not allow myself to be so. It seems 
 disloyal to one's work." 
 
 " What work ? " asked Deborah, abruptly. 
 
 " Our work of conquering," Ludwiga answered, 
 not having found the right word just at first. 
 
 Deborah laughed, and when she thought a 
 moment she laughed again. Then she said : 
 " You are one of the funniest girls I ever met. 
 I have not met many, but all that any of them 
 thought of c conquering ' was masculine admira- 
 tion. You should take up that work also. You 
 know a great many people, but there is one you 
 should know better, the person, after all, with 
 whom you should be in the finest touch. That 
 is yourself, Ludwiga. You should fall in love 
 with somebody and find yourself. Then every- 
 thing would be more real." 
 
 The words meant nothing at all to the mind 
 before her, in a personal sense. It was quite dark 
 now, so Ludwiga lit the lamp, and made every- 
 thing pleasant and cosey. By the light, Deborah 
 could study the face of the girl and see how it was 
 to mature and develop, for the blank of waiting 
 was already there, and the lines at the mouth 
 were so wistful that they almost approached 
 suffering. 
 
 " I wish my brother would come," she said 
 139 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 after a while in a pathetic way, as if she could not 
 help it. 
 
 At that moment Deborah commenced her war- 
 fare against Alfons Strong, a warfare which was 
 to be constant in its vigilance. 
 
 " I have seen women so foolish over their 
 husbands or their sons," she cried in her impetu- 
 ous fashion, " but a brother, Ludwiga ! " 
 
 The dark, earnest face, already with lines of 
 care, looked up from a basket of unmended 
 stockings. " I do not think it matters if a 
 person be a friend or a stranger or a relation, 
 Deborah, so long as one believes in good. Little 
 likes or dislikes, and time and suffering, will be 
 so elementary after a while." 
 
 Deborah sprang to her feet with a certain pas- 
 sion at this. Then when the humor of it reached 
 her, calling life elementary at seventeen, she went 
 over and took the face in her hands. It had the 
 soft texture of the Southern races, and yielded to 
 her clasp without resistance. " You little fool, 
 you little fool," she cried ; but it was from her 
 own past, from her life and her own suffering, and 
 out of her own experience as to a beginner, that 
 she said it, so Ludwiga could take no offence. 
 
 Deborah's lessons were powerless to influence 
 the young girl's views. She was a very simple- 
 natured creature, but her views were not the 
 result of schooling. They were deep-rooted, her 
 
 140 
 
And IVhat it Meant 
 
 very own except for certain qualities due to her 
 inheritance. No one had taught her the great 
 fundamental truths of life ; she had not many 
 friends, she knew few people, so her theories 
 were uncorrupted by contact with the world. 
 She did not know what Deborah had meant about 
 self. She was Ludwiga Strong, she felt. When 
 her father had died without a thought of any 
 responsibility toward his children, she did not 
 criticise him even to herself, but assumed his 
 place with a simplicity that was too sincere to 
 provoke very prolonged laughter ; she was so 
 young, so courageous, so solemn-eyed. 
 
 Her father had lost heart but occasionally ; 
 he was conscious of her simple, straightforward 
 actions, because one day before he died, he lay 
 looking at her. " She is more like my New 
 England people than the others," he thought; 
 she represented all those equities and ambitions 
 that passion had checked in his own life. He 
 loved Alfons, and was proud of Ludwiga, but he 
 did not take any interest at all in the third child, 
 the one who died later. He was not openly proud 
 of Ludwiga, but that one day it was all summed 
 up in a little thought which he had about her 
 he somehow felt that the family was not dying 
 with him, that she was the legacy which every 
 man likes to give the world, of the good within 
 him. 
 
 141 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 It was in this state of mind that Deborah had 
 met her, about the time when her brother had 
 fallen in love with Antonia, the foolish creature 
 with beautiful arms and an inordinate desire for 
 expensive clothing. At least Alfons called this 
 love, it was the conventional misnomer. At 
 any rate, everything was swept away before it. 
 He would leave the clean little home in the 
 Terrace without a thought as to its cleanliness or 
 prettiness, just as he would lose his sister's face, 
 with its sweet charm conveying its high moral 
 lessons to him, in the cold tones of Antonia, as 
 she engraved herself physically upon the minds 
 of her worshippers. 
 
 One of the most touching phases of their 
 romance, if it may be called such, was that Alfons 
 loved Antonia beyond his measure (for that was 
 the gauge with Antonia), half the time filling her 
 nonsensical fancies with the money which should 
 have paid the grocery bill. It is true, Antonia 
 did not object to that; she liked him best in 
 debt. It was a marked contrast to the sister's 
 help that he was ignoring, but in the state of 
 mind in which this infatuation cast him, he did 
 not value Ludwiga at all in a spiritual sense. 
 There were times, even, when her love seemed to 
 bore him. But when the young girl herself was 
 suffering most, she endured her misfortune with 
 all the fortitude that was no doubt inherited from 
 
 142 
 
And IVhat it Meant 
 
 those Italian ladies who had danced and smiled 
 when their hearts were breaking. She went on be- 
 stowing her smiles on rough fellows like old Casey, 
 and her attentions on old women knotted with 
 the rheumatism. Her belief in good sustained her. 
 She raised it high, like a banner, and lived under 
 it. Her mother had deprived her of a religion, 
 but there were times when she found a fellow- 
 worker amongst her labors, and paused at such 
 moments, comprehending God. If she came no 
 nearer to Him, still she obtained more good than 
 bad from her life, and far more hope than doubt, 
 but for all this her life was a shadowed life. 
 
 Meanwhile, Antonia completed her brother's 
 education. She laughed over his little struggles, 
 until he grew hot and sick with the shame of 
 being honest. It was such a huge joke to Antonia 
 that Alfons should have a grocery bill, like the 
 good young men who were fathers of families ! 
 She made it a target for her wit, longing, so she 
 told him, to see the items purchased : " Codfish, 
 ten cents* worth of tea, no doubt (this for the 
 Puritan sister), and small quantities of sugar ! it 
 was inexpressibly funny Oh, Lord ! " 
 
 He writhed under her banter. He was very 
 young when first he met her; he had so much to 
 learn, she said. Antonia took him under her 
 soiled wing, and taught him these truths in her 
 glib fashion, that truth and honor and love had 
 
 143 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 been buried years before in our grandmothers* 
 graves, and that everything was wrong except 
 wrong, and that Pleasure sat on the high throne 
 of heaven, and that we were to kneel there wor- 
 shipping. So of course she despised not the cod- 
 fish money, since to her debt was an education 
 that rids a man of youth's uneasy conscience. 
 
 Alfons was a most docile pupil. No one ever 
 understood why he loved Antonia so, possibly 
 because she did not love him, or perhaps because 
 her eyes, like the Lorelei's song, drew his soul 
 into their cold azure depths. Of course she was 
 older than Alfons, one's first loves run to the 
 extreme. She was fair and cold, but very lovely, 
 an arctic breath, which charmed the boy's wan- 
 dering and romantic spirit, used as he was to the 
 warm responses of more torrid blood. 
 
 Antonia had never been young. It was not 
 the premature age of Ludwiga, one that lays 
 loving hands on the spirit and shines anxiously 
 from a tender face. A more arctic age enveloped 
 Antonia's heart, causing Alfons, as Alfons, to 
 weary her, but Alfons as the buyer of baubles 
 to be endurable. 
 
 Some women are false and bad, but are kept 
 respectable by circumstances. They do not fall, 
 because there is no temptation; perhaps it may 
 never come, more often it does. 
 
 Antonia, living a narrow life, aping a surface 
 144 
 
And What it Meant 
 
 perfectness, was discovered by Alfons. She had 
 looked upon him with wanton eyes, as she had 
 upon many others, with only this difference, 
 that he knew. 
 
 Sin involves so many lives. Had Alfons and 
 Antonia married, the weak and evil of their na- 
 tures might have become spent within domestic 
 walls, and their restlessness been dissipated in 
 family jars ; but while it is true that this act would 
 have narrowed their influence to one home, it 
 might have been to perpetuate weakness, idleness, 
 indecision in the issue. Neither was ready to con- 
 tribute to the world ; but they doubtless would 
 have done so if married. Thus in their separa- 
 tion was there not a Hand stronger than that of 
 mere human beings ? 
 
 Did God Himself, for the success of God's 
 own high purpose, in His own time, retrieve 
 their act ? Was life to work on life and influence 
 on influence? Was even Antonia necessary to 
 some one ? Was there a height which she might 
 mount, strong to stand in the bright light that 
 beats upon the virtuous strong to bear the 
 weight of a little child tugging on her hands 
 up to manhood ? It is a great test, that strength 
 such an Antonia the result of labor. Were 
 the billows to be " God's billows," in Kingsley's 
 words ? 
 
 10 
 
 145 
 
XVII 
 THE TURN OF THE TIDE 
 
 AFONS was the first to repent. She grew 
 enchantingly beyond him, laughed, 
 sneered, scoffed at him, who had been 
 her first tutor. They had not been a year to- 
 gether when Alfons suffered a disadvantage, she 
 had taken so kindly to immorality ! He began 
 to amuse her in numberless ways, affording her 
 countless themes for laughter. One could not 
 keep good very long with Antonia as a compan- 
 ion. Presently, his ridiculous notions of honor 
 were a memory, dissolved into air by her light 
 sarcasms. 
 
 He had offered to marry her once, burdened 
 as he was with the sense of wrong he had done 
 her. She had laughed at him, patting him in a 
 motherly way, until the hot blood had burned 
 his face like fire. 
 
 " Marry ? I ? And where has the good boy 
 been? Off to the Sabbath class, I wonder? 
 Ah ? R-i-c-h ! We women do not marry boys 
 like you. We wait for the rich ones." 
 
 146 
 
The Turn of the Tide 
 
 He sat very still after that, staring at her, 
 wondering why men loved bad women and yet 
 could so hate them at the same time. So the 
 thought of marriage left Alfons's head, and with it 
 some ideals of honor and virtue and womanhood. 
 
 Gradually he became like the rest, toying with 
 earnestness ; one who laughed rather than sneered 
 at those beautiful truths that are taught to chil- 
 dren. Desire and passion were the only realities. 
 They are idle winds, but they are destructive ; so 
 his little lamp of truth went out, and Alfons's 
 ways went wrong. 
 
 Antonia did not care to marry Alfons. She 
 grew more beautiful, more vain, and more shallow, 
 as the years went on. She had yet to approach 
 her zenith. Instinctively she knew this; also, 
 the result, that her face and her manner might 
 yet secure for her a wealthy marriage. She could 
 joke about Alfons's poverty at a distance, but at 
 any thought of marriage with him she would shud- 
 der and smell the codfish cooking, and by reach- 
 ing out her arms could touch the narrow walls 
 of their bridal apartments, and see herself in a 
 dingy wrapper, getting their meals on the now 
 historical oil-stove. It was painfully realistic. 
 Men take so many privileges with their wives. 
 
 Alfons as a lover was not so bad. His jealous 
 face and his courtly airs, and his passionate ad- 
 miration, were very agreeable at times. Gradu- 
 
 147 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 ally, as I have said, he became more like other 
 men who knew her, careless of home and honor, 
 a trifle sceptical of virtue, an idle laugher at social 
 crimes. He learned all this on the grocer's 
 money ; putting pretty trinkets into Antonia' s 
 hands ; helping to make her a queen of fashion ; 
 while up on the hill at which Antonia laughed, a 
 young face very like his own used to wait and 
 wonder about it, her old rusty black alpaca gown 
 making a strong contrast with Antonia's latest 
 silk one. 
 
 Antonia had not the kind heart of the demi- 
 monde. She ridiculed Ludwiga to her brother, 
 not openly, of course, since she was suave and 
 charming, but she accomplished her purpose with 
 a slight touch of mocking exaggeration. She was 
 too clever to hate " out loud," as the children 
 would say, but under the cover of much solicitude 
 she sneered at Ludwiga's old-fashioned virtues. 
 Without caring to listen, Alfons did listen, hating 
 himself, as he remembered all the sacrifices that 
 his sister had made. 
 
 " What, bonbons, my reckless Fons, and not 
 bread such as the good sister likes ! " or, 
 " Surely I am blest, my good one, in having 
 found a friend in the little saint's brother, else 
 she, and not I, would have worn this fine pin. 
 Surely it sits better here than in the dark hair of 
 our virtuous baby." 
 
 148 
 
The Turn of the Tide 
 
 And when, rather boyishly, in the ignorance 
 of his first love scandal, he had shown her his 
 sister's picture, Antonia had laughed aloud at the 
 very ridiculousness of it, and Alfons had gone off 
 by himself, to a down-town restaurant, hurt, 
 proud, repelled, a death-blow given to the first 
 tenderness in him. 
 
 Scarcely eating, pretending to read the news- 
 paper, in reality he was studying between the 
 folds the once well-loved face that stared up at 
 him from a cheap card photograph. There was 
 so much faith in the eyes, but such a poor attempt 
 at the stylish in the unbecoming arrangement of 
 the pretty hair, that it was pitiable. Alfons found 
 himself torn by conflicting emotions, each ten- 
 derly cruel. One was honest true love, called into 
 life by the memory of all that his sister had tried 
 to be to him, blotting out all her awkwardness, 
 until only a heart remained, one that had 
 never failed him. Then the taunting echoes of 
 Antonia's laugh were borne in on his spirits, and 
 this jeer, laying hold of him, stole the sweetness 
 out of his little picture until only its lack of grace 
 was left him. It is a sad and complex emotion, 
 this hard thing which may come easily to us, but 
 will never go while remorse can overtake it, 
 idle shame of those who have faith in our love. 
 
 Ludwiga yearned over him in silence. She 
 made pathetic attempts at enlivening his evenings 
 
 149 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 at home, learning to play cards to interest him, 
 asking her few friends in to amuse him. Failing 
 in all these efforts to arouse him, and divert his 
 mind into domestic channels, she would turn for 
 comfort to the kind old man who had interested 
 Deborah in her. He was a very present help in 
 her time of trouble. He met her always with 
 consoling words, consumed with pity as he was 
 at the overwhelming burden of care revealed in 
 her eyes. 
 
 " Let us be patient a little longer ; the tide 
 will turn. It is like everything else, little friend, 
 accident oftener than effort answers our 
 prayers." 
 
 Presently she grew philosophic. Sooner or 
 later the end must come. In the meantime 
 Alfons retrograded. 
 
 Antonia's influence was all-pervading. It was 
 subtle in its power over him. It threatened to 
 destroy home, honor, family love, and his future 
 prospects, when suddenly Ludwiga found her 
 path lighted by a glimmer of hope. One night, 
 when walking with Alfons, they had stumbled 
 across Antonia, dressed very richly, as was usual. 
 Gradually they approached each other, Ludwiga 
 turning very pale with the stress of the whole 
 affair upon her. 
 
 Antonia's sealskin sack, her dark hat, her 
 suave smile, and well-groomed body contrasted 
 
 150 
 
The Turn of the Tide 
 
 strongly with Ludwiga's shabbiness. The acci- 
 dent had presented itself to Alfons. He saw the 
 moral difference between them. Then, with his 
 sister's arm drawn through his own more closely, 
 they passed Antonia. He had not bowed. 
 
 Antonia never forgave him for drawing the 
 line. They had a bitter quarrel and parted. 
 One day, unable to stand the separation any 
 longer, Alfons called, only to find himself sup- 
 planted. Antonia's rich lover, long looked for, 
 had arrived. Alfons wanted to kill himself, and 
 was very unhappy for some time about it, but 
 need I say ? he grew more reconciled to living, 
 although cynicism succeeded despair. For sev- 
 eral months he professed to hate women, and 
 possibly he failed to tender them his place in the 
 street-car, or show similar evidences of his esteem. 
 Then he had become acquainted with Deborah, 
 and her coming was like a drink of cold water to 
 a burning throat. He did not agree with her 
 views of life, nor did he approve of her mode of 
 living, but she added to the flavor of existence, 
 and they passed many moments in the enjoyment 
 of each other's company, although they were not 
 aware of the enjoyment. 
 
 His serenity, which nothing seemed to ruffle, 
 was palliation to her adverse opinions of him, 
 while the stern grip she held on life lent a subtle 
 strength to the indecision of his own. 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 It is not a pretty story, this story of Alfons's. 
 It is sad and miserable and unhappy. It is weak, 
 too, and the page should be turned down on it ; 
 but that will not do. God wants the whole of 
 life, and, after all, I think we are like Him, in 
 our little way. 
 
 152 
 
XVIII 
 A YOUNG MAN'S FANCIES 
 
 SPRING was in the air. There was no 
 triumphant unfolding of nature, but the 
 season was in the air. Alfons, we shall 
 judge the rest by him, Alfons went forth of a 
 morning, with his boutonntire, his soft, sweet 
 eyes, his ready laugh, his trim gray clothing, and 
 came back when the day was ended, fresh and 
 smiling. " Work is not so bad," he would say 
 to Ludwiga, "when one's mind is not on it, 
 and there is the money." 
 
 A skimmer of unfathomed waters, Alfons ! 
 His mind, wherever it was, seemed to be in a 
 happy state. He stopped short of extremes that 
 springtime, living beautifully and entirely in a 
 physical sense. He was at peace with nature, 
 eating, sleeping, smiling, dressing, all enjoyably 
 in turn, nor did he dwell with one emotion over- 
 long, lest that might grow tiresome. He would 
 go to bed in the starlit evening and awaken of 
 his own accord in the morning, as if Arcadian 
 dreams had retoned and rebuilded. 
 
 153 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 One morning, having gone out to his sister's 
 flower-pot garden, he found her already amongst 
 her blossoms. 
 
 " Why, what are you doing up so early ? " he 
 asked her. " Your eyes look as if you should 
 be communing with Mount Olympus, and here 
 you are hunting rheumatism in the mud." 
 
 She was looking up sweet as one of her own 
 trembling flowers, and smiling a reflection of his 
 own smile, yet very tender, very pure she looked. 
 Her words expressed both these feelings naively : 
 " Life is very beautiful, Fons." 
 
 The sight was good to behold. 
 
 His meals were enjoyed in the same light and 
 happy way, and did one call him away in the 
 midst of one he seldom went back as of old to 
 finish. 
 
 It was as if he were in greater accord with 
 creation, and Deborah, the Bachelor Woman, 
 she who was opposed to men on principle, and 
 to Alfons in particular, stood and waited in 
 this quiet Terrace, and once in the dim half-light 
 of her bedroom she broke into some strange 
 murmured words to heaven : " Thank God that 
 Alfons has reformed." She also serves who 
 only stands and waits. 
 
 In the beauty of life that spring, it is not strange 
 that they came nearer together, this quiet-hearted 
 girl and this gay young man. They forgave each 
 
 154 
 
 
A Young Mans Fancies 
 
 other more freely, and were more lenient to each 
 other in numerous ways. One evening, when 
 they had been at the Spanish restaurant, and had 
 fallen behind the others on their way up the hill, 
 Alfons paused in the very midst of a light jest, 
 and became very earnest for a minute or two. 
 He said that he had met an old Terrace woman 
 coming up the hill that evening, and that she 
 had been very happy because she had found her 
 eyeglasses which had been lost. Now, every one 
 believed in this debonair young man because he 
 had such manners, manners which you can 
 seldom find in first generations, unless the heart 
 be very fine, and all the old women told their 
 troubles to him. So this old woman told him 
 quite simply " that it was a prayer to Saint Anthony 
 which had restored her glasses, a prayer to Saint 
 Anthony of Padua, who restores what is lost to 
 people." She thought that he was interested in 
 it, his expression was so mild, so sympathetic. 
 So far so good for this graceless Alfons ; but as 
 he walked up the hill that evening he saw an 
 excellent opportunity in the story. It might 
 assist him to introduce a new variation to his 
 perpetual chaffing of Deborah, so he asked very 
 gravely : " Do young ladies ever pray for their 
 hearts ? " and Deborah had not taken it quite 
 as he expected, because the atmosphere was vio- 
 lent for a moment, and of course he must have 
 
 155 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 said something serious to smooth matters ; but 
 later, under the quiet stars, he felt vexed about it. 
 " I should miss Deborah/* he said aloud once, 
 when he thought of it, " more than any one else 
 I know." He hoped she would never become 
 really angry with him, while for her part, Deborah 
 was a devout churchwoman, and Saint Anthony 
 is convenient at times. 
 
 The young girl of his household lived much 
 as usual. Though young, she was full of old 
 ways, and she did not know that there would 
 come a moment when life would stand revealed 
 in all its breadth, and depth, and meaning, as 
 Deborah had prophesied it would. " She would 
 find herself/' Deborah had said ; but the time was 
 not yet. 
 
 Meanwhile, she did "those little kindnesses 
 which most leave undone or despise " as naturally 
 as some bestow pennies. She had made the 
 Terrace a better place because of her residence 
 therein. She had given the barren life of Deborah 
 a true religion ; she had bestowed a flower, a smile, 
 a kiss here and there, and all these humble 
 people loved her dearly. Did she pass them of 
 an evening clad in her Sunday gown (for that is 
 the way they still called one's best in the Terrace), 
 it was good to see some laborer's cap come oiF, 
 and to see the light in his eyes because of her 
 
 156 
 
A Young Mans Fancies 
 
 recognition, or it was like a page in her biography 
 to hear some old woman mumble, " God bless her." 
 
 She had done her little task very simply, but 
 it had been a hard life, strenuous, barely under- 
 stood, yet the task before her. Out of that life 
 a man who loved her, were he the age of Julian, 
 should have led her gently, shaken the dust of 
 Bohemia from her feet, and standing one day in 
 a little nest of their own, here we should find 
 them, holding hands, and the man saying, " God 
 saved you for me ! " This was not to be. 
 
 Life was very simple for her. One could hear 
 her call of an early morning, as she leaned over 
 the railing, and though her heart might be grow- 
 ing weary of its service, yet the note of conscience 
 was in her voice : " Good-bye ; come home early, 
 I worry so, Alfons ! " Paraphrased, it might 
 read somewhat in this fashion : " Good-bye ; come 
 home early, I worry so, Alfons ! Then why 
 should one drink or gamble? A man's only 
 friend is his pocket, Fons. I hope you have 
 an unsoiled handkerchief in yours, by the way, 
 and your boots, they are polished, Fons ? A 
 shine can tone up the oldest boots ; well, out of 
 sight out of mind, old fellow ; good riddance, 
 boy." 
 
 One morning this she knew not a man with 
 copper-colored hair had turned towards the place 
 where her voice came from, and love going where 
 
 157 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 it was sent, he had almost stretched out his arms 
 in the void, calling, " You have been too long 
 dispensing loaves and fishes, the remnants are 
 mine ! " But that was only the glad spring tinge- 
 ing his fleeting fancies, and the impulse passed 
 away. 
 
 Julian, for his part, worked better after the teach- 
 ing of that great painter of whom Mrs. O'Byrne 
 had tried to tell ; but the name of Benjamin West 
 would have meant no more to her than Leonardo 
 da Vinci, or any of the rest of them. 
 
 " To paint one thing, to paint and paint 
 until one has painted that thing perfect," that 
 was Julian's star those days, and into his rapture 
 there would come a voice the voice of his 
 friend who had done so much for him a voice 
 full of irritation, crying out : " My God but 
 you are not West." 
 
 It said so much for love, for the boy was pro- 
 gressing ; but men are often so blind as not to 
 recognize the invisible work of the spirit. Thus 
 Jameson and the Art Editor were wroth, and said 
 they could not stand it ; that the public was not 
 educated to this point yet. 
 
 They told him that the people were not up to 
 this culture, an idealized washerwoman (that 
 was Mrs. O'Byrne), and the Art Editor had 
 tried to argue it out with Julian. He was a 
 good-natured fellow, long-suffering also. 
 
A Young Mans Fancies 
 
 " It may be truth, Sonny, but there are three 
 styles of truth for me, the brutal, the hysterical, 
 and the real. Realism is forgiven, brutalism is 
 successful, but that poetic washerwoman is a 
 twenty-first century evolution, which the classes 
 are not up to just yet." Julian bore all this in 
 silence. He liked the Art Editor passing well, 
 and friendship can afford to be forgiving; but, 
 when the fellow looked over the little batch of 
 offerings in silence, and actually struck a match 
 in speaking to him, and out of the silence came 
 the vital question : " Who is she ? " Julian told 
 him to go to hell, as he could think of nothing 
 more clever just then. The Art Editor had not 
 intended to get angry, but there was something 
 in the advice of the young man which did not 
 please him. It was probably the tone in which 
 Julian said it, or he was in a bad humor when it 
 was uttered ; one of those humors when we are 
 unable to forgive the most petty slights, for years. 
 He did not forget it, and on thinking it over he 
 felt constantly aggrieved when he remembered the 
 many times he had tried to turn favors in Julian's 
 direction. " Of course he need not have gone," 
 which seems the masculine palliative ever, 
 but still Julian was ungrateful to him, and their 
 friendliness was never the same after. 
 
 Julian did not sever his connection with the 
 paper. True, he did not think of the paper much 
 
 159 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 at all after he had left the Art Editor's office in 
 a huff. If he had thought of it, it would have 
 been in his usual way, that the difference would 
 blow over as others had; but he really did not 
 think along those lines at all. 
 
 He went home, and when he picked up his 
 pencil again, it was to follow still in the footsteps 
 of that man with the wonderful theory, which is 
 so' consistent with the artistic development of a 
 young man in love. It was either as if he had 
 not quarrelled with the Art Editor or else had not 
 remembered any vital thing which that worthy 
 had said. 
 
 It was not that he drew Ludwiga entirely ; 
 there were brief recreative moments which he 
 devoted to her setting. 
 
 His life among the Terrace people had been a 
 prosperous one, and when he was not with the 
 girl or dreaming about her, he wrought the 
 humble folk into pictures of interest, impres- 
 sions pleasing to the eye or heart, and having 
 finished one, he passed to another, pale with in- 
 spiration. Whatever this force which had come 
 into his life, the secret spring had been reached, 
 and it responded. 
 
 Art was no longer mental, in its entirety, as it 
 had formerly been. It was full of thoughts and 
 sympathies and emotions, which all now flowed in 
 one direction, governed by a beautiful harmony, 
 
 160 
 
A Young Mans Fancies 
 
 toward the great goal. One day he sketched the 
 tough girl with whom Alfons flirted. It is quite 
 a story. The tough girl lived at the rear of the 
 Terrace. She was a nice girl, but " her father 
 was not so beautiful as our father was," little 
 Grace Strong had once said of her. Little Grace 
 had been the child who died, who could have 
 expressed it better ? The girl might wear a dress 
 and a gay Paris bonnet, but some way one knew 
 about her father without being told. God may 
 have made us all equal, but we must have taken 
 to highlands and lowlands, of our own accord. 
 
 Ludwiga showed the sketch to her brother ; 
 he looked, and did not smile at it. 
 
 " When was it drawn, at least the expres- 
 sion ? when was it caught ? " Alfons asked. 
 
 "When you were hanging over her gate, my 
 son ! now will you heed me ? " 
 
 " Oh, Ludwiga, you are too serious. To hang 
 over her gate, to kiss her, maybe, is not to harm 
 a woman." 
 
 Yet he was impressed by Julian's interpretation, 
 and decided that it was time to mend matters. 
 Her father had nothing to do with it ; there was 
 an expression in the shallow face which Julian 
 had set before them that can be assumed with a 
 certain dignity by all. 
 
 Alfons did not stop hanging over the gate all 
 of a sudden, it would have been cowardly, so he 
 " 161 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 said ; but he compromised by a change of motive ; 
 so where formerly it had been amusement, now it 
 was pity. But the saddest part of motives is their 
 impenetrability ; so how could the girl know ? 
 
 Mrs. O' Byrne was a central figure in Julian's 
 work, a large, stout woman with a simple joy 
 in her eyes, a mother's joy at her power to do 
 hard work, because she was acquiring great wealth, 
 as poor people judge it, for her little lad who was 
 blind. 
 
 Then Julian drew the bull pup and the round 
 man in the square hole. He drew a child's 
 worn-out doll with such subtle art that one knew 
 the lonely thing was an orphan ; he drew ould 
 Casey on his plodding road to Mass, and then 
 he drew ould Casey coming home, and the peace 
 on his face was passing that of promise because 
 he was absolved from sin and freed from the 
 crafts and assaults of the Devil, three of these 
 were his cravat, his coat, and his collar. 
 
 But this work was not satisfactory to the paper. 
 It was seen with the Art Editor's eyes, and he 
 was wroth with the young artist, and this trifling 
 ill-humor was to be one of the turnstiles of Julian's 
 destiny. 
 
 162 
 
XIX 
 REAPING THE WHIRLWIND 
 
 SUMMER held a great deal of heat that 
 year for those of the faithful who remained 
 in the city. It was dry heat, as is usual, 
 and men in crowded offices went home more 
 weary of evenings. It was work all day and 
 then dinner, and an after-dinner nap, with no 
 very restful slumber later. 
 
 Amongst other inconveniences and discom- 
 forts, it was the kind of summer that works on 
 a man's nerves. The Art Editor and Jameson 
 were amongst those who became changed and 
 fagged of expression, but Julian paused not, nor 
 heeded. He called it love of one woman, and 
 liked the diagnosis, but it was doubtless inspira- 
 tion ; at any rate, he was well content. 
 
 A Sunday came when Alfons went to call on 
 Miss Deborah Murphy. He had a message 
 from his sister for her; so he entered the attic 
 with no other intention than to play Mercury in 
 the proper manner ; but Deborah's mere appear- 
 ance was always too great a temptation for him. 
 
 163 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 He entered noiselessly. Deborah sat at her 
 desk writing, writing, dreaming, as the humor 
 pleased her. Once, when she said half-aloud, 
 " I wonder what is the matter with me lately," 
 it was too unexpected a kindness when his lazy 
 voice responded, " I am, Deborah." 
 
 Deborah said that his presence was offence 
 enough, but when to this was added his familiar 
 utterance, it was unpardonable. She glared so 
 indignantly at him that he put himself about 
 at once to mend matters. He said he could 
 stand indignation, but there were stages even 
 to indignation. Cold indignation made him 
 feel worse than a cold dinner. So he told her 
 very meekly and very contritely that his remark 
 had been only a jest ; but as any discerning 
 woman can see, this was no suitable amends to 
 a lady. 
 
 The color suffused the face now bending over 
 the paper, and she kept repeating, but wholly to 
 herself: " Oh, to think I let him see that I could 
 have imagined differently, even for an instant ! " 
 
 The color was very becoming, and Alfons 
 admired it for some time, after which he said 
 in his most harmless accents: 
 
 " Do you not get weary writing, Deborah ? " 
 
 " Sometimes," she replied guardedly, lest he 
 imagine she misconstrued that also. 
 
 " What are you writing ? " Alfons asked. 
 164 
 
 
Reaping the Whirlwind 
 
 The girl raised her face and leaned it on her 
 hands. She became younger by this action, a 
 Bachelor Woman noted for her youthful looks. 
 
 " Just then," she said, " I was writing to an old 
 stout woman who has pleasantly hinted on vari- 
 ous occasions that she may leave her money to 
 me, ' if I am good ' ; using the phrase with her 
 glasses on, as was done when we were six or 
 seven. She is not an unkind old party, but she 
 has long-distance charities ; although even they 
 are not half so cruel as they are amusing. She 
 is very, very stout, wears old silk dresses, and 
 saves her best ones, just as Ludwiga and I do, 
 only with no motive or reason. I read to her 
 when she is in town, and now I am so well versed 
 in her ways of breathing that I can tell just where 
 to stop throughout her naps, and just when to 
 start in again, so that she may not know there 
 has been a halt. At first I thought this quite 
 clever on my part, sometimes even now I 
 think so; but it has not the abundance of 
 genius I once ascribed to it, as association is the 
 greatest factor in education." 
 
 The young man now sat on the edge of the 
 couch, looking down a little and frowning slightly. 
 " I have a great many faults," he said, " but I 
 could not endure such an old person just for 
 money." 
 
 " No one said it was money," Deborah cor- 
 165 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 rected politely, " but of course it is. Besides, she 
 is not an unkind old person, as I have said ; not 
 at all. She loves to sympathize with sorrowings 
 in strange countries, and as I read of them to 
 her, she leans back and says with the proper 
 dramatic effect: c Famines in India, well, well ! 
 Suffering in Armenia, oh, poor creatures ; oh, 
 terrible ! ' God understands," ended Deborah, 
 quietly. 
 
 " That is not religious, that c God understands ' 
 of yours/' Alfons broke in, as if he wanted her to 
 be herself during one interview, at least. 
 
 She kept her gaze on him for some time. 
 
 " No, perhaps not," she resumed, with a burden 
 as of regret to her smile. He watched her criti- 
 cally ; he could see where some great element like 
 fire had swept over her personality, transforming 
 its surface, and all at once there came to him a 
 longing to know the secret place of her strange 
 life better, to be able to sympathize with her al- 
 together. He had never cared to know before. 
 With such a life as his, ancestry represented so 
 many excuses ; there were times when he had 
 committed this or that moral wrong, and relied 
 on the characteristics of dead and gone people to 
 re-establish him in his own self-respect. Nearly 
 every one knew that Ludwiga and he were what 
 even Americans call " of good family." Because 
 of this fact, his own commissions and omissions 
 
 166 
 
Reaping the Whirlwind 
 
 had never seemed quite as evil or vulgar to him 
 as those of some common-looking fellow with the 
 clay of labor more than of earth apparent on his 
 hands and face. 
 
 On this Sunday morning this one toneless 
 young woman was to make more of an individual 
 of him than life itself or his own position in life 
 had been able to accomplish. He was not in 
 love with Deborah, not at all. Alfons had car- 
 ried his heart like a sweet-toned guitar. Did a 
 pretty fancy enter his head, the willing chords 
 responded, and if one were snapped in the break- 
 ing, what of it ? There had been other strings, 
 and a fickle player has many fancies, so what 
 more ? 
 
 Assuredly he was not in love with Deborah, 
 a strange, colorless, straight-backed girl who pos- 
 sessed a violent temper without possessing the 
 excellent grace of concealment. Deborah saw no 
 reason why she should conceal her temper, or her 
 faults, or her mercenary fancies from him. She 
 was a woman, he was a man, Deborah would 
 have concluded fiercely. There may have been 
 a time when men were knights and women merely 
 the colors they lived and died for ; but in Deb- 
 orah's day she had rushed into the fray as a sol- 
 dier, and it really never occurred to her to use 
 milder weapons than justice, harshness, and 
 truth. 
 
 167 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Assuredly one could not be in love with Miss 
 Deborah Murphy, but she interested Alfons. 
 
 " Deborah," he asked all at once this morning, 
 "why do you care for money so much?" 
 
 He was staring at her through his glasses, and 
 she had never seen such a look before, from 
 Alfons. 
 
 " Once," she said, " I was very hungry, body, 
 soul, heart, and mind ; I was very, very hungry, 
 and in that disorder of everything, gold repre- 
 sents more than God to people, unless they 
 are saints. All the people by whom I was sur- 
 rounded felt the same way, I am sure. If some 
 one had walked in amongst us and had said the 
 name of God, I do not think that one eyelid 
 would have flickered or one pair of lips moved in 
 response ; but if some one had clinked a coin in 
 our hearing, there would have been almost an 
 uprising, until some hungry degenerate one had 
 gained possession of it." 
 
 He removed his glasses and dropped his head 
 slightly. 
 
 Deborah went on : " Whenever I look at a 
 newly coined piece of gold I think of that, and 
 how for years and years after, actual currency 
 was life, life's object, life's reward. When my 
 family was poorest a twenty-dollar gold-piece 
 meant food ; the next stage it meant just money, 
 holding, possessing money ; stage three, it meant 
 
 168 
 
Reaping the Whirlwind 
 
 becoming more like other people, all I, I, I ; 
 stage four, it meant an almost mad sense of 
 power," Deborah hesitated. 
 
 " And now ? " questioned Alfons. 
 
 "It means nothing at all," Deborah replied 
 simply : " It means nothing whatever, only I 
 keep on striving to get it, striving to enlarge my 
 capital/' She smiled pathetically. " I often 
 wonder what I shall really do when I actually 
 possess a great deal of money, at last. Some- 
 times I think and think, but I can never see 
 myself doing anything but laying it in the lap 
 of Misfortune, that old Misfortune, with a sob. 
 The sob would be for recollection, not for regret, 
 Alfons." 
 
 The young man rose to his feet. Her voice 
 had become very womanly and had gone clear 
 through him. 
 
 " I am proud of you, Deborah," he said. " It 
 is a fine thing for a girl to fight life and come out 
 brave and great and upright. Oh, it is a fine, 
 fine thing, one of the finest things a man can hear 
 of. It makes him better, more manly, through 
 shame." 
 
 The girl looked up, her eyes shining, but it 
 was a proof of her generosity that she did not 
 think then of herself. 
 
 "Your sister has fought life bravely, greatly, 
 uprightly," she repeated. "You have needed 
 
 169 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 but to reach out your hand all these years to 
 have touched her hand and realized your ideal." 
 
 It was like a return wave, which made him 
 speechless. 
 
 " Oh, she is my little scapegoat of Bohemia," 
 he said after a second. 
 
 He went down the stairs, away, away, after he 
 had said it. He could not bear to look in Deb- 
 orah's eyes nor read her judgment in them. His 
 little scapegoat of Bohemia ! He had never 
 realized before, but what a phrase in this light ! 
 What a long wrong, what an idle, thoughtless 
 lack of manhood ! 
 
 Alfons went down the steps, having forgotten to 
 deliver his sister's message. She wished Deborah 
 to dine with them as usual that evening, and she 
 was to come as guest de convenance as well. 
 In other words, if affairs went wrong, Deborah 
 was to stand by the ship, like Casabianca, but 
 otherwise she was merely to come with unim- 
 paired conversational powers and half a dozen 
 rather fine bits of table silver of which every one 
 was justly proud. 
 
 Left alone in the attic, Deborah wrote nor 
 dreamed not, but suffered from the supersensitive 
 fears of a just woman. " I have been hard on 
 him," Deborah thought. 
 
 It has been told that a stranger went into a 
 man's tent for shelter, and during the night 
 
 170 
 
Reaping the Whirlwind 
 
 blasphemed God, and was ordered to depart. In 
 the morning the Most High appeared and asked, 
 " Where is the stranger I sent you ? " The man 
 replied : " He blasphemed Thee, and I sent him 
 forth." This was the Divine reproach : " Forty 
 years have I been patient with that man. Could 
 you not have borne with him one night ? " 
 
 " That is Ludwiga and I," Deborah said over 
 and over. 
 
 171 
 
XX 
 
 WHAT THE SUMMER BROUGHT 
 
 BUT it is Julian's history which is all- 
 important. Alfons and Deborah are 
 merely intruders into Julian's history, 
 which is that of a brilliant career. 
 
 While Deborah and Alfons were fencing with 
 great swords that morning, the young artist lay 
 abed as usual. He made few exceptions to the 
 rule, and was wont to call down to Mrs. Mamma 
 later, " Soon I shall die of hunger ; nothing but 
 a cup of coffee administered immediately will save 
 my life." 
 
 She liked the boyish sound of it, and up she 
 would come with well-laden tray and steaming 
 coffee, calling on the saints to bless him for a 
 bonny fraud. " You 're welcome, you 're wil- 
 come, you 're welcome," she would say, mixing 
 her e's and her /'s a bit, just as the blind laddie 
 did also. 
 
 After Julian's life had been saved, he would 
 work for hours over some scrap of sketch only to 
 tear it up later, or he would write a long, newsy 
 letter to his mother. 
 
 172 
 
What the Summer Brought 
 
 This morning the usual programme was fol- 
 lowed out. He had called to Mrs. O'Byrne, he 
 had drunk his coffee, he had dreamed a great 
 deal of half-Latin optimism as usual, and when 
 Jameson glanced over the edge of his paper last, 
 the young man was sitting at a desk and was 
 writing to his mother. 
 
 " Jameson," he said, " when I write to mother, 
 I usually tell her all the news about everything, 
 all the Terrace except the girl. I do not 
 know why I did n't tell her about the girl, but 
 after this, does n't one understand though ? " 
 
 He picked up his mother's last letter, explain- 
 ing boyishly, " You see in my last letter, just 
 for fun I asked her what she would think if I 
 married some nice German girl in time, and set- 
 tled down into a civil old farmer under a big 
 straw hat, and listen to this answer: 'She will be 
 very welcome whenever it happens, dear, but I 
 want you to be an artist as I never wanted it 
 before/ ' He put his pen to the paper, seized by 
 one of his suddenly splendid moods. " I think 
 I 'd better tell her that the German girl won't get 
 me after all." 
 
 He wrote on. 
 
 "Your mother only expresses what hundreds 
 of other people feel, Julian. If you were to 
 marry just now, it would scatter all your forces, 
 it would lose time out of your service, it might 
 
 173 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 end in your deserting your profession altogether, 
 and settling down, as you say. Now the question 
 is would you be happy in such a lot ? " 
 
 The young fellow raised his face. 
 
 " I '11 tell you after a day or so," he uttered. 
 " I am going to put my luck to the test soon." 
 Then he went on writing his mother's letter. 
 "Jameson is the same old bear, the same sore- 
 headed, fine old fellow. I think it would be 
 good for him if he fell in love with some one and 
 got tuned up a bit. A woman can do heaps with 
 the harp of life when it gets out of tune, how 
 is that for a poetic fancy, and from your own son, 
 just think, you spoiled woman ? Mother, I want 
 to be an artist, but it won't kill me if I fall on this 
 side of the great hurdle, so don't fret. I 've come 
 to believe in compensation, and if I can't get the 
 best in art, I may manage the very best in some- 
 thing else, and that is what? Ask your own 
 heart, you sceptic. You say you want me to be an 
 artist more than you ever have before. Just 
 to-day in this sunny little room I want family love 
 more than anything else in the whole world, the 
 love that surrounds a man with actual happiness, 
 the love that Jameson fails even in realizing or he 
 would n't nag at me in the way he does." 
 
 After a while he sealed his letter. 
 
 " Jameson," he asked, " are you going into the 
 Strongs' for dinner ? " 
 
 174 
 
What the Summer Brought 
 
 " No," the man answered, " not to-day ; I have 
 another engagement/* He went out after a little, 
 leaving Julian alone. He had no other engage- 
 ment, but he had not cared to go to the Strongs'. 
 He had grown very sure of the Florentine girl, 
 but it was torture risking her, notwithstanding ; 
 then for hours he did not think of any of them, 
 but towards dark all he could conjure up was 
 Alfons's back porch, enclosed in its latticed rail- 
 ing, and lighted by sentimental Japanese lanterns. 
 He was so familiar with Alfons's back porch, con- 
 verted into a conservatory. Alfons would stand 
 off there tinkling forth emotional strains of music ; 
 that strange, silent-eyed Deborah would say sharp 
 things of occasions ; and Julian and the girl 
 would be standing here alone, alone 
 
 He, Jameson, had stood there also when there 
 were twinkling lights on the bay beyond them ; 
 lights on the distant Marin hills, bright lights 
 below them in the city, and such lights in her 
 shining eyes ! 
 
 It is said that " when we sow an act we reap a 
 habit, when we sow a habit we reap a character, 
 when we sow a character we reap a destiny." 
 
 Jameson had sown his act when he rescued 
 Julian from Antonia, and then had allowed her 
 to stay in their lives, still a burning brand. For 
 himself he had no fear of her, nor did he fear for 
 Julian. There were times when Julian had seen 
 
 175 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Antonia also, here and there, but the day of 
 her influence seemed passed, because he never 
 seemed to have any interest in her now. Once 
 Julian said, " She is beautiful certainly, the most 
 beautiful woman I have ever seen ; but beauty 
 is not all, Jameson." This was said during the 
 time that he was getting acquainted with Lud- 
 wiga. He did not pause to learn all about art 
 for himself, or he would have known that it was 
 not Antonia or Ludwiga, but the Perfect Woman 
 he was learning to appreciate, so that some time 
 he could paint her. 
 
 It was merely that Ludwiga and Antonia had 
 justified the highest to him, each in her own way. 
 If both were one woman there would have been 
 no delay in his life or no moral conquest of 
 Antonia, as you will see ; while, as for Jameson, 
 it was something in his character, formed by a 
 long chain of circumstances, which made him 
 turn to Antonia that evening. It was an instinct 
 akin to that of self-preservation, not clearly de- 
 fined, or one that could be analyzed, but vital 
 with intention. The great endeavors of all life 
 seemed in danger of being weakened, and he 
 needed Antonia's restoring influence ; yet in call- 
 ing on Antonia for solution in this dilemma, he 
 brought her into their lives again when she had 
 all but passed out of cither's interest. It may be 
 that there are moments and impulses when we 
 
 176 
 
What the Summer Brought 
 
 obey forces greater than our own small wills, 
 forces which impel us in the direction of great 
 results without regard to our own opinions, often 
 indeed in very opposition to our own opinions. 
 
 In his turn Jameson was to carry into Anto- 
 nia's life a greater helpfulness than he had form- 
 erly been able to offer her. It was the gentle 
 influence of that girl in the past, Alfons Strong's 
 sister. Antonia would grow a better woman 
 thereby ; there was a wide difference, a deal of 
 experience between the Antonia who had once 
 viewed that humble photograph of Ludwiga with 
 the earnest and pleading young face, the Anto- 
 nia who cried between ear-splitting screams of 
 laughter, " Her dress does not fit ! " and the 
 Antonia who was to learn to think in some 
 lonely twilight, " I wish I had been a good 
 woman ! " She grew to say this often at night 
 in the magnificence of her spacious home, when 
 she sat silent, beautiful, alone, while the twilight 
 came on ; those strange shadows that grow into a 
 stranger dark that seems to come in and settle 
 about us. 
 
 Jameson reached her dwelling after a long walk 
 under a heaven of stars. It was a handsome build- 
 ing, in the colonial style ; indeed, the only differ- 
 ence between Antonia and other women then was 
 her desolation. Women had not taken her up yet. 
 
 Jameson found her alone. She was remem- 
 
 12 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 bering the Sabbath day to keep it holy because 
 this was conventional ; righteousness was to come 
 later. In the few moments before she came down 
 the man studied the handsome apartment. There 
 was skill of upholstery, skill of brush, exquisite 
 skill of arrangement, but no trace of Antonia ; 
 she had obliterated herself entirely. She had 
 hot-house taste, and this was the impression of 
 some dealer who knew his business and was a 
 gentleman-like fellow as well. 
 
 The woman came down after a while and shook 
 hands with him. "You have handsome rooms 
 here," he said ; " they look as if they should be 
 the home of an artist." It brought him around 
 to Julian unexpectedly. " I have done something 
 to-day," he began, " that no one but you would 
 understand, so I came to see you to get it off my 
 mind. What have I done for Julian all these 
 years ? " 
 
 " You have made Julian," Antonia answered. 
 "You could have said that for yourself." 
 
 " Yes, I could have said it, but I wanted you to 
 say it for me," Jameson returned ; " it sounds 
 better." 
 
 Antonia smiled. "It is the only answer I 
 could have made to you," she said, " although I 
 like your modesty. It is n't a bad thing to have 
 in connection with well-doing ; but you need 
 never fear that I will misunderstand you." 
 
 178 
 
What the Summer Brought 
 
 " Oh, I don't," Jameson exclaimed. He sat 
 staring at her. He saw her sitting like a glo- 
 rious palm in her conventional surroundings. 
 She was graceful, beautiful, splendid physically, 
 and clad in a gray gown to which she conveyed 
 her individuality until it became like heliotrope, 
 the color that best matched her fair coloring and 
 complexion. 
 
 Jameson took in the impression. " I think I 
 can say the rest for myself," said he. " I made 
 Julian, as you say, and to-night I have unmade 
 him. I am not sorry, and I do not want to be 
 sorry about it, so do not look at me in that way." 
 
 " Oh, I never doubt what you do," said the 
 woman, " but he was such a lovable boy, such a 
 typical artist!" 
 
 Jameson laughed bitterly. " There is n't a 
 woman on earth who ever stands by a man's 
 opinion right through," he said ; " it is always the 
 feminine but or if. You side with us up to a 
 certain point, and then you are yourselves. I 
 thought you were the one woman who would un- 
 derstand how and why I deserted Julian after so 
 long. I have had him turned off from the paper. 
 I went down and got the Art Editor to do it. 
 Julian had made the latter angry, so it only 
 needed a word to accomplish Julian's undoing. 
 I think it has been on my account they held him, 
 anyway." 
 
 179 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 She continued to keep her eyes upon him. 
 "Oh, you used to like truth so well," she said; 
 "let us be truthful in this matter. You know 
 they would have kept Julian forever on your 
 account." 
 
 "Well, if you want truth," he replied, "they 
 would have kept Julian forever on my account, 
 but I withdrew the motive. I told them it was 
 no longer a favor to me." 
 
 Then she commenced speaking intuitively : 
 " Of course I understand you ; I think I always 
 have. You do not need to tell me any more 
 without my divining that you had a good reason 
 for what you did. Perhaps he fell in love with 
 some one, and you see that this is his only salva- 
 tion, his only chance of salvation, to be correct. 
 Of course if this is the case, there is nothing that 
 you could do about it, but I hope he saves 
 himself" 
 
 " There is the woman in you," he said again. 
 She sat with folded hands. 
 
 " Has he fallen in love with some one ? " she 
 asked. 
 
 "Yes, he has fallen in love with some one," 
 Jameson replied. "There is something else I 
 want to tell you about the matter. Maybe I did 
 him this turn through jealousy." 
 
 " That is rather new to you, is it not ? " asked 
 Antonia. She continued to look at him. She 
 
 1 80 
 
What the Summer Brought 
 
 had known all her life that this would come, but 
 it was worse than she had ever expected, now it 
 really had happened. It was not pain at all, but 
 a suffocation, as of ashes. 
 
 " Entirely," the man answered ; " I do not 
 know that the reason is true, but it may be true 
 about me, because I am jealous of Julian. 
 I met her after he did, and I have not meant any 
 wrong to him, but it would come the feeling 
 and this is the way it has ended." 
 
 " Oh, don't think so poorly of yourself," the 
 woman answered, love was making her far 
 more moral, as you see, "don't talk in this 
 fashion about yourself. You may care for the 
 woman, but you did this for Julian's art. It is 
 not the first act of jealousy or wrongdoing, it is 
 the last offering of a generous friendship. You 
 felt this sharpness necessary for his ultimate suc- 
 cess. You felt that he needed awakening, that 
 it was time when he should stop producing 
 sketches on your strength, and know himself 
 his own self, and his capabilities one way or 
 another." 
 
 " Still, I care for the woman," the man said. 
 
 " You may not know yourself as well as I 
 know you," Antonia answered. " I think you 
 would be the last person in the world to do 
 Julian anything but the best turn under these 
 circumstances." 
 
 181 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 He sat, and her heaviest punishment was that 
 no thought of his was for her. 
 
 After he went away she stood before a big 
 sombre-hued mantel, staring down at a great 
 empty fireplace. 
 
 " I was positively noble," she smiled to herself. 
 " I was positively noble to him, and I meant 
 every word of it too." 
 
 Then she fell to sobbing softly, right in the 
 midst of her mirth. She was lonely, and life 
 seemed empty at last, nothing very paying, 
 nothing very much worth while. 
 
 She continued sobbing, sobbing. 
 
 182 
 
XXI 
 THE RIFT 
 
 JAMESON had been reassured by Antonia's 
 opinion of him. He tried to believe that 
 she had made something more than a tact- 
 ful analysis of his action, and he spent all the 
 time reaching his and Julian's home thinking 
 of Julian as he had known him for the past 
 eight years. This train of thought meant count- 
 less memories, almost as tender as the memories 
 left from a friendship with a woman. 
 
 " You did this for his own good," Antonia had 
 said, " not your own ; you thought he needed 
 heroic treatment, and your friendship was great 
 enough to give it." 
 
 He had gone after that, off toward the lonely 
 hill on which he and Julian resided. He had 
 lived with Julian a long time, and he was fond 
 of him ; thus it was with an almost fatherly 
 love that he dwelt on the news he was about to 
 communicate to Julian, and the manner in which 
 he was to do it. He felt that a great deal 
 depended on that. 
 
 After what Antonia had said, he did not doubt 
 himself any more. He accepted her opinion that 
 
 183 
 
The Siege of Yo^lth 
 
 he had acted for Julian's good, and he was willing 
 to stand by his act, but he wanted to be lenient 
 with the young fellow. Julian was like a girl in 
 some ways. He needed a certain coating of gen- 
 tleness over any firm dealing with him. A woman 
 could do almost anything with Julian; but he had 
 become hopelessly sulky once or twice with Jame- 
 son, and this was not a time to tempt a failure 
 with him. 
 
 Jameson meant all these thoughts as he walked 
 up the hill toward their little home. He had few 
 thoughts other than these for Julian. 
 
 It is true that he recollected once how happy 
 they had been in the Terrace, and that this might 
 be one of the last times he would approach it in 
 just this home-going spirit ; but it was neither 
 an ache nor a regret with' him, because in his inner 
 consciousness he felt that this change in Julian's 
 life would make a change in his also, and he might 
 have another home his own home, maybe. It 
 was really not a conscious thought, that, but 
 there was an emotion which seemed to assist it in 
 nearly becoming one, as it went trailing, trailing 
 close to actual possession, actual knowledge, actual 
 selfishness. 
 
 Man-like he did not think of Antonia at all, 
 of her splendid beauty, or her home, or the real 
 generosity of her opinions. She had been satis- 
 factory just at the right time, as usual. She had 
 
 184 
 
The Rift 
 
 told him that he was honest, and he would rather 
 be innately honest than anything in the world. 
 The Bohemienne was intuitive as a friend, sooth- 
 ing as a woman. 
 
 He had once told Antonia that honesty and an 
 appetite were his besetting sins ; but he had for- 
 gotten honesty (the old, strenuous quality) for 
 years, until that evening when he had looked into 
 Ludwiga's eyes and found the old treasure. He 
 would have smiled in the dark had he thought 
 of it, rejoicing, as even a strong man will, over 
 the fact that his best ambition is the sympathetic 
 medium between him and the woman for whom 
 he cares. 
 
 It disturbed Jameson a great deal that Julian 
 was not in the house, and evidently had not been 
 there that evening. It broke the beauty of his 
 mood. It was a small place, and he went from 
 room to room, his room, Julian's room, their 
 parlor (with no suggestions of the word in its 
 appointments). He went into Julian's room 
 as naturally as if it belonged to a younger 
 brother. It was by far the most feminine room 
 in the house; it contained dainty articles which 
 only a woman's hands can produce; it had por- 
 tieres, cushions, and silken scarfs. There were 
 times when all were a snare to his feet, and his 
 hands would have done away with them, but for 
 the love of the mother who had fashioned them. 
 
 185 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 It was such a boyish love as yet, with occasional 
 conscientious moments, rather than any constant, 
 monotonous affection. 
 
 Jameson waited. He went back to their parlor, 
 and threw himself into a large chair. After a while, 
 he took out his watch, and found it to be twelve 
 o'clock, and the discovery influenced his tem- 
 per somewhat, in a manner not to be explained. 
 He sat there, unamused, scarcely thinking, under 
 the gaudy chandelier, with its shadows. Its dec- 
 orations with Josephs and the solemn lambs had 
 never before failed to entertain him in trying mo- 
 ments. He stared at it without the ghost of an 
 interest now. It takes so few moments to disturb 
 such great issues. 
 
 After the last stroke of twelve Julian opened 
 the door and entered ; a cheerful Julian, whistling 
 between his teeth as he came, a modulated exu- 
 berance. The six months just past had not left 
 any noticeable imprint on his features. He was 
 still young-faced, joyous- tempered, as well as the 
 embodiment of his profession. If there were any 
 change, it was from within. 
 
 " Hello, Janae, old man," Julian cried when he 
 perceived the figure in the shadow. " I am late 
 thought it was ten, and when I looked at my 
 watch, found it was two minutes to twelve." 
 
 He stood in the centre of the room, hesitating, 
 absorbed, smiling. 
 
 1 86 
 
The Rift 
 
 " Then I escaped like Cinderella " 
 
 " I have something to say to you," Jameson 
 replied ; " so I stayed up to say it." 
 
 " Oh, you old duffer ! I suppose it was to 
 remind me of my great-aunt's birthday, or some 
 other family event as important." 
 
 " It is on business." 
 
 Julian's smile vanished, but his expression re- 
 tained the gladsome look. 
 
 " Then don't bother with it, Jamie. Put it 
 off, Jamie. Let 's leave to-night undisturbed." 
 
 Julian's words had not been well chosen ; at 
 them Jameson rose to his feet, and took a step 
 forward. Under the glaring light, there was 
 no emotionalism to his expression. What was 
 evident was the face of a man who had struggled, 
 but who had not yet seen the end. 
 
 "You are sacked by the paper," he said. 
 " That is what I wanted to say to you." 
 
 It was a harsh commencement, very different 
 from the one he had intended, and Jameson knew 
 it was harsh by the effect it had on the boy's face ; 
 but he lacked sympathy and concern of a sudden, 
 and did not pursue his failure nor try to recall it. 
 He just stood there before Julian with a mad, 
 dogged sort of satisfaction in his bad news, and in 
 the fact that he was making a failure of the whole 
 affair. 
 
 Julian waited some time before he spoke. He 
 187 
 

 The Siege of Youth 
 
 had been unprepared, but there was something 
 almost manly in this comprehension when it 
 found voice. 
 
 "Sacked by the paper my word, but it is 
 cool of them ! " 
 
 He had not been able to keep the flush from his 
 face, but he tried to laugh as if indifference were 
 a first instinct with him, like that of self-defence. 
 
 Then he stood still in the middle of the room 
 and unbuttoned his collar, the small act seeming 
 to bring with it a double sense of relief. 
 
 " What do you think they have said about 
 me ? The Editor has joshed a good deal of late, 
 but I did not think it was serious." 
 
 " He has been saying a good deal for some 
 time," answered Jameson. " You see it was sure 
 to become serious. A great daily paper is hardly 
 the kind of affair to turn into a frame for one's 
 private fancies. It is managed so as to bring 
 dollars from the thousands. The moment any 
 contributor to its columns forgets the purpose of 
 that issue, he is merely paving the way for a 
 somewhat unaffecting parting between himself 
 and the manager." 
 
 " What did he say about me ? " repeated Julian. 
 
 He sat down before their little tobacco table, 
 and stretched his arms. He looked more of a 
 man in that moment, but there was in him still 
 much of the boy. 
 
 188 
 
The Rift 
 
 " He said that you commenced well enough," 
 replied Jameson, " only lately, you had let your 
 heart run away with your head, and they could 
 not stand it that was all." 
 
 " My mother will not like it, particularly," the 
 boy remarked. The thought of her coming so 
 suddenly to his mind caused a suffocating feeling 
 in his throat. He sat there and looked at Jame- 
 son, and it was at this moment that the latter 
 chose to speak. 
 
 " It is time we got to her," he began. " One 
 would almost think you had forgotten her, she is 
 so seldom on your lips in these latter days." 
 
 " Oh, no, not that," the boy's voice broke in, 
 but not so full of resentment as was usual in a 
 discussion relating to her. The voice was more 
 subdued, as if the reproof had been deserved. 
 
 " Now, you have a right to be treated as a 
 man," Jameson went on ; "I have tried to treat 
 you as one. Do you not know how all this must 
 have affected me, when I have seen you disap- 
 pointing her faith in you, her hopes of you, de- 
 feating the very causes of your separation ? I 
 took you away from her, boy. That time of the 
 ' Satire's ' offer, I said nothing to you ; I let you 
 choose your own path, follow your own will, 
 although you must have known how I felt about 
 it. There was your father my obligation to 
 him " 
 
 189 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 The old generous habit of the boy sought to 
 interrupt him. Jameson continued : 
 
 "My obligation to him my own interest in 
 the desire that you justify our efforts, and com- 
 mand success." 
 
 Julian was staring up at him. He did not 
 know it was the wrong time to speak, but his 
 pale face grew brighter of a sudden. The light 
 was beautiful, like the face of nature lifted out of 
 that darkness which precedes the dawn. 
 
 " There is no reason for taking this so hardly," 
 he began, flashing one of his own sunny smiles 
 on his friend. He took a deep breath, and 
 continued : 
 
 " Don't blame me, Jame," he said ; " it is only 
 human feeling, ending like this. I do not 
 mind about the failure. Mother will not, either, 
 when she knows. I think we spent too much energy 
 in the effort, and it has taken the enthusiasm out 
 of the hope. I do not feel as I did about the art, 
 and and do not mind its having ended so." 
 
 He could not interpret Jameson's expression, 
 and so offered this to its demand on him : " I 
 won't try to thank you, old fellow. I have not 
 meant to be ungrateful ; only it is the girl. One 
 changed after the girl came on." 
 
 He was warm, and went and stood by the 
 window. Outside it was warm also, scarcely 
 cooler than the air indoors. 
 
 190 
 
The Rift 
 
 Coming back, he went to a low shelf and took 
 a handful of sketches from it. He separated one 
 from the rest, and Jameson got to his feet, so 
 that he might better look at it. It was a good 
 face, not weak, but showing the heart wounds, 
 and a few lines of weariness, and that smile, 
 eternal in its optimism. 
 
 " It is what he meant," Jameson said, as he 
 looked into the wonderful eyes. His voice was 
 a little hoarse when he got to the depths in them, 
 but his mind rose above it. 
 
 " You have wasted more time on the woman 
 than on that thing called art, my son. None 
 of them are worth it, save as a means to the great 
 result." 
 
 Julian tried not to think of the depths, either, 
 as he also talked of art. " It is West, you see," 
 his ever-ready explanation, as they bent over the 
 Florentine head together. 
 
 ".Perfection is success, you know, and perfec- 
 tion once attained, is possession. I have only 
 been trying to attain it, Jame, in my own way." 
 (This hurt Jameson like the fine edge of a sword.) 
 "It is the fear of success, of its greatness, that 
 makes a failure of so many sincere attempts. 
 Attaining perfection is like mounting a hill. We 
 expect to make the height in a moment, and lose 
 our breath with the stress of straight racing; 
 whereas, the fellow who conquers height by 
 
 191 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 method, wins." He paused, but Jameson did 
 not reply to this, so he continued with an effort 
 to preserve the same tone of voice : " Winding 
 around the hill gives the climber advantage. 
 We gain on the impossible, as it were." 
 
 His accents grew more tender. Suddenly, 
 with an almost imperceptible movement, Jame- 
 son reached forth his hand until it covered that 
 smiling face. He also had grown paler, but it 
 was not the pallor of weakness, rather that ex- 
 pressing the strength of self-control. 
 
 " And what now ? " he asked, looking up at 
 Julian. " You will go back to your mother, of 
 course. Afterward, if it is intended that you see 
 the work better, you will drift back to it, but just 
 now it is your mother, of course ? " 
 
 " My mother ? " the boy repeated vaguely. 
 " I shall stay here. There is nothing else to 
 think of, Jameson. She herself would see that." 
 
 " And what are you going to do here, Julian ? " 
 
 " Get married," the boy replied, still smiling ; 
 but it was a strange smile, with joy and some- 
 thing tenderer, and ever deeper, but no mirth 
 in it. " I am going to marry the girl," he 
 said. 
 
 Jameson kept that cold gaze on him. " And 
 then what are you going to do ? " he asked. 
 
 " What people usually do after they marry. 
 I am going to live," was his reply. Then the 
 
 192 
 
The Rift 
 
 other man's silence wrought on the ecstasy of his 
 mood like subtle poison. 
 
 " Give me my sketch," he cried all at once. 
 " I want that sketch, Jameson." 
 
 Jameson straightened himself. " Your sketch, 
 Julian/' he cried, " your sketch ? " 
 
 "Yes, my sketch," cried the boy. He had 
 forgotten something for years, but suddenly it 
 came back to him. " Once you took another 
 one away from me ; give me back my sketch," 
 he cried. "It is the second woman you have 
 taken from me." When he gave the sketches 
 life in that word woman, a fierce, deep passion 
 worked into his eyes, fierce, deep, and futile. 
 
 " I took you away from one woman," 
 Jameson answered very deliberately. 
 
 They made a strange picture under the St. 
 Joseph's chandelier. They were not far apart, 
 at either end of the table ; they were both tall, 
 but Jameson leaned a little to one side, still hold- 
 ing the piece of white cardboard in his hand. 
 
 " I took you away from one woman," he re- 
 peated. " You were hers, and I had no right to 
 interfere with that fact, or all it meant to her." 
 
 It was a fateful moment ; then Julian reached 
 back and clung with one hand to the chair, as if 
 in need of support. 
 
 " Give back my sketch to me, Jame," he said 
 gently; "it is of the woman I love." 
 '3 193 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " And of the woman who loves me ! " Jameson 
 returned. " If you had not been blind all along 
 you could have seen it." 
 
 The younger man did not try to leave the 
 chair ; he was gripping it harder. " There were 
 times," he said, " when I thought you liked her, 
 but I also thought that it was on my account." 
 
 He still stood, holding the chair, and after a 
 little Jameson went to the door and passed out. 
 He kept one hand closed, but lighted the gas 
 with the other. Before this was done, he said in 
 scarcely audible tones, but still in articulate man- 
 ner : " He looked as he used to when he was a 
 little fellow, another minute, and I should 
 have remembered the time when he said his 
 prayers." 
 
 Left to himself, the boy sat down at the empty 
 table, under the glaring gaslight. Sitting there, 
 he straightened his numb right hand, spreading it 
 wide, as if he were smoothing a crumpled paper. 
 But when he remembered that Jameson had 
 the sketch, he sat on, and on, and seemed to 
 comprehend. 
 
 Jameson slept ; and in that fitful slumber he 
 dreamed that he and Julian were as they had 
 been, two earnest, strong-handed comrades, 
 with a smile or so when youth asked it, and with 
 the certainty that life is long. And once Julian 
 had come into his room, in a resurrected dress 
 
 194 
 
The Rift 
 
 suit and a romantic air, saying : " I am going to 
 propose to the girl this evening," and he had 
 reached out his hand to the glowing youth, saying, 
 as the boy clasped it : " Once I was young my- 
 self, at least, most men have been. My best 
 wishes, young fellow." 
 
 Then sleep went on as usual, and there were 
 no dreams. 
 
 195 
 
XXII 
 THE MORN 
 
 IN the beautiful cool of a midsummer dawn 
 Julian came to his senses again with no grief, 
 only wonder. A fog had swept in during 
 the night, but had lifted early, as if its one com- 
 passionate purpose had been to cool his burning 
 heart for him. 
 
 It was a pretty world upon which he looked 
 out. The sky was that pale blue which is merely 
 soothing. Even in our most optimistic mood 
 we could not find for this blue a more intense 
 qualifier than " cheerful." From the height on 
 which Mrs. O' Byrne's upper windows placed one 
 there were many adjacent roofs in any possible 
 landscape, but these did not jar Julian's artistic 
 temperament this morning. They did not repre- 
 sent anything unlovely or inartistic to him. A 
 sentence occurred to him more than once as he 
 leaned beside the open window ; it was a simple 
 little chirp at first, but became like the song 
 of a bird, constant, beautiful, and triumphant. 
 " They are homes, homes, homes," and so on 
 almost endlessly. 
 
 196 
 
The Morn 
 
 He turned away after a while, and went on with 
 his dressing. Life was changed to him. He had 
 made a half-unconscious journey, and was viewing 
 it from another point. It seemed ages to him 
 since the previous evening, when he had studied 
 a girl's face flushed with cooking, and had felt 
 that the great purposes of life revolved around 
 it. He did not feel so much unlike himself 
 as the Julian of yesterday seemed unfamiliar 
 to the Julian of to-day, the Julian without 
 illusions. 
 
 He was a different person, practically. We are 
 all different after certain vital happenings or after 
 certain friendships, certain telling days or years. 
 It is the time when our experiences have been 
 poured into their mould and are settling ; but we 
 call it growing middle-aged. Indeed, it is real 
 life within our reach, life as we have never before 
 understood it ; but wisdom such as this is not 
 ours all at once. 
 
 When the enlightenment comes it is well if 
 we are surrounded by palliating circumstances, 
 memories, kind glances, and uplifting words ; 
 otherwise all life may become sadly warped. 
 
 There was no harshness in Julian's judgment 
 of Jameson. He did not say, as some men might, 
 " He was dishonorable in his dealing with me." 
 Life had ever been beautiful to Julian, and the 
 beauty of his youth, now completed, would have 
 
 197 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 found excuse for his friend's action in the cause. 
 In reality, he was very noble, very generous, was 
 Julian. He did not even question his ideas on 
 the matter. He merely knew that he forgave 
 Jameson, to use a homely phrase, because it 
 did not occur to him to harbor great resentment 
 where Ludwiga Strong was concerned. 
 
 It was the greatest compliment he could pay 
 her ; it was the most delicate proof of his 
 homage. 
 
 He, Julian, had felt Jameson to be opposed to 
 his love of Ludwiga, because of Jameson's devo- 
 tion to art ; and when he thought of the night 
 before, it was without that surge of bitterness 
 which would seem so natural. He himself 
 grew very spiritual in his regard for her. He 
 loved her still, but with no regard to life or sex 
 or person. She had been his Beatrice, the influ- 
 ence he had needed to exalt humanity to him as 
 well as to humanize high art. She had not 
 been a scheming woman, playing on his dis- 
 ordered senses ; nor had she been a coquettish 
 girl, upsetting life's rich treasures for him as if 
 they were frivolous bric-a-brac. 
 
 She had been his friend, she had stood by his 
 side a few miles on their long life journey ; and 
 when he might have erred or hesitated, she had 
 led without exertion, not recognizing the assist- 
 ance she gave him. Only a less noble nature 
 
 198 
 
The Morn 
 
 than Julian's could forget this now. After that 
 night's vigil he was not the joyous Julian he 
 had been. He knew Jameson loved Ludwiga, 
 and that this love had been the real reason of 
 Jameson's interference in his own little romance ; 
 but he felt powerless to retaliate in the matter. 
 He knew that he himself was changed, but he 
 did not dwell on it, as it was not so powerful a 
 change as it might be, it was mainly, in a cer- 
 tain quietness of feeling, analogous to Jameson's 
 own expression. 
 
 He knew, too, that he and Jameson were to 
 meet in the morning, and he faced the meeting 
 with a moral courage that Jameson himself was 
 far from feeling. He said certain things to him- 
 self while he was changing his evening clothes, 
 and otherwise preparing for the morning. 
 
 He had sat just so handsome, passionate-faced, 
 through the hours, and Time had prepared him 
 for another act. 
 
 When he realized all this, he had gone into his 
 little room mechanically, the room crowded with 
 evidences of his mother. He had entered the 
 room to get into his morning clothes, to bathe, 
 to come back to material existence. There was 
 no decision as to his own future course of action 
 in his entering the homelike little apartment, but 
 suddenly all had been solved for him, answered 
 before he asked. 
 
 199 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 He would go back to his mother! He felt a 
 sudden longing for the maternal sympathy, and 
 in return it was as if his mother's yearning arms 
 were around him, and her low voice murmured 
 after their long years of separation : " My son ! 
 my son ! " 
 
 The old congenial love was renewed at the 
 thought, and when his eyes fell on a portfolio 
 embroidered for him by those loving hands 
 " To my darling " he smiled once again at the 
 thought. It was not the joyous lover smile of 
 the previous evening, but the first smile of his 
 more real manhood ; a smile at once tender, 
 chivalrous, yet innately strong. 
 
 Later, when he went out, Jameson stood on 
 their little landing waiting for him to approach. 
 He had been there a long time. He had heard 
 Julian's constant moving to and fro. He had 
 heard the boy turn the knob of his door, open 
 it. He saw Julian appear before him, and then 
 approach. He felt proud of the lad with whom 
 he was angry. He felt a great longing to shake 
 his hand. The boy's step was not gay or youth- 
 ful, but was firm, like that of a man who does not 
 stagger and yet may be drunk. 
 
 Julian's face was clear, even sweet in its expres- 
 sion. It did not bear the imprint of a sleepless 
 night, nor look as if any great sorrow had swept 
 across it. It was simply not like himself. Jame- 
 
 200 
 
The Morn 
 
 son tried to translate all into an emotion, but 
 failed. 
 
 His first words were harmonious to the change 
 in him rather than to the impetuous Julian of 
 yesterday. "You are right," he explained to 
 Jameson ; " I have been a blind fool all along." 
 
 " Are n't you coming out with me, Julian ? " 
 Jameson asked. 
 
 Julian almost made a move to do so ; then he 
 remembered. 
 
 " Can't you see that life is rather ended for me 
 here, Jameson ? There is nothing for me here 
 to-day." 
 
 Jameson stood on the steps just below him. 
 He tried to say, " Julian, my boy, forgive me ! " 
 but the words would not come. Let us trust we 
 are given credit for such unuttered thoughts, for 
 he seemed to feel as plainly as if the words were 
 written on the face before him, that Julian made 
 this response to him : 
 
 " I could not be angry even if I wanted to. 
 She has taught me to believe in good." 
 
 " As one lamp lights another, nor grows less, 
 So nobleness enkindleth nobleness." 
 
 " She has taught me to believe in good." It 
 was a tiny flame, but she had passed it, the tiny 
 flame lighting her own great darkness, and lo ! 
 were one to blow at it, one might find it still 
 
 201 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 burning like God's own. Poor Pelleas ! Poor 
 Julian ! She had put him in a strange position, 
 for God may forgive the weak hand raised against 
 Him ; but she had taught him merely to believe 
 in good. This is to have no sword. 
 
 It was a strange parting after such a friendship 
 and after so many years. 
 
 Mrs. O' Byrne was in the kitchen later when 
 Mr. Julian appeared to her. She never doubted 
 but that all was quite well with him, he was so 
 neatly dressed, his effects were so nicely packed. 
 He said he was going back to his mother, that he 
 was called home unexpectedly. It was evidently 
 not sad news, as he exchanged laughing words 
 with them. And they had rallied the young fel- 
 low as was usual (always with their mind's eye on 
 Ludwiga and the probability of his relation to 
 her). They said, all very slyly, that it was just as 
 well he was going now, as after this there would 
 doubtless be two of him, and after a while three of 
 him, and so on up until they had quite a decent- 
 sized little family surrounding him, and it would 
 not be so convenient then to travel ! and they 
 helped all this humor on with unmistakable 
 winks, as was customary in the Terrace ; while he 
 only stood and smiled, and smiled, as if it were 
 very funny which indeed it was. 
 
 Then he had gone in to see Deborah and Lud- 
 wiga and Alfons, and had told them the same 
 
 202 
 
The Morn 
 
 story, and Deborah had said she would play her 
 farewell to him, as she did not believe in saying 
 good-bye to people. This the strange girl did. 
 Now most people would only have thought of 
 some simple thing like " Auld Lang Syne," and 
 indeed it would have been very effective, but 
 once seated at the piano, Deborah became wrought 
 by a musical passion that seemed to extend from 
 the time when her first ancestor invaded Ireland. 
 She played on and on, until Julian told her he 
 would miss his train, and then he discovered she 
 was really weeping, so fond was every one of Julian. 
 
 It touched him very much, and he kissed her, 
 rallying her on her very excellent reasons against 
 conventional leave-taking. He said she was very 
 simple after all, just a dear silly girl whom he 
 had always taken for a geometrical equation. 
 She was his sworn friend ever afterward, but 
 someway Alfons was displeased. He was look- 
 ing on. Why? Indeed I cannot tell you. I do 
 not think he knew himself. In fact, standing 
 against the wall, twirling his dark moustaches, 
 Alfons was just enough to argue out his unex- 
 pected state of mind, when Julian reached half- 
 laughingly down and kissed the weeping Deborah. 
 
 It was not at Julian that Alfons was vexed. 
 He thought Julian a very fine young fellow. He 
 had doubts about Julian's correct point of view 
 in connection with spending the splendid fortune 
 
 203 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 reputed to be in his possession ; but that was not 
 really any one's but Julian's business. Alfons 
 would have given a more central pose to the 
 fortune ; but that, as I have said, is an entirely 
 personal arrangement. Nor was it at Deborah 
 that Alfons's vexation was directed. He realized 
 that there was a charm for him at least in every 
 phase of her, and, like Julian, he rather over-liked 
 the unexpected womanliness of her tears ; but esti- 
 mable as each was separated, Julian and Deborah 
 linked together in a kiss were terribly disturbing ! 
 There was no gainsaying it. 
 
 Julian left Deborah still playing, Alfons still 
 fuming, and went over toward the window to bid 
 Ludwiga good-bye. She stood, brave-mouthed, 
 her eyes raised, waiting for him. She did not 
 try to escape the ordeal, as Deborah had done, 
 but reached both strong little hands toward him. 
 
 It was beautiful, for she did not understand 
 the change in him, but said words which were 
 above individual prejudice. " Oh, good-bye ! 
 God bless you," were these. 
 
 He broke a bit at this, and said, looking down 
 as if on a little sister, " You have helped me to 
 learn more than any one else, Ludwiga ; " and she 
 replied at once in her characteristic manner, good- 
 ness and interrogation commingled, " What if I 
 should ever regret helping you to learn it all, 
 Julian dear ? " 
 
 204 
 
The Morn 
 
 Then he took his departure on the train, and 
 when the dust and discomfort were not too dis- 
 turbing, he thought of Deborah's wonderful music, 
 of her scope and maturity of expression, how tran- 
 quillizing it all was ; or he realized that familiar 
 haunting Florentine smile of the Italian brother 
 and sister through a certain new strength in his 
 heart which came from accepting individuals as 
 influences merely. 
 
 Later, he came nearer to the core of the country, 
 nearer to Nature, for having heard that little kin- 
 dergarten song of the blind baby. It had followed 
 him down the stairs, to the stoop, along the well- 
 worn planking. It was the last thing he had 
 heard before he stepped out of the Terrace for- 
 ever, into a broad, strange life : 
 
 " How green arc the flowers, 
 How cool is the wood, 
 Our Heavenly Father 
 How kind and how good." 
 
 It is sweet to learn wisdom from a child. 
 
 205 
 
XXIII 
 
 IN THE ALPHABET OF LOVE 
 
 JAMESON went home that same evening, 
 prepared to take a personal hold of the 
 wheel of Fortune and let its gifts fall into 
 his own path. 
 
 He had spent a long, wearisome, commercial 
 day, so far as hand was placed, so far as eye could 
 judge. He had sat at his desk in the office, 
 writing necessary thoughts, saying necessary 
 words. To all appearances it had been much as 
 other days since he had first entered the great 
 dark, quiet building, with its silent, powerful out- 
 put of news and intelligence. Yes, superficially 
 speaking, it was a usual day with him, perhaps 
 more than ordinarily busy ; but that was the outer 
 man, the automaton of progress. The inner self 
 had lived, suffered, labored, at a wretched tangle 
 of thought. His face changed toward night and 
 looked older. He had lived " not in figures on a 
 dial," but consciously, heart, mind, and soul, and 
 out of it all he wanted the girl foi- his wife, regard- 
 less of friend or misgiving. He loved her, and 
 he had seen her love for him in her eyes, and 
 
 206 
 
In the Alphabet of Love 
 
 God seemed to have sanctified the great black 
 waste of doubt, and everything else was as naught 
 save their need of each other. 
 
 He saw no one on his way home. It was July 
 then, but almost the same kind of an evening as 
 the one on which he had first met Ludwiga. 
 Darkness was longer in approaching, that was all. 
 He felt nothing save his own incompleteness. 
 He felt as if the only satisfaction attainable in life 
 lay in making Ludwiga part of himself, of his 
 past, his present, his future. He needed her 
 love, her eyes, her courage, to lift him out of his 
 arid past. 
 
 He loved her, he said to himself. She was his, 
 not Julian's. It did not matter about Julian, in 
 that mood. He went up the hill, up his steps, 
 and hesitated. Brown, and Brown's brother-in- 
 law at the office, all the rest would not have 
 recognized him, when he once more got inside 
 his and Julian's own landing. It was the 
 thought of the little quiet house that did it ; this 
 and his dreams. He felt that some day she 
 would stand at the head of his stairs, with glad 
 eyes, and pure lips, and a welcome for him. It 
 was a holy moment; we are more purified for 
 dreaming of it. It is a beautiful mystery, this 
 union, for it must be a union, " One near one is 
 too far." 
 
 The fact that Julian was not there disturbed 
 207 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 the poetry of his humor. He went down and 
 consulted Mrs. O'Byrne. When he found out 
 the truth of it, he hated himself for having be- 
 trayed any ignorance of Julian's movements. 
 He left them, muttering some futile words, 
 directed more to himself than to them, about 
 having known that Julian had intended going, 
 but not having realized that it was so soon. 
 
 He went back and sat down at his desk, just 
 as he had been sitting all day. He was not a 
 man of many words, and just in that tumult and 
 indecision it afforded him a certain self-hold to 
 place himself in the familiar position. He sat 
 there a long time. He felt that outside the stars 
 came out, visible at first in a pale evening heaven, 
 and then real darkness came, and the pale things 
 were like gilt spangles. Then as the city lay 
 silent on its hills, he thought of a home again, as 
 he had thought of it at the foot of their stairs on 
 the little landing, so he arose abruptly and lit a 
 lamp. He wanted to be sane, logical, consistent, 
 just to Julian before himself. 
 
 The boy's departure had upset him wonder- 
 fully. It was strange, it seemed an accusation, 
 and should they ever meet again, Jameson 
 wanted to be able to offer Julian his hand, and 
 feel that it would be accepted. He did not think 
 of the girl until long afterward. It was a man's 
 affair, and he did not realize that he had no right 
 
 208 
 
In the Alphabet of Love 
 
 to sacrifice her to it. He did not think of her at 
 all as an individual, until long afterward. 
 
 She was a part of himself during the sacrifice. 
 Many men would not have resisted the confes- 
 sion of that thought. They would have gone to 
 her, and once by her side, the old story would 
 have found its old fairy-book solution. But 
 Jameson was not of that order. He said to him- 
 self that he had wronged Julian, wronged his own 
 ideals of friendship ; he had been carried along by 
 a succession of almost irresistible impulses until 
 he found himself to-night a shadowy Brutus or 
 lago, but with still the chance to retrieve his 
 hand. 
 
 He was very sane, very logical then. He was 
 able to make his stand through a double argu- 
 ment, for and against himself, as she had known 
 him. He said he could not marry Ludwiga 
 Strong. He said he could do without love; it 
 was only a tinsel gimcrack, which men will-o'-the- 
 wisp after, thinking it a great guiding star. 
 
 He could not marry Ludwiga because of 
 Julian's opinion of it, yet once, as an intermis- 
 sion, he thought, " What if Julian were dead," 
 and he half rose to his feet with low escaping 
 words of endearment, so great was the longing 
 when that human barrier was swept away. It 
 was Julian living of whom he was afraid. He 
 would be the ghost at their very wedding feast. 
 M 209 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 They could never be very happy. This Julian 
 whom he had robbed and wronged would stand 
 day and night mocking their happiness until it 
 grew unwelcome, unenjoyable to them. 
 
 He had never had a home. He had meant 
 some day to stand in a sumptuous hall, and step 
 from the side of some gracious woman and bid 
 Julian welcome to his board. It had been a 
 pathetic little ambition with him, with which 
 Julian had less to do as Julian than as old Joy's 
 son, son to his benefactor. 
 
 Julian could probably never enter his home if 
 he married Ludwiga. If he died the thought 
 of it sent a sick rush of blood to Jameson's heart. 
 When we grow too old for a mad glow of guilt 
 in our cheeks, there is this unhealthy quickening 
 at the heart when our honor is questioned. 
 
 It was in this way that Jameson justified his giv- 
 ing up of Ludwiga Strong. It was very mascu- 
 line, very convincing, but entailed a sacrifice other 
 than himself. This is rather masculine also. 
 
 210 
 
 
XXIV 
 WHAT THE TERRACE THOUGHT 
 
 MRS. O'BYRNE told the two young 
 ladies and Mr. Alfons the next even- 
 ing that Mr. Jameson and young Mr. 
 Julian had given up their rooms ; at least, Mr. 
 Jameson had given them up for both the young 
 men. 
 
 She did not quite like the way this astounding 
 intelligence was received by them. Miss Deborah 
 gave a sweeping little look toward Miss Ludwiga. 
 Miss Ludwiga sat staring straight ahead, with her 
 eyes rather wide, and her two little hands clasped 
 as if she were having her picture taken, while Mr. 
 Alfons whistled. Trust Mr. Alfons to gain the 
 proper theatrical effect without any effort, every 
 time. Mrs. O' Byrne did not understand the 
 young ladies' way of receiving surprises ; but 
 Alfons's whistle was a popular medium of ex- 
 pression and went straight to her heart. She 
 directed her conversation to him. 
 
 " It is the most ^comprehensible thing," she 
 said to Mr. Alfons. Now Mrs. O'Byrne was 
 noted for her fine way of speaking and her choice 
 
 211 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 of words. She used modestly to explain, when 
 complimented on it, that it "just came natural to 
 her " ; but I feel that one could not live ten years 
 near Deborah Murphy without saying long words 
 half correctly, or short ones merely minus a few 
 salient letters Deborah was so powerful a 
 pedagogue- ess, as Alfons said. 
 
 Alfons was consistently responsive. 
 
 " It is not only uncomprehensible," he said, 
 with evident admiration for the word, as he lin- 
 gered on it, "but it is ungrateful also. What 
 did they say ? " 
 
 Mrs. O' Byrne bristled. "What could they 
 say ? " she asked. 
 
 " If I were going away," replied Mr. Alfons, 
 " I should have to stay a whole month's rent 
 extra to say all the things one should say to you, 
 Mrs. Mamma O'Byrne." 
 
 That last was what the blind baby called her 
 and completely routed her cynicism. 
 
 "You've a good tongue, hung well in the 
 middle. Shure, but a kind word hurts nobody, 
 even if you don't always mean it ! " 
 
 Mr. Alfons sometimes wore smart eyeglasses, 
 and he placed them on his handsome Greek 
 feature now. He looked quizzically at Deborah 
 as he did so, and for several seconds afterwards. 
 It was an impersonal stare to every one except 
 Deborah. 
 
 212 
 
What the Terrace Thought 
 
 " Deborah, listen to this fine opinion of Mrs. 
 O' Byrne," he said, while that dear woman stood 
 by delighted. " c Shure, but a kind word hurts 
 nobody, even if you don't always mean it ! ' 
 
 He turned again gracefully to the honest Irish 
 creature : " I thought Deborah might teach it in 
 her school/' he said, and then went on kindly : 
 " Now let me come back to the point again. 
 These two young men, it appears, came to your 
 rooms last winter, hired these apartments from 
 you ; have lived here in evident satisfaction for 
 nine or ten months, or something like it, and 
 have now flitted, to be romantic (it is surely a 
 time when one should be romantic), without a 
 word of complaint or warning. It certainly is 
 uncomprehensible, unless we are willing to accept 
 the novelist's explanation for all masculine action, 
 that ( the yoong men noo-a-days, the 're poor, 
 squashy things ; the' looks well anoof, but the' 
 woon't wear, the' woon't wear.' ' 
 
 His sister unclasped her hands and smiled at 
 him, the quaint strong smile which had ever 
 glimmered like a sunny rainbow over every hope- 
 ful tendency he had. 
 
 Mrs. O' Byrne was far more literal. " It is 
 that, it is that," she approved. 
 
 " It could be nothing else," returned Alfons, 
 still gravely, indeed so gravely that it charmed 
 her. "Jameson and Julian looked c well anoof,' 
 
 213 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 we will allow that. They certainly wore the 
 right things at the right times and otherwise 
 conventionally deceived us, but they themselves 
 have n't worn, Mrs. O' Byrne, and I wish for the 
 sake of all kind, sympathetic landladies such as 
 you, that we might hang a placard on their next 
 door-knob, reading, ' These young men are un- 
 comprehensible and look well anoof, but the* 
 
 woon't wear/ 
 
 She went off wondering about them. Mr. 
 Jameson had paid two months' rent in advance, 
 so she did not think all unkindly of him ; but 
 her feelings were terribly hurt. If she had not 
 been saving up for a blind baby (and if one has 
 to be a blind baby, it is much more comfortable 
 being a rich blind baby, poor little chap), she 
 would far rather Mr. Jameson and Mr. Julian 
 had left owing her two months' rent than to have 
 been disappointed in them. 
 
 Indeed, no one knew what to make of their 
 sudden departure. Mr. Julian's departure had 
 seemed natural enough, just a visit to his 
 mother, until they knew that he would never 
 come back. Then when you add to this Jame- 
 son's strange leave-taking, there seemed a sort 
 of mystery. 
 
 Every one talked about it, and when Alfons 
 was one of the party, he entered the subject read- 
 ily, as he had that evening with Mrs. Mamma. 
 
 214 
 
What the Terrace Thought 
 
 Alfons's interest was ever that of a man with a 
 ready tongue and a great deal of time. He did 
 not exactly care for the world, but there was 
 nothing else of so vital an interest, considering 
 that he was on the planet and a part of it. 
 
 Mr. O'Byrne refused to look at the matter 
 from a negative side. He was a stout, kind man, 
 and remained stout and kind by reason of his 
 practical philosophy. If anybody died, Mr. 
 O'Byrne was sorry for it; if anybody recovered, 
 Mr. O'Byrne was glad of it; but he never 
 anticipated either emotion. He worked on the 
 police force and had always been a faithful and 
 reliable officer, but was not considered acutely 
 brilliant until one day when a prisoner had 
 escaped from a room as if by magic. It non- 
 plussed every one and caused a scurrying and 
 scattering of excited deputies, which was all in 
 vain, until O'Byrne suggested that the missing 
 fellow might be under the very bench upon 
 which they had all been sitting ! It was a fine 
 thought of him, quoth every one, and he said 
 nothing more until they made him a sergeant. 
 And I 've no doubt but some fine day in San 
 Francisco this slow, fat snail of a fellow will be 
 the Chief of Police ; and a kind Irish face will 
 that chief possess, all success to him ! 
 
 While "up home," we must not forget this 
 about him ; there will be a blind brat of a laddie, 
 
 215 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 freckles and tow hair and long legs, doubtless, 
 who will strut around like a pretty peacock 
 because of these new honors to his dad. 
 
 And while O' Byrne stands before Jameson's 
 great white Goddess (!' suppose it is the same 
 Goddess who bestows laurel-wreaths, epaulets, 
 officers' stars, and the like) I doubt not but that 
 he will want to say to her : 
 
 " I would give ye back the arm-pieces and the 
 honors (sound the full h here, dear people) if 
 the Laddie could see the star ! " 
 
 But this is digressing. We have been relating 
 the effect of Jameson's and Julian's actions on 
 the various members of Terrace social life. 
 Purposely, perhaps, Deborah and Ludwiga have 
 been omitted. 
 
 Indeed, Deborah took the course these young 
 men had pursued in an entirely personal manner. 
 Unlike Mr. O'Byrne, she fitted it into her own 
 experiences as carefully as an artisan would dove- 
 tail joints. It was her way of developing through 
 other peoples* lives. She had a very limited field 
 of her own. 
 
 " What did Mr. O'Byrne say about your late 
 roomers ? " she asked Mrs. Mamma one morning. 
 
 <c Oh, that there are more roomers/' Mrs. 
 Mamma replied, smiling. She was not smiling 
 at the dear man's ideas, but over the joy of pos- 
 sessing such a treasure. 
 
 216 
 
What the Terrace Thought 
 
 Deborah threw out her hands. " If I were a 
 lodging-house keeper/' she said, " I 'd bar men 
 out of my rooms forever, after such an experi- 
 ence with them. I hate, hate, hate men, taking 
 them altogether. They are like little children 
 who build block houses, and then attack their 
 own work. So it is with our belief in men's 
 goodness. They no sooner erect beautiful tem- 
 ples of it in our hearts than they must undermine 
 their own precious foundations." 
 
 These opinions were lost on Mrs. O'Byrne, 
 which was quite as well, as they were too heretical 
 for an honest married woman to entertain. 
 
 To tell the truth, one can do no better than to 
 end this chapter of doubt and darkness by quot- 
 ing dear ould Casey's never-failing ultimatum. He 
 was the oracle of the Terrace, and did any one lose 
 his friend or his necktie, did a young giddy lady fly 
 out of a burning house, taking some infinitesimally 
 small thing (and frivolous also) like her best bronze 
 Oxford ties, leaving her wits, her family, and her 
 fortune, why, ould Casey must sit on the case, 
 assisted by Gambrinus. And each time after he 
 had drunk beer enough to make all heights and 
 depths one vast, glad plain to him, the dear old man 
 would say his mind, as I reproduce it to you : 
 
 " Oh, God help them ! God help them ! " 
 
 It was a nice thing to say, poor ould Casey, and 
 never wholly irrelevant. 
 
 217 
 
XXV 
 
 FRIENDS 
 
 DEBORAH sat at her table, writing. She 
 was in her own room, the room in which 
 she had dwelt so long that it seemed to 
 participate in her struggles and attainments, and 
 to be like a tried companion ; so she was well 
 content. 
 
 Her pen was a source of great comfort to 
 Deborah. She wrote in a desultory fashion. 
 She loved to reproduce her thoughts on paper, 
 and often after they were there, she obliterated 
 some and improved others, just as women prink 
 before a mirror ; only this was more psychological 
 decoration. 
 
 She had always written in this manner, way 
 back in the " dark ages." In the years when 
 she was a freckled, ragged Irish child, uncon- 
 genially placed, she had written on a broken 
 slate with a short scratching pencil, " I hate the 
 world!" And when she was a few years older, 
 a little unnoticed mortal doing tremendous 
 things, she would trace words on her steaming 
 window, so as to remember them ; words which 
 
 218 
 
Friends 
 
 had been said before her, and which she wanted 
 to impress on her recollection, and add to her 
 vocabulary. 
 
 Then she had become too old for broken slates, 
 and too poor for pen and paper; but compared 
 with this there came affluent circumstances later, 
 as I have said. Then she did not have to re- 
 gard the price of stationery, and could jot down 
 her many thoughts without that bugbear, econ- 
 omy, to restrain them. These thoughts were 
 rarely relevant or connected, merely ideas, the- 
 ories, comments, words, and then these over and 
 over until they were quite familiar. 
 
 She was writing now, when her door opened, 
 and in walked Ludwiga and Alfons. They often 
 entered without knocking, and consistent with 
 this friendliness, their entrance seldom disturbed 
 their hostess. It was an admirable trait in Deb- 
 orah. " Your hospitality," Alfons once said to 
 her, " is equalled only by one woman, surpassed 
 by none." 
 
 They had been quite alone, and it was a wrong 
 time to pay a compliment to a Bachelor Woman, 
 one who disliked men and abhorred any union 
 of the sexes. Deborah acted as if she had not 
 heard him, but he was not to be suppressed. 
 
 " This was she," he continued with his inim- 
 itable manner, " who passed to her guest that 
 goblet which was to select her husband." He 
 
 219 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 stood beside her chair, looking down upon her. 
 There was nothing personal in the look, in his 
 manner, or in the story, merely a delicate yet 
 apparent wonder that such a cordial custom had 
 passed out of use ; but it was one of the days 
 when Deborah could not take his folly, just as 
 there are many days when our hands refuse to 
 catch a ball. 
 
 " Why do you tell me such foolish things ? " 
 she asked abruptly. " They are so uninteresting." 
 
 He still stood by her chair, he still looked 
 down at her, he still retained his air of delicate 
 yet apparent wonder. 
 
 " How nearly ungrateful you can be," he an- 
 swered. "It was an historical allusion, especially 
 produced because you like history and such cereal 
 subjects. As well feed you, my dear Deborah, 
 on macaroons and ice-cream." 
 
 She sat there pale, her lip set firm as that of 
 an old Celtic bog-trotter. It paid him to tease 
 her when this strong line was broken by a little 
 tremor, as if she would rather weep than laugh. 
 Women are great toys in their humors to the 
 ordinary masculine mind. 
 
 This evening, Ludwiga and Alfons entered 
 Deborah's apartment as usual. As I before men- 
 tioned, it was a characteristic room. She had long 
 side shelves of many books as her best friends, 
 
 220 
 
Friends 
 
 her favorite authors among them, put off in a 
 little sacred spot by themselves, from which place 
 they were recognizable by their shabby binding 
 and their loosened leaves. She was a very tidy 
 person, but she had loved those authors since she 
 was a child, and she would not have wished to 
 improve this raiment. j 
 
 There were not many of them, but Hugo's 
 great work " Les Miserables " was there, also 
 the quaint, lonely jotting of Elia, some early 
 pamphlets of Stevenson, all the morbid, beauti- 
 ful genius of Hawthorne, and many more. Plants 
 were all of these, which had struggled from a 
 dark soil out toward a triumphant light. There 
 had sometime been cast a seed, and God himself 
 must have tended it. Perhaps her own soul had 
 risen from the rubbish heap, just as these won- 
 derful men had blossomed through misery, pain, 
 or commonplace surroundings into everlasting 
 flowers. 
 
 Alfons assisted his sister to remove her wraps. 
 The girl had on her terra-cotta gown, and as she 
 stood before them both an instant, she looked 
 like the flower-girl of Pompeii clad in twentieth- 
 century clothing. 
 
 She possessed the same simple, foreign grace 
 which suggested the short-lived bloom of the 
 tropical people. Her eyes were pure, wide, very 
 gentle, but they were not the eyes of a normal or 
 
 221 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 alert person. They represented qualities, not a 
 person. They were the eyes of a woman who 
 could see, but who did not see always. 
 
 She smiled when she caught Deborah looking 
 at her. " The smile is quite the same," Deborah 
 thought. It was the smile she had bestowed 
 indiscriminately on faltering men, on discouraged 
 women, on little children, from her own little 
 stored-up stock of sunshine. Yet the girl had 
 changed, Deborah thought. It had been years 
 since Deborah had thought of Ludwiga's age. 
 It is a test if we do not think of age or looks in 
 friendship. It had never seemed to matter to 
 Deborah if Ludwiga were sixteen or sixty, or some 
 intermediate number of passing years, their com- 
 panionship was so satisfactory, so congenial ; but 
 now Deborah observed, with subtle yearning, 
 that the girl was still young enough to have 
 grown a trifle, and to have gained that strange 
 form of self-possession which is proportionate 
 to additional height 
 
 It had aided her in acquiring poise of a sudden, 
 not a bodily beauty wholly, but rather that 
 stateliness which may come to our brows after 
 our destinies are written on them, according to 
 some wise sect. 
 
 " Good-evening," Alfons said briskly. 
 
 Deborah's eyes followed his sister until she 
 had become seated, and then Deborah looked 
 
 222 
 
Friends 
 
 up at him. Once looking full at him, one often 
 had to smile. He was of goodly appearance, 
 and had the winsome personality that sees no 
 reason why the world should dislike it. 
 
 "Good-evening," Deborah returned. "What 
 have you been doing this evening? You both 
 look as if you had been enjoying a walk." 
 
 He answered it in a characteristic manner. It 
 was a trick of his, before saying something un- 
 expected, to deliberate a few seconds. A listener 
 learned to anticipate the humor, but never the 
 sentiment. 
 
 " I do not know whether we enjoyed it," he 
 answered gravely, " and it was not a walk. In 
 lieu of our ancestral mode of transportation, we 
 took a ride in the street-car. Ludwiga did not 
 look as bright as a dollar, and I thought the 
 change would benefit her." He glanced humor- 
 ously at his sister. " Ludwiga had a fancy that 
 her heart felt silent! Imagine, my dear Deb- 
 orah, one's heart ! It is enough to make one 
 doubt the very fact of being alive. A man would 
 have been sincere, and would have gone at once 
 to the morgue and given himself up, or he would 
 have taken a cocktail ; but women, dear women, 
 can outwit both nature and art where our primal 
 instincts fail. 
 
 " We took a Jackson Street line to the beach, my 
 dear Deborah. We rode miles without speaking. 
 
 223 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 It was too early in the evening to catch the crowd. 
 At first the conductor probably took us for bride 
 and groom, but after we neared the curve where 
 one sees the ocean, even his interest failed. 
 There was not the slightest atmosphere of ro- 
 mance surrounding us. A man could not say 
 c How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this 
 bank * to his sister ! It is good living near the 
 ocean. I am sorry for the people who live inland 
 and have to call a silent heart indigestion, and 
 take tablets for it. Ludwiga and I stood on the 
 very verge of the cliff. We saw the great dark 
 Pacific rolling and fuming at our feet. That is a 
 beautiful misnomer, for there is passion enough 
 in the soul of the ocean, in the very deeps of its 
 soul, Deborah ! Have we not seen it lashing 
 about in a storm ? 
 
 " There was a strip of moonlight that lay all 
 across it like a path. Even I wanted to walk, 
 walk toward the dark horizon, toward the stars, 
 toward forgetting. I knew of what Ludwiga was 
 thinking, that God spoke to her through it all, 
 that one little human life seemed unindividual, 
 insignificant before the vastness and majesty of 
 the sea ; a c Build thee more stately mansions, 
 O my soul ' was the sort of message ; but I am 
 not the reincarnation of a tract." 
 
 He did not look back to see what Ludwiga 
 was doing, for she had seated herself at Deborah's 
 
 224 
 
Friends 
 
 piano and was playing some little song of Italy. 
 It was a quaint contradiction to the even, conven- 
 tional tones of the young man, but by some pretty 
 quirk of feeling it emphasized the ardor in his 
 eyes. They were restless, imperious, irresistible 
 with manhood. 
 
 " I suppose as you stood there," Deborah 
 forced her lips to say, "you wished another woman 
 had stood there beside you, one who was not 
 your sister, the last woman perhaps at whom 
 you had chanced to glance." 
 
 " No, a woman who came into my life years 
 ago," he answered gravely. " She has been like 
 the sound of the sea in a shell. I do not need 
 to seek the ocean for it ; I carry it with me 
 forever." 
 
 He reached over and lit a cigarette from her 
 student's lamp, and took several long puffs at 
 it. It was all done in his most nonchalant 
 manner, then he leaned over her table once 
 again. 
 
 "Were you ever in love, Miss Deborah Mur- 
 phy ? " he asked, sweetly smiling. He had not 
 expected an earnest answer, and when it came, he 
 did not know if it were earnest or not ; so does 
 love jest with us. 
 
 " Once, years ago, I happened to look at one 
 man," she said, "and there has never been any 
 other." 
 
 15 225 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Was it before we met, Miss Deborah Mur- 
 phy?" 
 
 " Before I ever spoke to you," Miss Deborah 
 answered gravely. He went out, and she sat 
 there. She thought he meant Antonia, and in 
 turn, he did not grasp the fact that before she 
 spoke to a man she might have seen him. It is 
 delightful from a fictional standpoint, but seems 
 rather unnecessary. Lovers must like to suffer or 
 they would make a little effort at times to know 
 facts. 
 
 The two girls were left alone. Ludwiga re- 
 mained at the small piano, which made a quaint 
 framework for her, as she sat, a pretty bit of 
 Italian color, between tall brass candlesticks. 
 There is much sombre passion in Pompeian 
 red, backgrounded by ebony, and overtopped 
 by the pale flame of tall Romish candles. Then 
 the small hands wandering over Deborah's keys 
 halted all at once as Deborah watched them, and 
 remained outspread. The attitude was singularly 
 pathetic. 
 
 " Deborah," she said, her face still turned 
 aside. 
 
 "What?" asked Deborah, with surprising 
 alacrity. 
 
 " May I write a letter at your desk ? I have 
 suddenly remembered that I owe one of my 
 friends a letter, one of those letters it has been 
 
 226 
 
Friends 
 
 rather hard to answer, even one of those letters 
 where I could not find words to say, and did I 
 seem to find them, the pen would not or could 
 
 not move." 
 
 Ludwiga had risen now, and had come and 
 stood in the spot vacated by her brother. She 
 was not as tall as he by a great many inches, but 
 there was more than a family resemblance this 
 one evening. They looked wonderfully unlike 
 every one else, singularly like each other. It 
 was the first time that Deborah had seen them 
 both under the equalizing influence of one 
 mood. 
 
 Deborah's eyes, hungry for the brother, lin- 
 gered over the pretty light in the eyes before her. 
 She felt like circling around and around the 
 flame, but her voice was as usual when she 
 spoke. 
 
 She sat looking up, not relinquishing her seat 
 even for the moment. 
 
 "If you had not been a fool you would 
 have been a beauty," she said half-irritably to 
 Ludwiga. 
 
 It was a license taken by her love, and it seldom 
 affected Ludwiga; but to-night the answering 
 smile on her lips was a little more sensitive than 
 usual. Her generally monotonous voice ran 
 into rapid musical words too, quite as rapid and 
 musical as Alfons's. 
 
 227 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " Do you know of whom I have been thinking 
 all this long, long evening ? " she said to Deborah 
 with an appealing simplicity, it was so sincere, so 
 direct, so unexpected. ic I was thinking of 
 Browning's little heroine who was so young and 
 who had no mother is n't that funny, Deborah ? 
 I have not had many real live people to think 
 of or talk to, and so people often seem very real 
 out of romance. To-night, for the first time in 
 my life, I actually wished that my mother were 
 living, so that she might talk to me and listen 
 to some silly thoughts that I felt I must speak 
 to some one. The reason I wished for her, 
 Deborah dear, is because I am sure my folly 
 would not bore her quite as much as it might 
 some one else. To read about a mother's love, 
 Deborah, is to feel that it must be nearer the 
 divine standard than anything else imaginable. 
 c To hate nothing that Thou hast made ' it is 
 so exquisite a parenthood, so intuitive, so lenient, 
 so forgiving ! To-night, for the first time in 
 my life, I wanted to be pretty too ; good, noble 
 perhaps, but pretty, like all the dream women 
 Guinevere and the rest of them." 
 
 She stood there, abashed by her own confession 
 the very second it had passed her lips ; but Deb- 
 orah's critical eyes were softer. She reached out 
 her hand and touched the girl's with it. 
 
 " Let me try to answer as your mother might 
 228 
 
Friends 
 
 have," she said. " Standing there you are not 
 alone, as might be said of any woman who is 
 merely beautiful in a physical sense. You are 
 environed, as you have ever been, by humble and 
 unlovely surroundings. It is sweet to see a flower 
 in a tenement window. Perhaps it is more deli- 
 cate, far more lovely than some showy rose in a 
 rich man's garden which has been able always to 
 raise its radiant face to a beautifying sun. You 
 have dwelt too long in the shade, my dear, a shade 
 dim and cool, but not healthy, otherwise 
 
 " Forgive my thoughtless saying, dearie, that 
 if you had not been a fool you would have been 
 a beauty ; I mean, you might have been standing 
 in some fine salon instead of here, robed, per- 
 haps, in more artistic garments, without those 
 patient lines at your mouth, without that strong 
 hope in your eyes, without that sunshine in your 
 smile." She reached up and kissed the face at 
 her words, with a depth of love not usual to her. 
 "It was not a very womanly speech, dear, with 
 the great moral searchlights turned on it." 
 
 " I think I could write my letter now," Lud- 
 wiga answered. 
 
 She slipped into Deborah's vacated chair and 
 drew some paper toward her. The action was 
 mechanical, while the hand that moved over the 
 surface put down word after word without hesita- 
 tion, but not recklessly. 
 
 229 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 She did not wish any mistakes to be made, and 
 so was dictated by a subconscious precision which 
 was far more powerful than impulse. 
 
 She had never written a love-letter before, and 
 showed the 'prentice hand throughout it, but deep 
 truth, unchildlike justice, childlike trust, were 
 there. It ran : 
 
 " DEAR MR. JAMESON, I did not know how to an- 
 swer your letter before. I thought I should have to ask 
 Deborah. I thought how beautiful it is to possess such 
 a love as this strong, good love which Deborah enter- 
 tains for me. 
 
 " I felt I could go to her and say : ' The thoughts of 
 my life and its issues may be the right or wrong, the 
 happiness or unhappiness of conscience hang in even 
 balance, and I should rather you touched the scales 
 than I.' 
 
 " Then I reread your letter, and I felt all at once that 
 Deborah could not answer what you said to me. It 
 must be my own life, my own life as I have lived it, 
 which is to act back upon all you said to me. The de- 
 cision produced that way would not be one which exter- 
 nal thoughts could affect or alter. It would be our 
 whole lives speaking to each other, rather than any un- 
 fledged emotions or any merely present self. 
 
 " You say that you love me, that you loved me from 
 that first happy evening in our little parlor, when Alfons 
 brought you in during Deborah's music and introduced 
 you to us all. You say that you recognized me that 
 evening as the good woman of your life. Whatever 
 
 230 
 
Friends 
 
 paths we choose, my friend, if it cannot be the same 
 one, may those two words inspire you still, for I shall 
 try to deserve them. 
 
 " It was like you to have recognized the gown also ! 
 It makes me think that perhaps the love is so weak and 
 so human that some day even yet I may be your happy, 
 every -day wife. 
 
 "After words like that to them, few women could 
 withhold the knowledge that they loved also, if it were 
 true. These words come out of silence to me : ' Given 
 Self to find God/ Back, far back, it must somewhere 
 be written that we are given love to find Self. 
 
 u You write that Julian's heart is broken, that he has 
 gone forth into the great world, companionless and with- 
 out illusion. You ask me if you and I could enjoy the 
 happiness that belonged by rights to your friend. You 
 ask me if the call of a bird for its mate is the clearer 
 note, that, or man's honor. 
 
 " I do not know I cannot say I am the woman 
 who loves you. When Julian went forth disillusioned, 
 he left us together in the world, but this is not my an- 
 swer. It is sweeter to be the woman you love. Will 
 you not bear my standard for me when my own strength 
 fails it? will you not be sight for me when my own 
 eyes fail to see ? So this is my woman's answer that 
 I am yours." 
 
 Below, far below on the page, she had com- 
 menced to write some farewell message. Maybe 
 her courage had failed, for faint, as if traced by 
 
 231 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 some onlooking kindly spirit in a faint Italian 
 script, was this : 
 
 u c In that twilight, so beloved of Titian, we may see 
 the colors of things with deeper truth than in the most 
 dazzling sunshine.' 
 
 "LuDWiGA STRONG." 
 
 232 
 
XXVI 
 HIS LIFE 
 
 WHEN Jameson picked up his life again, 
 it was with the cut and dried feeling 
 that even the possibility of happiness 
 was out of his reach forever. This is to curtail a 
 great deal of the zest of living, the compensatory 
 zest of mere existence. 
 
 He felt that he had done right in relinquishing 
 Ludwiga, but he was not always sure of it. He 
 often thought of quaint characteristic sentiments 
 which Deborah had occasionally uttered. He 
 could even see her in his mind's eye standing 
 once again in the dimly lit sun attic, her face and 
 eyes and vast wealth of plainly piled hair all one 
 with her colorless surroundings. Alfons would 
 be sunk deep in one of those unreadable moods 
 when he seemed to have slipped his shell, and 
 was a searching soul athirst for information. 
 Julian would be laughing, his hair thrown back 
 and slightly ruffled, his dark face fine and classic 
 until one caught the spirit of the buoyancy be- 
 neath it. Then one felt that the great sculptor 
 had not moulded lastingly yet. 
 
 233 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Ludwiga would be listening, interested in Deb- 
 orah, or in Deborah's views, or in her possession 
 of them ; they never knew which, nor had they 
 ever questioned. There are words we hear and 
 which we do not heed at the time, but which con- 
 tain a deep meaning for us later, when they rep- 
 resent light which has shifted until it falls on us. 
 
 " Birth is a greatness which is thrust upon us," 
 Deborah had said. " Death seems an unpleasant- 
 ness to be endured obediently or philosophically 
 or politely, according to temperament ; but mar- 
 riage is the one gift of the gods to us, the one 
 great card left in our hands to play, but we often 
 do not know how to do it. We blunder when 
 the time comes for us to pass or to play. Our 
 hands tremble, and all the pretty plans of birth, 
 all the possibilities of an eternal welding, may be 
 upset. Young people are too indeliberate about 
 marriage. They are hasty or self-conscious or 
 emotional in their relations toward the subject. 
 We all need the experience of marriage, and it is 
 those lives which have most benefited by its les- 
 sons that are best qualified to contribute to the 
 great purposeful chain of the world ; strong in 
 lives that have made links, links that have joined 
 great civilizations, wonderful dynasties." 
 
 Out from her listeners had come, as ever, but 
 one ready voice. It belonged to the man who 
 most constantly responded to her with his ever- 
 
 234 
 
His Life 
 
 ready raillery. The eyes looking into hers were 
 not the eager, searching ones of a moment previ- 
 ous, but the sweet, mocking eyes of Alfons 
 Strong as people knew him. 
 
 " Does one learn all this by living single, my 
 dear Deborah ? " he asked. She had flashed a 
 sarcastic glance at him. 
 
 " Yes, by living single," Deborah had replied ; 
 " by being but the dweller of thresholds, having 
 a welcome, perhaps, at many hearthstones, but a 
 lengthy dwelling-place at none ; by having friends 
 live and die around one; by being spared surely 
 this, the lonely agony of Earth's most scalding 
 bereavements, but by missing also the loving 
 human companionship." 
 
 The light seemed to fail around her as she 
 spoke. The evening shades made no attempt at 
 color work. Deborah became less real as she 
 stood before them ; her face grew small, her 
 eyes sad, her voice sounded very bitter. So she 
 might become in the days which were before her 
 if her woman love were not nourished, surely 
 " white hair crowned with thorns." 
 
 Jameson had never believed in love. In his effort 
 to be consistent, he remembered his old opinions 
 of it now. He had held that love was a sort of 
 development, merely one of the forces that are 
 powerful in getting us into the final mould. He 
 had believed Art, Success, Ambition, were a fair 
 
 235 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 sort of trinity, and that marriage was an unneces- 
 sary graven image. 
 
 He v was a just man, and tried to renew all these 
 thoughts now, and live according to them. The 
 only folly he committed was in thinking that he 
 was the same person who had originated them. 
 He was not. He was different ; and in thinking 
 there was no change in himself or his opinions, 
 he made the first mistake in a chain of many 
 others, for life becomes a consequence of our 
 right or wrong acts. 
 
 Thus Jameson rode on, as had King Arthur, 
 and " pitched his tents beside the forest " just 
 as he might have done previously. 
 
 In every-day language he went to and from his 
 office. There were times, it is true, when the 
 light from Guinevere's eyes was confusing, but 
 he laid the weakness to mood, and did not allow 
 it to produce any irregularity in his habits or his 
 existence. 
 
 Without any special effort, he felt a strange 
 need for her, unexpectedly, not so much for 
 herself as he had left her, but for the woman that 
 he had expected to find in her continually ; the 
 congenial sharer of his household, the person he 
 most cared to see at table ; in time, maybe, the 
 noble mother of some little children who would 
 look more to him for strength and kindness than 
 to any one else in the whole wide world. 
 
 236 
 
His Life 
 
 It took his whole strength to be true to Julian 
 then, the Julian for whom he was sacrificing 
 love ; the Julian who was supposed to be heart- 
 broken. 
 
 He did not labor as men do for a home or 
 woman, even for the idle pleasure of buying 
 her an expensive gown. There was not the joy 
 in it. He flung that single-handed glory of celi- 
 bacy, which had been an Eastern Star to them, 
 into the attempt to succeed. 
 
 In time, there came a return to him. He 
 got a well-earned and complimentary promotion. 
 Then a man who stood before him died, and 
 in looking around for a successor, courtesy sug- 
 gested Brown's brother-in-law, because of his 
 seniority on the journal ; but the management 
 laid its finger on Jameson. When they received 
 his answer, it was an acceptance, characteristically 
 polite. The long-shut door of the temple had 
 opened. He wished that Ludwiga stood by his 
 side to note the marvel ; he wished that he had 
 not to pass by his best friend, Brown's brother- 
 in-law, for this kindly man had never failed to 
 encourage the tall, awkward fellow from whom 
 the victorious Jameson had evolved. But this 
 is ambition, and he entered the temple alone. 
 
 It did not seem to harm the sacredness of 
 his attitude toward Ludwiga when he called 
 
 237 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 on Antonia occasionally. She was a keen re- 
 storative at first to him, intuitive, brilliant, 
 feminine. 
 
 He even forgot Ludwiga's personality a trifle, 
 under this influence, failed to feel the strong im- 
 pression formerly made by the mere recollections 
 of her daily life. She became a part of the 
 change in him, rather than a woman. He even 
 felt that in time he could accept Antonia as a 
 fixture in his existence. She was handsome, rich, 
 and entertaining. She had learned a great deaL 
 She could adorn a salon with the grace of an 
 empress, and carry from it all the pretty charla- 
 tan wit which is like champagne from a dainty 
 glass to a man's jaded and perverted senses. He 
 might have married her in those times, but love 
 was looking out for its own, and he did not 
 do so. 
 
 The turning-point came unexpectedly to him. 
 He had gone to call on Antonia one night, and 
 found her rooms filled as usual with a brilliant 
 and versatile set of men. Some of them were 
 good men, who were merely indulging in the 
 experiment of a transgression from conventional- 
 ity ; some of them were club-men, experienced 
 Bohemians ; a few of them were youths. 
 
 This fact came with the old force to Jameson. 
 He remembered Julian, and he nearly choked. 
 It was a terrible reaction with him, to find him- 
 
 238 
 
His Life 
 
 self so much outwardly unlike the old Jameson, 
 and yet inwardly the same man, with the old 
 surge of morals and emotions. He knew the 
 opinion they all had of him ; that he had a 
 place amongst them, and they trusted him to 
 mount still higher, to turn his finesse to his own 
 advantage. He was a connoisseur of opportuni- 
 ties, they said, a man rid of folly in conscience 
 and of all the other impediments of the journey 
 of youth, and he had come to believe it of him- 
 self; but in one little flash from Fate, he was the 
 old Jameson, the man who was born " a good 
 radical," as young Julian had been wont to say 
 of him when he sat after some vapid social even- 
 ing in shirt-sleeves and with fine, frank, boy- 
 worship. 
 
 It was as if facts were tossed up from the seat 
 of Truth, facts which were incapable of suppres- 
 sion, eternal in their significance. Jameson saw 
 the youths who were fair and full of promise, as 
 Julian had once been, raise the wine to their lips. 
 He felt a strange throbbing fatherhood about it; 
 and then, as in a dream, the rich room and his 
 rare surroundings faded, and in their place was 
 a girl with pure eyes and a slim, quiet figure, 
 saying over and over : " Don't, Alfons look 
 not upon the wine when it is red." 
 
 Then he got up and left Antonia's house. 
 When he did not return she waited for him ; but 
 
 239 
 
The Siege of Yoitth 
 
 he never did return. He plunged into his work 
 instead, laboring as men seldom labor. 
 
 One day he heard indirectly that Antonia had 
 departed for Europe. It represented nothing to 
 him for a time; then he recognized Europe as 
 the great void into which Julian had stepped, 
 after he was disillusioned. Mrs. Joy had written 
 this fact. 
 
 240 
 
XXVII 
 FATUM 
 
 JULIAN had gone to Europe, and had 
 taken his mother with him. The thought 
 of her did not bore him as it might have 
 done even the most dutiful son who was experi- 
 encing an awakening. An awakening of self 
 does not always produce selfishness. 
 
 Julian had left the Terrace without any of the 
 keen torture that seems rather expected from a 
 broken heart. He did not dwell much on the 
 details of the past, but when he did, he realized 
 that the last night, spent alone, had been one of 
 keen, transforming suffering. He had gone over 
 his whole past with Ludwiga ; he had again real- 
 ized in her all the quaint and refreshing sweetness, 
 all the rare humanity that he had needed just 
 then from some woman. He had awakened from 
 what he called his own blind egotism to find that 
 Jameson had cut him out, to use homely language, 
 while he was looking on, and of course it hurt 
 his pride ; but I cannot say that his heart was 
 broken. 
 
 It is true that there are times when we can 
 endure such great crises and seem oblivious of 
 is 241 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 the sharp pain. Nature seems to provide a kind 
 anaesthetic of her own for such occasions. After 
 that night Julian could never look at a certain 
 calm ideal of St. Joseph without becoming sud- 
 denly sick sharply and unexplainably sick. He 
 never knew that it was because of Mrs. O'Byrne's 
 chandelier, and the hours he had spent looking at 
 it from one dark to dawn. 
 
 He thought it was just an artistic difference of 
 conception to which he was supersensitive. He 
 did not waste much of his after life on analysis, 
 but when he wondered much about the effect 
 produced upon him by St. Joseph he disposed 
 of it by thinking simply, " I will do a better one 
 some day." You see life had for him become full 
 of genuine twentieth-century purpose. 
 
 No, assuredly his heart was not broken, as we 
 have understood the symptoms. Even as early 
 as his ride toward town in the street-cars, his 
 thoughts were not constantly of Ludwiga, nor 
 yet hate, nor love, nor Jameson. They were 
 as casual as those of any other passenger, I 
 fancy. 
 
 He thought of the route he was to take, of 
 how his mother would be surprised to see him ; 
 and of course he thought of Deborah and her 
 music, and occasionally of his trunk checks, and 
 whether he would have time to see to them. It 
 seemed natural for his mind to be running on 
 
 242 
 
Fatum 
 
 in that way. After he stepped onto the ferry- 
 boat, which was the first real portion of his 
 journey, it is true that he became more con- 
 scious of his departure, as an act that had a 
 certain earnest interest to him. He felt that he 
 loved San Francisco, and he went and stood in 
 the stern of the boat, looking back at the thickly 
 settled city that lay tier-like on its many hills. 
 Assuredly he loved San Francisco. Almost 
 every one does who was born in California, and 
 has lived in the metropolis since it was a little 
 child, with certain ambitious toy houses scattered 
 over some drifting sandhills. 
 
 As the strip of blue bay grew wider between 
 them, he said between his teeth : " Why, I went 
 to you when you were a little city, not big or 
 great at ail, and it was only ten years ago. 
 Now you look like a person who has found 
 his manhood, and dares to aim at being great. 
 Oh, I am proud of you ! I hope I shall come 
 home again ! " 
 
 He had never quite lost that homely, tender 
 little scrap of ambition; but unheeded for years 
 was the thought that California was home, and 
 that when he had made a name, he wanted to 
 bring the little offering back and lay it at the 
 feet of the pretty city in which he had learned 
 to be a man. It was as if she were the fair, 
 state-like woman drawn to personify the city, 
 
 243 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 and he wanted to add to the growing offerings 
 tendered by her devoted sons. 
 
 When he was on the train speeding along 
 toward Sacramento, on the Port Costa flats, he 
 became terribly homesick for the dear old place 
 he was leaving, for all their good Bohemian 
 times together ; even for the flat, flat, homely 
 country over which the train was passing. It 
 was toward evening, and the sun was going 
 down red, over some swampy water. It burned 
 hot and unlovely into every fibre of him. It 
 was anything but a picturesque scene, but it 
 represented the whole land that he was leaving, 
 and he was its son ! 
 
 When he opened his eyes, it was dark with- 
 out and around him, save for the train lamps 
 overhead. He was a calmer person, only his 
 throat was rather sore over the change in him. 
 He had resisted an inclination to cry. 
 
 This awakening made a cosmopolitan of Julian, 
 one whose heart would have responded to any 
 emergency call from his country, and responded 
 tenderly and with quickened blood, but one capa- 
 ble of living contentedly anywhere. In this 
 mood, he travelled later into that great strange 
 land where antiquity and art and mere association 
 hold careful chisels for a chosen few. 
 
 He seemed changed to his mother, older, 
 more alert, more practical; but she did not note 
 
 244 
 
Fatum 
 
 it greatly. He was her dear son, she said, and 
 would sometime become a great artist. 
 
 They crossed the ocean together, and stayed 
 in Paris a long, long time. At first his mother 
 thought he had gone there to perfect himself in 
 pen-and-ink work, but one day he said to her, 
 " Don't you know that I am facing something 
 broader ? " Pen-and-ink work was all very well 
 for a training, but he was glad that he had gradu- 
 ated from it. 
 
 Mrs. Joy suffered a great deal while Julian 
 kept her in Paris; but she would not have let 
 him know this for the world. There were no 
 people like herself near her. People there 
 seemed very unlike her old neighbors, who had 
 been wont to run in and talk over preserves with 
 her ; although these same neighbors were all 
 comfortably off, and could have trusted their 
 "jell " to servants. 
 
 The poor lady suffered in this peculiar house- 
 wifely fashion. It was quite pathetic. In fact, 
 it is very pathetic to be so alone, and to want 
 to talk about pans and new kinds of soap with 
 a pale, ecstatic young person who is worshipping 
 dead goddesses. She was wont to sit in a lonely 
 room with a great many American periodicals 
 around her, but they were not very satisfactory. 
 She had tried to read them at first only to dis- 
 cover that they were unfamiliar, quite as much 
 
 245 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 so as Russian or Hindostanee papers would be 
 to her. It is really almost a desperate point that 
 has been reached by an exile when his home 
 papers seem to be denationalized. 
 
 Mrs. Joy took a patient interest in Julian's 
 work at first. She did not understand it in its 
 rudimentary state, but she took an interest in it, 
 notwithstanding, just as mothers do in their 
 daughters' mastering tedious scales on the piano. 
 She felt that she wanted to keep in touch with 
 him. 
 
 To her regret, just as they were becoming at 
 home in Paris, he carried her away to Italy. 
 There Julian became stimulated to work as he 
 had never been stimulated before. All the 
 beauty by which he was surrounded seemed to 
 arouse his own latent powers. He did not fall 
 abashed on his face before the great works of the 
 masters, but he went here and there, seeing and 
 absorbing color and form. After weeks of this 
 eager, intense life he paused as if to take a deep 
 breath, and then he took up his life's work with 
 a new ardor. 
 
 A sjrt of fever seemed to possess him. He 
 was swept up by the spirit of art-competition. 
 He painted things that he had never imagined 
 himself capable of conceiving, and when he dis- 
 covered his own possibilities he became intoxi- 
 
 246 
 
Fatum 
 
 cated by them, and his self-opinion grew more 
 secure, his fancy more variously colored, his 
 hand more skilled, and his sight more inspired. 
 
 He drew women most wonderfully, his mother 
 thought. She was watching him with the same 
 careful patience, a little more educated, perhaps. 
 No one ever seemed so to understand women. 
 She was too dear and simple a woman to marvel 
 over it, it all seemed in the complement of genius 
 to her trusting mother love. 
 
 Then she began to notice the kind of woman 
 he portrayed best, and it was never the really 
 good, limited type of creature with whom she 
 was most familiar, but a type of woman who 
 might become domestic if life were to carry out 
 the young artist's intention. He drew women 
 who looked like Magdalens with a Saviour's smile 
 working on them. He drew women, and women, 
 and women, and then one day he drew a pair 
 of arms that made him famous. There was a 
 woman back of them, of course, a woman with 
 subtle, wonderful physical grace, and when they 
 asked him who she was, that they might hang 
 the picture in a conventional fashion, he wrote 
 these words mechanically, " Suada, the Goddess 
 of Persuasion." 
 
 They hardly represented anything of moment 
 to him until long afterward, " Suada, the God- 
 dess of Persuasion ! " and after the world went 
 
 247 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 wild about her, he began to worship her himself. 
 
 She was at first a leading, wonderful feminine 
 thing, with a human message that the people did 
 not understand ; but he grew to know her better, 
 just as one does the woman he loves. After a 
 while he began to wish that she were human. 
 
 The end of it was, that one day Antonia walked 
 into the Louvre and found herself exalted. She 
 had been reproduced by some devot'e and hung 
 in a splendid frame with a good light on her. 
 There was a strange undercurrent to the subject 
 that affected her spiritually. She looked, and 
 became a better woman. It was by some one 
 who loved her, she felt, and she looked for the 
 name of the artist. No one had ever loved her 
 sincerely before. 
 
 She found Julian the next day in a splendidly 
 handsome studio. He was a young man with 
 the flesh and poise of years on him. He had a 
 Van Dyke beard, and started when she appeared 
 before him. 
 
 " So you are the little artist ! " she said. 
 
 They spent a happy season or two near each 
 other. One day on the Isle of Capri, they found 
 a resemblance in it. It was like Sausalito, they 
 said, and reminded them of a day they had spent 
 together when Jameson lay under a Sunday 
 paper and Antonia had thought him, Julian, 
 merely a pretty, tiresome, lovable boy. Sausalito 
 
 248 
 
Fatum 
 
 is a suburb of San Francisco, too far away from 
 Capri to betray this thought. 
 
 It was a pretty scene when he introduced 
 Antonia to Mrs. Joy as a daughter. 
 
 " You are very welcome, dear," she said ; 
 "Julian must have always loved you, or he 
 could not have painted women as he did." 
 
 249 
 
XXVIII 
 HOME 
 
 FIVE years of conscious living may mean a 
 great deal to one existence ; but again, 
 there are five or ten years, or even twenty, 
 in another person's life that hold not even one 
 light to illumine their monotony. Much time 
 passes simply like a rather dreary watch in the 
 night. To Julian, each day, almost each mo- 
 ment, had been a telling one. A change had 
 been the tide with him which led on to fortune, 
 and it was in a wonderfully grateful frame of 
 mind that he realized one day in Athens that he 
 wanted to return to California. He had been 
 inhaling the atmosphere of Athens as if there 
 might still linger inspiration from some nectar 
 spilt centuries agone by the gods, when he was 
 seized by an impulse which he communicated to 
 Antonia. They were in the very centre of a 
 beautiful decaying temple. 
 
 " I want to go home," he broke out. " I am 
 tired of dead art that is being restored and made 
 to smile again by so many beauty doctors." 
 
 250 
 
Home 
 
 " Oh, you have done so well," she cried. 
 " You are the centre of professional hope just 
 now. Even I am enjoying professional antici- 
 pation with the world about you. Should we go 
 home just yet ? " 
 
 "Yes," he answered. "I am coming back 
 after a while, but I need the change of mental 
 climate or I won't be able to produce anything 
 but a fairly well-featured mummy." 
 
 He stood looking at her critically. " She 
 would have to be a well-featured mummy, An- 
 tonia," he said. " She could n't be anything but 
 well-featured, after you, after c Suada.' I don't 
 know why I was a fool so long, but I used to 
 draw and draw and draw women, sometimes 
 just one woman, but it never amounted to any- 
 thing. I did not understand at first, not for 
 a long time, Antonia. And then one day in 
 Paris I remembered how I used to say, when 
 a young boy, that I would draw a woman some 
 day who would surpass that armless silent Milo 
 queen, who has borne the standard so long, so 
 long ! " 
 
 He showed a restlessness and a passion that he 
 had not displayed for five years. " It is God 
 who must first make the perfect woman. You 
 see I had erred all along in trying to reproduce 
 my own ideals, my own ideals of her. They 
 were mostly qualities, personified in some Ma- 
 
 251 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 donna-faced girl with too full eyes or a bad figure 
 or inartistic lines. After awakening to the weak 
 places, it was splendid fun getting readjusted. 
 I had put my own finger on the very thought 
 that simplified the whole matter. I did not 
 desert my old methods, not at all, only I com- 
 menced again at the very lowest rung of the lad- 
 der. Now it was Nature, not the mere physical 
 study other fellows were making of it ; I aimed at 
 a rival for the Milo goddess, even if I had to do 
 her in part, and it should take me a lifetime to 
 recreate the whole woman. After a long, long 
 time," he said, " I had drawn a pair of arms 
 that the fellows used to sit and look at, and 
 then I filled in You. That is all," he added 
 simply. " Fame is n't such a wonderful thing, 
 after all, just learning what to do, doing it 
 without any special effort, and finding one's self 
 with the possibility of a good deal more to do 
 in life." 
 
 She tucked her hand into his arm and said with 
 a motherly note in her voice, "You must go 
 back to California, Julian ! " 
 
 They walked along arm in arm. People might 
 have said as they passed, "It is Joy and his wife, 
 Joy the American artist of the Louvre, you know. 
 They are the most entertaining people, and rather 
 social hits outside the inevitable lionizing. Every 
 one likes Joy and his wife. They are as com- 
 
 252 
 
Home 
 
 posing to shattered nerves as the even balance of 
 a pair of scales." 
 
 So Joy went back to California, back to San 
 Francisco. Jameson was sitting at his desk one 
 day, when he looked up as if he had missed some- 
 thing which he should have heard, and was 
 vaguely conscious of it, an old failing of his. 
 
 " What did you say, Brown ? " he asked. 
 " Whom did you say is coming back to Cali- 
 fornia ? " 
 
 " Why, Joy, Joy who used to work here," 
 Brown returned. 
 
 Silence fell again between them. Jameson did 
 not go back to his writing. Brown sat at his 
 papers busily. Brown was the optimist who had 
 married when he was nothing more than an office 
 boy. His wife and he could not have had more 
 than a crust of bread and much love between 
 them, but it had seemed to suffice. Afterward, 
 when they acquired a small raise, and a large 
 baby, both in the same month, they would sit 
 holding each other's hands, looking at their 
 treasure, and talking about the poverty of the 
 first year of their married life before the addi- 
 tional money came and when they had no com- 
 pensation like the baby ! It was all very idyllic, 
 but kept little Brown senior rather ill-dressed and 
 thin. 
 
 253 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 When Jameson received his well-earned success 
 and got the management of the office, he said one 
 month : " I need a man here to help me, besides 
 the stenographer." 
 
 They said he could have half a dozen if he 
 cared, which was hyperbolic. 
 
 He went out amongst the staff to little Brown. 
 " I need a man in there," he said, " and I want to 
 offer you the position. It will mean advancement 
 to you of a positive sort, if you care to learn to 
 put up with me. I need some one who under- 
 stands the business and some one who will have 
 the patience to try to learn to understand me 
 too. There is a good deal of work, and I am 
 willing to stand well by any one who knows how 
 to share the minor part of it." 
 
 Young Brown had stared back at him with the 
 dawn of almost a holy pleasure in his wide, round 
 eyes. " It was good of you to choose me," he 
 answered simply. " Mrs. Brown will be glad." 
 He had not said what he would try to accomplish 
 for the man above him, and he did not know that 
 his good fortune had been an emotional caprice ; 
 but the various babies had taught him a great deal 
 of patience, so he got along with his new employer 
 capitally. Whenever he did not understand Jame- 
 son, or know quite how to take his humors, there 
 was always Mrs. Brown to say, " Be patient, dear- 
 est ! Remember, he has no home life like ours 
 
 254 
 
Home 
 
 to soften the hard thoughts for him ! " and there 
 were also the Brown babies to tumble into his 
 arms of an evening. 
 
 It did not occur to Jameson how Brown became 
 such an invaluable assistant to him, but he advanced 
 the young fellow conscientiously. After a long, 
 long pause, this day, the man with the conserva- 
 tive calm to his face said again simply : 
 
 " Whom did you say told you that Julian was 
 coming home, Brown ? " He had said the old 
 boyish name without thinking. 
 
 " Oh, no one told me," Brown replied. " It 
 was in the paper; I read it in this morning's 
 paper." 
 
 The busy city surged and swarmed on the 
 streets below them. Its roar came up, but other- 
 wise all was very quiet. 
 
 " If I had not thought you knew it, Mr. 
 Jameson," Brown said, " I might have mentioned 
 it earlier to you." 
 
 "It does not matter," the man returned. " I 
 have not heard from him since he left the city. 
 I do not know whether it is generally known, but 
 we had a sort of rupture. It was nothing very 
 violent, barely anything, now I come to think of 
 it, but just a widening. It is rather strange to 
 dwell on it." 
 
 Brown sat and listened respectfully. He did 
 not know what to answer. After a bit, his senior 
 
 255 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 rose, and walking over stood looking down on 
 the busy city. 
 
 " To see that look again in his eyes to feel 
 he has done fine work and out of such suffering ! 
 I wonder if Suada is Ludwiga ! I had not 
 known it would all come back this way. Oh, 
 my God! how long?" 
 
 There was the busy scratch, scratching of his 
 assistant's pen. After a little he went back to 
 work also. 
 
 In a room lined with handsome frames holding 
 some European gems that Julian had brought 
 back with him, Jameson and Julian met again. 
 They had to step over some unpacked things to 
 reach each other, and once near enough to shake 
 hands, they had to spring and rescue a Dresden 
 vase that looked frivolous enough to be rather 
 expensive. Then they grasped hands heartily. 
 
 " It is good to see you back," Jameson ex- 
 claimed. He would not have thought of calling 
 him Julian for the world. " It is good to see 
 you back, Joy." He wondered why he had ever 
 thought that Julian would not have a welcome 
 for him. Julian was in his shirt-sleeves, just as 
 he had been that last night when he had unloos- 
 ened his collar and looked as if he were about to 
 die because he was so heart-broken. But while 
 this lent a subtle help to one's opinion of the 
 
 256 
 
Home 
 
 changes in him, it did not recall that pale-faced 
 suffering Julian at all, in an unpleasant manner. 
 Once Jameson caught himself noticing gratefully 
 that there were no hollows in his cheeks or 
 shoulders, and then it seemed ridiculous. 
 
 " I thought I should come at once," he com- 
 menced apologetically, partly to fill in time and 
 partly because the room was upset, "I thought 
 I should come at once. If I had known when 
 you were to come, via what line, I should have 
 been there to meet you." 
 
 " Oh, thanks, old man," Julian replied. He 
 slipped into a handsome jacket and sat down on 
 a big labelled box. He looked like Apollo made 
 over to appear conventional to us. He had a 
 fine, easy picturesque physique, and his artist 
 beard lent years to him, years that he could not 
 have owned if one had put two and two together. 
 He made a fine, healthy contrast to the man still 
 standing beside a dismantled easel. 
 
 " Oh, sit down," Julian said. " You 're surely 
 not going to be upset because I Ve been hammer- 
 ing and knocking things about a bit. I did not 
 have to do it, only I wanted to. You and I used 
 to have such fun moving." 
 
 "Yes, we did," Jameson answered. He sat 
 
 down, looking rather awkward and big-shouldered 
 
 in contrast to the easy, handsome young fellow 
 
 before him. His face had not so much changed, 
 
 17 257 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Julian thought, as it had merely grown older. 
 There were marks and lines and gray hairs and 
 some certain hunger. They sat there, neither 
 knowing quite what to say after Jameson's " Yes, 
 we did." There should have been so much to re- 
 member, so much to laugh over, so much to erase. 
 Jameson was the one at last. " It was splen- 
 did of you to do that work so soon, Joy. It was 
 the sort of thing that almost has the divine breath 
 in it, to go unknown across the ocean and get 
 into the Salon so soon. I was paralyzed when I 
 heard it. It did not seem long ago since you 
 wore kilts and expected candy of me. We have 
 been proud of you, out here, my boy." 
 
 They shook hands with a great deal more force 
 this time, and the Dresden vase nearly saw its 
 undoing again. 
 
 " There has n't seemed much volition, much 
 actual labor," Julian replied. " I was in a fair 
 way to succeed when I went over, only I should 
 never have found it out but for you. I remem- 
 ber all you did for me, all you used to suggest 
 and say. I have never lost the thought of the 
 friendship, Jame, old boy, and when the great 
 time came when artist fellows who had seemed 
 far, far above me, appeared to find the right touch 
 in Suada, and and rather cottoned to me in 
 fact why, I remember I stood one day in my 
 room and felt that you had done it every bit for 
 
 258 
 
Home 
 
 me, because father had given your governor ten 
 cents, or something like that, one day." 
 
 They were both standing now, and when 
 Julian laughed nervously, Jameson put all his 
 self-control into retaining that conservative calm 
 across his own face. It was the way he best 
 knew himself lately. " I want to tell you about 
 Suada, Jameson. They wanted to buy her of me 
 over there. I could have gotten a fine price for 
 her. Some day I '11 take them up on other 
 paintings, and we can have the best cigars ad in- 
 finifum, without pipe intermissions. I," he 
 paused a second " I have brought the painting 
 back to you, old man ! I want you to take it 
 from me. It will be splendid of you if you will, 
 for it will make me feel as if I had expressed 
 something ; whereas the work was all yours, all 
 your friendship to me, when I might have thrown 
 these high chances all away." 
 
 " You may regret it, Julian," the older man 
 said. It was the only time he had used the 'old 
 name, and all the old love became a new friend- 
 ship in it. His voice stirred Julian to the very 
 centre of man-thought and life. " Regret it ! " 
 he cried, taking a step forward and laying the old 
 boyish grip on the man's broad shoulder. " Why, 
 I never look at Suada, Jame, but I think of how 
 I used to feel as a little fellow over that lesson 
 where Columbus did all the work and America 
 
 259 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 was named after the fellow who just touched the 
 great shores and did n't realize it at all. Be- 
 sides/' he said, still holding on to Jameson's 
 shoulder, " I think I came home just for this 
 one purpose, to see and thank and smoke with 
 you, and to give you Suada." 
 
 " This is coming very full-handed," said Jame- 
 son. He had not had a single offering from 
 affection since the old, old times. He was stirred 
 beyond his usual depths. He simply stood star- 
 ing back at Julian, with his lined face and its 
 strange calm, his occasional silvery hairs, and that 
 hunger in his eyes. 
 
 " It 's not," Julian said, " it is absolutely noth- 
 ing as money value goes, only it is the first fruit 
 of my mind, so whenever you or I look at 
 it, it will mean something personal to us, some- 
 thing I never want to forget, old fellow. That 
 is all there is worth while in existence, after all. 
 Now," he ended, " I want you to stay to dinner, 
 and tell us what you Ve been doing all this long 
 time." 
 
 " Oh, it's been nothing very interesting," Jame- 
 son replied ; " Just work at the same office, 
 almost at the same desk. Then they got new 
 quarters. You must come and see us, a new 
 building and all the rest of it. We fellows were 
 not acclimatized to it readily. We used to long 
 for the old halls, where even the light of genius 
 
 260 
 
Home 
 
 failed to be an illumination. I insisted on using 
 my old desk at first, just to keep in touch with 
 the old identity, but they took it from me, and 
 now I have a sort of fine atmosphere about me, 
 that used to seem like Rockefeller." 
 
 " That speaks for itself," the young fellow re- 
 marked. 
 
 " I want you to stay the evening with us now," 
 he went on, when Jameson made no effort to re- 
 main. " I want mother to see you. She never 
 quite understood about you, and worried a good 
 deal at first. I often thought I should write, and 
 then it seemed as if there were n't so much to say 
 as to do ; so now Suada will say all for me. 
 You see Suada, the real Suada, is my wife," he 
 said, and stood there, smiling, handsome. 
 
 " Suada is what ? " Jameson asked when he 
 was able to do so. 
 
 " Suada is my wife" Julian returned. " One 
 day she came into the studio, and it was all right 
 from then on. I never knew quite how she had 
 influenced the boyish part of me, until we met 
 as man and woman. Then we were on equal 
 ground, and there could be but one outcome." 
 He gave a deep, happy laugh over the memory, 
 rather than over any present meaning of it. 
 
 " Imagine painting your ideal woman, and then 
 having her walk into your studio and look at 
 you ! " 
 
 261 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 " I know you will be happy," Jameson man- 
 aged to insert. 
 
 " Happy/' repeated the young man ; " it is 
 just having completed longing, that is all." Now 
 he was the old Julian, radiant, full of little ripples 
 
 " Now life is one smooth run, all dead easy. 
 c We '11 just keep alivin' an* alovin' as the years 
 go glidin' by/ If you stay you will see her also, 
 meet and talk with her she was Antonia Vlor, 
 you know." 
 
 The afternoon had been growing old, and they 
 found themselves in a certain gloom that seemed 
 to demand clearer tones from Jameson's deep 
 voice. 
 
 " I did not know that, Joy," he said, "I did 
 not know that." 
 
 He stood still and big a moment, and then he 
 moved toward the door. cc It is election time," 
 he explained, " and I have to go back to the 
 office. It is to be a busy night, otherwise noth- 
 ing could drag me away from you and the women 
 folks. I am glad for you. You will have to let 
 me come again." 
 
 As he went down the stairs, he buttoned his 
 coat as if he felt a little chilly. Once out on 
 the darkening street he murmured something. 
 
 " If I had mentioned Ludwiga's name, he would 
 probably have said that she was a sweet little thing 
 
 that she had been a sweet little thing ! " 
 
 262 
 
Home 
 
 He went on, saying it over and over. The 
 world had yielded so little to him. Once he 
 stumbled, and after that paid better heed to his 
 way. 
 
 Over the dreams of our youth should be 
 written, " Here reposes a little child," so that 
 we may be excused for weeping a tear or so on 
 it once in a while. 
 
 363 
 
XXIX 
 
 HARVEST-HOME 
 
 THERE had been no change to speak of 
 in the Terrace, or rather the changes 
 had been so gradual, so natural, that the 
 Terrace, even without the actual presence of its 
 old inhabitants, seemed far less deserted than 
 many other places might have appeared. 
 
 At first, just after Julian and Jameson left the 
 Terrace, there had been no change at all. Ould 
 Casey went after his beer, and quite as regularly 
 drank it, while the O' Byrnes and Deborah just 
 lived on, and the half-Florentine girl with the 
 American ways and the German name played 
 oftener with the O' Byrne baby. There were 
 secrets in her eyes those days, and he could not 
 see them. 
 
 The billows had been " God's billows." Life 
 had worked on life, and influence on influence ; 
 but in the mind of the Most High had been the 
 " spiritual coherence " which brought Antonia 
 back to Julian's life when a new Antonia, one 
 not morally blind, was most needed. On the 
 Other hand, if Ludwiga were to meet Jameson 
 
 264 
 
Harvest-Home 
 
 again, it would be under stronger lights, lights 
 that would dispel all shade, and shock them into 
 a deeper, more irresistible recognition. 
 
 " God gives us love. Something to love 
 
 He lends us ; but when love is grown 
 To ripeness, that on which it throve 
 Falls off, and love is left alone." 
 
 About the end of the fourth year, Alfons mar- 
 ried the strange half-Irish girl, Deborah Murphy. 
 
 Lest you should wonder at all about it, his 
 declaration and their courtship were quite as un- 
 expected and quite as tender as heart could wish. 
 
 At first he called it an interest in her. He 
 was in no mood to know love as love after such 
 a long play-time with the emotion. He just 
 called it an interest in Deborah. Then he grew 
 strangely interested in her, almost remarkably 
 so. He quarrelled more deliberately with her, 
 less enjoyably. There were times when he said 
 things to her which he might have said to the 
 women with whom he flirted, only he was seri- 
 ous with Deborah. Possibly Deborah's being 
 serious accounted for this result. He realized 
 her condition, her being a bachelor woman, this 
 offence seeming to mean social obliteration to 
 her, much as crime forces political obliteration on 
 a man ; but propinquity had entrapped him, 
 irretrievably. 
 
 This was brought home to him rather abruptly 
 265 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 one afternoon. He was walking along the street, 
 when he saw a woman just a little ahead of him. 
 He had seldom seen Deborah away from the 
 Terrace, so he did not recognize her immediately. 
 When he did, it was with a feeling of exhilaration, 
 as if she were some one he had long been in search 
 of, although he had left her only that morning, 
 quarrelling as they parted, trying to see who 
 would have the last word. 
 
 He observed with that flattering unction so 
 familiar to us in our hours of pride, that Deborah 
 was a woman of whom one might well be proud. 
 In the crowd of gaudy and mediocre people, she 
 moved calmly, as a lady who was not only her 
 own ancestor, but she might have been the 
 daughter of a hundred earls as well. There was 
 a grace about her movements which enraptured 
 him. He was unable to explain the reason of his 
 action, but, obeying the impulse, he followed her. 
 He imagined at the time that it was merely to 
 perfect one of his unusually preposterous jokes 
 upon her, but as he continued in her wake his 
 feeling changed. 
 
 It was one of the strangest things that had 
 ever happened to him, this meeting Deborah 
 away from home, and regarding her not only as 
 if she were a stranger, but a strange woman. It 
 would have been delightful had it not given him 
 a strange sensation about his heart. 
 
Harvest-Home 
 
 By this time they had reached the depot, and 
 observing that Deborah purchased a ticket for a 
 suburban town, Alfons mechanically did the same. 
 Passing through the waiting-room, he caught a 
 glimpse of a face in a mirror. It was a quiet 
 face, and was looking at him with a too quiet 
 expression, as if a curtain were dropped before 
 the eyes, shutting the bright things out, such 
 bright things as he had believed the only real 
 illuminations of life. Suddenly, as it grew more 
 familiar to him, he realized it was his own present 
 self that he was contemplating, with the wonder- 
 ing eyes of that " little beautiful brother, the man 
 he had hoped to be." 
 
 When Deborah went into the cabin he followed 
 her, but as he took a seat beside her, she gave a 
 little shriek of terror which sounded so young and 
 so artificial that it restored him, in a measure. 
 
 "You are arriving at the age now/' he re- 
 marked, looking studiously before him as if it 
 were a ponderous subject and required earnest- 
 ness, " when, if you wish to keep young, you 
 must catch hold of Time by the coat-tails and 
 hang onto him ; but, on the other hand, if you are 
 going to surrender like a sensible woman, you 
 must hand over your sword to him, as all defeated 
 generals do, and stop practising all those coquet- 
 ries in which you have been indulging for so 
 long a time." 
 
 267 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Deborah sat, staring straight before her, but 
 occasionally stealing a furtive glance at him. 
 Needless to say, she ignored his flippant remarks 
 utterly. 
 
 " Where are you going ? " she asked him 
 presently. 
 
 " I do not know," he answered. " As I came 
 to the boat I saw a huge placard, stating that 
 there was to be an open-air concert across the 
 bay, to be given in aid of the c Undenomina- 
 tional Orphans/ and I decided to claim that as 
 my destination, should I be suspected of follow- 
 ing you." 
 
 " I am going to the open-air concert of the 
 c Undenominational Orphans,' ' she remarked, 
 setting her lips a trifle. 
 
 " Why are you going ? " asked Alfons after a 
 second. 
 
 " Oh, every one goes to them," she replied. 
 
 " Then that is also my reason for going. I 
 had none before. It is more respectable to have 
 a reason. By the way, speaking of the concert 
 reminds me of the little girl in some asylum 
 whom you used to befriend. How is she getting 
 along?" 
 
 " I now assist her more indirectly," returned 
 Deborah. " It is plebeian to force one's self on 
 poverty." 
 
 " Indeed ? " returned Alfons. After a while 
 268 
 
Harvest-Home 
 
 he asked more gravely, " Are undenominational 
 orphans different from other orphans ? " 
 
 She hesitated just a moment. " The country 
 is running to scepticism," she answered ; " and 
 undenominational orphans are more fashionable 
 just now/' 
 
 At this they both looked out of the narrow 
 window before them, and both were thinking, but 
 neither spoke. 
 
 After an interval of silence, she spoke to him : 
 
 " Something unexpected has happened to me." 
 He arose with a certain degree of violence. He 
 did not know that it was inconsistent with his 
 mother's breeding for him to do such a thing, 
 but as he stood before Deborah there was some- 
 thing so pleading in the attitude that she for- 
 gave the action. 
 
 " You are going to be married ? " Alfons ex- 
 plained, as he looked in her face. 
 
 " Yes," she answered quite sedately, in the 
 same manner in which he had spoken of the con- 
 cert. "In reality, I had not intended to get 
 married until just this moment, but since you 
 have suggested it, the idea grows in favor with 
 me, just as your going to the concert must have 
 done." 
 
 He sat down laughing. " They say c fightin* 
 and scartin' is the Scotch way of courtinV I 
 wish we were Scotch, Deborah ! " 
 
 269 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 After a time she said: "The something 'un- 
 expected ' of which I spoke has happened to our 
 landlady. She has fallen heir to a fortune at 
 last. The uncle with whom she quarrelled has 
 died at such an advanced age that it was impos- 
 sible for him to frame a will. He had put off 
 doing so for years, so now it will all come to her. 
 The house, of course, will change hands, and I 
 may leave the Terrace in consequence." 
 
 " I can't imagine the Terrace without you," 
 replied Alfons, simply. 
 
 She had had a very loveless life, and would not 
 accept the implied kindness. She attempted to 
 say something frivolous in return, but came very 
 near the flame in her disport. 
 
 " Without me, or my ancestry, you will indeed 
 be lonesome !" 
 
 " Without you or your bookcase or your 
 ancestry," he repeated, " without you ! " 
 
 Deborah smiled, the old smile of their years 
 of cheerful wrangling. " You will not lose the 
 heart out of your wit because of that," she re- 
 marked to him. "You will lose the bookcase, 
 you will lose me, you will also lose the warm 
 affection you must have acquired for my grand- 
 parents, in the spirit, but you will retain the in- 
 spiration of it all. I can picture you quite a gay 
 old man, a sort of c grand seigneur/ like your 
 grandparent, only a little more human because of 
 
 270 
 
Harvest-Home 
 
 your American birth, and I can hear you saying 
 to the new-comers : c Here dwelt a maid who 
 had no grandfather, had only a bookcase which 
 was suspected of having been a cupboard, and 
 not very well filled at that. She was not a nice 
 girl, nor yet very good-looking, and she had not 
 the accomplishment of love, only its never-ending 
 power, so she bored me, and I had to turn to the 
 beautiful world for consolation/ ' 
 
 " Stop ! " he interrupted suddenly. " You 
 must not mock me, Deborah. Not any old 
 grand seigneur, indeed ; rather some driftwood so 
 rotted by the swish of the sea as to be unfit even 
 for a cottage fire." 
 
 She looked into the soft dark eyes, and was 
 moved at the sadness she saw reflected in their 
 depths. She was only a woman, and the time 
 had come when life was interpreted to her, and 
 only what was good and noble in it were worth 
 while. Alfons and she had played a long time 
 and were a-weary. As the boat grated against 
 the landing she looked up at him and began to 
 speak. " I have combated your life," she said, 
 " rather than contributed to it. I have called 
 you a derelict on the great sea of life, where men 
 and even women are struggling to save some little 
 skiff. I have said you were a libertine and a 
 drunkard, one who let idle pleasure run into 
 habitual wrong, but in these devious ways I have 
 
 271 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 come to you. I want you to know all that life 
 has asked of me for you, Alfons. I think that 
 I have loved you for a hundred years." 
 
 He forbore to take advantage of the moment. 
 It was a time-worn phrase, but it represented the 
 utmost she had to give him, and for some reason 
 unknown to him she had seen fit to acquaint 
 him with her generosity. He stood staring at 
 her. Then she spoke again : " Great gifts do no 
 harm in the bestowing, and I have felt it might 
 stimulate your purpose in life to know that some 
 one cared for you, some one who would think it 
 worth while to help you to become a nobler man." 
 
 She had come from a long line of laboring 
 people, he thought, and he had descended from a 
 long line of idlers, who had lived on a soil insuffi- 
 cient to sustain them, but " out of the darkness 
 had they met to read life's meaning in each other's 
 eyes." 
 
 Then he spoke the same thought to her : " Out 
 of the dark and the gloom of life we have emerged, 
 facing each other. It has seemed like a hundred 
 thousand years, Deborah ! " 
 
 People were crowding off the boat. After a 
 bit, as they stood close together, she reached out 
 to him her trembling hand. They went off like 
 two lovers. They did not seem to care what 
 people were thinking of them, or whether people 
 were thinking at all. 
 
 272 
 
Harvest-Home 
 
 Ludwiga alone was able to lay hands on the 
 marvel of it. That night in her own little 
 thought-book she wrote, " I am not surprised 
 at it. * Hast thou not known ? hast thou not 
 heard, that the everlasting God, the Lord, the 
 Creator of the ends of the earth . . . there is no 
 searching of His understanding/ ' 
 
 Then they married and went away, to another 
 part of the city ; it was very lonely afterwards. 
 Ludwiga often went back to see the people, until 
 one day the O' Byrne baby was big enough to go to 
 a blind asylum and learn to read. After that she 
 could not bear it, and stayed away. It was like a 
 grave after our sorrow is ended. Strange people 
 moved into the little flats, and she roomed in a 
 tenderly furnished den off Deborah's and Alfons's 
 apartments. 
 
 She lived her own strange little life, but they 
 were glad to have her near them. " Some day," 
 they used to say, thinking of each other. 
 
 18 273 
 
XXX 
 
 WHEN THE GODS ARRIVE 
 
 JAMESON went back to the office. It was 
 to be a busy night, and his presence was nec- 
 essary. Just those first hours' work seemed 
 rather necessary too. 
 
 Brown had not returned from his dinner ; and 
 from Mrs. Brown and the babies. Time went 
 by, and he did not come, but Jameson knew 
 that he would do so. Brown was sure as death, 
 casually speaking. 
 
 There was a great deal of work to do, but 
 Jameson just sat at his desk and did not do it. 
 Once he flung out his arms and let his head sink 
 forward on them. There was nothing of interest 
 concerning politics occurring in the office ; noth- 
 ing to suggest that the paper was on the verge of 
 a great city 'election. 
 
 Presently the man dreamed. 
 
 He was not asleep, but numb, like a person 
 who is unconscious save for some tiny, tiny por- 
 tion of his brain. This was quite active, and con- 
 jured strange pictures for him, produced memories 
 
 274 
 
IV hen the Gods Arrive 
 
 which had been so long absent that he had grown 
 to believe them dead. 
 
 He dreamed of Julian again, the boy Julian, 
 who had been wont to stand in his mother's luxu- 
 rious country home, perhaps whittling at a stick 
 while they were laying plans for his future. One 
 day (this image had dark, curly hair and long 
 trousers), the boy had come over shyly, and lain 
 a hand on Jameson's shoulder. " I don't care so 
 much about the art," he had cried impetuously, 
 "or the city, unless I go with you." 
 
 After this Jameson thought of the man whom 
 he had just left in his handsome studio, sur- 
 rounded by beautiful things, and somewhere, 
 hidden, that beautiful inspiration which he had 
 wrought for himself after Jameson's guideship 
 was over. 
 
 Then Jameson dreamed of Antonia, how he 
 himself could have had her for the asking, and 
 how one night she had said : 
 
 " To-day I saw a woman. She had on a funny 
 dress that would be excusable in a painting, but 
 looked rather shabby under her eyes. She is 
 Alfons Strong's sister, you remember young 
 Strong. I nearly screamed when I saw her. 
 She was trying to carry a fat Irish baby over 
 a crowded crossing, and walk like a queen. My 
 man all but drove into them. I do not know 
 why I kept thinking of her, but it has enter- 
 
 275 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 tained me all day. I suppose she is married, 
 and maybe that was her child. It is so funny 
 to think of whom people marry, why they choose. 
 This girl is very, very funny to me, like a prayer. 
 He must be stolid, stout, with unblinking eyes, 
 like an Egyptian idol, his fat hands folded across 
 his breast, honest, honest, honest." 
 
 Jameson had sat and listened to her. He had 
 been like the great man who " had picked up 
 this or that pretty pebble or shell for diversion 
 while the great ocean of truth lay all undis- 
 covered at his feet." 
 
 Again, it was only words which Jameson re- 
 membered, like love, and life, and forever, and 
 peace. Afterward he dreamed of Ludwiga 
 herself. 
 
 She was clad in a gown this time that would 
 be most excusable in a painting, because it was so 
 unreal, like the flowing robes in angels* pictures, 
 and she was surrounded by many bright lights 
 and many flowers, " flowers of all hue and with- 
 out thorn, the rose." Then he realized that 
 she was probably dead ; that she was no longer 
 a living, groping little thing, but translated. 
 
 It was all very beautiful, that, like a glimpse 
 of heaven; and the tiny active portion of his 
 numbed brain did not suffer at all from it. It 
 was merely pretty, merely pictorial. But it was 
 not to end there. He dreamed on and on ; once 
 
JVhen the Gods Arrive 
 
 that he was married to some other woman, some 
 fine, noble, conventional woman, and one evening 
 she had said at dinner : " What do you suppose 
 is in the evening paper ? A girl with grocery 
 eyes is dead ! " (Grocery eyes had been what 
 Alfons called them.) 
 
 And he had mumbled in answer : " What do 
 I care about that, you woman who wear your 
 clothes so well and preside so tenderly over my 
 house and table ! " 
 
 And she, the wife, had answered : " But this 
 girl's name is Strong ! " 
 
 It was very expressive, and after it had been 
 uttered, he suffered very much ; he cared a great 
 deal. 
 
 " But this girl's name is Strong ! " 
 
 It was not right of him, but all life and its 
 meaning was in that simple sentence, " But this 
 girl's name is Strong ! " 
 
 He had liked to think of her as living. He 
 had done better work when this was so. He 
 liked to remember her, strong, young, brave, as 
 she had appeared to the Terrace people, with all 
 that faith in her eyes, all that optimism in her 
 smile. He even liked to remember her rather 
 tired, a certain droop to the strong young shoul- 
 ders, a certain stamp of care on her face, but 
 brave still. 
 
 Oh, it was sweet to have known that she was 
 277 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 living, that her face had not passed out of mean- 
 ing, as dead faces do. Her face was ever so very 
 human, so full of riddles, unusual incongruities ; 
 the strength bequeathed by some long-dead an- 
 cestor, those smiling, wonderful Florentine eyes, 
 the quaint little shadow cast athwart her by that 
 hideous little German name. To have died, to 
 have folded her useful hands, to be lying smiling 
 in some quiet room in that impossible-to-break, 
 long silence, clad in some slight gown held by 
 slender stitches, a candle at her head lighting up 
 the expression which knowledge held there, " with 
 sandals loose " at last. 
 
 The tiny active portion of his brain seemed to 
 become numb also. After what seemed a long 
 time he heard some noise, to which he found him- 
 self responding mechanically. 
 
 It was still evening in the office, and he was 
 sitting at his desk as usual, staring stupidly up at 
 young Brown. Dulled as were his senses, he 
 realized that young Brown looked appalled, as if 
 something dreadful had just happened. 
 
 " What is the matter ? " Jameson asked after a 
 second. 
 
 " Why, it is ten o'clock/* young Brown re- 
 plied, " ten o'clock, and there is an ocean of work 
 to do before press time." 
 
 " Well, it does n't matter as far as I am con- 
 cerned," answered Jameson, dully. 
 
 278 
 
JVhen the Gods Arrive 
 
 " Why, what do you mean ? " blurted out the 
 younger man. " What do you mean, Jameson? " 
 
 Jameson rose to his feet, pushing some papers 
 from him. 
 
 " It means I can't work to-night," he replied. 
 " I am sick. I am all gone to pieces, anything you 
 want to say ; but I cannot work this evening." 
 
 He even reached toward his hat as if he were 
 going out. Young Brown caught hold of him. 
 
 " I don't know what is the matter with you, 
 Jameson," he exclaimed," but whatever has come 
 over your mind, it has come at the wrong time. 
 You '11 just have to stay and do the work. We 
 two are the only ones capable of dealing with it, 
 and I am going away myself." 
 
 " You are going to do what ? " repeated the 
 older man, hardly realizing the significance of 
 their position, but aware that it bore a vital rele- 
 vancy to something. 
 
 " I am not going to stay myself," Brown 
 replied, with a new quality of sternness in his 
 voice. He felt that a great deal depended on it, 
 and he was desirous of forcing the truth of this 
 on the tall, broad-shouldered man before him 
 with wreckage in his face. He felt as if he must 
 make Jameson do the work. He make Jame- 
 son ! It was very funny, but the work must be 
 done, it was very necessary. 
 
 " You see," Brown said, standing between 
 279 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 Jameson and the door, " both of us should 
 have been working since six o'clock, but I could 
 not get back. I got nearly crazy, but I could 
 not get back, I say. You know it must have 
 been sickness. Nothing could have kept me 
 away but sickness." After a while (gulping a 
 little) he said : " It was such a sickness that I 
 did not mind about the work at all, or if it went 
 to the devil ! But yet I think I had a latent 
 thought that you were doing it for us, just as 
 you did that time the baby nearly died, and I 
 came in about thirteen in the morning. Then, 
 then when I got here you were asleep, and 
 nothing at all had been done, and I felt suicidal. 
 Every moment is against us now. Buckle down, 
 Jameson, and go at it." 
 
 Jameson sat down heavily. He brought some 
 papers toward him and looked at them. Then 
 he raised one and pushed it from him. 
 
 " It is no use," he said, as if he were sorry for 
 Brown, but rather weary as to himself. " They 
 don't mean the least to me. I can't work this 
 evening." 
 
 Brown nearly shouted. Then he saw that it 
 was an untactful mode of action, so he leaned 
 over the desk with such gravity in his gaze that 
 it nearly forced Jameson back into his chair like 
 muscular effort. As it was, the man sat look- 
 ing up at him. 
 
 280 
 
When the Gods Arrive 
 
 " I do not know what is the matter with you," 
 Brown said. "A stranger might almost think 
 you had been drinking ; but it is not that. I 
 know you too well, and I like and respect you ; 
 but I can't take your place this evening. I can't 
 work to-night. We may just as well come to 
 business. To-morrow, next week, I 'd almost 
 lay down my life for you, but not to-night. 
 
 C, 3 > 
 
 an t you see r 
 
 A clock on their handsome mantel began to 
 strike. At first they both thought it was eleven, 
 and then it was merely ten-thirty, one half-hour 
 signal. More would have been unendurable. 
 
 " You see, there is a friend of ours," Brown 
 went on, " who has been very sick, and the crisis 
 was to occur this evening. She has been the 
 best friend we ever had. You remember when 
 the children got the diphtheria and we thought we 
 were going to lose the baby you have always 
 been good these last years about the babies." 
 
 Jameson smiled. It was not a smile that 
 would jar even sorrow. 
 
 " I do not know why I was," he said. 
 
 " I do," Brown answered. " It is because you 
 need babies also. Every one of us needs them, 
 and what they represent. You men do some 
 heavy joshing on me, Jameson, until some of 
 you go off and get married, and then you are 
 different fellows." 
 
 281 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 "Well, you were telling about this nurse," 
 Jameson said. 
 
 Brown started. 
 
 " She is n't a nurse at all," he answered, " only 
 a friend ; a woman that goes about doing kind 
 little things for people who can't afford trained 
 nurses. My wife was sick, and every baby was 
 down too, and we did not know what to do until 
 Ludwiga came in one day, a perfect stranger. 
 She had just heard about us, and was n't afraid, 
 and since then we have been great friends with 
 her. 
 
 "Then she got sick herself, lately. We did 
 not know of it for some time, or we would have 
 made her come home to us. She did not come 
 in the usual time to see us ; we thought she was 
 with her brother, but he and his wife have gone 
 away to Alaska. It is a long way to Alaska 
 when a person has not months, only hours maybe, 
 to live." 
 
 That was parenthetical and very pathetic. 
 Then he continued speaking, his words fast, thick, 
 almost unintelligible. 
 
 " The children have not been very well, and I 
 was extra busy here at the office ; but one even- 
 ing I looked her up. It was terrible," said 
 Brown. " She had gotten some kind of fever 
 just a few days after her brother left. She was 
 over in the hospital, the Romish hospital on 
 
 282 
 
When the Gods Arrive 
 
 Rincon Hill. They thought she was dying, but 
 might pull through. She is not Romish either. 
 I am glad of it, for she was so sick, Jameson, I 
 think she would have died if they had given her 
 absolution. It would have been a good excuse. 
 
 " To-night was to be the crisis. I went home 
 to find that one of the babies had had a fall and 
 my wife could not leave it. There is a time 
 when parenthood seems damned selfishness, but 
 you can't help it. My wife could n't leave the 
 baby, so I went myself. I did not know what 
 to do, but I just had to go there, although I 
 knew you needed me so much here. 
 
 " All the road over, I thought and thought, 
 but there was only one civilized thing for me to 
 do. I saw the nurse. She said to-night was to be 
 the crisis between twelve and dawn. If the girl 
 lived until then, she was all right ; but she might 
 not do so. There was only one thought, I say, 
 Jameson. I sat down beside her bed and forgot 
 everything except what we owed her. If she had 
 to die, it should be with a friend's grateful hand 
 in hers. If her eyes were to open toward life 
 and an earthly future, it should be to see a wel- 
 come smile in a friend's thankful face. I sat 
 waiting. 
 
 " The work here meant nothing to me just at 
 first. Then about nine, all my service here, all 
 your kindness to me, reached a sort of climax. 
 
 283 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 I pulled out my watch, and saw I had time to 
 get over here and tell you, and be back there 
 before twelve." 
 
 He had put his case, and more words could not 
 strengthen it. 
 
 " I am going now," he said to Jameson. 
 " Hold the job for me, if you can." 
 
 Jameson seemed to awaken somewhat. 
 
 " What did you say her name was? " he asked. 
 " It sounded like a name of which I had been 
 thinking." 
 
 " Oh, it is not a name one could forget or get 
 twisted," Brown answered with a certain wonder. 
 " It is Ludwiga, Ludwiga Strong." 
 
 284 
 
XXXI 
 
 NOT ON THE HOSPITAL STAFF 
 
 THE great silent hospital lies well to the 
 east of the city, a twenty minutes' walk, 
 perhaps, from the very core of the town. 
 You go along Market Street a short distance, but 
 at that time of night there is not much commo- 
 tion ; besides, it is below the traffic line. Then 
 there is street after street toward the south, of 
 crowded buildings, tenements, saloons. Every 
 other light is the signal glare of evil. But the 
 sons of Belial are not always abroad. That even- 
 ing all was very dark, very still ; yet, although 
 this impression of quiet may be attained, there is 
 a subtle difference of atmosphere. It is not the 
 calm, beautiful dignity of space and rest that 
 hovers over the homes of the very wealthy ; it is 
 not the cheery, homelike dark of more modest 
 dwellings where one has but to draw a blind to 
 let forth a flood of light from some innocently 
 crowded parlor. 
 
 This darkness through which Jameson strode 
 was the fetid gloom of saloons, of mistaken peo- 
 ple, of probable sharp commotions, terminating 
 
 285 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 in unhappy crimes. Yet it was near this district 
 that San Francisco started its social growth. 
 Here was once the drawing-room of our youth- 
 ful city. There are many evidences of this past 
 still in existence; here are dwellings with the dig- 
 nity of age on them, and justly proud are we all 
 of these time-marked structures, built back in the 
 " fifties " some time ! 
 
 There are longer histories, but this young one 
 is writ full of deeds and promises. 
 
 Jameson strode on toward the hospital on this 
 hill. Below all, on the dark, quiet bay, lay great 
 ships laden with many cargoes that plied between 
 busy ports. One can catch the salt whiff of the 
 sea at the recollection, and then one's senses play 
 with one, and produce this metaphor. From 
 this lonely building also go forth careful skiffs of 
 occasions, toward a harbor of which no man 
 knows. Let us trust that the voyagers will not 
 be disappointed, that somewhere may be found 
 those treasures not purchaseable at our earthly 
 
 marts. 
 
 " Rest, rest for the weary, 
 
 Peace, peace for the soul." 
 
 Jameson had struck out from the journal build- 
 ing blindly, but with all the unerring instinct of 
 those without sight. He headed toward the hos- 
 pital ; he wanted to get there. 
 
 He did not know what he had said to young 
 286 
 
Not on the Hospital Staff 
 
 Brown, but they had stood in the middle of the 
 room a moment, face to face, and then he was out 
 on the street, walking, with the recollection that 
 before he had seen the last of this Benedict, Brown 
 had seated himself at the piled-up desk and com- 
 menced working. 
 
 There was no worry after that about the office. 
 All Jameson heard, all he grasped, all he compre- 
 hended was that sentence which Brown had said, 
 just before they had separated. 
 
 " Her name is Ludwiga, Ludwiga Strong." 
 
 He had said, " I want to go to her ; she is 
 the good woman of my life." 
 
 He had not grasped what Brown thought 
 about him, but once in the heavy gloom, Jame- 
 son imagined what Brown would say to himself 
 about it. When we know people very well, it is 
 the most natural thing in the world to follow 
 their train of thoughts on various subjects. It is 
 a sequence of unity in friendship. 
 
 " I wonder why he did n't marry her ! " and 
 for once Brown really had ceased being an autom- 
 aton and had looked up for one brief second. 
 He was not the capable young business man then, 
 but the tender husband of his " good woman." 
 
 " I wonder why he did not marry her," Brown 
 said. " It is so simple, just being happy." 
 
 Mrs. Brown sat watching over their little child, 
 but the tall man stumbled on in the darkness. 
 
 287 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 He felt that he and Ludwiga had done wrong. 
 They had read life's message wrongly. They 
 had trusted to reason for an answer to the heart. 
 Life itself is the only thing that supplies it. 
 Marriage is the only sacred solution of our sane 
 need for some other person. After this step, 
 affairs seem to come right of their own accord, if 
 it is the divine union. If it is not, there is still 
 great power in our hands to shape the clay after 
 the divine model and out of failure bring to God, 
 success. 
 
 Young people should remember this. The 
 divorce court is not the only solution for unhappy 
 marriages or for uncongenial people. We are 
 not without certain chisels of our own ; and with 
 time and patient strokes, any two stones may be 
 made to grow very like each other. 
 
 Jameson walked on toward Ludwiga. The 
 night spoke to him as it had never spoken before. 
 Nature became a near and consoling friend. Once 
 he wandered from the right track ; but during 
 those moments time did not seem lost, but he 
 himself benefited. 
 
 He did not feel that the girl would die. He 
 loved her as he had never loved her in those shy, 
 strange days of courtship. She was no longer an 
 ideal to him, but the helpful, helpless woman 
 whom he wanted for his wife. 
 
 He could not do without love, now that he 
 288 
 
Not on the Hospital Staff 
 
 once knew love. He was not different from 
 other men. He was like Julian, like Brown, 
 like all other men in the office. He wanted to 
 work all day and go toward home in the evening. 
 He was pleased at the change in himself. He 
 was deeply, warmly, wholly happy, even in his 
 grief. He loved her, and he wanted her to live. 
 Once the grave alternative appeared to him. 
 After a long pause, he cried, " She will not 
 die." 
 
 There are but few natures brave and strong 
 enough to attain great heights by mere self-reli- 
 ance. These are like rockets, going up, up alone, 
 to break into fine, visible, vivid lights when they 
 are nearest heaven ; but with the majority of us 
 there is needed the stimulus, the unity of love 
 and home. Influence then is not so wonderful, 
 so comet-like, but like a call, sweet, passing 
 understanding, as we step from some humble 
 hearthstone strong into a weak world. 
 
 Jameson came in sight of this quiet home of 
 the sick at last. It lay large, very large in the 
 dark ; for it meant a great deal to him. At the 
 door he paused, although he had not meant to 
 do so. 
 
 He stood almost stupidly before it. 
 
 " Don't let her die," Brown had said. " If 
 she lies like a saint on some marble tomb in an 
 Italian cathedral, fight, pray, don't yield ; hold 
 '9 289 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 on. She used to pray to the hearts of men. 
 She was a sort of heathen. Pray back to hers. 
 God will come later. Say we need her here, 
 Jameson." 
 
 Jameson stood before the door, then his lips 
 moved in prayer. He had not prayed for years, 
 but there are times when we are not self-sufficient. 
 " O Lord, save Thy servant." 
 
 Then he stepped toward the building, and a 
 second later, a sleepy-eyed attendant had arisen 
 and closed the door. 
 
 Toward four in the morning a nurse entered 
 on her noiseless rounds, going directly to Lud- 
 wiga's quiet figure on its narrow cot. The act 
 aroused Jameson in the old manner. He did 
 not know much about such things, but all men 
 know more or less of woman nature. At any 
 rate, the man's weary brain was awakened to a 
 semi-positive comment. " If she were not a 
 nurse," he thought, " she would have re-arranged 
 the shade on the lamp ; she would have trifled a 
 little over the medicine table; she would have 
 even dropped on her knees and prayed before 
 she looked at that face on the pillow." 
 
 He watched the woman. What she might 
 utter after that experienced gaze would be power- 
 ful in determining his future, but he could not 
 seek that speech. After a while she left the room. 
 
 290 
 
Not on the Hospital Staff 
 
 Until she left, he did not realize how much he 
 had wanted to hear her words, how desperately 
 alive he had been to even an unfavorable opinion. 
 
 Then time began to pass again, just as it had 
 before the woman entered. Brown had told him 
 that the crisis was to occur between twelve and 
 dawn. It was then four, so the man went back 
 to his vigil dully. He saw the same outline as 
 before, he noted the increasing gentleness of her 
 respiration, he himself arose once and re-arranged 
 the shade and toyed with some articles on the 
 table, either because his surmise had been true or 
 he was responding to his last conscious reasoning. 
 
 Before he reached the bed, the same nurse 
 came in, clad in the habit of her order. Emo- 
 tion had been spent or suspended in her breast, 
 and he felt that she looked with quiet wonder on 
 the struggle in his face for life. Perhaps it meant 
 a great stormy sea to her, and he and this young 
 girl who was dying were unaware when Provi- 
 dence reached forth a saving hand. He could 
 have smiled a little heart-brokenly at it. 
 
 " I came back to tell you that the crisis is to 
 occur soon, between now and five," she announced. 
 " I feared you might need me. Shall I stay, or 
 will you ring ? " 
 
 " No, do not stay," he answered, " unless there 
 is something I cannot do." 
 
 The woman went once more to the bedside, 
 291 
 
The Siege of Youth 
 
 looking down at the sleeper's face. After touch- 
 ing the nerveless hand gently, she stepped back 
 to where the man was standing. He could not 
 read hope or loss, only faith, in the serene eyes 
 she turned on him. 
 
 " You might pray," she suggested, and then 
 stole quietly from the room. 
 
 Death did not mean leaving the world to such 
 women. It was an abstract state. Left to him- 
 self, Jameson continued the prayerless, hopeless, 
 prayerful combat he had been conducting all 
 night : 
 
 " O despairer, here is my neck, 
 
 By God, you shall not go down ! hang your whole weight 
 upon me. 
 
 " I dilate you with tremendous breath, I buoy you up, 
 Every room of the house do I fill with an arm'd force, 
 Lovers of me, bafflers of graves." 
 
 There were moments when he felt triumphant ; 
 there was one when he gave up altogether. It 
 was when Brown came in at five. 
 
 Brown found the girl, the man, and a crucifix 
 on the wall growing more distinct out of darkness, 
 deep bas-reliefs all. The girl lay on her bed, and 
 the man sat with his hand on her pillow, as if 
 afraid to stir. He was watching a smile on her 
 face. In the long watches of the night he had 
 waited for this moment. It was a strange smile. 
 
 292 
 
Not on the Hospital Staff 
 
 It seemed to contain the calm of death and form 
 a link between the great stages of soul existence. 
 She had always smiled, and this last grace of lip 
 was forming a triumphant prelude to Eternity. 
 
 Brown's glance took in the man's rigid frame 
 and the gray lines across his forehead. Then 
 Brown approached the cot with the same direct- 
 ness that the nurse had, not professional direct- 
 ness though, more the step of a man who was 
 rearing his little family and had stood ever first 
 between them and recurring griefs. 
 
 In this same manner he bent over the girl a 
 second. 
 
 " How long do you think ? " Jameson tried to 
 ask. Brown half turned, then Jameson caught 
 the joy in his face. 
 
 " Oh, can't you see ? it is life> man ! " Brown 
 cried. 
 
 The smile stayed, and after a while it seemed to 
 form a link between the girl and her lover. 
 
 293 
 
By the Author of The Siege of Youth 
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THIS 
 
 IS B35 
 
 THE 1A - T DA 
 
 
 DAY 
 
 AND 
 
662766 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY