ALVMNW BOOK FVND 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 NEW YORK BOSTON CHICAGO DALLAS 
 ATLANTA SAN FRANCISCO 
 
 MACMILLAN & CO., LIMITED 
 
 LONDON BOMBAY CALCUTTA 
 MELBOURNE 
 
 THE MACMILLAN CO. OF CANADA, LTD. 
 
 TORONTO 
 
The Flying Teuton 
 
 and Other Stories 
 
 BY 
 ALICE BROWN 
 
 AUTHOR OF " THE PRISONER," ETC. 
 
 &tto gork 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 1918 
 
 AU righto reserved 
 
COPYRIGHT, 1906, 1912, 1915, 1917 
 BT HARPER & BROTHERS 
 
 COPYKIGHT, 1911, 1912 
 Br CHARLES SCRIBNER S SONS 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1916 
 BY P. F. COLLIER & SON 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1913 
 BY THE RIDGWAY COMPANY 
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918 
 
 BY THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1918. 
 
 L M 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 PAGE 
 
 THE FLYING TEUTON . . . . * . * 
 
 THE ISLAND . * . . 24 
 
 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH . . . . . . . 48 
 
 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT ..... 69 
 
 A CITIZEN AND His WIFE . . * , . . 97 v 
 
 THE TORCH OF LIFE . . 122 
 
 THE TRYST ....... . ... 140 
 
 WAVES . ... .160 
 
 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER ... i . . 178 
 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO . ..... .200 
 
 THE MID- VICTORIAN 231 
 
 FATHER . . 265 
 
 NEMESIS * 299 
 
 392451 
 
The author gratefully acknowledges the courtesy 
 of the Atlantic Monthly, Collier s Weekly, Every 
 body s Magazine, Harper s Magazine and Scribner s 
 Magazine in permitting the printing of stories which 
 have first appeared in these magazines. 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 WE were talking, that night, about the year after 
 the great war, which was also the year of the great 
 religious awakening. A few of us had dropped into 
 the Neo-Pacifist Club, that assemblage of old-time 
 acifists who, having been actually immersed in the 
 great war, afterward set humbly about informing 
 themselves on the subject of those passions that 
 make the duty of defensive fighting at times a holy 
 one, and who, having once seen Michael hurl Satan 
 down to the abyss, actually began to suspect you d 
 got to do more than read Satan the Beatitudes if 
 he climbed up again. There never was anything 
 like the eagerness of these after-the-war pacifists to 
 study human nature in other than its sentimental 
 aspects, to learn to predict the great waves of sav 
 agery that wreck civilization at intervals unless 
 there are dykes and to plumb the heroism of those 
 men who gave their bodies that the soul of nations 
 might securely live. We retraced a good many steps 
 on wide territory that night, took up and looked at 
 things familiar we were all the better for remember 
 ing, as a man says his creed, from time to time, no 
 matter how well he knows it; and chiefly we read 
 over, in its different aspects, the pages of the great 
 revival. 
 
 1 
 
2 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 This was not, it will be remembered, an increase 
 in the authority of any church, but simply the recog 
 nition in all hearts of all peoples that God is, and that 
 the plagues of the world spawn out of our forgetful- 
 ness that He is, and our overwhelming desire toward 
 the things of this temporal life. Whence, in our 
 haste, we sacrifice to the devil. 
 
 The terms of peace had been as righteous as it is 
 possible for hurt hearts to compass. Evil had been 
 bound, and foresight had made the path of justice 
 plain. The nations that had borne the first attack 
 (and with what light limbs they sprang to meet it!), 
 they who had learned to read God in that awful 
 unfurling of the book of life, were wonderfully ready 
 to enter on their task of building up the house of 
 peace. 
 
 The United States, which had saved its skin so long 
 that it had almost mislaid its soul, was sitting at the 
 knees of knowledge and plainly asking to be taught. 
 
 One amazing detail of the great revival was that 
 there would be no industrial boycott. The men 
 about the peace table came away from it so imbued 
 with the desire to save the peoples who had been 
 guilty of the virtue of obedience in following false 
 rulers that they represented to their governments the 
 barbarity of curbing even the commerce of those 
 nations who had set the world ablaze. So it fol 
 lowed that territory and indemnities were the pen 
 alties imposed. Boundaries had changed and so 
 had governments! but every country was to go 
 back to its former freedom of selling goods in all 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON S 
 
 quarters of the earth. In their arguments the peace 
 delegates had used the supreme one that "Ven 
 geance is mine, saith the Lord." They had fixed 
 the terms of all the vengeance they were sure they 
 were entitled to, fixed it soberly and sternly, too. 
 But they did not quite see, having effectually crippled 
 the powers of evil, that they ought also to cripple 
 the powers of good the desire of nations to sell 
 their products and the work of their hands abroad. 
 So they said, "Vengeance is mine," but they did not 
 go so far as to note that, judging from the centuries, 
 God Himself would indubitably be on the spot. He 
 would repay. 
 
 It was in the spring of that year that a German 
 liner, tied up since 1914 and waiting the will of the 
 English fleet, was released and put into commission 
 again and loaded with goods for the United States. 
 On board her was Frank Drake, a newspaper corre 
 spondent, who had, after hovering about the Peace 
 Congress, been wandering over Germany, in a des 
 ultory fashion, to see what changes had been 
 wrought in her by the war. And it was Drake who 
 sat with us at the Neo-Pacifist Club that night, and 
 was persuaded to tell a story he had, in the year after 
 the Great War, got into print, and so done incal 
 culable service to the muse of history and incidentally 
 made his own name to be remembered. For what 
 he had seen hundreds of others confirmed only he 
 saw it first, and gave his testimony in a manner so 
 direct as well as picturesque that it might as well 
 have been he alone who sang that epic story. 
 
4 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 He was a tough, seasoned-looking man, spare, and 
 hard as whipcord, and with an adventurer s face 
 aquiline, uplifted, looking for horizons, some one 
 said. At this point of his life he was grey-headed 
 yet he never would be old. We had gathered about 
 him as near as might be, and really filled the room 
 way back into the shadows. He had been talking 
 about the supernatural events that had been in 
 extricably mingled with facts of battle and march 
 and counter-march, and owned himself frankly be 
 mused by them. 
 
 "It isn t as if I hadn t actually been in the war, 
 you know. I ve seen, things. I haven t the slight 
 est doubt a fellow blown out of a trench into the 
 next world meets so many of the other fellows who 
 were blown there before him that it gives him that 
 look I ve seen it over and over of surprise, wonder 
 oh, and beauty, too, a most awful kind of beauty. 
 Whatever they saw when they went from the 
 trenches to wherever it is they were mighty well 
 pleased to be there, and satisfied that the other fel 
 lows could get along without them. And, mind you, 
 things lasted, too, after they got over there. I m 
 as sure of that as I am that I m sitting here. The 
 love of it all the Vive la France! you know, the gro 
 tesque fondness for Old Blighty that made them die 
 for her those weren t wiped out by getting into 
 another atmosphere. It s all pretty much the same, 
 you know, there and here, only there you apparently 
 see the causes of things and the values. And you 
 absolutely can t hate. You see what a damned 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 5 
 
 shame it was that anybody should ever have been 
 ignorant enough to hate." 
 
 "You d say it was a world of peace?" inquired a 
 rapt-looking saint of a man in the front row. 
 
 "Don t talk to me about peace yet," said 
 Drake. " I m not over there yet, and I haven t got 
 that perspective. As for Peace, too many crimes 
 were committed in her name those last years of the 
 war too much cowardice, expediency, the devil and 
 all of people wanting to save their skins and their 
 money. Yes, I know, peace is what they ve earned 
 for us, those fellows in Europe, and it s a gorgeous 
 peace. But the word itself does take me back. It 
 sets me swearing. 
 
 "Yes, I ll tell you about the ship, the Treue 
 Konigin, and the first sailing from Bremen, if that s 
 what you want. They d put a good deal of spec 
 tacular business into the sailing of that ship because 
 she was the first one after John Bull tied up their 
 navy. There were flags flying and crowds and 
 Hocks/ and altogether it was an occasion to be re 
 membered. I knew it would be, and that s why I 
 was there. I rather wanted to say I was on the 
 first free ship that sailed out of Bremen, and I 
 hadn t any Teutonophobia any more since Kultur 
 had got its medicine. Besides, wasn t the whole 
 world chanting * Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord ? 
 and I d begun to be awakened a little, too, in my in 
 ward parts, though I didn t talk much about it. 
 The voyage began delightfully. I was the only 
 American on board. The rest were merchants going 
 
6 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 over to take up relations with us again, and a brand- 
 new consul or two. I didn t have much to do with 
 any of those fellows, and the more things happened 
 the more I didn t see them. I didn t want to get all 
 muddled up with the absurdity of the lay mind s 
 attitude toward evidence. 
 
 "Near evening on the second day something 
 queer happened. It was foggy, and I was on deck, 
 talking, in a desultory way, with the first mate, but 
 really wondering if I d got to sleep to the ob^ligato 
 of the fog-horn all night, when suddenly out of the 
 dark came the nose of a great ship. Our engines 
 were reversed, but not in time, and she struck us 
 amidships. I cowered down. Yes, I did. There 
 was no time for life-preservers and lowering boats. 
 I simply cowered, and put my hand over my eyes. 
 But there was no crash, no shock, no grinding of 
 splintered wood and steel. I opened my eyes. The 
 first mate was still there, a foot or two further from 
 me, as if the apparition had started him toward his 
 duty in case of collision. But he was looking off 
 into the fog, and now he turned and looked at me. 
 I have seen men frightened, but never one in such 
 case as this. 
 
 " Did you see it? he asked. 
 
 "It was as if he implored me to say I had, because 
 otherwise he d have to doubt his own reason. 
 
 " Did she sheer off? I said. 
 
 "My voice sounded queer to me. 
 Sheer off? She struck us amidships and went 
 through us. 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 7 
 
 "I began to stare round me. I must have looked 
 a fool. It was as if I were trying to find a break in a 
 piece of china. There was the deck unoccupied, 
 except for us two, exactly as it had been when we 
 were struck. There were the smoke-stacks and 
 boats, and altogether the familiar outline of the 
 ship. 
 
 " Well! said I. My voice was a sort of croak 
 now. You and I are nutty, that s all. There 
 never was any ship. 
 
 "But he turned and ran up to the lookout, and 
 afterward I heard the wireless zip-zipping away, and 
 later for I stayed on deck; I couldn t go below 
 I saw him and the captain standing amidships and 
 talking. They looked pretty serious and really a 
 little sick, just as I felt. And I didn t speak to 
 either of them. Didn t dare. You know when 
 there s a fire in the hold, or any such pleasantry on 
 board ship, you d better let the great high josses 
 alone. Well, that s what I did. The next day I 
 found the first mate wouldn t notice me. He spoke 
 English perfectly, but all I could get out of him was a 
 Nein or a Was? and as stupid a grin as I ever saw on 
 a man s face. So I understood the incident was 
 closed. And it began to look a little thin even to 
 me, who d seen it. But the next night, with no fog 
 at all, the thing happened again. A big British liner 
 came down on us, and we did all in the power of 
 navigation to escape her; but she raked us and 
 passed through us from stem to stern, and I swear 
 I put out a hand and touched her as she cut the 
 
8 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 length of the deck. For an instant I believed what 
 I know every officer and man on the ship believed 
 at the time believed madly, for you couldn t 
 reason in the face of that monstrous happening. 
 They believed England had broken the peace, only 
 they cursed * perfidious Albion, and I knew she d 
 got wind of some devil s deed we hadn t heard of, 
 and was at her old beneficence of police work on the 
 sea. But it was only an instant we could think 
 that, for there, untouched, unharmed, at her maxi 
 mum speed went the English liner. And we, too, 
 were untouched. We weren t making our course 
 because we d manoeuvred so as to avoid her, and 
 now we lay there an instant, trembling, before we 
 swung about again. Yes, it s a fact; the ship did 
 tremble, and though there was her plain mechanical 
 reason for it, it seemed to be out of panic, just as 
 everybody aboard of her was trembling. 
 
 "And that night the ship s doctor, a fat, red-haired 
 man whom I d remembered as waltzing indefatigably 
 and exquisitely on a trip to the West Indies, but who 
 had been turned into a jelly of melancholy by the 
 war, did talk to me. I think he had to. He was 
 afraid he was dotty and the entire lot were dotty. 
 He had to find out whether a plain American was on 
 to it. 
 
 "A pleasant night, last night," he said. 
 
 "I knew what he was coming at, and I thought 
 
 there was no need of wasting our time by preambles. 
 
 Yes, said I, till the British liner ran us down. 
 
 "He looked at me well, I can t tell you how grate- 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 9 
 
 ful he looked. All melted up, you know, the way 
 those German fatty s are sometimes. I stepped away 
 a little. I thought he was going to kiss me. 
 
 " * You saw it, too. God be thanked ! said he. 
 
 " Saw it! said I. *I not only saw her, but I 
 touched her on the elbow as she split the deck. 
 Splendid old lady, wasn t she? But eccentric. 
 Makes nothing of cutting a ship in two, just for fun, 
 I suppose, and not losing speed. Her little joke. 
 That s how I take it, don t you? 
 
 "But I shouldn t have chaffed him. It shut him 
 up. I think he gathered I was in it somehow. But 
 the fact is, I was scared. Well, if you ll believe me 
 (and of course you will, for I ve written the thing 
 out in my * Notes on the War, and it s been quoted 
 over and over till even school children know the 
 text of it), so, as you must believe me and the hun 
 dreds that corroborated me, in other cases, the next 
 collision, or ramming what shall I call it? hap 
 pened in broad daylight, ten o clock in the morning. 
 It was a perfectly clear day and a smooth sea. We 
 were in the track of the freighter Marlborough, and 
 by George! she didn t make way for us. She ran 
 through us as neat as wax and cut us in two. But 
 we didn t stay cut. We didn t show a crack. 
 And there she went churning off, as gay as you 
 please, and we steamed on our way. Only we 
 weren t gay, mind you. We were scared. And the 
 doctor, ghastly again, came stumping across the deck 
 to me, and I thought he was going to fall into my 
 arms. 
 
10 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 " Lieber Gott! 9 said he. What does it mean? 
 We see them, but they don t see us. 
 
 "That was it. We d been slow in taking the hint, 
 but we d got it at last. We were invisible on the 
 seas. We were practically non-existent. And we d 
 tried wireless. We d sent out call after call, and 
 finally, desperately, S.O.S., because we knew, if 
 there were a conspiracy against us, no ship but would 
 listen to that. No answer. We were marooned 
 if you can be marooned on the high seas. Civiliza 
 tion had put us on an island of silence and invisi 
 bility. Civilization wasn t going to play with us 
 any more. But it wasn t civilization at all. It 
 wasn t any punitive device of man. It was some 
 thing outside. 
 
 "For the next two days the doctor hardly left me. 
 I suppose he was forbidden to talk, and he had to 
 keep near somebody or die. He wasn t the man he 
 was when he tripped the light fantastic in the West 
 Indies. He d been through the war, and now he was 
 going through something worse. And he said to 
 me the morning of the day before we were due in 
 New York : 
 
 " Now we shall be picking up the pilot. And I 
 sha n t go back. I ve got a married daughter in 
 New York. I shall spend the rest of my life with 
 her. 
 
 "And, as we went on, we sighted ship after ship. 
 It was a gay day for ships. You don t know how 
 many there are until they won t notice you. And 
 not one of them would turn out for us or answer our 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 11 
 
 call. And everybody was desperate now on board, 
 though we had learned we were safe enough, even 
 if they did run us down. So we put on all speed and 
 forged ahead and rammed whatever got in our way 
 and never sank them. Never seemed to touch them. 
 But with every one we hit and never hurt our panic 
 grew. Desperate panic it was, from the captain 
 down to me. Then we came on the pilot-boats, 
 quite a distance out, for of course everybody knew 
 we were coming and there was a little rivalry about 
 it all. Just as I d wanted to say I d crossed on the 
 first liner from Germany, every pilot wanted to be 
 the one to take us in. Well, the first one was making 
 for us and we hailed him. But, by God! he didn t 
 slacken speed, but dashed through us. That little 
 bobbing boat ran through our High Mightiness and 
 went careering on in search of us. And we went 
 on in search of another pilot. And we sighted him 
 shortly, several of him; and, though they didn t 
 ram us in that ghostly way they had, they went 
 sliding by us, bowing and ducking to the breeze, and 
 always that was the awful part of it looking for 
 us. There we were, and they didn t see us. And we 
 hailed them and they didn t hear. 
 
 "By that time we were all pretty nearly off our 
 nuts, and it took us different ways. The captain 
 was purple with rage and that sense of injured im 
 portance the Deutscher didn t lose by having to toe 
 the mark after his big war bubble burst. He 
 swore, and I heard him, that he could take his own 
 ship into New York Harbor as well as any con- 
 
12 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 demned pilot that ever sailed, and he wouldn t 
 even hail another, not even if all the dead in the 
 sea rose up and faced him. I was rather worried 
 over that about the dead in the sea. I couldn t help 
 thinking that if all the dead recently in the sea rose 
 up and combined against any German ship, it 
 would have short shrift. But we were all, I fancy, 
 rather glad of his stand. We had full confidence in 
 him. He was a clever, daring fellow, heavier by the 
 iron cross for in the last years he d sent scores of 
 men unwarned to the bottom, and he had been 
 precious to Kultur. We much preferred to go in un- 
 piloted to making even one more grisly try at prov 
 ing we were living flesh and blood. 
 
 " My own particular obsession was to wonder what 
 would happen if, when a ship clove our decks and 
 left them solid, as they d done so often in the past 
 six days, I put myself in the way of its nose. Would 
 it run through me like a wedge and I close up unhurt? 
 Would it smash me, carry me with it off the deck, to 
 Kingdom Come? I wondered. It didn t smash 
 life-boats or deck-chairs. It I found I was begin 
 ning to call the ramming boats it, as if there were 
 but one of them, though really there were all kinds of 
 craft it would go through a rug on the deck and 
 leave it in its folds. But I hadn t the sand to put 
 myself in its way and find out beyond a peradven- 
 ture whether it tore me, nerve from nerve. The 
 drama was too absorbing. I wanted to see it 
 through. 
 
 "I did once, in my most daring minute, stand at the 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 13 
 
 rail, watching a freighter as it came, head on. And 
 I yelled to the lookout, when we were near enough to 
 pass the time of day, yelled desperately. I can see 
 him now, a small man with a lined face and blue 
 eyes screwed up into a point of light, as if the whole 
 of him concentrated on feeding that one sense, just 
 seeing. And there was a queer-shaped scar on his 
 face, a kind of cornerwise scar, and I wondered how 
 he got it. The freighter was making her maximum, 
 and so were we; but in that fraction of time I waited 
 for her it seemed to be hours, eternities, that I had 
 my eyes on the little man with the scar. It seemed as 
 if he and I alone had the destinies of the world to 
 settle. If I called and he answered me, it would 
 prove our ship was not lost in a loneness of invisi 
 bility more terrible than any obvious danger on the 
 unfriending seas. Suppose you were in hell, aad you 
 met face to face somebody that had your pardon or 
 your reprieve mysteriously about him, and the pardon 
 and reprieve of all the other millions there think 
 how you d fix him with your eyes and signal, call to 
 him for fear he d pass you by. Well, that was how 
 I signalled and called the little man with the scar. 
 But he stared through me out of those clear lenses 
 of his eyes, and when I yelled the loudest he made up 
 his lips and began whistling a tune. It was a 
 whispering sort of whistle, but I heard it, we were 
 so near. And the tune well, the tune broke my 
 heart, for it was an old English tune that made me 
 think of the beautiful English country as I had seen 
 it not many weeks before, with the people soberly 
 
14 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 beginning to till it with unhindered hands. And 
 here were we on a German ship that the world 
 wouldn t even see. The sun himself wouldn t lend 
 his rays for humanity to look at us. And then, as 
 I began to cry yes, I cried; I m not ashamed to 
 own it the freighter passed through us, and I felt 
 the unsteadiness of her wake. The lookout and I had 
 met in hell, and I had hailed and he had not answered 
 me. 
 
 "Was I glad to see the Goddess of Liberty and 
 the gay old harbor of New York? I believe you! 
 We went on like a house afire, and once, when I caught 
 a glimpse of the captain s face, I decided he could 
 steer his ship into any harbor against unknown reefs 
 and currents, because there was a fury of revolt in 
 him, a colossal force of will. And as I thought that 
 I exulted with him, for though nobody knows better 
 than I do the way the Furies ought to be out after 
 Kultur oh yes, they d have to or lose their job 
 there was a kind of fighting grit that came up in 
 me, and for that voyage I was conscious that the 
 Treue Konigin had got to fight, fight, for existence, 
 the mere decency of being visible to other men. 
 
 "Did we sail into New York Harbor, invisible or 
 not? You know as well as I. The story s as real 
 as George Washington and Valley Forge, and it ll 
 stay in print, like them, as long as print exists. 
 We stopped short, an instant only it was, and then 
 against the impetus of the ship and the steering- 
 gear, and against the will of her captain and her 
 crew, she turned about and steamed away again. 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 15 
 
 And, by the Lord! it was as graceful a sweep as I 
 ever saw a liner make. I remember thinking after 
 ward that if there were heavenly steersmen on board 
 the Furies, maybe, taking the wheel by turns 
 they knew little tricks of the trade we pygmies didn t. 
 At first, of course, this right-about didn t worry us. 
 It didn t worry me, at least. I thought the captain 
 had found it a more difficult matter than he thought, 
 and was going down harbor again, for some myste 
 rious nautical reason, to turn about and make another 
 try. But pretty soon I saw my fat doctor making 
 for me. He was ash-colored by now, and he kept 
 licking his dry lips. 
 
 " We re going back, he said. 
 
 " Ah? said I. They don t find it so easy? 
 
 " Why, good God, man! said he, look at the 
 sun. Don t you see your course? We re going 
 back, I tell you ! 
 
 " Back where? I asked. 
 
 "But I didn t care. So long as we made New 
 York Harbor within twenty-four hours or more I 
 wasn t going to complain. 
 
 " Where? said he. He looked at me now as if 
 he d got to teach me what he knew, and I thought 
 I d never seen eyes so full of fear, absolute fear. 
 Nothing in mortal peril calls that look into a man s 
 eyes. It has to be the unknown, the unaccounted 
 for. How do I know where? I only know the ship s 
 out of our hands somehow. She won t answer. 
 
 " Well, said I, something s the matter with the 
 machinery/ 
 
16 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 " You see the bright American air, the gay harbor, 
 the Statue of Liberty everything had heartened me. 
 For an instant I didn t believe we really were in 
 visible. 
 
 " The machinery s working like a very devil, but 
 it s working its own way. You can t turn a nut on 
 this ship unless it wants to be turned. You can t 
 change your course unless this devil of a ship wants 
 it changed. 
 
 "I laughed out. 
 
 " * You ve been under too much of a strain, said 
 I. * You seem to think the ship s bewitched. Well, 
 if we re not to dock in New York, after this little 
 excursion down the harbor, where is it your impres 
 sion we re going? Back to Germany? 
 
 " God knows! said he, solemnly. Maybe back 
 to Germany. I wish to God we were there now. 
 Or maybe we shall sail the seas eternally. 
 
 "I laughed again. But he put up his hand and I 
 stopped, his panic was actually so terrible. I was 
 sorry for the beggar. 
 
 Wait ! said he. I thought that would happen. 
 I wonder it hasn t happened before. 
 
 "A man came running the quartermaster, I 
 found out afterward and I had one glimpse of his 
 face as he passed. He covered the deck as if he were 
 sprinting and was near the goal, and suddenly the 
 run seemed only to give him momentum or get his 
 courage up, and he slipped over the rail, with a fly 
 ing confusion of arms and legs, into the sea. I 
 yelled and grabbed a lifebelt and ran to the rail, 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 17 
 
 where I knew there d be sailors, in an instant, letting 
 down a boat. I threw my lifebelt, and kept on yell 
 ing. But no one came, no one but the doctor. In 
 an instant I realized he was by my side, his hands in 
 his pockets, his eyes fixed in a dull gaze on the sea. 
 And we hadn t slackened speed, and we hadn t put 
 about, and I saw two other sailors idly at the rail, 
 looking as the doctor looked, into the vacancy of 
 immediate space. 
 
 " For God s sake! said I, aren t they going to do 
 something? 
 
 " There s nothing to do, said my doctor. He 
 won t come up. They know that. 
 
 " Won t come up? Why won t he? 
 Because he doesn t want to. 
 
 " Didn t you ever hear of the instinct of self- 
 preservation, I spluttered, that steps in and defeats 
 a man, even when he thinks he s done with life? 
 How do you know but that poor devil is back there 
 choking and praying and swallowing salt water, and 
 sane again sane enough to see he was dotty when 
 he swapped the deck for the sea? 
 
 " He won t come up, said the doctor. He turned 
 away and, with his head bent, began to plod along the 
 deck. I couldn t help thinking of the way he used 
 to fly over the planks in the West Indies. But he 
 did turn back again for one word more. Did you, 
 said he and he looked a little what shall I say? 
 a little ironic, as if he d got something now to 
 floor me with did you ever happen to hear of the 
 Flying Dutchman? 
 
18 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 " Then I understood. They d understood days and 
 days ago. The words had been whispered round the 
 decks, in the galley even, Der Fliegende Hollander. 
 Knowing better than I what Kultur had done on the 
 high seas, they had hit sooner on the devilish logic 
 of it. They were more or less prepared. But it 
 struck me right in the center. After they d once 
 said it I didn t any more doubt it than if I d been 
 sitting in an orchestra stall, with the score of the 
 old Flying Dutchman* and the orchestra s smash- 
 bang, and the fervid conductor, with his bald head, 
 to divert me for a couple of hours or so. And I 
 went down into my cabin and stretched out in my 
 berth and shut my eyes. And all I remember think 
 ing was that if we were going to sail the seas in 
 visible till doomsday, I d stay put, and not get dotty 
 seeing the noses of ships cleaving the deck or trying 
 to hail little whistling men with scars on their faces 
 and finding that, so far as they knew, I wasn t in the 
 universe at all. I think I dozed for a matter of two 
 days. The steward brought me grub of a primitive 
 sort our cuisine wasn t what it had been coming 
 over and news, whenever I would take it from him. 
 There had been more of the ghastly collisions. We 
 had picked up S.O.S. from an English ship and gone 
 to her rescue, to find we could neither hail her nor, 
 though we launched boats, approach her within 
 twenty feet. Why? The same reason that pre 
 vented our going into New York Harbor, if you can 
 tell me what that was. And in the midst of these 
 futile efforts a Brazilian freighter came along and did 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 19 
 
 the salving neatly, and neither ship was any more 
 aware of us than if we had been a ship of air. But my 
 chief news, the only news that mattered, I got from 
 the steward s face. It was yellow-white, and the 
 eyes were full of that same apprehension I had 
 learned to know now the fear of the unknown. 
 He brought sparse items he dropped in a whisper, as 
 if he had been forbidden to speak and yet must speak 
 or die about the supply of water, the supply of coal. 
 It was his theory that, when the coal actually gave 
 out and the engines stopped, we should stay ever 
 lastingly tossing in the welter of the sea, watching 
 the happy wings of commerce go sailing by and hailed 
 of none. But that proved not to be so, and when he 
 told me that it scared him doubly. For we econ 
 omized coal to the last point, and it proved the en 
 gines went excellently without it, so long, at least, 
 as we kept our course for Germany. Evidently, so 
 far as we could guess at the designs of those grim 
 powers that had blocked our way, a German ship 
 was to be aided, even by miracle, to sail back to 
 Germany, but not to enter any foreign port. 
 
 "And we did go back to Germany, meeting mean 
 time other German ships just out, and we hailed 
 them and they saw us and answered. And the same 
 fear was on the faces of every soul on board, and the 
 news was in every case the same. They were, to 
 all the ships of all the world, invisible. 
 
 "We slunk into harbor, and I have never known 
 how the captain met his company or what exporters 
 said to the consignments of merchandise returned un- 
 
20 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 touched in the hold. I only know that the shore 
 officials looked strangely at us, and, since we told the 
 same mad story, seemed to think a whole ship s 
 crew could hardly be incarcerated. You must re 
 member, too, that since the war signs and wonders 
 have had a different value. There have been too 
 many marvels for men to scout them. There was 
 the marvel of the victory, you know. But we won t 
 go into that. I suppose books will be written about 
 it until the end of time. 
 
 "You may be sure of one thing I didn t let the 
 grass grow under my feet. I made tracks for Hol 
 land, and from there I put for England, and sailed 
 from Liverpool, and was in New York in a little 
 over five days. And by that time the whole world 
 knew. German ships were in full possession, as they 
 had been before the war, of the freedom of the seas 
 except that they mysteriously could not use it. 
 German ships took passengers, as of old, and loaded 
 themselves with merchandise. But there was not a 
 port on the surface of the globe that could receive 
 them. Yet there was a certain beneficence in the 
 power that condemned them to this wandering exile 
 they could go home. And so strange a thing is 
 hope, and so almost unbreakable a thing is human will, 
 that they would no sooner go home in panic than they 
 would recover and dare the seas again, as if, perad- 
 venture, it might be different this time, or as if the 
 wrath of the grim powers might be overpast. And it 
 came out that the shipping rotted in their harbors, 
 and there were many suicides among sailingmen." 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 21 
 
 When Drake reached this point in his story he 
 almost always got solemn and rhythmic. His book 
 was succinctly and plainly written, but he could 
 never speak of its subject-matter without the rhythm 
 of imagery. 
 
 "You know," he said, "it wasn t expected, while 
 the war was going on, that there would be a living 
 being, not of Teutonic birth, who would ever be sorry 
 for a Teuton until near the tail end of time, when 
 some of the penalties had been worked out. But, 
 by George! the countries that had been injured most 
 were the first to be sorry for the poor devils that had 
 prated about the freedom of the seas and now had to 
 keep their own ships tied up in harbor, tight as in 
 war-time, because the fleet that withstood them, drew 
 the mighty cordon, was the fleet of God. Belgium 
 had prayers for the German fleet. England sent 
 experts over to see what was the matter with their 
 engines. Russia prayed for the boats, as she had 
 for her four-footed beasties in the war, and France 
 well, France proposed that she and England should 
 establish a maritime service from Germany to the 
 United States and South American ports, with nom 
 inal freight rates, until the world found out what the 
 deuce was the matter or what God actually meant. 
 And it was to begin the week before Christmas, if 
 you remember, and something put it into the clever 
 French brain that maybe a German Christmas ship 
 a ship all full of toys and dolls might be let to pass. 
 France didn t think it was bamboozling God by 
 swinging a censer of sentiment before Him; but it 
 
22 THE FLYING TEUTON 
 
 knew God might be willing to speak our little lan 
 guage with us, encourage us in it, let us think He 
 knew what we were trying to tell Him when we took 
 the toys and dolls. 
 
 "And, if you remember, a string of ships went out 
 that day, all with pretty serious men on board, men 
 of an anxious countenance. And the British and 
 French ships convoyed them like mother birds, and 
 other British and French ships met them, and for 
 a time no Teuton ship dared speak a foreign one for 
 fear it should not be answered. But finally one it 
 was my old ship, the Treue Konigin, and on her my 
 old captain couldn t wait any longer, and did speak, 
 and every French and English boat answered her, 
 and she knew she and the rest were saved for the 
 eyes of man could see them and the ears of man were 
 opened to their voice. And that s all. You know 
 the rest how the German navy slowly and soberly 
 built up its lines and sailed the seas again; but how 
 nobody ceased talking of the wonder of the time when 
 it was under the ban of judgment. And nobody 
 ever will cease, because of all the signs and marvels 
 of these later years this was the greatest." 
 
 "I have heard," said the pacifist in the front row 
 "I hardly like to mention it; these things are best 
 forgotten that there is one submarine that actually 
 does sail the sea, and never has found rest. But 
 that, they say, is sometimes visible." 
 
 "Yes," said Drake. He looked grim now, and 
 nobody could doubt that he knew whereof he spoke. 
 " She is sometimes visible. She plies back and forth 
 
THE FLYING TEUTON 23 
 
 along the Irish coast. I d heard it over and over, 
 and I d heard that on the seventh of May she shows 
 her periscope. She is obliged to. And they say she 
 has one passenger the Man We Do Not Mention." 
 
 "Do you suppose " began the pacifist, and Drake 
 interrupted him : 
 
 "Do I suppose that sentence ever will be worked 
 out? Maybe it isn t a sentence. Maybe it s a 
 warning, against pride and cruelty and lust of power; 
 maybe the Man We Do Not Mention is condemned to 
 sail it, and sails it in fear and hate. But maybe he 
 sails it in humility by now, and is willing to be hated, 
 so long as he can be the warning to the world the 
 warning against his sins. Do you know, I ve often 
 wondered if he knows one thing if h* knows that, 
 whenever toasts are drunk in Germany, it isn t now 
 Der Tag, but it is, since that day when England and 
 France joined hands to help their scared old enemy, 
 The Fleet! " 
 
 "He d think it meant the German navy, anyway," 
 said a younger, unregenerate man, who was no paci 
 fist only, being young, too quick of tongue and rash 
 of apprehension. 
 
 "Oh no, he wouldn t," said Drake, a very warm 
 tone in his voice. It told youth it didn t know what 
 its elders had been through. " He d know it meant 
 The Fleet!" 
 
THE ISLAND 
 
 JOHN HADDON went down with one of the first 
 passenger ships " spurlos versenkt" and, after varying 
 tragedy and bewilderment, survived, and I was told 
 by an intimate friend of us both the extraordinary 
 impression the catastrophe and the rescue had 
 stamped upon his memory. I never for a moment 
 believed we were to accept the tale as anything but 
 the sad overflow of disaster left in a mind submerged 
 and then bared by the receding tide. I was con 
 vinced, and this without surprise, that Haddon had 
 suffered shock and never recovered from it, that he 
 would be moved by unhealthy or at least disturbing 
 recollections to the end of his mortal time. And 
 then I met him face to face, when we were both going 
 over, the next year, on business connected with the 
 Allies, and he came straight to me and made himself 
 known. I d heard he was on board, and had ex 
 pected to see a man not quite rectilinear in his relation 
 to other normal things, twisted by the fire and ice of 
 what he had been through. But there walked up 
 to me on deck a fine, keen, bronzed athlete with 
 far-seeing blue eyes and an extraordinarily sweet 
 smile on resolute lips. 
 
 "I m Haddon," said he. "I know who you are. 
 Wentworth has talked about you." 
 
 24 
 
THE ISLAND 25 
 
 So at once we were cronies, beginning a good num 
 ber of steps further on from our common acquaint 
 ance with Wentworth, and being warmly ready to 
 continue. We ate and lounged together and had 
 long subdued talks when we ran through the dan 
 gerous dark, a black speck on a blacker waste. 
 We didn t mention shipwreck or the perils of the 
 sea. Although he was such a daylight sort of per 
 son, with nothing even of the haze of fancy about 
 him, I understood that was the thing which should 
 be tabu. But one night when we were talking the 
 dark away, he brought a thrill into my breath by 
 himself grazing what I thought that danger line 
 and in as commonplace a manner as if he had been 
 describing a stroll on Broadway. 
 
 "You know," he said, "I went down in the 
 Artemisia." (That name will serve.) 
 
 "Yes," I said, gulping, "Wentworth told me." 
 
 "He didn t need to," said Haddon, with a little 
 laugh. "Of course we were all pretty well known, 
 by name, at least. We were very much in the public 
 eye necessarily. You can t find yourself the victim 
 of a hellish tragedy and not continue to be a marked 
 man throughout your natural life. Did Wentworth 
 tell you what really happened to me?" 
 
 "He told me you were one of the last picked up," 
 I said. I was in a fever of wanting to say the right 
 thing, knowing what even a word might recall to 
 him. "He said it wasn t apparent exactly how you 
 were saved, how you d kept afloat so long, or what 
 the live-preserver was " 
 
26 THE ISLAND 
 
 "He knew perfectly well what it was," said 
 Haddon, in a brusque but indulgent kindliness. 
 "So do you, only you can t account for it and so 
 you don t want to mention it and go wrong. Don t 
 mince matters. You needn t. I don t." 
 
 "Well," said I desperately, "he said the life-belt 
 hadn t belonged to the Artemisia at all, but that old 
 tramp, the Elsinore, that was lost a dozen years ago." 
 
 "Precisely," said Haddon. "That was what 
 happened, and it s never been explained and never 
 will be, except by me, and if you don t believe what 
 I say you ll be no better for my opening up to you. 
 Did Wentworth tell you I took that trip on the 
 Artemisia just because Amy Lake was going over 
 and I was in love with her and couldn t let her go 
 alone?" 
 
 "No," said I, a little shocked that Wentworth s 
 reticence on so fine an issue could be suspected for 
 a moment. "He didn t mention her." 
 
 "No, of course not," said Haddon. "I knew it, 
 really. But that was the fact. Did you know Amy 
 Lake?" 
 
 I had seen her once and never forgotten her, a 
 tall sweet creature in light grays, a winter outfit 
 that made her look appropriately like some fleet, 
 fine animal, through an invulnerable yet sensitive 
 strength adapted to rigors and winter snows. She 
 had come into a vociferous tea-room for a minute, 
 and drunk her sip or two with a healthy relish and 
 gone away again, leaving a blankness over all our 
 talk and a duller atmosphere. 
 
THE ISLAND 27 
 
 "I was in love with her, of course," said Haddon 
 quietly. 
 
 The tone was an implication that he didn t really 
 need to say it to a person of ordinary penetration. 
 I took it acquiescently. I thought so, too. She was 
 one of the women who, without challenging the 
 senses, leave such an impression of beauty and 
 harmony that all men not of the roughest type can 
 at least see why some men should adore them. 
 
 "I hoped," he said, "I should have opportunities 
 on the voyage such as I d never had, get nearer her, 
 you know, understand her a little and let her see I 
 was trying to. We d always been separated by a 
 lot of things before, other people, relatives, the gen 
 eral gregariousness of what they call society, and 
 after the war began, the whole terrible business. 
 That, of course, did bring us together in essentials. 
 We were both getting ready to go over to England 
 and being hindered in ways you can guess. But 
 somehow we didn t talk much about ourselves; the 
 desperate big thing overpowered us and prevented 
 it. But on that voyage we began to take each other 
 for granted. We recognized I did, as a matter of 
 course, and I very soon guessed she did we recog 
 nized we d got more to say to each other than all 
 the other passengers and the world, for that mat 
 ter had to say to either of us. We saw at last 
 our interests our spiritual interests, you must 
 let me say were identical. I like to tell you this 
 because I want you to see how the things that hap 
 pened afterward, after the sinking, were founded 
 
28 THE ISLAND 
 
 on what came legitimately all along. I should be 
 ashamed to keep it to myself as something sacred 
 when it might start out a writing person like you 
 into charting certain facts that ought to be common 
 possessions if we re ever going to believe in the 
 sanity and security of the universe again. We d 
 talked, that last night, about the Island you see 
 from Innishmore. You know about it." 
 
 "I hadn t thought of it for years," I said, "until 
 Went worth reminded me, and then I knew I d 
 heard a particularly sweet ballad singer sing about 
 it, and I remembered a line or two." 
 
 "Yes," said Haddon. "Amy remembered more 
 than that. She d copied the whole ballad, and sang 
 it to me in a purling little whisper. Of course, 
 when I came to life again after the Artemisia devil 
 ment, I looked up every word there is about the 
 Island. There isn t much. You re most likely to 
 see it from Innishmore, but not only from there but 
 when you re at sea off the Irish coast. One of you 
 writing persons says it s seen only in certain lights or 
 moods of the mind." Now Haddon s voice took on 
 the measured carefulness of one quoting from an 
 other who perhaps wrote in a style foreign to his own 
 homespun speech. "It is an island that is some 
 times actually seen. But mostly it isn t there. 
 And when it is there it is almost always when the 
 traveler is setting out for far shores and his heart is 
 full of longing to return. Some might think it the 
 embodiment of his longings. Some might call it a 
 mirage of hope. It is believed also that not only 
 
THE ISLAND 29 
 
 is the island visible in beatific or passionately sor 
 rowful states of mind, but that it actually does 
 exist in the Atlantic, though again it is withdrawn. 
 Whether it is a sort of amaranthine flower of the 
 past no one knows, or whether the mind, projecting 
 into the future, creates a jewel of its own in a waste 
 of sea. You can imagine," Haddon concluded, 
 dropping his tone of heedful recollection, "how an 
 emigrant, starting out from the old country in the 
 days of the longer voyage, saw it in the sunset light, 
 all golden turrets and shimmering mists." 
 
 "They called it, didn t they," I asked, "the para 
 dise of the pagan Irish?" 
 
 "It is the paradise of more than the pagan and 
 more than the Irish," said he. "It s a stepping 
 stone, a refuge well!" 
 
 That last word held an infinity of meanings. It 
 seemed to draw pitying attention to the guidebook 
 childishness which accounts for things and stops 
 contented and his own happier estate now that he 
 knew. 
 
 "The next day," he said, "that noon, that lunch 
 eon but I won t talk about that." 
 
 "No," I put in hastily. I wanted to spare him 
 the rehearsal of the tragedy. I had an unreasoned 
 feeling he d go all to pieces if he tried to travel that 
 watery road again and tell what the sea had done to 
 him. 
 
 "But after luncheon," he went on, "I couldn t 
 find her, and for some reason I didn t understand 
 then I was desperately anxious to. You see the 
 
30 THE ISLAND 
 
 time began to look so short, and however closely I 
 might be able to tie up our destinies and plans over 
 there, it wouldn t be the same as that shipboard 
 solitude. Besides, I felt as if we should be caught 
 up and whirled round in such a sea of bigger things 
 that my own paltry desires would have to wait 
 indefinitely, as if there d be no question but I should 
 want them to wait. Everything would be war. 
 Well, I went on deck and I saw her there before me 
 not ten paces away, and she turned to me smiling, 
 and it came. I ve never had any heart to talk 
 about the sensations of the minute because, for me, 
 they all involved her. The whole thing was con 
 nected with her, as if a colossal power had risen up, 
 hostile to her, and had accepted that tremendous 
 destruction as a condition of its being able to destroy 
 her with it. I felt as if I were leaping, the whole of 
 me, to get to her before we were separated forever, 
 and yet maybe I didn t move before I was crushed 
 and suffocated and snuffed out. That part of it is 
 where my brain fails me. I didn t know, I don t 
 know now, where my consciousness stopped, whether 
 I did struggle and it went on faintly and faded out 
 at last, or whether I was hit. When I came to 
 myself I simply was alive, delightfully alive, and in 
 another place. It was an Island, for there was the 
 sea. It had the verdure of the British Isles, but its 
 atmosphere was unlike anything I d seen. And 
 there was Amy close in front of me, and we laughed, 
 we were so glad, and she said to me: 
 " The Island! " 
 
THE ISLAND 31 
 
 " Do you think so? I asked, for it looked more 
 beautiful than the song, and was really so impalpable 
 in spite of its reality that I couldn t fit it into any 
 previous conception." 
 
 " But look, she said, all that golden mist. And 
 the towers. They re not real towers. They re 
 sunlight, don t you think? " 
 
 "Oh, yes, they re real enough, I said. Don t 
 you see how they come out of the rock itself?" 
 
 "That s not rock, said she. It s as misty as 
 the towers. " 
 
 "Well, it s solid, too, I said, and then I realized 
 we were talking absurdly. We were simply trying 
 to fit old expressions to new uses, and the real fact 
 was also that our eyes were giving us more data 
 than our minds could use." 
 
 "How did she look?" I asked. "Amy?" 
 
 I had to call her that. The strange thing that had 
 happened to her seemed to remove her absolutely 
 from ordinary customs of speech. 
 
 "Why," he said, "that s the queer part of it. 
 She was herself, and yet different. I was amazed at 
 her. I puzzled over her. She was beautiful, you 
 understand, more beautiful than ever. That was 
 it. I at once got the idea I d never seen the real 
 Amy, and this was she. Maybe I was different, too, 
 for she said to me suddenly and laughed How 
 nice you look! But I don t know." 
 
 "I mean," I ventured, though it seemed a childish 
 thing to insist on, "what did she wear? The same 
 things she had on when you saw her on the deck? " 
 
32 THE ISLAND 
 
 "That s it," said he. "That s the big puzzle. 
 Wentworth asked me that, and though I ve almost 
 hammered my head to think, I couldn t tell him. 
 Whatever it was, it was beautiful. And familiar. 
 Beyond that I don t know. And I don t know 
 about the other people either." 
 
 "Oh, there were other people?" I asked. 
 
 "Scores of em, and all busy, and for a while all 
 hurrying and talking. It was evidently a time of 
 unusual excitement. For there were ships coming 
 in sail boats, beauties and people landing from 
 them. And everybody was met and evidently 
 made to feel it was tremendously nice they d come, 
 and there was a good deal of laughing and relief. 
 That s it. There was relief in the air, as if there d 
 been a cloudburst and now the sun was out and 
 people were saying to one another, It didn t do 
 any damage, after all." 
 
 "And did you really think you were on the fabu 
 lous Island?" I asked. 
 
 I wanted to pin him down to as literal fact as he 
 could manage. 
 
 He laughed. 
 
 "Not for an instant," he answered, "then. 
 Amy d said so, you remember, and I partially agreed, 
 but it was only because we were so light-hearted we 
 said the first things that came into our heads. 
 Really, I was perfectly sure we were on the coast of 
 Ireland. I assumed that, without a doubt. And 
 when things had quieted down a little and our 
 passengers were dispersing, going off by ones and 
 
THE ISLAND 33 
 
 twos with the Island people, I went up to the Tall 
 Man" 
 
 "Who was he?" I interrupted. 
 
 "I don t know. I never even heard his name." 
 
 "You don t assume," I hesitated, "it was " 
 and this was the only way I could end "some one 
 supernatural? " 
 
 "Bless you, no," said he. "I call him the Tall 
 Man simply because he was tall and I don t know 
 his name. And he was most certainly some one in 
 authority. I went up to him and said, * Can we hire 
 any sort of conveyance to take us to Queenstown 
 or somewhere else where we can get passage for 
 England? 
 
 "And he looked at me, a long look, and smiled. 
 And then I knew. But I didn t dare look at Amy. 
 I thought it might frighten her, you see. But I 
 might have known. She d guessed it from the first. 
 She took my hand, and we stood there like two chil 
 dren, not in any way distressed, but coming out of 
 a wood-path to an open door, a little curious and 
 pretty excited. 
 
 " Don t you see, John? said Amy. Don t you 
 know? 
 
 "And then I said it. My voice sounded strange 
 tome. 
 
 " Ami dead? 
 
 "For the minute I forgot her. I rather think the 
 soul has to face that one thing alone, and now it was 
 my turn to face it. 
 
 " Yes, said Amy. It was the most commonplace 
 
S4 THE ISLAND 
 
 *y es / y u ever heard. She might have been encour 
 aging a child, after he d come out of some bad bus 
 iness like an anaesthetic. Now let s get to work. 
 Isn t there something, she said to the Tall Man, 
 we can do? 
 
 "He was immensely pleased with her. She 
 seemed to have been clever in accepting it and adapt 
 ing herself, as you might say. 
 
 " Yes, he said, there are lots of things you can 
 do. And I ve got to break off right here and say 
 I don t know whether those were his actual words. 
 But it was the sense of them. And then he looked 
 doubtful and queer. The fact is, he said, I m 
 not sure, you know, whether you re both going to 
 stay. 
 
 " Oh, you mean, said Amy and when it comes 
 to her I could swear to every word you re not 
 sure whether we re both dead. It seems astonish 
 ing to me, the way she used that word we hate so, 
 lightly, you know, as if it meant something rather 
 warm and pleasant. And then she snatched at my 
 hand and held it tight. We ve got to be, she said. 
 If one of us is, the other s got to be, too. 
 
 "I know, he said. He seemed to understand 
 perfectly. And it may be so. But I have a kind 
 of a doubt and then he seemed to recall himself 
 and remember he mustn t say more than he actually 
 knew. Anyway, he went on, it doesn t matter, 
 and for the present, at least, you re on the Island. 
 And you ve come at a time of a good deal of anxiety 
 for us 
 
THE ISLAND 35 
 
 " How can you have anxieties, said Amy, if 
 you re all dead? 
 
 "He smiled at her. 
 
 " Aren t you anxious? he asked. 
 
 "And that reminded her. 
 
 " Of course, she said. Why, I hadn t thought. 
 I d forgotten them father and mother. But they ll 
 be hearing oh, think how it ll come to them. In 
 an instant, maybe a cable message, maybe a line 
 in a newspaper. Oh, how horrible of me to be 
 happy for a minute! 
 
 " That s it, he said. You ve got to be anxious 
 so long as you love anything on the earth that is, 
 while the earth s in the state it is now. And we re 
 anxious about England. 
 
 " Then you re English, I asked, all of you. 
 
 "No, no, he said. But we used to belong to 
 her, you see, we were a part of her. I mean, the 
 actual Island. And those old birth bonds hold. 
 Why, look at me. I he smiled at Amy as if he 
 must indulge her I died, we ll say and I don t 
 mind the word a long, long time ago, and yet I 
 never ve been willing to leave here. 
 
 "Could you leave? Amy asked him quickly. I 
 think she saw herself hurrying back to America 
 for a minute invisible herself, maybe a minute 
 of comfort for her father and mother. Is it per 
 mitted? 
 
 "Oh, yes, he said, anything s permitted. The 
 things that wouldn t be permitted you simply don t 
 want to do. But there s no particular pleasure in 
 
36 THE ISLAND 
 
 elbowing about among the others the ones that 
 are, so to speak, alive. (I m using all your terms. 
 It s simpler.) Besides, you realize that when you re 
 dead (your term again, you see!) your place is among 
 the dead. And people keep coming to us just as 
 you ve come and there are the drowned ships. 
 We have as much fun getting them into dry dock and 
 setting them afloat again as we have in receiving 
 the drowned sailors. 
 
 1 Were those the ships? Amy put in quickly, and 
 he nodded at her. 
 
 Yes, he said, those were the good drowned 
 boats that didn t want to go down and are mighty 
 glad to get up again and feel the hand of man on 
 them, man that made them. You don t suppose a 
 boat can t love its creator do you? the one that 
 shaped and guided her? 
 
 " But, said Amy, if all those lost ships were on 
 the ocean, we couldn t have helped seeing them and 
 running into them. Or, said she and I can tell 
 you she wrinkled her eyebrows at him. You know 
 that way she had aren t they real ships, or only 
 the souls of ships? Just as I suppose we re souls 
 now and our bodies are off there in the sea? 
 
 "She could meet it all, without a quiver. I could 
 n t. I didn t want to think of my body s being out 
 there, fathoms down. But the Tall Man was smil 
 ing at her with that look he had for her and not once 
 for me. No wonder! 
 
 You re going too fast now, he said. I can t 
 help you. I mustn t. You ll know it all in time/ 
 
THE ISLAND 37 
 
 "Then he turned suddenly to a green walk that 
 led up to one of the misty temples. I call em tem 
 ples. What do I know? I don t know what they 
 were used for ordinarily, nor how they were built, 
 nor whether, if you struck em, they would hurt 
 your hand. I only know they were outlines, a 
 sort of enchanting outline that made you contented 
 and pleased when you looked at it. And a lot of 
 people were going toward it not our Artemisia 
 crowd, but the others, those that had met us and 
 been kind. 
 
 " I told you we are anxious, said the Tall Man. 
 4 That s a sign of it. It means we ve got to talk 
 things over. 
 
 "He was moving away, as he spoke. I saw he 
 was suddenly in a hurry anxious, like the rest. 
 
 " Oh, said Amy, mayn t we come? 
 
 "He stopped and looked at us, kindly, but a little 
 doubtfully. 
 
 " Why, yes, he said then, I think so. Nobody 
 ever does come so soon. But you re different. 
 At least, one of you is. 
 
 "And then I began to understand it was I he 
 meant when he said maybe we couldn t both stay 
 there, and I held to Amy s hand and made up my 
 mind I d never let it go. And she held mine just 
 as tight. She d had the same thought, you see, and 
 she was determined, too. But she was tremendously 
 interested curious, in a darling kind of way about 
 the Island and it made her audacious, even. 
 
 " Then we ll come, she said to him. Let us go 
 
38 THE ISLAND 
 
 along behind you, and of course if the others don t 
 like our being there they ll say so. 
 
 "He smiled in that indulgent way he had, and I 
 gathered from it he knew if he vouched for us it 
 would be enough and that he was somebody very 
 important in relation to the others, and he walked 
 away and we followed. 
 
 "Well, we went along, and when we got inside 
 what I call the temple and after we were once 
 there the walls didn t look like walls any more it 
 was just a large place, when we were among the 
 others we lost him and then saw him later, up on a 
 kind of dais where they went to speak. At least it 
 must have been a place higher than the rest of the 
 temple there I go, you see, calling it a temple! 
 or else the ones that spoke looked taller than the 
 rest." 
 
 "Were they sitting?" I asked him, "the audience, 
 I mean?" 
 
 "I m not sure," he said. His voice sounded 
 troubled. I could believe he was finding it more and 
 more disturbing, as time went on, to realize how in 
 exorably his memory of the event was losing its clear 
 edges, growing less distinct. "I seem to remember 
 them standing. I can t repeat the words of their 
 discussion, but I do remember the sense of it. That 
 will never leave me. They were in a state of anxiety, 
 as he had said, and trying to see whether something 
 couldn t be done. They were all perfectly agreed; 
 that wasn t the ground of discussion. They were 
 pulling together absolutely, and the point they were 
 
THE ISLAND 89 
 
 after was whether they couldn t make themselves 
 known, as an island, you see, a possession, to Eng 
 land. They were doing all they could to help, 
 receiving the dead and that kind of thing, and God 
 knows what else. They may have been fighting 
 the submarines, for all I know, with their invisible 
 fleet. But they wanted England to know they were 
 there, safeguarding when they could and comforting 
 all the time. And then it came over me with a great 
 rush that England not only had her daughter col 
 onies, fighting for her, the cubs as brave as the lion, 
 but she had her invisible colonies, too. They were 
 round her like a guard of not mere human steel, 
 but heavenly fire. Amy saw it, and we looked at 
 each other and felt we d begun to understand the 
 universe a little bit, not the surface of things we d 
 been stumbling over up to now. 
 
 " But I had a thought I didn t like. Logic, reason, 
 you know what a nasty way they have of putting a 
 heavy hand on the curb of your high horse. 
 
 " But, I said, if England s got invisible cohorts 
 fighting for her, Germany must have the same kind. 
 And they d be pretty formidable, those old scalawags, 
 Barbarossa and his horsemen and the whole gang. 
 
 " I don t think so, said Amy. When we die, we 
 see things differently. They must have got some 
 thing out of being dead, just as we have, and they ve 
 been dead centuries and we only is it weeks or 
 minutes? I don t believe Kultur looks very attrac 
 tive, even to a German, if he s got out of his skin and 
 begun to look with the eyes of his spirit. No, they 
 
40 THE ISLAND 
 
 wouldn t help Germany. They d see she mustn t 
 win. They d know it would only be prolonging her 
 childish bluff and brutishness. What they d want 
 most would be to have her humbled so she d see 
 she d got to crawl up out of her slime. But England 
 well, you know what you said on shipboard. That 
 no matter what England had done in the past, to 
 other nations and her own poor, it happens now 
 she s right. 9 
 
 "And as I looked at Amy and saw how alive she 
 was, how eager, how understanding, how perfectly 
 able to weave her past into the strange present and 
 make them equally alive, my fear came over me that 
 she was to stay here and, unless I was somehow let 
 to hocus fate, I was to go. I hadn t dropped her 
 hand and now I clutched it tighter and drew her 
 away. 
 
 " Come, I said, we must find some place of our 
 own. 
 
 "She was still thinking about the heavenly co 
 horts fighting for their earthly mothers, and though 
 she didn t resist me she evidently went on in that 
 same groove. 
 
 "Just think, she said as we went out together, 
 what it must be for the dead Germans, not bound, 
 as we are, to a just and wonderful cause. They ve 
 got to know they can t help. It wouldn t be per 
 mitted. They can only pray and suffer shame. 
 
 "I didn t answer. I saw before us a long alley, 
 made by slender trees that seemed to throw a green 
 light across the path, one to another, in an enchant - 
 
THE ISLAND 41 
 
 ing kind of way. The trees themselves were opaque 
 gems and the light through them was pulsating and 
 clear. I wish I could describe it to you. But I 
 can t You ll see those things sometime. (So shall 
 I again. And mighty soon, too. I m as sure of 
 that as I am we re sitting here tonight. That s why 
 I take it as I do not having her, you know.) I 
 hurried Amy along the path so fast we seemed to 
 skim the ground without touching it. Don t you 
 know that dream we have of floating? You just 
 give a little push with a tiptoe, and you re above the 
 ground, willing yourself to go. And while we hur 
 ried, not breathlessly, but with a pleasurable sen 
 sation as if nothing nicer could happen to us than 
 wafting along a green path, I had the queerest 
 sensation that the path was ours, that nobody d 
 used it or even seen it before. And we came out on 
 an open space with trees round it not slender, like 
 the path trees but big, round, populous, with spaces 
 in them and coverts for a million birds. A green 
 city, that s what each tree was, all full of plots and 
 courts and alleys under dancing leaves." 
 
 "Were there birds?" I asked. Every time he 
 stopped for a minute I felt as if he might actually 
 break the thread and leave me lost on my bewildered 
 way. 
 
 Again he was perplexed and troubled. 
 
 "About the birds," he said. "I ve thought of 
 that. And I can t be sure. I tell myself it couldn t 
 have been so happy if there hadn t been birds. A 
 tree like a green city and no birds to live in it that s 
 
42 THE ISLAND 
 
 desolation. I think I heard them. Actually I do 
 think so. Only they weren t songs I can remember. 
 Except one. I ve thought it might have been the 
 skylark, not just an English lark, you know, but 
 Shelley s." He laughed a little here, as if he could 
 allow himself an occasional tender romancing over 
 the inexhaustible riches of the place. 
 
 "And I did hear the sea, softly lapping on the 
 shore. Well, I made Amy sit down with me and I 
 held her hands, thinking all the time how tight I must 
 cling to them to keep something destiny or what 
 we call life from dragging me away from her. And 
 then I told her about my fear. She was to stay, I 
 told her, and I was to go. She looked at me seriously 
 and I was plunged deeper and deeper in my misery 
 to find she knew at once it was to be. But whereas 
 I was distracted she was grave and different. 
 Calm, perhaps that was it as if she saw the end 
 of things I was only guessing out from the beginning. 
 But I had my plan. 
 
 " Now/ I said to her, we re here alone. We ve 
 escaped from them all, and they re too busy to think 
 of us. And this is our place. We must build us a 
 house and live here stay absolutely by ourselves, 
 so nobody 11 be reminded of us. 
 
 "It won t do any good, said she, very grave, but 
 not unhappy as I was. And then she laughed a 
 little as if she liked me tremendously and wanted me 
 to have my way, even for a minute or two, to soften 
 things for me afterward and she said, Still, it won t 
 do any harm. 
 
THE ISLAND 43 
 
 "Then all the strength I d got came up in me I 
 don t know whether it was will or muscle and I 
 made up my mind I d show the Powers I was as 
 strong as They were, and I said : 
 
 " Very well then, we ll build our house. 
 
 "I got up and so did she, and we went to work. 
 And to this day I don t know whether we talked 
 about the house and what sort it should be, or how 
 we found material, or whether we actually worked. 
 I seem to remember tools of some sort and going 
 round whistling and Amy s singing and her reminding 
 me of old jokes and our agreeing we d been so silly 
 way back before we came here not to have been 
 married the first day we met. 
 
 " For we knew then, said Amy. Not that it 
 makes any difference now. 
 
 "And suddenly the house was built and we stood 
 looking at it. And it wasn t walled with mist like 
 the Islanders temple, but it was a good deal like 
 some of the old houses we d seen and talked about 
 on shipboard. It was palpable to the eye and the 
 touch oh, you never ll understand me here; I 
 can t express myself and yet it was different. We 
 loved it. When I looked at it I forgot my fear and 
 Amy seemed to put aside her sad certainties. And 
 I got daring and wished for the moon, and the moon 
 came. Do you know, I never ve looked it up to 
 see if there was a moon at that particular time be 
 cause I d rather think it was our moon, the moon of 
 our thoughts. And we stood at a window, looking 
 at it I must tell you about that window, though, 
 
44 THE ISLAND 
 
 before I forget. I d wanted a magic casement, 
 like Keats s 
 
 opening on the foam 
 Of perilous seas, in faery lands forlorn. 
 
 And, if you ll believe me, I got it. Don t ask me 
 what it looked like. I simply got it, that s all. And 
 we knew it was that window and no other. And it 
 was while we stood there looking at our world that 
 she said to me: 
 
 " You like to stay in the house, don t you? You d 
 rather do it than explore the Island. 
 
 "jl felt sulky, just because of my fear. 
 
 " Yes, I said. It s our house. We d better 
 stay in it while we can. 
 
 "The last words I hadn t meant to say. I didn t 
 like to remind her of my fear. 
 
 " Yes, she said, you stay in the house because 
 you think they won t find us when they want us. 
 But they will. 
 
 " Then she called me a name I won t tell you. But 
 sometime I shall hear it. 
 
 "I didn t see why, if the Island itself wasn t 
 visible to passing ships, our house should necessarily 
 be visible to the Islanders themselves. There were 
 queer rules here, I told her. We didn t know just 
 what would obtain. But all the time I knew there 
 was nothing in it and so did she. She began to talk, 
 quietly. 
 
 " You ve heard the sounds, haven t you, even 
 when we re in our house? 
 
THE ISLAND 45 
 
 " Tve heard the sea, I told her. 
 
 "I d made up my mind that was all I d own to. 
 
 * You ve heard more, said she. I could see she 
 was terribly sorry for me now, not so much for her 
 self because she d begun to learn the end of things, 
 and besides she saw some kinds of grief are of no use. 
 We both have. We ve heard their music and 
 their bugles sometimes I think when we heard 
 the bugles we ought to have gone. I suppose that 
 was when more ships came in and brought more 
 dead. 
 
 "I believe then I began to cry. Anyway I had a 
 feeling of breaking up and going all to pieces, and 
 as we do sometimes in nightmare I began to say the 
 same thing over and over. For God s sake! that 
 was what I kept saying, and though I never could 
 finish I knew she understood perfectly well what I 
 was trying to pray. Not to leave me, that was what 
 I was praying to her, whatever they said or did to 
 her, not to leave me. And her face began to grow 
 fainter and fainter, though she bent over me I felt 
 I was on my knees crying to her she bent over me 
 to give me the sight of it to the last. And it s my 
 one best thing in life now to remember her hands 
 held mine tighter and tighter and wouldn t let 
 them go. And then there was a great clanging in 
 my ears I thought it was the Islanders summoning 
 me to tell me I d got to part from her, and I began 
 to have a queer pain and misery. And I woke up. 
 And there were two men I d never seen, and I knew 
 
46 THE ISLAND 
 
 instantly the worst had happened. I d been rescued 
 and Amy was dead." 
 
 "About the life-preserver?" said I, because I 
 knew we could never come back to this again and 
 that was the most mysterious thing of all to me. 
 "I couldn t understand " 
 
 He got up and shook himself a little, as if he cast off 
 the dust of old perplexities. 
 
 "You never will," he said. "You ll have to do 
 as I do: believe it and accept it and be satisfied not 
 to understand. The amount of the matter was that 
 when I got on my feet I hunted out the boat that 
 picked me up. I had a feeling that among so many 
 incredible things they might have found Amy, too, 
 and seen her dear body later than I did. But they 
 hadn t. Only, just as I was going over the side, the 
 captain followed me, and he said: 
 
 " That was a queer thing about your life-belt. It 
 was off the old Elsinore. How d you come by it? 
 
 " Why, I said, I didn t come by it. There 
 wasn t any time for life-belts. 
 
 "But you had it on, said he, Elsinore, marked 
 plain. I commanded that ship once myself. 
 
 " Then where is it? said I. 
 
 "I ve got it down here below, he said, and he 
 went off to fetch it. But he came back in ten min 
 utes or so, and he was more puzzled than I was. I d 
 seen the Island fleet, you remember. It can t be 
 found, said he, high nor low. But we shall come 
 on it. I ll send it to you. 
 
 "But he never did. I knew he wouldn t. He s 
 
THE ISLAND 47 
 
 written me once or twice about it. I believe it scares 
 him, rather." 
 
 "But it doesn t scare you," I ventured. 
 
 "I should say not," he said. He laughed a little. 
 "Some things I know. Nothing scares me now." 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 IT is true that the most extraordinary and exact 
 coincidences happen, as if pieces in the mosaic of 
 life, made to fit together in some mysterious fore 
 cast of destiny, rush toward each other and are 
 finally joined. The common motive of brother 
 meeting brother or friend meeting friend from oppos 
 ing ranks of a war is a not too crudely obvious one. 
 It has happened over and over again, as if the two 
 had been journeying toward each other by intent, 
 and out of all the millions of men who accompany 
 them, are unerringly accurate in their direction 
 and their destiny of a poignant recognition or a 
 last sickening sequel of wild warfare. 
 
 This story, told by an American for a time in the 
 Foreign Legion and then disabled and, by note 
 worthy privilege, allowed to join an observation 
 party in March of this year, 1917, is entirely true 
 according to his psychology. I am ready to assert 
 it is true also in a definite sense made to fit all out 
 ward facts as well. 
 
 "Let me go back," he said, that afternoon when 
 I sat by his bedside while he talked to me and tried 
 to explain the message he wanted to send to a girl 
 in New Hampshire. "You ve got to understand 
 just what my connection was with Hugo and with 
 her, too, before the war began. So I want to tell 
 
 48 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 49 
 
 you the whole business. That s not to be repeated 
 to her, mind you. Only that I saw Hugo, and that 
 he s safe, you can tell her. But I suppose I 
 want, too, to pass over what happened pass it 
 over to somebody else. I m tired of owning it 
 alone and shutting it up inside me: for I don t know 
 whether it s a treasure, you see, or only a strange 
 secret. And anyway it s got to be shut up, unless 
 you want to write it out, with a change of name, so 
 that the people playing the old games buying and 
 selling and thinking the world will last their time, 
 and that going to church once a week and putting a 
 check in the plate is enough to ensure their communi 
 cation with the heavenly powers so they ll get to 
 wondering whether perhaps after all there isn t 
 something between God and man that hasn t been 
 entirely mapped out. And if there is, whether they d 
 better not explore a little before they re called 
 on to take the unknown country at a dash and 
 perhaps suffer terrors actual as hunger and thirst. 
 For one thing I m sure I ve learned out of my own 
 neck-and-crop pitch into futurity that in my 
 Father s house are many mansions. And not all 
 of the mansions are for the soul to inherit and take 
 its ease in. Some of em are deserts full of torments; 
 and they re none the less His mansions. And if 
 you ask me why one man should be singled out for 
 punishment when millions of men have committed 
 the same offenses in his company, I tell you you don t 
 know where those other millions are. For space 
 the mansions is illimitable, and every man that 
 
50 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 sins is pretty sure of getting a lonesome hell of his 
 own. 
 
 "Now Hugo and I were chums at Harvard. I d 
 never understood why he was there; when the rest 
 of us were dying to get to Germany to study, he 
 came from Germany here. His father was back and 
 forth between us and Berlin, on vague business never 
 quite defined. We assumed it was connected with 
 imports; but before the war there was no particular 
 curiosity about it. You won t have seen this, 
 because you don t know his name; but the other day 
 he was proved guilty of hostile propaganda and 
 indubitable plotting at munition plants, and, accord 
 ing to the amiable, tolerant habit of our government, 
 merely interned. But then, when Hugo and I were 
 trotting round together, he was simply a beneficent 
 deity, pocket full of money, always ready to blow 
 it in for theatres and dinners, and simply the best 
 comrade a set of fellows could find in a man of 
 middle age. He sang German songs to admiration, 
 and he never took the fatherly pose of you ll think 
 so when you re older. He was apparently one 
 of us. 
 
 "When we came out of college, Hugo and I, we 
 ran right along in the same groove. I wanted to 
 write things I ve a kind of a gift of words and I 
 determined at the same time to be a farmer. Farm 
 ing s in my blood. My grandfather was a farmer. 
 He could graft trees and do all kinds of witch work 
 with them. He anticipated this wave of growing 
 improved apples by a good many years. While 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 51 
 
 other people were rubbing along with old apple 
 trees set out on side hills where you couldn t culti 
 vate em and close to the stone wall where every 
 apple that fell would get a nasty disfiguring bruise, 
 he set out several acres with healthy little trees, 
 and ploughed and fertilized and thinned the fruit, 
 and pruned and scraped; and, if you ll believe me, 
 it was that orchard that sent me to college. And 
 better than that, I inherited the apple passion, and 
 so, when I came out of college, I bought me a farm 
 up in New Hampshire, and settled down there to 
 write, and incidentally to grow fruit. 
 
 " And Hugo was with me. I don t think he wanted 
 to be at first, but his father encouraged it in his big- 
 voiced way, and bought some adjoining land for 
 him and I ve since fancied I saw why. We weren t 
 so far from Canada, and I ve guessed he wanted 
 our little acreage for a base. Also, Hugo fell in 
 love with Annie Mills. So did I. She was the 
 daughter of the farmer next me, a quarter of a mile 
 away, and kept house for him, and the first time 
 we saw her coming home from the woods she was, 
 with her hands full of violets well, I m pretty sure 
 each of us felt then what we kept on feeling till the 
 war gripped us and afterward. And when I say 
 she was coming home with her hands full of violets 
 you mustn t see any Sweet Lavender kind of girl in 
 a pink sunbonnet and dialect on her tongue, ready 
 to be awed by two college fellows. O Lord! you 
 know, Annie d had her course at a mighty good 
 seminary, and she read her Greek for fun and be- 
 
52 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 cause she liked it; whereas, if you asked me to trans 
 late at random, without context, I should be no 
 where: not even come in by freight. So Hugo, 
 having seen her, settled down with me and read 
 books on forestry and his father encouraged it, and 
 I wished the devil would fly away with him and not 
 bring him back till I d got Annie. 
 
 "Yes, give me a drink, but don t stop me. I m 
 going to keep right on till this story is told. If I 
 get it off my chest I sha n t do so much seeing things 
 at night. 
 
 "Annie was a discreet and level-headed little 
 person, but she hadn t any eyes for me. It was all 
 Hugo. Terrible nice to me, you understand, but 
 in a sort of maze about him, hypnotized, you know, 
 what s called being in love. Or, no. Sometimes I 
 think she wasn t in love yet, only on the way to it. 
 And Hugo s dad took up his share in the hypnotizing. 
 He stayed with us from time to time, and sang 
 German songs to her and made love in a kind of 
 indirect fashion nicely, you know, quite straight 
 about it. Only, as an older man preparing the way 
 for Hugo and turning the world upside down with 
 the romance of everything as if he d built a kind of 
 palace with flowers to walk on and birds singing, for 
 Hugo to lead her into and propose to her. Do you 
 get me? I mean the whole atmosphere of our New 
 England neighborhood, so far as we three were con 
 cerned, was back in some kind of super-civilization 
 America hasn t a glimmer of, except through poetry 
 and pictures, and Annie was being asked indirectly 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 53 
 
 but in every way possible to accept the freedom of 
 the city in a golden box. 
 
 "Her father? Annie s father? Oh, he didn t 
 know what was happening. He was road commis 
 sioner, and he was sitting up nights figuring on 
 harder roads for the automobiles, and over the 
 motors how to trap em better for over-speeding 
 and so pay for the roads. And Annie was a wonder. 
 She kept her gait. Only I could see her eyes grow 
 big and black when she was pelted with the whole 
 German Empire, and I had an idea if Hugo asked 
 her right off the bat, she d have to say *y es - You 
 may think I was a fool not to ask her myself, but it 
 was a fact T didn t dare to. I felt as if I stood for 
 New Hampshire with her and the kind of person 
 that would turn into a road commissioner some day, 
 and I felt as if a joggle of the wheel might give me 
 a chance to offer her some little glamour myself. 
 It s no use saying I cherished any high-minded 
 horseback determination to let Hugo have her 
 because he was my chum. Not a bit of it. If I 
 could have shipped him off to Siam I would, and 
 father and his German songs with him. Some days 
 they got most infernally on my nerves, and I cursed 
 myself for walking into the combination as I had 
 or inviting it to walk over me. 
 
 "And then the turn of the wheel came, in August, 
 1914, and everything was different. In the first 
 place father disappeared, lock, stock and barrel. 
 Whether he said good-by to Hugo I don t know. He 
 didn t say good-by to me, and I rather resented the 
 
54 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 unfriendliness of it and didn t ask about him. But 
 Hugo had letters from him, and the post-mark was 
 Canada. But straight off I found out things weren t 
 the same between Hugo and me. He got rather 
 strained and quiet; I can t tell you what effect it 
 had after knowing him those last years when he 
 was always banging round and whistling and singing. 
 Now he was mum as a fish. He wouldn t talk about 
 the war not to me, though he did, I found out, talk 
 to Annie. For she grew mum and white, to the 
 same degree, and one day when I overtook her on 
 the path through the Cathedral Woods she asked 
 her question, right out from the shoulder. I d gone 
 into the woods to think things over, and so had she, 
 and we were both just enough keyed up so she had 
 to put her question. 
 
 " Arnold, said she, what do you think about 
 Belgium? 
 
 "It was just after that deviltry, you see, while 
 we, the ones of us that see straight, and mean to act 
 straight, were almost out of our minds with the 
 helpless, mad desire to do something, and the others 
 well, the others it s better, to the end of time, to 
 forget them. Don t you say so? What s the use of 
 keeping on poisoning our own blood with the just 
 contempt we ve got to feel for em? Well, I told 
 her what I thought, as well as I could, I don t know 
 in what words. Maybe I didn t choose em for their 
 academic flavor. About that time I was fed up 
 with academic puddling. And I saw she thought 
 she d got it hot, but maybe no more than she ex- 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 55 
 
 pected, and the light, what little there was of it in 
 her face, paled out and she walked along with her 
 head bent. 
 
 " Yes/ she said at last, that s the way I feel. 
 And then she lifted her head she s a gallant girl, 
 Annie and she said, as if it might be a kind of 
 challenge to me to understand she identified herself 
 with him, But Hugo can t feel so. 
 
 " Can t he? said I. 
 
 "I found myself mumbling. I d spent what heat 
 I had on Belgium. 
 
 " No, said she. There are all his traditions, you 
 see. He has to be loyal to Germany. He s German 
 to the backbone. 
 
 " Well! said I. 
 
 "That was literally all I could say. I wanted to 
 ask her if Hugo wasn t the son of a German who d 
 got himself naturalized in the United States, and 
 whether he mightn t stiffen his own backbone accord 
 ingly. But I didn t. I felt as if I d lost them all, 
 Hugo and his father inevitably, and Annie, because, 
 though she stood with me about Belgium, she seemed 
 to have accepted their point of view, for them, which 
 was, to my way of thinking, giving a kind of intangi 
 ble aid and comfort to our spiritual enemies. But 
 this I knew. If Hugo was even emotionally a citizen 
 of Germany at this crisis for that first crisis, you 
 know, was like a great questioning fiat from a moral 
 judgment seat where did a man stand? And he 
 that was not for the devil was against him well, if 
 Hugo was with the devil as he had been revealed 
 
56 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 walking abroad under a Prussian helmet was he 
 to sit at my table any more? Was I to break bread 
 with him? I didn t say another word to Annie nor 
 did she to me, and at the edge of the woods I left her 
 and turned back into the Cathedral aisle. And, if 
 you believe me, I stayed in the woods all night. I 
 sent word to Hugo by a boy that came up through 
 from fishing, not to expect me, that I was off trying 
 to find a strayed calf which was absurd, because 
 we hadn t any cattle pastured and Hugo knew it. 
 But I had an idea he wouldn t be enough interested 
 in my movements to pin me down to facts. And 
 perhaps he d been as uneasy with me as I was with 
 him. And when I did go back, next morning, dew- 
 soaked and cold and sort of awkward about meeting 
 him, he d gone, and the housekeeper told me it was 
 for good. He d gone to the war. 
 
 " And it s for Germany, she kept saying. Mr. 
 Grant, ain t it queer? he s goin to fight for Ger 
 many. 
 
 "And I told her it wasn t queer quite natural, 
 for he was a German. And I waited for her to tell 
 me he d left me something, a letter, of course, or if 
 not that, some sort of message. But he hadn t, for 
 she didn t say another word, and even before I had 
 breakfast I went over the house hunting for his 
 good-by the living-room, his room, mine. Not a 
 word did I find. He d disappeared just as if his 
 father d given him the formula. 
 
 "That day I went to see Annie and her face told 
 me he hadn t gone without saying good-by to her. 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 57 
 
 She was as serious as we are after a sobering blow, 
 not a girl now, a woman. 
 
 "I couldn t talk to her till she d answered me one 
 question. 
 
 " Are you engaged to him? 
 
 "I asked it plump and she answered as if it was 
 a natural thing to ask and I d every right to an 
 answer. 
 
 " No, she said. I couldn t. I m puzzled. I 
 had to think things over. Belgium. 
 
 " Yes, I said. 
 
 "And then I asked how long she was going to 
 think things over, and she said: 
 
 " I don t know. Till I can stop being puzzled, 
 I guess. 
 
 " Well, Annie, said I, I m going, too. Only I 
 shall fight on the other side. 
 
 "And before she could think she put her hands 
 together and the red ran into her face and she said : 
 
 " Oh, bless you ! bless you ! I wish I could go, too. 
 And then she remembered the thing that was hurting 
 her so, and she said, If you see him, won t you write 
 me? 
 
 " I sha n t see him, I said, among ten million 
 Germans. But I ll write you anyway. 
 
 "And the next day I was off, up through Canada 
 and over to the other side. The queer part of it 
 was I hadn t thought of going till that minute facing 
 Annie s eyes. It seemed as if she d made me go. 
 And maybe Hugo had, too. It was as if he d chal 
 lenged me and I d got to make sure he didn t throw 
 
58 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 his little weight in for Germany without my throwing 
 mine on the other side. 
 
 "Well, I ll skip all my dodges to get over, and what 
 happened to me there and how I got my first wound 
 I ve been sort of unlucky, you know and then my 
 good luck of getting a little pull, enough to put me 
 into the observation party that followed along after 
 the French when they banged the Germans into their 
 strategic retreat in March of this year. And you 
 know what those same Germans that are bambooz 
 ling Russia now with their peace terms did when 
 they retreated: how they blew up villages and 
 poisoned wells and wrecked houses and destroyed 
 fruit trees. Now that last is what I m coming to 
 the destruction of the trees. I can forgive em my 
 game leg, even if it never straightens out, and I can 
 fancy in minutes I have sometimes when the sun s 
 shining and it looks as if we d got em on the run 
 and somebody reminds me all s right with the 
 world that God may make a try at forgiving em 
 for the houses and the gardens and the women 
 but I can t go into that. Honestly I haven t the 
 nerve. Sometimes when it comes over me the 
 women I know about, the ghosts of children I ve 
 seen with my own eyes well, I m afraid I shall just 
 go daffy lying here, with sheer mad. But and 
 this is what I ve been coming to all this time so 
 long as I keep my brain to invent curses and my 
 tongue to utter em, I never ll forgive the destruc 
 tion of the trees. If my ticket for a comfortable 
 hereafter depended on it I couldn t. Put me any- 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 59 
 
 where you like, Lord/ I should have to say, but 
 that s a new crime. That s arboricide. You 
 didn t mention it in the Decalogue but I ve got it 
 down in mine. And it proves there s more than one 
 unpardonable sin among men. 
 
 "Maybe it s my grandfather coming out in me. 
 Anyway it s as strong as I am. Why, do you know 
 what a tree represents, how slow it grows, what a 
 push and urge it puts into its resurrection every 
 spring and how it goes to sleep so pretty and stands 
 there for all the winds of winter to buffet it and the 
 rain to lash it in the face? And there it is in the 
 spring ready again if you give it half a chance, 
 gnarled maybe and brown and old, but with a bridal 
 bloom no girl could ever equal not even Annie. 
 It s kind, a fruit tree is, it s beneficent, always 
 offering you something, and even if you neglect it 
 offering you a little still. As if it said, I m poor, 
 but I ll share with you. Why, the relation between 
 mankind and its fruit trees ought to be a never- 
 ending alliance protection on our part, generosity, 
 kindness. Because on theirs they re always ready 
 with an answer. Well, that s how I feel about fruit 
 trees, and when I saw them by the hundred sawed 
 two-thirds through and then broken down, split, 
 mangled, murdered, how do you think I felt? And 
 let me stop right here and say I found in a newspaper 
 I got hold of the other day what a German military 
 high joss said about their retreat: 
 
 " Before our new positions runs, like a gigantic 
 ribbon, an empire of death. 
 
60 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 "That describes it better than I could if I went 
 into a day s talk of mine craters and gaping holes 
 and what had been fruit trees with the life-blood in 
 them standing there, bare, jagged spikes, pointing 
 up to heaven. That idea rather got hold of me as 
 I stared at them. There seemed to be something 
 significant in it. They were pointing up to heaven. 
 
 "Well, we moved along, we of the observation 
 party, and we found not only destruction of all the 
 mechanism of life but the dead. Here and there 
 were a few dead Boches. And one man, lying with 
 two others quite safely off on their journey into some 
 other planet, was a slender fellow, face downward, 
 his hand stretched limp toward one of the others 
 as if he had tried to touch him, get some comfort 
 or give it, God knows which. And I knew that 
 hand. I can t say now whether I actually did know 
 it, the outward form of it, or whether some inside 
 sense told me. But I knew. It was Hugo s, and 
 I slid off my horse and told the others I d overtake 
 them, and I turned him over as gently as I could 
 and his eyes opened and met mine the strangest 
 look, that was, as if he were relieved to see me and 
 yet, too, as if he were too far away to have it count 
 and he said my name, and that one word that haunts 
 the battlefield like a litany of torture: Water. 
 But with it he was gone, slipped away out of his 
 body as if he d been ready and only waiting for 
 me to give him somehow his release, and I laid him 
 down as easy as I could. Strange isn t it how we 
 feel they can keep on being hurt, though we know 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 61 
 
 their bodies are as they are? And then I remem 
 bered I must see if he had anything I could send back 
 to Annie, and as I put out my hand to him again 
 something obliterated me and I d got the earth be 
 hind me, too. 
 
 "Now you know how it was, how an apparently 
 dead Boche at my left had come to himself and potted 
 me, and you know of course I wasn t dead because 
 I m here now. But I did have a narrow squeak of 
 it, as they d tell you in hospital if they had time to 
 remember also-rans like me. So far as this world 
 goes, I was dead. I had gone out of my body and 
 into some other state of existence, just as sure s 
 you re here in this. I had a sensation of lightness, 
 of rising, and of all my faculties being keener than 
 they d ever been. I seemed to be thinking of a 
 dozen things at once and with a clearness, a power, 
 that was even in itself a mode of action. Don t 
 you see? I might not have my hands or feet or 
 eyes to work with or a heart to beat, but I was per 
 fectly conscious that I could do things. And I 
 thought of Annie with a sort of regret that yet wasn t 
 sad, even though now she d lost us both and there 
 was nobody but the road commissioner to stand 
 between her and life yes, I actually saw the road 
 commissioner as I lay there on the field of France, 
 with his pepper and salt suit and the gold tooth I 
 always suspected him of being proud of and above 
 every stratum of feeling was the certainty that I d 
 got to hang on to Hugo till we could sit down and 
 talk it over md sowehow Arrange things for her. 
 
62 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 And though I had that sensation of lightness, I was 
 apparently there on the ground, only we were stand 
 ing and we faced each other and I was the first to 
 speak. 
 
 " Well, old chap, said I, how goes it? 
 
 "And we seemed to shake hands, only I didn t feel 
 the grip of his; but I knew he was tremendously glad 
 to see me, and his voice sounded perfectly familiar 
 when he answered. 
 
 " I suppose, said he, we re dead. 
 
 "That was it. We were dead. It had been so 
 far from my thoughts as anything I was likely to 
 suffer, that particular day, that I actually hadn t 
 known it. He began to peer round in exactly the 
 way he used to when we were alive, and I laughed. 
 Being dead wasn t going to be so bad if we were 
 sufficiently ourselves to chum together in the old 
 way. Though all the time I was conscious of some 
 thing that tried to draw me away from him or him 
 away from me. That s a commonplace, you know. 
 I ve heard lots of chaps speak of it that got knocked 
 out and then had to come back. It was so strong 
 that I felt breathless as I combated it, and gasped 
 once or twice to get my breath, because I d even 
 thought of a little joke. 
 
 "Evidently we re to be separated, I said. I m 
 going to heaven. So you can draw your own con 
 clusions. 
 
 "How did it look round us? I forgot I hadn t 
 told you. Well, it simply didn t look any way at 
 all, any more than it does at sea when the fogs shut 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 63 
 
 down and the horn is groaning. And there wasn t 
 any horn, not a sound in that eerie place unless we 
 chose to speak. And Hugo did speak, and with such 
 a relief in his voice that I knew he d been as lost as I. 
 
 " The fog is lifting, he said. 
 
 "It was, or dispersing itself, thinner at first, then 
 in little separate spirals like pipe smoke, and then, 
 with a rush, it went. And we were in the most 
 unbelievable place you ever saw with your mind s 
 eye, that is for it was like no other place mapped 
 out or charted. It was a place as big I can t tell 
 you how big, for it seemed illimitable. And that 
 you must take my word for, because you can t see 
 how we could get the idea of tremendous space 
 when there were so many trees to break it. But 
 they didn t break it. They just gave the impression 
 of more and more miles and more and more trees. 
 
 * Come, said I, we ve got to get somewhere out 
 of this. 
 
 "I spoke with the more decision because, mind 
 you, I was determined not to leave Hugo, and I was 
 conscious all the time of the force that was trying 
 to pull me away from him. 
 
 4 * Come, it seemed to say, his way lies here. 
 Yours doesn t. Break off and leave him. 
 
 "And because I had an inward certainty that the 
 phrase about leaving him might have been rounded 
 out * leave him to his fate I was all the more deter 
 mined not to go. It was partly because I was fond 
 of him. The old days were pulling at me. And 
 then I was morally bound not to fail Annie. Some- 
 
64 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 how or other I d got to give him back to her, if we 
 weren t both in here for keeps. I wanted Annie 
 myself precisely as much as I ever had, but in that 
 place something I don t know what it was fell 
 away from me and I was ready to stand back and 
 let the other man walk over me to his own. If he 
 could: but there was something in the place that 
 put a spell on you and decreed you should walk 
 only its way. And when I said that last I told you, 
 that we d got to get out, he agreed with me, though 
 I don t know whether he spoke, and we plunged 
 into the undergrowth among the trees in a direction 
 that seemed to lead to a kind of path. The air was 
 green, oozy, damp, not exactly the air you find in 
 tropical forests, but as if there was intention in it. 
 You ll think I m daffy, but it wasn t as if the trees 
 were luxuriating naturally in that wet medium, but 
 as if it were something they controlled and were 
 breathing it out to choke and slay. 
 
 "And when my breath and my heart failed me and 
 I stopped to wipe my dripping face, I looked round 
 me and what I saw, though it ought to have been 
 beautiful to me, was terrifying in the extreme. 
 For they were fruit trees in full bloom. They were 
 low-growing, so that their laced branches made a 
 roof I could have touched by stretching up my arm, 
 and their brown twigs were heavy with crowded 
 petals, pink and white, and with hardly a leaf to 
 break their blended continuity. And the fragrance 
 of them, the heaviness of it that sickened you with 
 its very sweetness and lay in your lungs like a drug! 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 65 
 
 I looked at Hugo and I saw he was frightened. That 
 is what he must have seen in me, pale fear reflected 
 each to each. 
 
 " Trees! I said. My voice sounded faint and 
 unfamiliar to me. It might have been death I 
 said or murder or any of those words weighted 
 with an awful inheritance from countless tragedies. 
 (Am I talking rot? Maybe. You see I ve thought 
 for ever so long how I d write this out if I could. 
 But I can t. I can t. I lived it, once for all. That 
 was my part. Anything I could say would sound 
 like a penny whistle.) And Hugo, in the same kind 
 of voice echoed back Trees ! and there we stood star 
 ing, as if there was no spell we could think of like that 
 same word. And in a minute Hugo looked across 
 me to one side where the light was growing a trifle 
 brighter, and he gave a cry I never shall forget so 
 long as I live. It was like a woman s scream, and 
 a man s voice in a woman s scream is something to 
 remember. 
 
 "What s that? said he, that over there 
 Then he stopped and cried out again before he went 
 on. It s like the road from Roye. 
 
 "It was then I began to understand, and I cried 
 out at him: 
 
 "Were you one of the devils that cut down the 
 trees? 
 
 "And all the time my eyes, like his, were on that 
 further space where there were no blossoms and no 
 interlacing boughs : only maimed and mangled torsos 
 such as I had seen that day. And then Hugo began 
 
66 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 to cry out in an awful abandonment, sobbing, too, 
 as if he were beseeching something as if he found 
 himself helpless and the most terrific power that 
 could be imagined stood over him with its most 
 terrific weapon, and it was raised to fall. I never 
 before realized what it is to see a man in every 
 last nerve and sinew of him mad with fear. He 
 began to beg, and justify himself all in one. 
 
 : Why, he said, what s a tree? If it were a 
 man they ve all been killing men the French 
 and English, look at them! they ve killed me. And 
 I ve killed, too. I know I have. But you don t 
 punish me for that. You punish me for sawing 
 down a tree or two. I had to, don t you see? It 
 was orders, and common sense, too. What s the 
 crime of sawing down a tree? 
 
 "And I understood. He was in hell, a hell of 
 trees, and I was with him because I wouldn t let 
 him go. For all the time, mind you, the power that 
 forbade me to stay with him was tugging at me and 
 beating in my ears, Give him up, give him up. 
 And I wouldn t give him up, and gripped tighter on 
 his hand. By this time he had gone to pieces, over 
 his entire body, and fallen to his knees and still I 
 held his hand and tried to drag him up by it. And 
 he did get up and turned about obliquely toward the 
 naked torsos of the ruined wood and took a step mis 
 erably and then another and I took mine with him. 
 
 " I ve got to go, he kept saying, and now he 
 sobbed without any restraint or shame. That s 
 the way I ve got to go. 
 
THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 67 
 
 "And as we stumbled on in that thick sweet air 
 oh, a million apple trees in bloom shut up like con 
 centrated poison in a flask couldn t have been 
 stronger I understood that the trees were unfriendly 
 to us. That broke my heart. Trees! the patient, 
 generous friend of man they were unfriendly. I 
 felt as if God Himself had forsaken me. And an 
 other delicately exquisite bit of torture piled up on 
 this last. The trees were moving, too. They ran 
 beside us, they pursued us, they waved their branches 
 it was their own volition, mind you there was 
 no wind they outran us and beckoned us on, they 
 pelted us with blooms that hurt like ice-pellets and 
 suffocated like wool. It seemed millions of years 
 that we were running for we ran fast now, as if 
 we spurned the undergrowth, ran through the air 
 but never, never could we outrun the racing trees. 
 And one fear in me was stronger than all other fears 
 would they, somehow, at last speak in some arboreal 
 fashion? Would they charge Hugo with his crime 
 and me for my unfriendliness to them and all my 
 inherited past in staying with him? And finally 
 the maimed victims neared us, as if they might be 
 running to meet us, and Hugo spoke with that small 
 sobbing breath he had: 
 
 " It is the road from Roye. That s the way I ve 
 got to go. 
 
 "How far had he got to go? And where would 
 the road of torment lead him at the last? And now 
 he stopped short and looked at me. In that minute, 
 from that look of his, I knew he loved me, that he 
 
68 THE EMPIRE OF DEATH 
 
 saw what I d been trying to do. The trees stopped, 
 too. I had a foolish fancy they were giving him an 
 instant s breathing space just for that look, that 
 look of human kindliness and sacrifice. And he 
 spoke precisely as he might have spoken in those 
 first days in New Hampshire or in Cambridge, when 
 we sat with a table between us and smoked and re 
 arranged the world. 
 
 " Good-by, old chap, said he. Good-by. 
 "But I m with you, I called out to him as if 
 there d already begun to be widening space between 
 us. I won t go. 
 
 "And with a quick pull, as if he d got to do it that 
 way or not at all, because I d grip the harder if he 
 did it otherwise, he snatched his hand out of mine, 
 and it was dark before me, and something kind oh 
 you don t know what beneficent destinies there are 
 till you ve been where Hugo and I were it seemed 
 to lift me and carry me to where there was breath 
 and light. 
 
 "And to go back a minute, to the kind destinies. 
 You know the Furies have another name. And I 
 can t help thinking that when they d got done scourg 
 ing him through his wilderness of murdered trees, 
 he d see their other faces and call that name, and 
 they d answer him and smile." 
 
 "And you," said I. "You were in hospital?" 
 "Yes. I was in hospital. And you tell Annie 
 I saw Hugo, saw him die, quickly, without pain, 
 and that yes, you say it! that he s safe." 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 ON an early June morning in London, Grace 
 Harwich stood by a pillar box at the West End. She 
 had dropped in an enclosure, and she now put out her 
 hand again to the slit. This time it was for another 
 envelope, somewhat thickish and blue-gray, and she 
 tucked the corner in with a delicate concern that 
 might have led you to think she was an awkward per 
 son aware of her disabilities and patiently trying to get 
 the best of them. You would have said: "There is a 
 most charming young lady, evidently, from her dress 
 and her carriage, an American, mailing her letters 
 home." 
 
 But Gilbert Mills, the young man in the limousine 
 that had been trailing her and now as softly stopped, 
 was keeping an eye on the envelope, not in any 
 cursory way, but as if it held the news he feared or 
 longed for. He stepped out of the car, took one 
 stride that brought him to her elbow before she had 
 time to do more than wince, and his hand fell on her 
 wrist. 
 
 "You little sneak!" said he. 
 
 Grace looked at him in a perfect silence. She had 
 not been quick enough to poke the incriminating 
 oblong in, and the hand upon her wrist had with 
 drawn it from the box. Unconsciously her thumb 
 and finger grasped it tighter, and a viscid fluid 
 
70 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 trailed out of the envelope and made a little 
 meandering rivulet on the front of her gray dress, 
 dripping thence to her perfect shoe. She had trained 
 rigorously for this adventure, and the first article 
 of her code had been that she must never scream. 
 So she stood looking, with a grave and questioning 
 composure, out of violet-blue eyes, at Gilbert who, 
 having drawn his brows together and set his square 
 jaw as if he meant to subjugate by every masculine 
 device of facial power, also looked at her. He was 
 an American, her own countryman, and she knew 
 he loved her so completely that she made no doubt 
 of his unfailing concurrence in her aims. As she 
 had once expressed it to him, he really did see things 
 her way. Then she had elaborated somewhat. For 
 she knew, as he did, that he wasn t merely, in an 
 acquiescence to her charm or an involuntary sex- 
 homage for the purpose of making it his own, seeing 
 her way. They actually did look upon present life 
 and the larger future with the same demands. They 
 were safe in knowing they were to be man and wife, 
 although that finished conclusion in the mind of 
 each had not yet been shared. Gilbert had only 
 just come into his luck, and until he had he would 
 not ask, and Grace had waited with the utmost tran 
 quillity, being only a little over twenty and having 
 adventurous things to occupy her. 
 
 Gilbert still held her wrist and answered the clear 
 interrogation of her eyes with that savage and dom 
 inating stare. But it did not dominate. She merely 
 inquired, in a conversational tone: 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 71 
 
 "What are you grabbing me for?" 
 
 "What," said Gilbert, "are you doing to the inside 
 of that pillar box? " 
 
 A faint smile lifted the corners of her mouth. It 
 was the lightest little signal from the woman in her 
 to the man in him, and Gilbert saw it and approved. 
 
 "Why, you know," said she. "The same thing 
 we ve done before." 
 
 "I knew They d been doing it," said he, with a 
 comprehensive jerk of the head, meant to indicate 
 the entire female contingent of the British empire. 
 "But what have you got to do with it? " 
 
 Her unflinching eyes held obvious reproach. 
 
 "Why, Gil," said she, "what did Lafayette have 
 to do with it when he came over to us and fought our 
 battles?" 
 
 Gilbert lifted one foot and set it down with the 
 emphasis of a stamp. That was all he could do as a 
 natural expression of feeling, because he had begun to 
 remember his own plan of campaign. The sight of 
 an American girl playing rough house with an English 
 pillar box had put it temporarily out of his head, and 
 now he called upon himself to be not so much man as 
 woman in guile and firmness fit to cope with the 
 young desperado before him. She raised her brows 
 with a look at once mandatory and pleading. 
 
 "You re holding my wrist awfully tight," said she. 
 
 But he didn t loose it. 
 
 "Grace," said he, "I ve got a message for you." 
 
 "For me? From uncle? Oh, piffle! I sha n t 
 go home. Auntie cabled the minute she found Mrs, 
 
72 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 Irvington had got to leave me unchaperoned. But I 
 wouldn t go. Of course I wouldn t. Do you think 
 I m likely to quit my English sisters in bondage 
 when I could " 
 
 "When you could put molasses or what is the 
 infernal stuff? on your skirt? Well, whatever it is, 
 so long as you could stick up love letters and checks 
 and make butter-slides down Asquith s stairs and 
 hide gooseberry tarts in his bed and play the devil 
 generally?" 
 
 He had, since he left the University at least, been 
 leaning on the well-founded conviction that he was 
 a clever young man, as clever as need be, even at this 
 time of competitive scrambling and sophomoric 
 recipes for the way it is "done " ; but now he bit his lip 
 in a savage self-reproach. He was not being nearly 
 so clever as he had intended. Grace had the ad 
 vantage of having taken her limitations into account 
 and steadily allowing for them. He hadn t realized 
 he had any limitations at all. 
 
 "But Gil," said she with the same mild dignity, 
 though a slight twitching of the brow was meant to 
 remind him that her wrist did indeed hurt her in 
 creasingly, "we are simply convincing the nation that 
 we are a power in it." 
 
 "What s the matter with staying at home and 
 convincing your own nation?" said Gilbert. "I 
 don t mean by butter-slides and stealing knockers " 
 
 "The need is greater here," she said gravely. 
 "You really do hurt me very much." 
 
 Somehow now it seemed as if the hurt referred not 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 73 
 
 only to the appealing wrist but to the discovery that 
 he did not see things as she did. She seemed to 
 break out, at one uncalculated bound, from the en 
 closure of her determined action. 
 
 "O Gil," said she meltingly, "I thought you were 
 one of us." 
 
 And he was melted, chiefly because he saw this 
 was not artifice. She was indeed hurt to the soul to 
 suspect a flaw in the oneness of their aims. 
 
 "I am," said he. "If you mean votes for women, 
 of course I m with you. Do you suppose I d go back 
 on mother and grandmother? to say nothing of you 
 and the trend of things. Didn t I march in that 
 infernal procession, and didn t I help you put up 
 balloons on Palm Beach? Well, I should say! I ve 
 disgraced myself plenty, to prove it." 
 
 " Thank you, Gil," said she faintly. " You ve an aw 
 ful grip, haven t you? Is that Treherne in the car?" 
 
 She was indicating the leather-colored chauffeur 
 who sat with his gaze set discreetly forward, waiting 
 in a perfect stolidity, yet still, even to the casual gaze, 
 with an air of tense readiness, as if he needed only the 
 first syllable of the word to "let her out" and cover 
 the distance from Land s End to John o* Groat s. 
 The still presence of Treherne and the certainty of 
 his readiness brought Gilbert with a shock to a recog 
 nition of the way he was fumbling his own job. He 
 summoned to his face a beautiful smile. He did it 
 with the feeling of signaling wildly for reinforcements, 
 and was grateful to his muscles when they answered 
 him. 
 
74 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 " Grace," said he, " I m all there. I m simply glad 
 to see you. It s made me daffy. Had to take it out 
 in kidding you. Now I m in dead earnest. I ve 
 got a message for you." 
 
 "Auntie?" she asked, now with a faint concern. 
 "Nothing s happened?" 
 
 "No, not auntie. I ve had a conference with two 
 of your leaders, Hang it, Grace! I m not going to 
 mention names, even at this hour, in the open street. 
 Jump into the car and we ll tool round a little and 
 I ll tell you about it there." 
 
 "Surely," said she; and then he did open his hand 
 and free the ill-used wrist. She looked down at it 
 ruefully and gave it a rub with the other hand. 
 But she did not intermit her delicate grasp of the 
 envelope. 
 
 " Here," said Gilbert, "give me that." He plucked 
 it from her, did it up in the morning paper Tre- 
 herne respectfully proffered, and tossed it into the 
 car. "Let the devilish thing leak there all it wants 
 to." 
 
 Grace put her foot, in its slightly sticky shoe, in 
 after it, and gave her pretty hop of pleasurable ex 
 citement to the seat. Gilbert knew that spring. 
 It always meant, "We re off," and caught him in 
 the throat because it seemed to indicate a longer 
 journey to the peal of bells. They were seated now, 
 and the car, as if Treherne had whispered the one 
 magic word, shot forward, gliding on glass. 
 
 "He knows," said Gilbert. He had taken out his 
 handkerchief and was rubbing at her skirt in a frown- 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 75 
 
 ing care. "Look what you ve done to your pretty 
 dress!" 
 
 She laughed, a little burst of pleasure like the top 
 most drops of a fountain where they are colored by 
 the sun. 
 
 " Now tell," she said. " You went to headquarters 
 here. What for? You had my address." 
 
 "I went for news," said Gilbert. "Don t forget 
 I ve got my own paper now. I really intended to ask 
 for a set of articles on the situation, and I wanted a 
 prominent person to do them. And then, because 
 I was an American, she spoke of other Americans, 
 and you especially." 
 
 "Gil! What did she say?" 
 
 "Why, there s but one thing she could say. She 
 thought your Votes-for- Women shower in Saint 
 Paul s an admirable coup." 
 
 "Yes," said Grace modestly, "it was rather well 
 managed, I think myself." 
 
 She sat forward in her seat and gazed at the road 
 running so hard to meet them. Gilbert knew that 
 look of high excitement. She was happy, and Tre- 
 herne was speeding. For a time she had not noticed 
 that, but now the motion madness touched her 
 brain, and she turned to Gilbert. There was no 
 apprehension in her face: merely wonder. 
 
 ** Well," said she, "we re going some." 
 
 Gilbert apparently didn t hear. 
 
 "So she asked me," he continued, "if I thought 
 you were game for a big job." 
 
 "She did? Oh, that s tremendous! That s the 
 
76 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 most amazing compliment I ever had in all my 
 life." 
 
 Gilbert remembered a few he had handed her, 
 colossal pieces of sterling value, he had thought, and 
 swallowed. 
 
 "She asked me," he continued in a rush, "if a 
 certain person we ll mention no names " 
 
 "But we could," said she, wide-eyed, "here in the 
 car. Treherne won t listen." 
 
 "It s a good precaution," said Gilbert firmly, 
 "to mention no names anywhere, even if you re alone 
 at midday on an open prairie. It s an excellent 
 habit. It gets you into the way of being all there." 
 
 " You re right," said she. " Go on." 
 
 "She asked me if a certain person now in France in 
 hiding " 
 
 " Oh ! " screamed Grace. " Is she there? " 
 
 Gilbert nodded. 
 
 "If that person decided to charter a boat and come 
 over and land in Cornwall " 
 
 "Like Boney!" Her eyes ran over with wild 
 light. She looked like youth and hope incarnate on 
 its brave adventure. "Like the invading Kaiser. 
 But she can t land except incog. She can t. There 
 are a thousand eyes out, and a million regulations 
 got up for German Willie. They d spot her in an 
 instant." 
 
 "That s the point," said Gilbert. "She s not 
 going to be spotted. She s coming to a little Cornish 
 port, to lie off the shore and signal. And we re going 
 out at midnight, you and I and Treherne, in a sail- 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 77 
 
 boat, and bring her in. And the news will filter 
 round through Cornwall Treherne sees to that 
 and the Cornish women are all primed to rally to the 
 standard, and by George! you ll break every window 
 in Cornwall." 
 
 Grace had turned upon him, her face a bright mask 
 of eager wonder. 
 
 "I never heard of anything so absolutely magnifi 
 cent in all my life," she said. "But why does she 
 take me?" 
 
 "Because the whole adventure is to be made as 
 spectacular as possible. Think how the women of 
 Paris marched to Versailles. Wouldn t it have been 
 still more dramatic then if they had had a leader in a 
 woman of another country a woman who simply 
 had to come into it because their wrongs were so 
 unspeakable? Same reason that our fugitive comes 
 over and lands in a little boat when she might dis 
 guise herself and go to any port. The adventure! 
 Consider the adventure ! That delicate woman dares 
 to land at midnight, like smuggled goods, and an 
 American girl meets her and leads the forces on to 
 Victory." 
 
 Grace threaded her hands together in her lap and 
 strained them while the knuckles blanched. She was 
 ecstatically serious now, like a sacrificial victim who 
 believes in the gods that slaughter him. And Tre 
 herne was speeding. Gilbert pulled out his letter 
 case and drew a paper from it. 
 
 "Here," said he, "read your orders. Her signa 
 ture!" 
 
78 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 Grace took the paper and spread it before her daz 
 zled eyes. It was laconic, to the extent of five terse 
 lines, and it was signed by the name of her loved 
 leader. She reverently folded it. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "it s her signature. But Gil, 
 how fast we re going!" 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Gilbert. His tone conveyed a 
 hollow nonchalance. "We re outside London. In 
 fact, we re on the road to Guilford. That s a part 
 of it." She had accepted his authority, and that, 
 while it moved him warmly, brought also its prick of 
 helpless self-reproach. " Yes," said he, " we re on the 
 road to Cornwall." 
 
 Grace rose in her seat with the surprise of it, but 
 the motion, gliding as it was, threw her back again. 
 It was not so much, indeed, the motion, as the swift 
 vision of the road running to meet her and being ex 
 tinguished as it came. "Sit still," the road seemed 
 to say. "You and I are in the hands of a greater 
 than we. It is my lot to run to you and be cast be 
 hind; it is yours to leave me lying there like a dis 
 carded ribbon." Then, sitting, she did cry out: 
 
 "I can t go to Cornwall like this." 
 
 "Not when you ve got your marching orders?" 
 inquired Gilbert sternly. "What kind of soldiers 
 are you women anyway?" 
 
 She plucked up a doubting spirit. 
 
 "I ve got to have some clothes." 
 
 "Your clothes are all right. I saw Marie this 
 morning and she gave me a suitcase. It s behind 
 there." 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 79 
 
 "My Marie?" 
 
 "Your maid." 
 
 "While I was out?" 
 
 "While you were putting molasses in the pillar 
 box." 
 
 "But why not have consulted me?" 
 
 "You weren t there, I tell you. You were gluing 
 up the correspondence of the British Empire and the 
 world." 
 
 "Why not have telephoned in advance?" 
 
 "Now see here, Grace," said Gilbert, "if you re 
 going to take orders, you can t question em. You re 
 talking too much. She you know whom I mean " 
 
 Grace nodded. It was her loved leader. 
 
 "She has given me a perfectly clear plan of ac 
 tion. I may not agree with it. I may not see why 
 the deuce she should be so much of a martinet." 
 
 "Oh, I see," said Grace. Her loyalty had been 
 woven without the break of a thread. " It has to be. 
 Think of the thousands she s in command of. I see 
 perfectly." 
 
 "Very well then." He blinked his eyes two or 
 three times, as if the relief of that were almost too 
 unexpected to be borne. " Then I ve only to tell you 
 that I m carrying out instructions to the letter. 
 You and I are to drive like the devil to Penreath." 
 
 " Why," said Grace, "that s where your cottage is." 
 
 "Yes. I haven t been there this summer, but 
 it s in order waiting for us." 
 
 "And wasn t it Penreath where you got Treherne? " 
 
 "Yes. Treherne s sister is in the cottage now. 
 
80 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 She ll give us plain food and act as your maid in a 
 way while you re there." 
 
 "Is she," Grace asked with a pretty simplicity that 
 challenged him to be as direct with her, "is she an 
 older woman a widow or anything?" 
 
 "No," said Gilbert, with robust imperviousness. 
 "No, Wenna s never been married. She s about 
 nineteen." 
 
 "But Gil," said she, "we can t stay there together, 
 you and I, with Treherne and that girl. Auntie d 
 raise the roof." 
 
 "Great Csesar!" said Gilbert, now meeting her 
 glance with an impact of amazement equal to her 
 own, "you don t mean to tell me you can stick up 
 letter-boxes and heckle the Prime Minister of Eng 
 land and then cringe before the out- worn conventions 
 of the past?" 
 
 Gilbert sat the straighter after he had said that. 
 He thought it rather good. And so did she. 
 
 "I m sorry," she owned humbly. "I was only 
 thinking of auntie." 
 
 "I wonder if Lafayette thought of auntie when he 
 set sail for America?" inquired Gilbert caustically; 
 and she owned that she supposed not. 
 
 Now that she fairly knew her road and the adven 
 ture unrolled itself, a responsive excitement took 
 possession of her. She sat straight and sniffed the 
 air. Gilbert thought she sat as buoyantly as if she 
 might spurn the flying car and take to wings. He 
 had never loved his car so well, valiant dear thing 
 without fault or flaw, as if it had pledged itself to that 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 81 
 
 day s run. Yet throughout he felt he was denying 
 Grace the pleasures of the road, delights her eyes 
 besought him for. As they slipped through Win 
 chester, she recalled to him that other summer when 
 he and she, bulwarked by auntie, had eaten straw 
 berries in the Itchin meadows; but though she knew 
 his mind was one with hers, he would not stop. In 
 the middle of the day they ate delicious things from 
 the hamper, and Treherne, accepting his sandwiches 
 as if they were cartridges for another round, stoked 
 himself hurriedly and drove on. Grace had caught 
 the infection of it now. The madness of speed ran in 
 her nerves. 
 
 She hardly spoke, and when the air changed to the 
 softness off the moors and then the tang of salt, she 
 breathed it in as if to hearten her for the predestined 
 act. She looked very serious and, to Gilbert, beau 
 tiful. She had taken off her hat, and her thick 
 light hair lay disordered above her brows. Through 
 the aura of the coming quest she was more the woman 
 than the girl. This grave reflectiveness, new in her 
 face, was maternal even, and brought deep thoughts 
 to birth in him. When the coolness of the afternoon 
 came on, he put a fur coat round her, and she re 
 ceived it with a smile. She had done, he saw, with 
 questioning. She had accepted her appointed task, 
 and with it the inevitable mystery. 
 
 It was damp and dark when they ran along Cornish 
 lanes and stopped at a cottage set by itself in space. 
 The windows were alight, and Wenna, sweet as pink 
 thrift, stood in the door, shading a candle with a 
 
82 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 careful hand. Grace, under the braided spell of air 
 and speed and mystery, smiled at the girl as if they 
 had been old friends. 
 
 "O Wenna," she said drowsily, out of the narcot 
 ism of that windy rush, "just hear the sea!" 
 
 Then Wenna brought food to a dim fragrant cham 
 ber, and Grace ate and hurried into the white bed 
 by the latticed window to the east. 
 
 She slept sweetly, and when she woke late in the 
 morning, lay for a time and loved the air of Cornwall 
 on her cheek. The cottage awoke presently to the 
 sound of Wenna, who brought salt water, and Grace, 
 uprising, knotted her long hair and asked for a se 
 cluded pool where she could dip. Wenna decisively 
 said no. There was no pool, and Mr. Mills had sent 
 up this bucket quite freshly filled by himself, for a 
 sponge. He was waiting breakfast in the garden. 
 Grace made a quick toilet and at the end looked in 
 the glass, approving. Here was rich color and noble 
 line. She looked as fit and splendid as she felt. 
 Her loved leader had done well to summon her. 
 Whatever the task demanded, she had for it the mad 
 devotion, the muscle and the nerve. Just here she 
 went to the window, and found that although the air 
 came in buoyantly, it was through latticed iron. 
 The glazed window opened inward. The diamonds 
 were firm. She shook them for no reason and 
 then smiled. She was balking, it seemed, at the 
 very thought of bars. 
 
 In the room below a room all sweet Cornish air 
 through iron-latticed panes Wenna was waiting. 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 83 
 
 4Tv rhis way, miss," said Wenna. 
 
 She indicated an open door, and through this 
 Grace walked into a garden where Gilbert met her. 
 She looked at him and found him, with that vital 
 throb of pleasure in him responsive to her own im 
 perious youth, as fit and splendid as the girl that met 
 her from the glass. Then she looked at the garden. 
 This was a little paradise shut in by a high brick 
 wall; it had flagged walks through bright luxuriance, 
 and in a shady corner a round table with the break 
 fast things. Grace opened her mouth to commend it 
 all, but she said, out of a desultory wonder at the 
 bottom of her mind: 
 
 " Gil, aren t your windows queer? " 
 
 " Queer ? They re all right." 
 
 "They re barred. The pattern s in diamonds, 
 but they re perfectly tight. Burglar-proof is that 
 it?" 
 
 "Oh," said Gilbert, "so they are. We ll take a 
 look at em, after breakfast, when we re fortified." 
 
 Wenna came then with a tray, and Treherne with 
 another. It was an admirable breakfast, suited to 
 hungry youth. When it was over, Grace, exhilarated 
 by the day, the comfort of a well-used body, and the 
 man s enhancing presence, looked at him across the 
 table and smiled in a way to indicate her readiness. 
 
 "Now," said she. 
 
 Gilbert looked suddenly haggard and very grave. 
 He folded his napkin seriously, the motion of one 
 gaining time, and dumped it, as if it represented a 
 conclusion. 
 
84 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 "After they take these things," he said. He 
 seemed to crave that slight delay. 
 
 Treherne presently cleared the table, and then 
 Gilbert, as if he had been waiting only to lean his 
 arm upon it, began, tapping slightly with his fingers: 
 
 "I ve been lying to you." 
 
 Now for a long minute there was nothing but the 
 rote of the sea and the delicate insistence of the 
 breeze, less a whisper than a touch. Grace stared at 
 him. 
 
 "That note of instructions," he said. "It wasn t 
 from her at all." 
 
 "Not from her?" 
 
 "No." 
 
 "Her name was signed." 
 
 "I signed it." 
 
 "You forged her name?" 
 
 "Yes," said Gilbert. He was answering her ques 
 tions in a leaden quiet, as if they were what he had 
 expected, in some form, and he had to go through with 
 the heavy task. 
 
 "Gil," said she, "will you explain yourself." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said he at once. "Shall I do it as it 
 comes, or will you ask me questions?" 
 
 "I haven t any questions," she said, as grave as he. 
 "I m too puzzled." 
 
 "It goes back," he said, "to what you ve been do 
 ing here in England. I ve kept pretty accurate track 
 of you ever since you wrote me you were a militant. 
 When I couldn t stand it any longer, I came over. 
 And here I am." 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 85 
 
 She looked really alarmed now. A spark had 
 come into her eyes, and her anxious face besought 
 him. 
 
 "Gil," she said, "don t tell me you ve gone back 
 on suffrage." 
 
 "Oh, no," said he, "I couldn t. I should if I were 
 an Englishman, of course; that is, I should be mighty 
 near it. But for our women oh, no, I ve not 
 changed." 
 
 "Then what is it? Is it because you don t like me 
 to do things that are conspicuous?" 
 
 Gilbert looked up at her now, brightening in a 
 whimsical response. 
 
 "You ve always been conspicuous, dear," he said. 
 "There s nothing else visible when you re round. 
 But now you ve sunk into the criminal class, you see, 
 the conspicuousness isn t because you re so charming. 
 It s because you re conspicuous." 
 
 "Gilbert," said she, "do you want to know what 
 I think? You re crazy." 
 
 " No," said he, "I m not. I m simply worried." 
 
 "About me?" 
 
 "All of you. You chiefly, of course, because I 
 thought I was going to marry you." 
 
 " Well, but " She stopped so short on the word 
 that he knew she was about to add, "Aren t you?" 
 and that he could not answer. 
 
 "You re discouraging me frightfully," he said, 
 "all of you. Don t you see what you re proving? 
 You ve reverted. You ve gone back to the oldest 
 type of all, the woman that cries until she gets it, 
 
86 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 that won t let any peace settle on the house until 
 she is given her way. The individual hysteria of 
 the spoiled child has culminated in the hysteria of 
 a class. That type used to say to its husband or its 
 lover, I ll cry all night if you don t back down. 
 That s what you re saying in concert to the English 
 nation." 
 
 "Gilbert," said she, "do you mean to tell me you 
 don t think it s of infinite importance for us to have 
 the vote?" 
 
 Gilbert answered wearily. 
 
 "I think it s of infinite importance for you to be 
 civilized enough to deserve the vote and then to 
 have it. But I shouldn t admit any woman to a 
 finger in the pie who would go out and stick up letter 
 boxes and call it a Holy War. I should be afraid 
 to. As soon as she doesn t get her measures passed, 
 what is she going to do? She s going to say, Sisters, 
 here s another call to smash things. Come on. 
 
 "It s war. Don t you know it s war? " 
 
 "Oh, no, it isn t," said Gilbert dolefully. "I ve 
 tried to make myself think so, but I can t. War is 
 training yourself to be the best man and going out 
 and fighting like a man. It isn t sneaking round 
 destroying private property." 
 
 "But we let ourselves be caught." Her cheeks 
 were scarlet now. He glanced up at her and thought 
 he would not willingly do it again. She seemed 
 literally to blaze. He might take fire himself at her 
 fine passion. "We glory in getting caught." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "and then you don t take your 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 87 
 
 punishment like men. You stop eating and call it 
 sport." 
 
 "Am I to be shut up here in Penreath?" she in 
 quired, in a tone of ominous composure. 
 
 "For a while." 
 
 "Is that why the windows are barred? " 
 
 "Yes. That s why." 
 
 "Is that why you ve built a brick wall round the 
 garden? I notice the bricks are new." 
 
 "Yes. That s why." 
 
 "Have Wenna and her brother been corrupted?" 
 
 "They won t help you." 
 
 "How long is this state of things to last?" 
 
 "Until we have come to terms." 
 
 "Until you have made me promise things?" 
 
 "Until we mutually decide on your future course, 
 and what our relations are to be." 
 
 She was silent. He did not look at her, but he was 
 aware that she was deliberating on her next move, as 
 a captive might study a long time on the quick turn 
 that should free her wrists. 
 
 "What are your terms?" she inquired finally, in a 
 perfectly unmoved voice. He saw she had called 
 upon her emergency training, and he admired her 
 for the speed and coolness of her tactics. 
 
 "What I should like to do," he said, in an attempt 
 at similar composure, "is to have you marry me, 
 after whatever formality of residence and special 
 license they require, and sail with me for home." 
 
 "Oh!" Her voice took on something of an edge 
 here, and he did wince, "I fancied from some- 
 
88 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 thing you said, a minute ago, that I d ceased to be 
 eligible." 
 
 "Of course," said he, avoiding the edge and feeling 
 a droll relief that it really had not cut him badly, 
 "that would be after we had come to terms. You 
 would have agreed with me that the only road to 
 eligibility for marriage to any man would be through 
 returning to the old code of private honor." 
 
 "Gil," she flashed, with a touch of temper very 
 pretty and beguiling, "you must have been a 
 long time getting this up. You re talking like a 
 book." 
 
 If he knew himself caught, he did not show it. 
 
 "You see," he continued, "I ve some tremendously 
 keen ideas on marriage. You know what they are. 
 And I shouldn t marry a woman who was a criminal, 
 or who could be incited by even the most under 
 standable form of hysteria to criminal acts." 
 
 She got up and made him a low courtesy. Wenna, 
 watching incidentally while she did her kitchen work, 
 almost broke a dish. 
 
 "I shall try," said Grace, "to bear my rejection 
 with fortitude." 
 
 " Don t be a silly. Sit down, dear." 
 
 She obeyed him because she was too curious to go. 
 Besides, she liked it. The instinct of battle ran 
 thrillingly through her, and the question where it 
 was to end was nothing to the charm of its still 
 continuing. 
 
 "If we were savages on an island," said Gilbert, 
 "I don t suppose I should mind your indulging your 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 89 
 
 instincts once in a while. I might indulge my own 
 and hit you over the head with a cocoanut. But in 
 Salem! I couldn t live in Salem with a wife out of 
 the aboriginal past. I couldn t practice law knowing 
 I might go home any noon and find her and the cook 
 and the housemaid all breaking the furniture to 
 gether." 
 
 "Don t chaff," she said, frowning. "We are talk 
 ing about serious matters." 
 
 "I mean it," said Gilbert. "If you cut down the 
 cook s wages, the cook, if she s got a saltspoon of 
 logic in her nut, will hack your furniture. For she ll 
 remember you were the celebrated Lafayette Grace 
 who, in the year of our Lord 1913, hacked into Eng 
 land. And if I don t vote as my wife wants me to, 
 my militant wife will cut up my cravats and dint my 
 razors and starve herself. I m not being funny, 
 Grace. I mean it. You are the only girl in the 
 world for me. I d rather marry you than own a foot 
 ball team. But unless you get back your sense of 
 honor, I m afraid to." 
 
 While the warmest of his declarations had caressed 
 her she had leaned toward him, lips apart, eyes 
 misty, ingenuously expectant. But he did not look 
 at her. She collected herself and spoke reflectively. 
 
 " Sense of honor ! Who lied to me, to trick me into 
 coming here?" 
 
 "Oh, I did," he said. "Deliberately. You re 
 outside the line, you know. You ve been sneaking. 
 I had to sneak to catch you." 
 
 She deliberated a moment. Then, 
 
90 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 "You don t like our methods," she said. 
 
 "I utterly repudiate them," said he, "just as I 
 repudiate the noble sabotage of the working-man. 
 You re all of a piece." 
 
 "Your father was a soldier, Gil," she softly re 
 minded him. "You wouldn t be, would you? 
 Don t believe in war?" 
 
 "By George, I do," he said. "There s something 
 mighty fine in a man s saying I believe in this thing 
 so much I ll die for it. But that s not putting mar 
 malade in Asquith s boots." 
 
 "Do you believe in strikes?" 
 
 "Once in a dog s age." 
 
 "Very well. The nature of the cause determines 
 the form of strike. Now I give you notice that, 
 from this minute, I m going on strike." 
 
 "Hunger?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "I foresaw that. So I ordered a good breakfast. 
 It was all the start I could give you." 
 
 Remembering three eggs apiece, she frowned* 
 
 "And," he continued, "I m forced to tell you again 
 that the woman who does that is no man. Still, 
 I supposed you d do it. I d thought it out. And I 
 thought I d fast as long as you did." 
 
 "Ah!" she breathed. She liked the clash of wills. 
 
 "That was my first thought. Then I said to my 
 self, I won t be such an ass. I ll serve three excel 
 lent meals a day. If she refuses to eat them, it s at 
 her own risk. 
 
 She rose. 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 91 
 
 "May I ask again," she said, with some ceremony, 
 "how long I am to be detained here?" 
 
 He hesitated. At length, "I can t go into that," 
 he said. 
 
 She knitted her brows and studied him. "There s 
 something behind this," she avowed. 
 
 "There is," he lightly owned. "The whole mili 
 tant movement." 
 
 "You ve found out!" she cried, so stridently that 
 Wenna ran again to look. 
 
 "Yes," said he gravely, "I ve found out." 
 
 "You know what is going to be done within the 
 week." 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 "And you ve told." 
 
 "No, I haven t told yet. But by God! you re 
 not going to be in it." 
 
 She was breathing hard. 
 
 " Gil," she said, " what would make you let me go? " 
 
 He looked up at her. She saw, with a shock of 
 terror lest it was not to concern her any more, that 
 his face, in its stern sincerity, was beautiful. 
 
 "Your word of honor," he said. "I d still take it 
 in spite of the things you ve done. Your word of 
 honor that you ll stop short and fight fair." 
 
 "Have men," she challenged him passionately, 
 "have men fought fair?" 
 
 "Not often." 
 
 "Look at the Great Powers when they want an 
 inch of land. Do they fight fair? " 
 
 "No. But you, Grace you fight fair. I m 
 
92 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 with you. I ll help you fight. You d have cut me 
 when I came on here for the games that time, if I d 
 sneaked it by a hair. Why, girl, you haven t for 
 gotten the game ?" 
 
 Their eyes were encountering in a scrutiny made of 
 passionate memory and dying hope. 
 
 "Give me your word," he pleaded. 
 
 Then there was another pause while they felt the 
 breeze and heard the sea, and both weighed to the 
 full the poignant cruelty of the sunlit day that has 
 not a tear to drop for youth and love in ruins. 
 
 "I can t, Gil," she said; but in mercy to them 
 both she said it gently. She walked into the house 
 and up to her own room, and when Wenna tapped 
 there at luncheon time, the door was locked. 
 
 The siege lasted three days. To the four in the 
 cottage, though they could exchange no words about 
 it, it was man s siege of woman s heart. Wenna, as 
 if she suffered not only for the moment and these two 
 lovers, but for her whole sex, tragically paled. Three 
 times a day she carried up food prepared with an ex 
 cess of daintiness, the trays even, at length, decked 
 with flowers; this might have had a sacrificial look 
 though Wenna meant the flowers also to implore. 
 She also appeared at odd moments with tea. Every 
 body, Wenna thought, had to have a cup of tea. It 
 was the universal fluid. 
 
 At the end of the third day she found the door ajar, 
 and though there was no answer to her knock, went 
 in. The room was in beautiful order; Grace was 
 refusing service in the house of her enemies, and she 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 93 
 
 sat by the window, her arms outstretched on the 
 arms of the chair, her hands hanging in pale beauty. 
 Wenna ran, dropped at her feet and cried. But 
 though Grace did not notice her except by a touch of 
 the white fingers on her pretty hair, it was not from 
 any coldness. She was thinking her own thoughts, 
 and Wenna was no more than a mote in that big sea. 
 
 The outer beauty of the days had been unbear 
 able, taken with the ache of her own heart. Even 
 the scent from the kind garden sickened her. Down 
 there striding through its bloom or even at the stair 
 foot, listening day and night in anguish equal to her 
 own, was her lover, made by the strange sad chance 
 of time her enemy. The creature who longed to 
 fight for her was warring against her. The being 
 she should foster, she was denying the comfort of her 
 breast. The immemorial alliance of the two who 
 needed each other so inexorably had been turned into 
 warfare, by the age-long ignorance of both, and the 
 man was driving the woman into the wilderness, and 
 the woman s milk was poisoning the men-children 
 it should nourish. 
 
 For a time she blamed him in his own person. 
 Then, as hunger clarified the inner workshop of her 
 brain, and her soul seemed to rise and float above the 
 body and look understandingly upon its trials, she 
 thought of him tenderly as condemned to suffer 
 with her in the rush of time. They were no longer 
 light-hearted man and maid meeting in the rose- 
 garden of their pure desire. Her life seemed to her 
 now but the breath blown out of the trumpets of 
 
94 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 revolt. His walled garden had turned into a symbol. 
 Outside it, like a sea girdling her paradise, she seemed 
 to hear the clamoring cry of women the hunted, the 
 unshielded condemned to cry in dissonance without 
 her own voice to make it harmony. She loved him, 
 the "young man in his beauty," but he was no longer 
 Gilbert Mills alone: he was child of the traditions 
 that had made revolt inevitable. What room was 
 there on this "darkling plain" where "ignorant 
 armies clash by night" for the bride bower and the 
 vows of cherishing according to what she called a 
 specious ritual? 
 
 Yet so gently did she think of him that when she 
 heard his voice at her door, that late twilight, she 
 could answer. 
 
 "Grace," he said, "will you listen?" 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I m listening." 
 
 "You ve forced my hand. This can t go on." 
 
 " Yes, it can. I m up to it." 
 
 "The doors are open. You can go. I ve given 
 Wenna a rigid schedule for your food. You ll abide 
 by it, won t you? Nothing else till you re in shape." 
 
 "That was good of you. Yes, I believe it upsets 
 you to eat after " 
 
 She paused. She wanted to save him the crude 
 sound of things. Still it seemed to her that this 
 wasn t Gil starving her: only the cruelty of time that 
 had starved women in so many ways, starved them 
 into hysteria if Gil were right. Now they were no 
 longer wives and maidens. They were Judiths; they 
 were Bacchse on the mountain drinking blood. 
 
THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 95 
 
 "Treherne will be ready," he continued, "to take 
 you up to London in the car." 
 
 "Shall you come, too?" The question leaped 
 from her. 
 
 "I hadn t meant to. I thought you d rather not. 
 I wish you d let me to make sure you re all right." 
 
 "I shall be all right." She heard Wenna on the 
 stairs, bringing, she knew, a spoonful of food for 
 which appetite had gone. "But I think you d bet 
 ter come." 
 
 This she said to give him less anxiety over her 
 state, and he thanked her humbly. Wenna slipped 
 in with her spoon and cup. Wenna was crying in a 
 low-spirited way as if she had cried for days and 
 was tired of it. But Grace took the liquid like medi 
 cine, and then called again to the man outside the 
 door. 
 
 "Gil!" 
 
 "Yes, I m here." 
 
 "Have you done it?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "You ve betrayed us?" 
 
 "I ve given you away." 
 
 "The whole plan, Gil, the whole big plan?" 
 
 "Absolutely." 
 
 "Then it hasn t happened?" 
 
 " No. I ve saved you from that, at least." 
 
 She got on her feet. 
 
 "Tell Treherne," she said, "to be ready in half an 
 hour. I m going to London." 
 
 "Grace, you can t do anything. It never can 
 
96 THE MAN AND THE MILITANT 
 
 happen now, I tell you, never to the end of time. 
 There ll be a thousand pairs of eyes on it, all watch 
 ing till you and I are dead and the world is sane 
 again." 
 
 "It isn t that," she said. She was trembling, and 
 her teeth chattered. "But you ve done it, Gil 
 and I m glad it s done, too. I loved it. I couldn t 
 bear to have it destroyed. But somehow because 
 you ve done it I can t stay here in your house and 
 eat your food. Wenna, get my coat and tell Tre- 
 herne." 
 
 And after all, she let him go with her, and through 
 the moonlit night, past the unheard nightingale in 
 copses their car ran by, they sat in deep love of each 
 other and a sick distrust, and drove to London. He 
 left her at her door in the leaden dawn. She looked 
 like the spirit of it, her soft cheeks grayed. 
 
 "Good-by, Wenna," she said. "Good-by, Tre- 
 herne." She turned to Gilbert, "Good-by. You ll 
 be sailing soon." 
 
 "Yes," he said, "as soon as I know you re fit again. 
 Won t you " He had her hand now and drew her 
 a pace away from the two sad Cornish servitors who 
 seemed to have shut themselves into their reserve. 
 "Grace, won t you come with me? Come home." 
 
 "Last call? " she asked, in a loving mockery of him. 
 She smiled, a little wry, old smile. "No, Gil. Give 
 my love to Salem." 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 IT was a pleasantry among an informal set of us 
 in the studios that Anne Ritchie, after withstanding 
 our individual fascinations from a piquing yet 
 affectionate coolness, had been, in the twinkling of 
 an eye, bewitched by a cosmopolitan. His name, 
 he said and none of us thought of doubting it 
 was Louis Fieldman. He had appeared in our laxly 
 hospitable circle, introduced by somebody, we soon 
 forgot who, and was accepted, wholly on account of 
 his personal charm, persuasive enough to lay the 
 usual precautionary hesitations to rest. He was 
 tall, blond, keen-eyed, and yet, subtly, like an im 
 plication of the real self he could show if there weren t 
 decorous inhibitions, with a manner some one called 
 tender. She was well jeered at for saying it, but 
 doggedly held to her point, and though nobody 
 accepted the word for working use, it was inwardly 
 felt to be the right one. He was indeed a charmer, 
 well equipped. He knew folklore, legends, the lyric 
 beauties of old countries, though he spoke, he said 
 at once, no tongue but English. He seemed to have 
 no occupation, but indifferently accounted for it. 
 He was, he said, "a correspondent, of sorts," and 
 was lying off a bit. He was tired of the same old 
 game and the indifferent rewards. By and by there 
 
 97 
 
98 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 would be a war or something, and he should pitch in 
 again. All these hazy excursions about the edges of 
 main fact would have contented us; but we saw Anne 
 Ritchie was in love with him. Then we wanted to 
 know the definite and absolutely worldly equivalent 
 of our gentleman. How much would he weigh in 
 honor and in cash? It was the custom to be in love 
 with Anne. I was not, because I was too old for 
 anything but a spiritual uncleship. We recognized 
 that between us, and it enabled her to like me "good 
 and hard," she said, without being misunderstood 
 or held to promissory notes, and it gave me some 
 protective rights over her, though as yet I had had 
 no occasion to use them. 
 
 Anne was the darling of the studios, entirely with 
 out conscious charm but shedding the fragrance of 
 an exquisite gentleness at every breath. I doubt 
 whether she was beautiful; yet they were all forever 
 wanting to paint her: a slender gracefulness, a healthy 
 pallor, a moonlight wistfulness from haunting eyes. 
 Anne was the most normal woman I ever knew, the 
 rhythm of her loveliness actually the pulse of per 
 fect health; but her uncommon look of appeal, her 
 haunting suggestiveness of beauties beyond sense, 
 had the power to rouse all kinds of dormant worship 
 in all degrees of men. From her first meeting with 
 Fieldman, I saw her turn to him with an inevitable- 
 ness that was like nothing but implicit obedience. 
 He saw it, too, and, with a mastery of himself that 
 was extraordinary, seemed not to recognize it. But 
 he charmed her more and more. He did small, 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 99 
 
 seemingly involuntary, services for her; he sang 
 songs of invitation to love; he did enchanting things, 
 and she was enchanted. 
 
 One night there was a circle about the open fire in 
 Ben Moody s studio. They were burning laurel, 
 leaf by leaf, an accumulation dried for such idle 
 ceremonial, and as it spent its hoarded beauty in 
 sparks they sang idling verse or tossed about reverie 
 from lip to lip. Fieldman was at an angle where 
 Anne could see him perfectly with the firelight on 
 his ruddy and gold comeliness, and she leaned back 
 a little behind Moody s great shoulders, to watch 
 luxuriously from the shadow. I got up, complain 
 ing of the heat, but really because I couldn t bear 
 her rapt worship, and made my way back to a corner, 
 and there Jane Wall joined me. Jane was fully my 
 own age, a gaunt, gray-haired creature whose starved 
 youth ought to have been spent in painting, and who 
 lived now in an ecstasy of content before the vesti 
 bule of the art she would never approach more 
 nearly. She had drawn up a little chair and rested 
 her elbow on the arm of the big carved one I sulked 
 in. It brought her within whispering distance, and 
 she did whisper acidly: 
 
 "Who is he?" 
 
 I made no pretense of needing a more particular 
 designation. 
 
 "He says," I pronounced bitterly in my return 
 whisper, "he is a cosmopolitan." 
 
 "That s not enough," returned she, "for a man 
 Anne looks at like that." 
 
100 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 "Oh, what s the odds?" I put in. "He doesn t 
 look at her." 
 
 Yet I knew every guarded silence of his was a 
 hypnotic appeal. It said: "I am not suing, but 
 here are my stronghold and my garden. Do they 
 please? do they tempt?" 
 
 "His not looking is the most insidious courting 
 I ve seen," said she. "You know it is. It s not 
 because he cares so little. It s because he means so 
 much. He s sitting there letting her steal nearer 
 and nearer, out of a half-frightened fascination. 
 When she s near enough he ll nab her." 
 
 "Don t," 1 jerked out. "You re a horrible old 
 Cassandra." 
 
 "No, I m not," said she. And again: "You know 
 it. But before he nabs her we re going to find out 
 things about him and understand precisely who s 
 nabbing her. Listen to that." 
 
 Jack Bretton, who, at odd moments when the 
 world shone very bright about him, called himself 
 Jacques le Bret, was telling a story in his facile 
 French. It might as well have been told in English, 
 but it gave him a chance for a rapid flourish of idiom. 
 The story was sufficiently neat, and everybody 
 laughed with the idle satisfaction of having given 
 him what he fondly desired and being allowed now 
 to return to English. My terrible Jane leaned for 
 ward, her gray head silhouetted against the firelight 
 leaping higher now as it devoured a garland. 
 
 "Mr. Fieldman," said she, "why don t you 
 laugh?" 
 
A CITIZEN AND BIS WIPE 101 
 
 He turned his face toward us and said, with a 
 grave courtesy: 
 
 "I am so sorry, but I don t understand French." 
 
 "Ah," said the merciless Jane, "but you under 
 stand Russian?" 
 
 "No," said he, still with the same gentle gravity: 
 "nothing but English." 
 
 "Ah! German?" 
 
 "No, nothing but English." 
 
 "How can you be a foreign correspondent?" she 
 persisted with such an evident intention of worrying 
 him that several heads took an alerter pose, and 
 Anne turned square round upon her. "I can t 
 imagine a correspondent s being of any use if he has 
 no languages." 
 
 "It is a great handicap," agreed Fieldman politely. 
 "But " he shrugged his shoulders and spoke rather 
 ruefully "I do what I can." 
 
 "Sing," some one proposed. Actual sparring was 
 frowned on in the studios. "Sword Song." 
 
 So, idly and also, in some quarters, vehemently, 
 they broke into the clamorous: 
 
 Ferrara made and fashioned me, 
 In Cordova in Spain. 
 
 Fieldman listened with a pleased attention. It 
 was repeated, for when they had once begun singing 
 "Ferrara" they were likely to continue from heroic 
 impetus, and with the second repetition he threw in 
 his big baritone, and Anne, with a little shiver of 
 delight, put her hand over her eyes. She was with 
 drawing into her own intimate solitudes to be the 
 
102 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 nearer him. But when that song was exhausted 
 and there was a silence that promised to continue 
 briefly, Jane, was at him again. 
 
 "Mr. Fieldman," said she, "are you an American? " 
 
 "Yes," he replied at once, with a gentleness some 
 what tinged with compassion for her. It seemed 
 bent on concealing even from her the degree of her 
 own crudity. "I am an American citizen." 
 
 "Born here?" 
 
 "No, Miss Wall. I was born at sea." 
 
 A murmur, hardly a breath, ran over the circle. 
 It sounded like pity for a child born at sea; but it 
 was really extreme ruth over a citizen of any country 
 who had fallen under the inquisition of Jane Wall. 
 
 "Your father and mother were Americans?" she 
 stated, with an implication of doubt so strongly 
 subtle that I admired and wondered how she had 
 managed it. 
 
 "No," said he, "they were not Americans, It is 
 I who am American a naturalized American citi 
 
 zen." 
 
 Here I laid a hand on the sinewy wrist of the one 
 gripping my chair. I was trying to tell her she 
 had driven him far enough. More would have 
 started the others in full cry of hostility against her. 
 She understood, and when they began, in a nervous 
 relief, to sing again, she threw at me, with a scornful 
 toss, as if such a self-evident fact might reach me or 
 not, since I knew its substance already: 
 
 "Do you call that answering? I call it scuttling 
 into a hole and drawing the hole in after you." 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 103 
 
 "Don t worry," I said, in a quick undertone. 
 "I ll look him up. If I can t, I ll pay somebody else 
 to do it." 
 
 But there was never time to look him up. Shocked 
 out of his security perhaps by Jane, or judging that 
 the moment of passionate attack and victory had 
 come, he laid siege to Anne and married her, all in 
 three days. It was done without my knowledge, 
 actually under the eyes of all her old friends, and 
 yet beyond their hearing. We literally had to be 
 told by the wedding announcement that Anne was 
 no longer ours. The card informed us further that 
 she would be at home without the delay of a day 
 spent in seclusion under the moon of love. 
 
 We went, in a group as if to give one another cour 
 age, to a house in a most respectable quarter, fur 
 nished from roof to ground in a completeness of 
 luxury, a barbarity of pomp none of us would willingly 
 have encountered, and found her husband, the cos 
 mopolite, unchanged, and Anne herself, all in white, 
 like a creature caught up into an unimagined heaven 
 and incredulous of her fortune. Others were there 
 besides our gang, friends of his, she told me after 
 ward, queer men of a foreign stamp, and heavy men 
 bearing the dollar mark. A strange mingling, one 
 balanced against the other, as if they said: 
 
 "Here are the extremes of earthly fortune and 
 desire. But we re all at one, in some hidden way 
 you artist-folk haven t penetrated." 
 
 Anne, after a lovely welcome of us, drew me aside 
 into a window recess and let fall the screening cur- 
 
104 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 tains between us and the unassorted crowd. Then 
 she looked up at me with flower-blue eyes all dewy, 
 and said : 
 
 "Forgive me." 
 
 "I won t," said I, stoutly at the outset, though I 
 knew I had already forgiven. 
 
 "It was a crazy haste to marry in," she said. 
 "But I was alone; nobody to ask, and he wanted it 
 
 so." 
 
 Nobody to ask? " said I. " You had me." 
 
 "Yes." She made pretty eyes at me. "But 
 you d have said: Wait. " 
 
 "I should," I owned to her. "I should have said: 
 Let me look him up." : 
 
 "I knew it," said she. "But that would have 
 been silly." 
 
 "Why would it?" 
 
 "Because I knew." 
 
 I hadn t a wish to shake her certainties now that 
 the irrevocable had closed its door on her, but I 
 couldn t help asking: 
 
 "What do you know about him?" 
 
 "I won t tell you," said Anne. "You don t 
 deserve to hear." 
 
 "Only a word or two, Anne. Who is he? Who 
 was his father? Who was his mother?" 
 
 Anne looked at me and laughed outright in a way 
 unlike her, even in her happiest moments before 
 this new wind of destiny had blown her to flowery 
 heights. 
 
 "He is a citizen of the world," said she. 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 105 
 
 She gave me a little tap of old possession and 
 present kindliness, and swept aside the curtains for 
 us to rejoin the tea-drinking crowd. But I under 
 stood perfectly that she merely didn t know who 
 his father was, and that she didn t care. It was a 
 part of her gallant bravado to glory in accepting him 
 without the current hall marks. I went out, and 
 dutifully, yet with a wry mind, drank tea with the 
 bizarre assemblage, and I became conscious pres 
 ently that there were no American voices save ours 
 of the studios and no clear English speech. Some 
 of the men were professional I gather that each 
 talking about his specialty: most were deep-throated, 
 guttural, and deficient in humor. I made a few 
 little attempts on them in the half -ironic obliqueness 
 current in social intercourse, and they only stared at 
 me. They were, in some impetuous way, much in 
 earnest and taking themselves, also in a mysterious 
 way, with great seriousness. I escaped before the rest 
 of our crowd and, with Jane Wall, walked dismally 
 away, a gorgeous sunset flaming at our backs. Jane, 
 dressed in oozy greens and salmon pinks, was a sight, 
 but her honest face looked right to me after the 
 strange beasts I had tried to establish connection 
 with. She put my distaste into words. 
 
 "Did you ever see such a mob?" 
 
 "Evidently his friends," I said, out of an unfor- 
 mulated desire to stand for Anne s environment. 
 
 "Evidently. And that s his house. We none of 
 us thought he had a house. He s been hanging out 
 at a little family hotel." 
 
106 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 "I suppose he found it furnished," I volunteered, 
 again remembering we spoke of Anne s husband. 
 
 "Fiddle f addle! that house was furnished out of 
 his brain a good long time beforehand, and it shows 
 he knew she d have him." 
 
 I made no civil pretext of wanting to walk home 
 with Jane Wall. I felt I could not endure the 
 assault of one more bare brutality, and left her at 
 the next corner. It seemed to me probable, as 
 I smoked my pipe alone that evening, that I should 
 never enter Anne s house again. 
 
 But I did enter. I was drawn by a dismal desire 
 to assure myself whether she really was happy, and 
 though her gay welcome and her cozy confidences 
 left no doubt of the matter, I went again and again. 
 And every time I found the same frequenters of the 
 house. They were not merely there on public days. 
 They swarmed in it. There were alien presences at 
 all hours coming and going, an orgie, Jane Wall said, 
 of hospitality. She brazenly went whenever she 
 was invited and even stayed the night, and she 
 assured me there were as many camping aliens at 
 breakfast as at midnight suppers, and over them all 
 Anne presided joyously, a lavish hostess, loving her 
 hideous house because it had been decreed for her, 
 adoring her husband and being adored. Jane called 
 the flocking aliens hateful names: locusts, devouring 
 the land, Sindbads, crooks. She talked so shame 
 lessly about them and I listened so unprotestingly 
 that I began to doubt our right, in decency, to go 
 to Anne s house at all. But one day Anne herself 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 107 
 
 told me a startling thing. I was calling, and she 
 ran downstairs with me at the end, and there, on a 
 sofa in a little reception room, we came on a bearded 
 Sindbad sound asleep. I was for waking him and 
 turning him out neck and crop. I had a certainty 
 he was not staying in the house, but Anne stood 
 clutching my arm and laughing noiselessly at my 
 nervousness and the drollery of the situation. 
 
 "Do you know who he is?" I asked her. 
 
 "No," she whispered, overcome by the absurdity 
 of it. "I don t know him from Adam." 
 
 "I won t leave you in the house with fellows from 
 nobody knows where," I told her. "Come, be a 
 good girl. I m going to pitch him out." 
 
 "But he s a perfect right to be here," she assured 
 me. 
 
 "How do you know?" 
 
 "Because he couldn t have got in if he hadn t." 
 
 "You don t know how he got in," I reminded her. 
 
 "Oh, yes, I do. He has a latchkey. They all 
 have latchkeys." 
 
 "What!" I said, feeling for an instant I d caught 
 her off guard "all those hordes of the desert? Do 
 you mean to tell me they ve the entree to your house 
 unannounced?" 
 
 "Bless you, yes," said Anne. She was hanging 
 on my arm and still regarding the prone sleeper with 
 amusement not tinged with the slightest apprehen 
 sion. "Of course they have. It was theirs before 
 my husband took it." She always said "my hus 
 band" in a prim way, as if she held the shield of her 
 
108 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 possession, to guard him from incidental judgments. 
 "They met here, you know." 
 
 "They?" I ventured. "Is it a club?" 
 
 She grew instantly serious. A little frown knit 
 itself between her brows. She had betrayed some 
 thing. And at that moment the front door opened 
 and Fieldman came in, singing. He was red with 
 the cold, full of life, bountifully happy, and Anne 
 left my arm and fled to him in a still but absolutely 
 apparent passion of welcome. He was not careless 
 of her, but he was, my eyes told me, used to that 
 sort of implied largess and could pass it over with 
 out a tremendous recognition, knowing what endless 
 riches she had for him and what unstinted moments. 
 Besides, he saw me, and, through the door, the sleep 
 ing invader. He put Anne aside with a little word, 
 nodded to me, and went in to his guest. And imme 
 diately I had the feeling that Anne, the inner, im 
 material part of her, was wafting me away. She 
 was terribly afraid I should stay too long, in some 
 manner insinuate myself into that dialogue between 
 the master of the house and his guest, and I was 
 hurt enough to go with an offended haste. At the 
 door she leaned forward to me as I halted on the 
 upper step, and asked me a hasty question. 
 
 "Did you hear," she trembled, in an anxious 
 undertone, "what they said?" 
 
 "No," I told her, looking her straight in the face. 
 
 It was a lie. I had heard. The two were talking 
 rapidly in an alien tongue, the stranger and Fieldman 
 who had said he spoke only English. 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 109 
 
 After that I didn t go to the house for a long time, 
 but one night it drew me, the thought of its hideous 
 magnificence imprisoning her in her beauty like the 
 toad with the jewel in his head. I had to go once 
 in so often, I told myself, to assure my elderly heart 
 she was safe. From what? I never asked myself. 
 A woman with such happy eyes was more than safe. 
 She had entered into the security of the eternally 
 loving and the well-beloved. The amount of it was, 
 I owned now, as, in spite of me, my feet carried me 
 up the steps, I had to see her at intervals, merely 
 because I loved her, to bathe my sick desires in the 
 well of her kind eyes. I always came away from 
 her refreshed, able to live in my still seclusions a 
 little longer. I was taken into the library where 
 she sat alone by the fire in the serene companionship 
 of a book. She was in blue and white, Madonna 
 colors, and for the first time I thought of her having 
 a child, and the thought choked me. She sprang up, 
 instantly all gay glance and motion. She was glad 
 to see me, and we sat down and talked in our old 
 way, as if no citizen of the world had ever shut her 
 up in his tawdry house. I didn t ask for Fieldman. 
 It was apparent he was away from home, which was 
 all that affected me. But suddenly, about half 
 an hour after my coming, a door opened somewhere 
 on the landing above, and a flood of men s voices 
 came out and ceased again as the door closed. I 
 looked at her, with a little smile perhaps, I felt so 
 fortunate in being intimately alone with her and not 
 invited to go appropriately up and intern myself with 
 
110 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 my kind. She answered my look with a smile, 
 reminiscent, I thought, proud. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "they re up there. This is a 
 special night." 
 
 "Special?" I asked. I did want to know some 
 thing about Fieldman s activities. 
 
 She quenched the smile, as if it might tell me more 
 than she intended. 
 
 "I m always indiscreet with you," she said. 
 "With nobody else. I ve assured him so." 
 
 "Indiscreet?" I ventured again. "It s a secret 
 session?" 
 
 "You re making me indiscreet again," she frowned, 
 rueful over her own lapses, and yet amused at them, 
 too, she did trust me so completely. That is the 
 long, proud feather in my cap, and I am glad to wave 
 it here. "However, it doesn t matter. I don t 
 really know anything. But I am to know very soon. 
 He is to tell me. I m to be taken in." 
 
 "Into the society?" I asked. 
 
 "Not that exactly. But told things. You can t 
 guess how proud I shall be. Don t you see? Till 
 then I m not quite his wife. There s one part of 
 him I don t share." 
 
 "You ve shared everything else?" I suggested 
 gently, the gaunt shadow of Jane Wall at my side 
 egging me on. 
 
 She tightened her lips and looked me in the eyes. 
 
 "Everything," she said firmly. 
 
 "Then," said I, "little Anne, just for old sake s 
 sake to quiet down my parental flutterings, you 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 111 
 
 know tell me who he is. His nationality, at least." 
 Anne looked at me a moment, pale to the lips. 
 But she got a smile out of the lips then, and the gay 
 little laugh followed. 
 
 "I told you," said she. "He s a citizen of the 
 world." 
 
 So I laughed too, and we talked about safer 
 things. But the current of our amity had been 
 deflected and I didn t get much further satisfaction 
 out of my call. Again, toward eleven, the door 
 opened and closed, and a man ran down the stairs 
 and out of the house, and after that Anne grew 
 visibly uneasy. Suddenly I understood. She was 
 afraid the meeting would break up and they would 
 all come down, perhaps continuing the tags of their 
 talk, and her husband would find me there and be 
 annoyed. So I took my leave in a hurry, and she, 
 I saw, understood and was grateful to me. At least 
 I could still win meager favors of gratitude and 
 confidence, though the big prizes had all gone. 
 
 But the next time I went to her house I was not 
 admitted, nor was I the second time and the third. 
 It was not difficult to read the hint. The citizen 
 of the world had found my casual presence too near 
 the outer bounds, at least, of his relations. I stayed 
 away and nursed my resentment against him and 
 whatever unclassed tenderness I had for her. Jane 
 Wall, too, was denied, but she was furious and kept 
 on going, confident, she said, it was no order of 
 Anne s, and challenged by the shut look of the place. 
 Even the upper windows, she declared, were non- 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 committal. Their heavy curtains fell with an actual 
 hostility. She was even prepared, if she could get 
 anywhere near them, to find the panes themselves 
 barred. But she never did get near them, nor did I. 
 It was one night about six months after this that 
 I was by my own fire in my unfashionable part 
 of the town, reading a little, thinking a great deal. 
 My house was a gem in the heart of that ignored 
 precinct. I had furnished it bit by bit at the slow 
 pace of one who crawls cautiously toward the de 
 sired perfection of a work of art. The whole thing 
 was small, a cameo set to a wonderful standard of 
 excellence I had always held in my mind. I knew 
 how the whole thing had worked out. It had begun 
 with my mother s old-fashioned house full of a mel 
 lowed loveliness, and it had grown with the thought 
 of Anne some time in the midst of it. Strange wist 
 ful solacings the hungry mind allows itself! I had 
 known from the beginning that Anne would never 
 be for me anything but the unattainable though 
 recognized well-beloved. Yet I had built her house, 
 and on nights when I was most desolately at home 
 in it I saw the imagined reality of her sitting there, 
 moving about, supremely at ease. This night 
 especially she was there in a free, gay happiness. 
 That was why the fire sprang so high and bright. 
 I shut my book on my knee and narrowed my eyes 
 to the smallest slit that would admit the fire blaze 
 and at the same time shut out the emptiness beside 
 me. For a moment I was almost happy, as we 
 are over such rueful expedients. I hardly knew 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 113 
 
 whether I was in the body or out of it, and at a 
 sound I looked up, not to be surprised if I found her 
 really there. And there in the doorway she stood, 
 changed from my last sight of her, worn in an inex 
 plicable way, and yet with a new loveliness, almost 
 a majesty, a divinity. This was again the Madonna 
 look, and she was wrapped about in the Madonna 
 color, a great blue cloak. 
 
 As I said, I felt no surprise. I got up and drew for 
 ward the other chair an inch. I had an idea we were 
 perhaps not to speak, the understanding between 
 us seemed likely to run on such swift and soundless 
 wheels. But she spoke, quietly, practically: 
 
 " I wouldn t let him announce me. I don t know 
 why." 
 
 I offered to take her cloak. 
 
 "No," said she. "I ll keep it on." 
 
 She sat down in the hearthside chair, still with 
 the blue cloak wrapped about her. I threw on a 
 log, and the flames leaped. 
 
 "No," she said again in answer to my questioning 
 offer of drawing the chair still nearer. "I m not 
 cold. But I ll keep my cloak. David, what time 
 it is?" 
 
 She had never before used my name; but I was 
 not surprised at hearing it now, only warmed some 
 how as if it fitted the everyday peace of our com 
 panionship. I told her the time and she seemed to 
 gather herself for some determined effort. 
 
 "I ve things to tell you," she said. I kept my 
 eyes on hers, but I did not answer. There was no 
 
114 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 need of answering except by that grave communion 
 of the eyes, "I have been making up my mind to 
 it for a good many months. It is a secret. It was 
 confided to me. And I m going to tell." 
 
 "It sha n t go farther," I assured her. 
 
 "It can go as much farther as you like," said she. 
 "I trust you absolutely to do the best thing with it. 
 I can t do anything. I m tied. But you ll know. 
 You ll do it. I leave it in your hands." A ghost 
 of her old smile ran over her face then. She wrink 
 led her brows at me in that wistful way she had. 
 "David," said she, "I don t exactly know how to 
 begin. Ask me questions." 
 
 "How is your husband?" I began at random. 
 
 She drew a little breath. " That s right," she said. 
 "That starts me. He is away, on business. To 
 morrow morning he will get the letter I have written 
 him, telling him where I have gone and that he won t 
 find me when he comes back." 
 
 For an instant of sickening delight I almost be 
 lieved she had left him and come to me in every 
 sense beyond that of her bodily presence. I couldn t 
 ask my question, but she answered it. 
 
 "Yes," she said, "I have left him. I shall never 
 go back, unless " 
 
 Suddenly I felt a red-hot anger, and that, too, 
 she must have read. 
 
 "No, David," said she gently; "not that. He has 
 been good to me: delightful, too, in an enchanting 
 way. It has never failed me. It s only that I told 
 myself I must stop being enchanted." 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 115 
 
 "You love him?" I blundered. 
 
 "I am not thinking of that," she said. "There 
 are things I ve got to do, and if I think of things in 
 that way love, you know I can t do them." 
 
 For a moment she was shaken by the piteous 
 apparition of the things she must not remember. I 
 could see her desperate need of woman s resource 
 from passion, wild tears, shipwreck on the desolate 
 shore of lost hopes, and then a forlorn placidity. I 
 could fancy she had traversed all that. She had 
 been almost drowned in some sea and then cast up 
 again, and she shuddered away from such devastating 
 overthrow. 
 
 "You remember," she said, "I told you indis 
 creetly that I was to be let into the secret of the 
 meetings at the house." 
 
 It was betrayal itself, the impersonality of her 
 never once calling the house hers or his. I nodded. 
 
 "I see why I was to be told. It was not only 
 because it would be safer, but because he truly 
 wanted me to become a part of him. He had a 
 great idea of my courage and fidelity and my love 
 for him. He believed the thing he wanted with his 
 whole heart I should want, too, and we should be 
 one in a almost a glorious way." 
 
 She stopped here and bit her lip. I could see a 
 pulse beating in her throat. 
 
 " Yes, Anne," I said. " You d be as true as steel." 
 
 "That s it," said she quickly. "That s precisely 
 the point. He thought I should be true; but I am 
 not. I am betraying him to you." 
 
116 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 Now I didn t understand. If she loved him 
 and what was it but the beseeching memory of love 
 she had to put behind her? why could she not be 
 true to him? She began again, moistening her dry 
 lips: 
 
 "He is a traitor. They are all traitors, those men. 
 They are conspiring against the government." 
 
 "But," I said stupidly, " he is an American citizen." 
 
 "That, I suppose," said Anne wearily, "is what 
 makes it treason." 
 
 I looked at her dumbly, and then, I must confess, 
 the personal side of it came over me, and I broke 
 out: 
 
 "How he must have trusted you!" 
 
 "Yes," she said, "absolutely." She lifted her 
 head a little and looked her pride. But the pride 
 did not last long. It flowed into the humility of 
 a softer passion, unavailing, yet inevitable regret. 
 "He owned that he hadn t really known me at the 
 first. He had been attracted to me. It was love, 
 as he understood it then. But in living with me he 
 saw it all differently. He decided I was worthy of 
 big things. He had a vision of what we could do, 
 we two, if I felt as he did. And he hadn t any doubt 
 whatever that I should." 
 
 "What are you going to do?" 
 
 "I m putting it in your hands," said she simply. 
 "You will know." 
 
 "Have you evidence?" I asked. 
 
 "None but my word. They have papers, plans, 
 letters, photographs. These were in a safe in the 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 117 
 
 room they used to meet in. But he took them west 
 with him. I found the safe empty." 
 
 "Then he did suspect you," I exclaimed. 
 
 "No. I kissed him good-by. Judas! It is my 
 impression he took them west to some meeting 
 there." 
 
 "And your letter simply tells him you have left 
 his house? Do you think that will make him suspect 
 anything further? " 
 
 "No. I took pains to make it affectionate and 
 kind. Judas! He will come back to the house. 
 You can arrest him there if you think best." 
 
 It seemed to me monstrous, the thing itself, the 
 colossal plot against her happiness. I saw what 
 miles her bleeding feet had carried her before she 
 could compass this present calm. She had made 
 pilgrimage about the world of grief and back again, 
 not once only, but many times, before she could have 
 reached this spot. 
 
 "Anne," I said, in a wild grasp at hope for her, 
 "you do love him." 
 
 "I ve done thinking of that," she said. "I told 
 you so. See here, David." She stretched out one 
 delicate hand and laid it on the little table between 
 us, and there it lay clasping and unclasping as she 
 talked. While I live I cannot forget the picture of 
 that agonized hand, talking as her lips talked, and 
 allowed, though they were not, its signs of agony. 
 "My father was a New England judge. He was a 
 man of reputation, of strict honor. My grandfathers 
 on both sides were farmers. So were my great- 
 
118 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 grandfathers. They were good, plain men. And 
 they were Americans. I hadn t realized what that 
 meant till I was told what had been going on in that 
 locked room in the house I ve lived in. It s been 
 growing and growing in me. And it s come to birth. 
 I m an American, David, as my father was and all 
 those plain, honest men behind us." 
 
 I couldn t answer. But she had more to say. Her 
 face twisted into an anguish dreadful to see. In the 
 flash before I could turn my eyes mercifully away 
 from it, I even wondered if her poor mouth were 
 convulsed by actual disorder of the nerves. After 
 this she talked as if she were cold, and sometimes 
 her teeth clicked on the words. 
 
 "It isn t that you choose," she said, "that I choose 
 and say a man isn t worth the entire world to me. 
 He is worth the whole world of warmth and pleasure 
 and luxury, or life life itself; but there s something 
 in all those generations behind you you can t deny, 
 any more than you can deny God. If the man you 
 you belong to is a traitor, you ve got to give 
 him up." 
 
 And she had given him up to me. I was to be the 
 one to carry out the breaking of her heart to the last 
 issue. She read my horror of the task, and the white 
 hand lay there lax and besought pardon. 
 
 "Couldn t help it, David," she said. "I tried to 
 think of another way, and there wasn t any. But 
 somehow, I ve got to stand up to it. Got to, David." 
 
 Damning myself for my stupidity in not doing it 
 before, I opened a cabinet and brought her a glass 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 119 
 
 of cordial. She sipped it, and a little color came 
 back into her cheeks. 
 
 "The other thing I ve got to stand up to that s 
 what helped me make up my mind," she said. 
 "I couldn t let a baby have the wrong kind of 
 mother." 
 
 A few minutes after I found I was sitting there, 
 my head bent, and she was standing by me, touching 
 my hair with the kind, tortured hand. 
 
 "Poor Davy!" she was saying. Only my mother 
 had called me that. "Good boy! dear friend! 
 You ll think for me now. I don t know what you ll 
 have to do. But it s all in your hands. If tLey 
 want me to to testify or anything " Here she 
 staggered a step backward into her chair, and I got 
 up and pulled her cloak about her, murmuring I 
 don t know what words of love and pity. "You ll 
 see him," she said, looking up at me with despairing 
 eyes. "You ll tell him I set the trap for him. I 
 couldn t warn him or he would have stayed away 
 and kept on plotting. Spying, too, David. They 
 are spies." Then she leaned her head back and 
 shut her eyes and rested so a moment. She opened 
 her eyes quickly, as they do who start suddenly 
 awake. "My only hope, David, is this," she said. 
 "That he will understand. He worships his own 
 country where he was born, you know. Maybe he 
 can understand my feeling about mine. I don t 
 know." 
 
 "You mean not to see him again?" I ventured. 
 "You would refuse?" 
 
120 A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 Her face awoke quite gloriously. "See him?" 
 she repeated. "Yes. Work for him, stand by 
 him, take his disgrace with him. If he ll let me. 
 But my own work s got to be done first." 
 
 "Where are you going, Anne," I asked, "from 
 here?" 
 
 I had flooding schemes of hiding places I could buy 
 for her apart from all of us. 
 
 "Why, you stupid David," said she, "I m going 
 to the hospital. My trunk went this morning. See, 
 here s his address, in case things don t go well. 
 You ll wire him. Here is mine. But you re not 
 to come there, you re not to write me, you re not to 
 remember me any more than if I d taken a vow and 
 gone into a sisterhood. I m lost, Davie, dear, until 
 I come back and bilng my baby with me. Under 
 stand?" 
 
 J did, and we spoke little after that. She was 
 tired to exhaustion, and her purpose, I understood, 
 had been accomplished. As we stood together at 
 the door she forbade my going down with her 
 the Madonna blue of her cloak enveloping her in an 
 ineffable way, she said one last word: 
 
 "Let him understand fully I set the trap for him; 
 but tell him, if you can, I d rather have died than 
 set it. Tell him if he wants me ah, well, Davie, 
 I m giving you too much. Maybe I can say it my 
 self some time. Good-by." 
 
 The beautiful hand lay stanchly in mine, and while 
 I held it I tried to say something adequate, but 
 couldn t manage it. 
 
A CITIZEN AND HIS WIFE 
 
 "Anne, you re a great creature. You re as great 
 as the Roman mothers we hear about." 
 
 She shook her head. A little hurt smile moved 
 her lips. 
 
 "Ah," she said, "maybe they had plain sailing. 
 They weren t traitors too." 
 
 I stood and looked on her, a vision of gold and 
 blue going down my stairs, and did not follow her. 
 At the door she turned, looked up at me, and smiled 
 a full smile, knowing, I suppose, how I should keep 
 the picture of her opened my door and was gone. 
 And in an instant I heard the carriage taking her 
 away. . . . 
 
 I am a patient dog of a man, and in the eleven 
 days I had no word from her I did not seek her, I 
 did not even look at the address she had given me. 
 I only tried to send her my flooding, enfolding love. 
 And every day I went past his house in the reputable 
 street, looked up at its reticent windows, and tried 
 to fix on my own immediate action when the master 
 of it should return. For eleven days this continued. 
 This morning is the morning of the thirteenth, and 
 I am waiting for the master of the house. He has 
 been summoned. He has been told, as I was told 
 forty-eight hours ago, that Anne, wife of Louis 
 Fieldman, died in hospital at midnight, she and her 
 infant son. 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 "MR. HARRY has come, miss," said the maid, 
 hurrying in, with deepened color, to announce a 
 name dedicated in that household to general worship. 
 
 Miss Evelyn May, Harry s great-aunt, given over 
 to a mild enjoyment of the sunny morning-room, laid 
 down her book and turned upon the woman a face 
 of surprised interrogation. 
 
 " Harry? Not Harry ! He is in France." 
 
 "Mr. Harry, miss. He s down in the library. 
 The boat got in at five." 
 
 "Show him up," said the old lady. There was a 
 warm excitement in her look. "Or, no. Tell him 
 to wait there. I ll come down." She rose, shook 
 out her draperies and turned to the tall glass. This 
 was in many respects an amazing old woman. For 
 "one thing, she had resolved early that, although she 
 wrote books, she would never incur the odium earned 
 by a slattern sisterhood. She had been softly pretty 
 in youth, and a fresh good health had lasted her like 
 a magic mantle. Her age was exquisite in its care 
 and finish. All her appointments were significantly 
 fine, yet with no specious hint in them of a desire to 
 push back the hands a point upon the dial. They 
 were of no type save that of beauty. Her small face 
 still held a tinge of pink, her pompadoured hair 
 shone with a lovely lustre, and her white house-dress 
 
 122 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 was a wonder of old lace. The look she gave herself 
 now was critical, not admiring, and she turned away 
 from the glass the moment its use had been accom 
 plished. Then, holding up her draperies in one deli 
 cate hand, she went down to the library, where 
 impatiently, in the morning sunshine, Harry was 
 awaiting her. He met her at the door and kissed 
 both her hands before accepting her proffered wel 
 come. He was tall and brown, with a free glance 
 warm with all the confidence of youth. 
 
 "Well, my own child," said Miss Evelyn, following 
 him to the sofa, where they sat side by side, holding 
 each other s hands like playmates, "what are you 
 here for?" 
 
 "I got in this morning, Aunt Ev." He said it 
 imploringly. "Don t scold me." 
 
 " Scold you ! I didn t want you to stay over there. 
 You went for fun. Haven t you had it? " 
 
 "I mean, don t wonder, don t think anything is 
 odd. They ll be here in half an hour." 
 
 "They?" 
 
 "I ve made some friends. I m bringing them to 
 see you." 
 
 "People you met on the steamer?" 
 
 "No, no, Aunt Evelyn, in France. A French 
 gentleman and his granddaughter." The beautiful 
 ingenuousness of his face, its air of quick appeal, 
 stirred and enlightened her. 
 
 "Oh," she breathed corroboratively, "his grand 
 daughter." Then she laid the other hand on his. 
 "Dear child," she said, "I m so glad." 
 
1S4 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 He was eager to repudiate her approval in the 
 first fulness of it. 
 
 "No," he insisted, "don t be glad, not altogether 
 glad yet. You see, we don t so far, her grand 
 father and I quite hit it off." 
 
 " Her grandfather? Hasn t she anything nearer? " 
 
 "No. She s in his charge. He approves of me. 
 He likes me, man to man; but he wanted her to 
 marry in France, and so he s come with me to well, 
 to look me up, you know. I think he s nervous about 
 the whole thing. He wants to do his utmost to break 
 it off without taking the responsibility of doing it. 
 He won t really do it, because he s a good fellow, and 
 she well, she won t let him." 
 
 "No," said Miss Evelyn, in the most delicately 
 comprehending vein, "I see. She wouldn t let him." 
 
 The young man gave an awkward little laugh; yet 
 there was a proud assurance in his bearing. 
 
 "She s a nice girl, Aunt Evelyn," he said, answer 
 ing her tone. 
 
 "But she isn t over here, too?" suggested Miss 
 Evelyn interrogatively. 
 
 He nodded, his eyes quite glowing with reminis 
 cence of the voyage with her six days and seven 
 moonlit nights of fun and rhapsody. 
 
 "What does she come for? You say she doesn t 
 want to break it off?" 
 
 Again he laughed, remembering the Frenchman s 
 unprofitable resistance in the face of a girl s decision. 
 
 "He never thought of her coming. She would 
 do it." 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 125 
 
 "That sounds American. What s her name, 
 dear?" 
 
 "Angelique." He gave the name the circumflex 
 of a caress. "Angelique de Trouville." 
 
 "Trouville!" 
 
 "Yes." His answer to her glance was one of 
 pride. "You ve hit it, Aunt Ev. It s the poet s 
 granddaughter . 
 
 "Armand de Trouville!" 
 
 Her voice had the sweep of meanings too manifold 
 for the compass of one word. It made the name elo 
 quent in rich suggestion. 
 
 The young man nodded in his pride in having done 
 so admirably toward satisfying her instincts with his 
 own. 
 
 "Armand de Trouville," he repeated "the man 
 that wrote the lyrics. The man that other French 
 man came over here to lecture about when I was in 
 college. Yes, if you please. And I should say he d 
 be here inside of ten minutes." She looked a blank- 
 ness of wonder that made him laugh and then con 
 sider her. He patted her hand affectionately. 
 "Don t flinch, Aunt Ev," he counselled. "He s 
 a big gun, but no bigger than you. He knows about 
 you, too. I got your books for him, and he read em 
 on the steamer. He longs to see you." 
 
 The bell rang below, and they continued staring. 
 The woman was white with some unexplained in 
 tensity of feeling; the young man quivered with im 
 patience to meet his happy fate. He listened. 
 
 "Mary s taking them into the red room," he said. 
 
126 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 "Angelique is with him." Then, catching the ex 
 pression of her face, he added hastily: "But she 
 sha n t come up. I ll go down and take her to walk 
 while he has his interview." 
 
 She smiled a little then. "Is that what modern 
 French girls do?" she asked. "Go to walk alone 
 with young men in strange cities? They didn t do 
 that in the novels." 
 
 "Angelique will." He nodded in hilarious con 
 fidence. "He won t let her, but she will." 
 
 Again he put her hands hastily to his lips and hur 
 ried out of the room as Mary entered with a card. 
 A moment later Mary appeared again, after her 
 return down-stairs, ushering in Monsieur de Trou- 
 ville. 
 
 Evelyn May had in the meantime not given a 
 thought to her looks or the turbulence of her mind. 
 This was not so much a meeting with a distinguished 
 caller as an incredible spiritual experience, one that 
 might be the commonplace of paradise, but not of 
 earth. She was standing when he entered the room, 
 ready to greet him with a fine composure. He was 
 exactly what she had expected to find him, save that 
 the lustre of the eyes, the point of light in them, was 
 something which even the faithful sun could not re 
 produce. He was tall, well poised, and graceful, with 
 a composure of his own. He was spoken of as a giant 
 among Frenchmen, but his size, to her partial mind, 
 contributed to his simplicity and gentleness. The 
 profile, beautiful enough for a coin, the close gray 
 mustache, the iron-gray hair, she was prepared for 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 127 
 
 them all through portraiture, and yet the reality of 
 the man brought her a wistful sense of satisfaction 
 close upon the pangs of youth. He bowed over her 
 hand, and pronounced her full name with "Made 
 moiselle" prefixed; and then, ceremoniously waiting 
 until he had seen her placed, and even bringing a 
 footstool for her, in quick divination, he seated him 
 self and leaned forward to say, with a sudden smile, 
 and in faultless English made piquant by the slight 
 est accent: 
 
 "Your books are beautiful." 
 
 "So is your English," she returned, smiling back 
 at him with a sense of old acquaintanceship. 
 
 "My mother was an Englishwoman. She had 
 been on the stage. Then, too, I was at Oxford." 
 
 "I know." 
 
 "You know?" He raised his eyebrows. 
 
 "We all know everything about you, monsieur. 
 An author as famous as you lives under glass." 
 
 "And you?" he drew her again into kinship. 
 "Do these clever American people know about you 
 also? Your family tree, what you have for break 
 fast?" 
 
 She met his banter with a laugh, 
 
 "Pretty nearly. But there are a great many like 
 me. No one is like you." 
 
 He rose to make his bow. 
 
 "I thank you, mademoiselle," he said, with the 
 humility she expected of him. Then, as he seated 
 himself, it seemed to be to settle to conclusions bar 
 ring raillery. "I find in you," he continued, with 
 
128 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 a judicial firmness, looking past her as if he sought 
 an impersonal attitude of mind forbidding intimate 
 interchange, "I find in your books an extraordinary 
 beauty. They are simple. They are true. If I 
 could have written in English, I should have liked 
 to do them, word for word." 
 
 She was breathing faster. Her face had taken 
 on a flush that filled its lines and softened it to a 
 transcript of what it had been years before. She 
 spoke rapidly, her hands accenting the words and 
 speaking with her. 
 
 "Listen, monsieur. It is as if you did write them. 
 Forty years ago I had not heard of you. Forty 
 years! How recklessly we speak of years when we 
 are old ! Thirty-nine years ago I heard of you for 
 the first time. I was discontented, sad. I was 
 writing books, and nobody wanted them. Then I 
 read your Souvenir. It made me over. At once I 
 had hope, courage. The blood came back into my 
 veins. The sun shone in at the window, the birds 
 sang monsieur, I was alive." Involuntarily she 
 was adopting a style of speech alien to her own. It 
 was as if she tried to make herself more intelligible, 
 not to his ear, but to his mind, through little re 
 membered notes, echoes from his own fluent style. 
 
 He had caught the fire of her revelation. 
 
 "Then," said he, "I will tell you what happened. 
 Your second book came out just before my next one; 
 but they might have been written by the same hand. 
 Not in the style, but the intention. And so it fol 
 lowed. You have not written so many books as I, 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 129 
 
 but in your essays and my verse we have gone step 
 and step, hand in hand. Is it not so, mademoi 
 selle?" 
 
 She answered gently and with a quiet pride, a little 
 smile curving the corners of her mouth. 
 
 " Oh, I know that is so ! I have always known it." 
 
 "I didn t know it until last week, when I began 
 to read your books with what shall I tell you? 
 with a boredom, an exasperation I cannot describe. 
 You were a species I hate a woman that meddles 
 with the arts to please her vanity, to stultify her 
 heart. Oh, I know, mademoiselle, those women are 
 not all so. There were the great ones. My homage 
 to them. My homage to you also, mademoiselle 
 to you also." 
 
 Again he got up to make his bow, and she rose also 
 and accepted it with a curtsy she never remembered 
 having tried before. But it came naturally. She 
 had a double consciousness of being herself and also 
 a lady in a long hall in France, with garlands upon 
 the wall, and other ladies and other courtly gentle 
 men, and mirrors all about them reduplicating their 
 graces and their charm. It had all happened before, 
 though perhaps only in her mind, where he had dwelt 
 so long. 
 
 "But you knew it," he said, as they again sat 
 regarding each other. "You knew we were twin 
 workfellows?" 
 
 "Oh, yes!" Again she spoke quietly. "I read 
 you. Everybody did, you were so great. You 
 couldn t have read me possibly. There was never 
 
ISO THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 more than one edition of me for any book, and no 
 body bought that. The likeness between what we 
 said was so marked that if your books had come out 
 first, I shouldn t have published mine. Fortunately, 
 in point of time, you kept a step behind me." 
 
 "You knew it," he repeated. The tone held an 
 ingenuous reproach. He followed it with the climax: 
 "And you did nothing! If I had been the one to 
 know, I should have come to find you." 
 
 "Ah," she breathed, in an involuntary betrayal 
 beyond anything she had imagined in her dreams of 
 what might happen if she should meet him in some 
 other life, "I went and I did not find you." 
 
 "You came to France?" 
 
 She clasped her hands upon her knee, swaying in 
 her slenderness like a girl. She spoke reflectively, 
 judging from point to point how much to tell. 
 
 "I am seventy years old, monsieur." 
 
 "That is nothing," he interrupted gallantly. 
 "I am seventy-one. I am young. We are very 
 young, both of us." 
 
 "I am seventy years old. When I read your 
 Souvenir and it illuminated my life, I felt perhaps 
 older than I do now. I had loved a man. I thought 
 I loved him, but I presently found out that it was 
 not the man; it was his youth, reenforcing my youth. 
 When I found out what it was to him, I " She 
 shrugged her shoulders in a quick distaste. "I do 
 not think of this, monsieur," she continued, with 
 a proud glance at him. "It is tawdry to me, and 
 I do not accept anything tawdry for my life. But 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 131 
 
 at that time it soiled the whole earth. Then I read 
 your book. I said, Here is somebody great enough 
 to guide me. I began to think your thoughts. I 
 walked in the path you had hewn out. Presently 
 my life was reconstructed. You had made me." 
 
 "But France," he urged. His eyes also spoke. 
 They had gained in their luminous intensity. They 
 beckoned, they insisted with a force that was the 
 very gentleness of power. "You came to France?" 
 
 " I went to France. By that time I fancied I knew 
 you very well. I spent a month in Tours." 
 
 "In Tours? A mile away from me!" 
 
 She smiled, in wistful memory. 
 
 " I waited a week, monsieur. I asked no one about 
 you, and then, in the beginning of your fame, fewer 
 personalities were broadcast about authors than at 
 present, when every farthing dip has its reflector. 
 I knew only that you lived on a beautiful road 
 ah, yes, I remember the name," she interrupted him, 
 as he was about to form the word. "I walked there 
 every day, only never so far as your chateau. But 
 one day, after I had been there a week, I started out, 
 my two poor little books in my hand, to make an 
 offering to you. I reached your gate, my feet falter 
 ing under me. There was a high garden wall. Be 
 fore I could ring, I heard a voice behind the wall. 
 It was a woman singing." 
 
 "My wife! It must have been my wife." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur. You were married. I had known 
 that, of course, before. Your wife was Lisette ? of 
 the Opera La Belle I4sett," 
 
132 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 "But why did you not ring? Or you were not 
 admitted?" 
 
 "I did not ring, monsieur." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
 "I don t know," she answered, simply. "I 
 turned back to Tours, and the next week I went 
 home." 
 
 He got up and paced the floor from window to 
 window, snatching a glance from each, as he ap 
 proached it, at the bright American sky. That day 
 there was no veiling atmosphere. It seemed to him 
 without, as within, a world of clear, bright revela 
 tion. 
 
 "What year was that?" he asked her, turning 
 suddenly. 
 
 She told him. 
 
 "My wife left me the next January," he said 
 curtly. " Did you hear that? " 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 "Everybody heard of it, in France, in America, 
 in England. I was well known enough by that time 
 to have it count." He sat down, and remained there 
 in silence, his hands hanging loosely clasped between 
 his knees, his eyes upon the floor. Presently he 
 looked up at her. "I have not spoken of it," he 
 said, simply, "to any one, till now." 
 
 She shook her head, and again there was silence 
 between them, broken at length by his voice, 
 abruptly shaken. 
 
 "Have you known about her since?" 
 
 "No." 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 133 
 
 "She died, in Hungary, six years after they went 
 away together. They were happy, I think. She re 
 gretted nothing, not even her child. He was with 
 her to the last." 
 
 "You had her child?" she ventured. 
 
 "Yes. She grew up a kind, stolid creature. She 
 took back to our peasant ancestry. Then when 
 Angelique was born, she died." 
 
 "Ah, Angelique! We were to talk of Angelique." 
 
 "Dear mademoiselle!" He laughed outright. 
 "How far Angelique seems from the loves and heart 
 breaks of old years!" 
 
 "Yet it is the same," she protested loyally, with a 
 quick thought of Harry. " It is just the same." 
 
 "The spring renews itself, you think. Yet you 
 know as well as I that even the spring is different 
 sometimes. They tell me your Harry told me 
 that your American autumn is sometimes yellow, 
 sometimes soft and sere. So with the spring, made 
 moiselle so with the spring. Tell me,V he fixed 
 his eyes upon her in keen interrogation, " when you 
 knew my wife had left me, were you sorry?" 
 
 "I was very sorry. My heart ached for you. I 
 was afraid it would cripple you, your genius, your 
 beautiful art." 
 
 "Did it cripple me?" 
 
 "No, monsieur. It changed you, but it did not 
 cripple you." 
 
 " How was I changed? " 
 
 "You were harder. It was the hand of iron that 
 wrote, not the supple, human hand. Ah, Monsieur 
 
134 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 de Trouville, you clung through everything to your 
 old ideals, but you were no longer confident that they 
 would wear. You used to say, Life is thus. Now 
 you said, Life should be thus. You had lost faith 
 that it could be." 
 
 "You knew me well," he brooded. "You knew 
 me well." 
 
 "That was in the essays, where you spoke with 
 voluntary authority; but in your poems the spirit 
 took possession of you and kindled the old flame. 
 I used to smile, monsieur, over the difference. I 
 used to laugh sometimes in triumph, as a mother 
 might over a son who couldn t escape his heritage, 
 and say to myself, It is not lost yet/ 
 
 He beat the table beside him, for a moment, with 
 an impatient hand. His brows were clouded. They 
 smoothed out with the conclusion of his thought. 
 
 "I will tell you," he said, "some things I have not 
 told anybody. I give you the* key, mademoiselle, 
 but only because you have* it already one exactly 
 like it. The great quickener of life, in one form or 
 another, is what we call love." 
 
 "Yes, I know." 
 
 "It has many forms; but its ecstasy is the love 
 between men and women. That is the blossom, the 
 topmost blossom on the tree of life, remote, defended 
 by a thousand natural impulses. It is the torch, 
 always kept burning and passed along from mother 
 to daughter, from father to son. I felt that love, 
 mademoiselle. I thought I felt it. But when I 
 found it had been in her nothing but the quick warn) 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 135 
 
 instinct that comes also to the birds, when I found 
 she could settle on another branch, so that she found 
 it safe, I, too, ceased to love, mademoiselle. I 
 was not more constant than she." He looked at her 
 with the questioning face of a child who has done 
 what may have been wrong, though he has no way of 
 estimating how wrong it is. "You are disappointed 
 in me?" he asked, entreatingly, at length. "You 
 would like it better if I could say I had clung to my 
 dream, even after she broke it for me?" 
 
 She shook her head. There were tears in her 
 eyes, and she found it better not to answer him di 
 rectly. 
 
 "I know what you felt, then," she said, "what 
 you resolved to feel. You said: It is not possible 
 for that dream ever to come true, for any man, for 
 any woman. Years from now, if there are giants 
 on the earth, it may come true, or in some place where 
 there are angels; but not here with us. 
 
 "So I stopped seeking," he said confirmingly. 
 "If I had believed there was a mate for me, do you 
 think I should have rested till I found her?" 
 
 "No," she answered, in a low tone, "you would 
 not have rested. But perhaps it is better that you 
 gave up that quest and starved your heart and wrote 
 your books." 
 
 He got up and stood towering before her. "No," 
 he said, "no. Don t make that mistake. It may 
 be better for us to be cut and pruned; but if we can, 
 if there is the sap in us, it is also better that we should 
 answer to the knife, and put out blossoms on new 
 
136 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 branches. No, child, no, Starve till you get the 
 food you need, and then eat it. Don t push it 
 away from you because you have got used to starv 
 ing. When I think of a new heaven and a new 
 earth " He paused, and she took up the prophecy. 
 
 "I know. You think of them peopled by beauti 
 ful beings whose desires can be satisfied because 
 they run in one channel with the law. Yes, and so 
 do I." 
 
 "But you think with me that it is not possible 
 now, as the world is to-day?" 
 
 She pondered for a moment, wondering, he could 
 see, with that prescience of her that was as natural 
 now as any familiar habit of his life, if she could 
 trust her real Frenchman as she had been wont to 
 trust the man inhabiting her dreams. The decision 
 made, she looked up at him, frankly smiling. 
 
 "No, monsieur," she said, "I do not think that 
 at all." 
 
 "I knew it. I saw it in your books. You are 
 ending your life with the same belief in the passion 
 of love that you had when you were twenty." 
 
 She corrected him gently. 
 
 "Not the same, monsieur. A greater belief and 
 better grounded." 
 
 "But you have not " He stopped, and she 
 filled out the broken sentence. 
 
 "No, I have not married. But I have lived. I 
 have looked on. I have seen the bud of love flower 
 into quiet loyalty. I have seen pleasure lost in hum 
 ble service." 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 1S7 
 
 "Also, you have seen the bud blighted, and young 
 liking lost in self-love or deceit." 
 
 "Yes. But it is all ah, monsieur, it is only 
 another of the choices we are given." She paused 
 a moment and looked at him as if she begged indul 
 gence for the enormous egotism of her importunity, 
 and his eyes reassured her. For him, she knew at 
 last, as for her, the warmth of their mutual compre 
 hension had melted the rigidities of speech, and 
 made their interchange as fluent as pure thought. 
 
 "Nothing was ever so generous," she hurried on, 
 "as the Maker of this earth. Take it, He said. 
 Use it, or deface it. Plant flowers, or let it go to 
 rack. Do anything you like and take the con 
 sequences. Monsieur," her voice faltered a little, 
 "that is how it is with love. It is an immense 
 choice, the greatest one of all. We can make some 
 thing beautiful, or something tawdry." 
 
 "But if we begin with a mistake? " 
 
 "Then we must be patient or maybe plant 
 again." 
 
 " I did not plant again. And you " 
 
 She looked past him, smiling, wondering if it mat 
 tered whether he understood. Again he was walk 
 ing back and forth from window to window. At 
 length he stopped in front of her. 
 
 "Have you had," he asked, "a happy life?" 
 
 "The last part of it. The first was tempestuous, 
 full of hungers and discontent. But since then 
 since I have been old, monsieur, I have been happy." 
 
 "Why?" 
 
138 THE TORCH OF LIFE 
 
 She pondered. Presently she looked up at him 
 in a smiling candor. 
 
 "I am not sure. Perhaps it is that after we have 
 really given up the earth, we look back upon it and 
 know that if we kept one great loyalty we had enough." 
 
 "And that you did. You kept your one great 
 loyalty." 
 
 "Yes, monsieur." 
 
 Still he was looking down at her, and when he 
 spoke his voice held that wistful tenderness devoted 
 from of old to the worship of women and children. 
 
 " What finger beckoned me to you ! What strange 
 wind blew me here at last!" 
 
 She looked up at him whimsically, though her 
 eyes had tears in them. 
 
 "Angelique, monsieur. It was Angelique." 
 
 "Yes. I came over in a fit of irritation. I 
 hoped I should find him your Harry undesirable 
 in some way. I wanted Angelique to marry in her 
 own country. I thought it would be safer a prac 
 tical alliance than this spring passion." 
 
 "They are coming, I think," she interrupted him. 
 "I hear voices in the hall." 
 
 He was smiling at her. His eyes were wet. 
 
 "They must marry," he said, "the boy and girl. 
 You will like Angelique. She has the best of her 
 mother in her and the best of me. I had meant to 
 stay here a week only " He paused, facing a doubt, 
 an indecision that might have been fostered by a 
 younger heart. 
 
 But the woman finished for him, gravely. 
 
THE TORCH OF LIFE 139 
 
 "That is right, monsieur. You will go back next 
 week, and take her with you. If they care enough, 
 they can wait, six months, a year. Then he can go 
 to France." 
 
 "They shall marry," he confirmed himself, mus 
 ingly. "We will pass along the torch to them. 
 They shall finish what we began." 
 
 She nodded gratefully. 
 
 "I say what we began," he went on. "But it 
 was you alone. You knew me. You kept your 
 hand on me and steadied me, all these years. It is 
 only now I know you." 
 
 "It is the same thing, monsieur. One hand can 
 keep the fire burning, if it is faithful." 
 
 There were light steps on the stairs, and a gust of 
 laughter was borne in to them as if it floated like 
 a cloud of flower incense from a procession of the 
 spring. The woman rose to meet her guests. 
 Monsieur de Trouville put out his hand, and she 
 gave hers frankly. He spoke in haste, because the 
 lilting voices were so near: "It is your gift to them 
 the flaming torch." 
 
x/ 
 
 THE TRYST 
 
 THAT a man nearing forty is far from being in his 
 right mind when he even contemplates an excursion 
 with two recently married couples, one of the brides 
 being she whom he has not been able to cease loving 
 with an ardor intensified by the certainty that he 
 had been denied his chance with her by circumstance 
 only, bare circumstance, a matter of staying in a 
 place eight and three-quarters days instead of nine, 
 thereby missing her by a train this is pathologically 
 evident. I was the man. I was at Naples, with no 
 more idea that Julia and her young husband were 
 there for an ecstatic minute of their bridal tour than 
 I had that I should be dining with them in a kind 
 of enraged content, being offered fruit from her soft 
 finger-tips I would have died to kiss I let myself 
 go now in the telling of it as I let myself go mentally 
 at that incredible dinner, since, after all, there has 
 to be a moment s delirium even for a man of forty 
 who has got his wound. I had met them face to 
 face in the street, I absurdly chaffering for corals I 
 didn t want, only to spur the vendor s verbal acro 
 batics, and then meaning to go on to the Aquarium 
 and pretend I had an interest in fins and octopi, 
 when they came on me, the radiant four of them, she 
 and her Jack, Billy Petersham and his new wife, 
 who had been a widow, over-corseted and creaking. 
 
 140 
 
THE TRYST 141 
 
 She always, in spite of decency, made you think of 
 her stays, and I never saw her without a vague 
 nautical memory that stays are something a boat 
 is warped into or warped out of, and I never could 
 resist the certainty that she had got in and stayed 
 warped. They greeted me, three of them, with the 
 hilarious ecstasy of the inordinately joyous crowded 
 up one more notch of bliss by the spectacle of the 
 enforcedly abstemious for whom the cupboard is 
 bare of 
 
 "syrops tinct with cinnamon" 
 and the heavenly manna of verified illusion. 
 
 "Dine with us, old boy," Jack said at once, and 
 mentioned the gilded hotel on the height where I 
 had been too tame-spirited to go. 
 
 I looked at him a second before I answered, looked 
 him up and down perhaps, for I had a chance to 
 think how fresh-colored his face was, how hued by 
 blood so good and so new that it might have run 
 from heavenly founts, how white his teeth were, and 
 how his honest eyes met me with their old clarity 
 and kindness, but more a challenge, perhaps, to 
 note how happy he was, and what a conqueror. I 
 noted his exquisite clothes, too, his lilac tie I knew 
 the stockings matched it, if only the eye could have 
 got at them his general look of something flowered 
 out in the spring. He was a splendor, no mistake. 
 I must have hesitated, for before I answered, Julia 
 was holding out her hand, that slender hand I 
 knew in all its gloved seclusion, in its slim, lovely 
 length as it fed her beautiful lips she held it out to 
 
142 THE TRYST 
 
 me, and I took it and forgot Jack s question and his 
 tie. I only stood and stared into that face I had so 
 hungered for and yet I had seen it night upon 
 night, framed in the black wall of darkness, or against 
 the moving tapestry of my shut eyes I had been 
 seeing it, I thought, "every day i the hour" since 
 she had been reft away by her Jack; but only God He 
 knew how horribly I had been longing to set eyes 
 once more upon its fair reality. She was above all 
 women beautiful, not because I loved her, but chiefly 
 that she was so kind. The faint flush, the fineness 
 of her cheek, the glory of hair all gold and rarer, the 
 wistful look of her blue eyes : these a lover, if he had 
 been also a poet, might inadequately have sung. 
 But nobody in this generation, nobody but a dead 
 and gone cavalier who clapped his sword in scabbard 
 to write a lyric explaining why swords must be out 
 and love-knots temporarily put by, only he could 
 have hit off that human look of hers, of sympathy, 
 of compassion, of knowing exactly how the under 
 dog felt, with even a surprising hint of having been 
 herself, at some time, desperately at odds with 
 fortune and now remembering it. This was not 
 for me, I thought, as I stood stupidly worshipping 
 her. Julia Dove never had, I was sure, the least 
 suspicion of my love for her. How could she, when 
 she was engaged the day I met her, and I must have 
 looked to her a dry old hortus siccus of emotions as I 
 was, pelting round after historical data, even more 
 desiccated than was entirely just, seen through the 
 lilac mistjs pf Jack s ties and hose and bis 
 
THE TRYST US 
 
 glance. But now her look seemed to say inexplic 
 ably: "Dear man, be comforted. You are shock 
 ingly lonesome. So am I." 
 
 There I pulled myself up in my unlawful imagin 
 ings. She couldn t be. The candid glance meant 
 only so she once had been before she found him 
 and twined her soul with his. But all she really 
 said, independently of her kind eyes, was this, oh, in 
 the dearest voice: 
 
 "Do, Mr. Olmstead. Do come." 
 
 I dropped her hand. 
 
 "Thank you," said I, with the abruptness of one 
 recalled. "I will." 
 
 So we five dined together in the splendor of the 
 Bertolini, and sat on the terrace afterward like funny 
 modern gods on Olympus, and watched the lights 
 flaming out and twinkling out below, and heard 
 faint touches of music, and knew the multitudinous 
 life of the city was dancing itself blind and mad, 
 and doing the little tasks that bought its bread, and 
 playing its pageant because its blood ran so fast it 
 couldn t help it, and yet thriftily, since the foreigners 
 paid for piping. Mrs. Billy and I did most of the 
 talking. I fancied she was rather glad of a prosaic 
 new element, she who was almost forty herself, and 
 getting painfully attached to succulent dishes and 
 talk about reducing one s self and, on this occasion, 
 my immunity from care because nature turned me 
 out so lean. Her husband smoked and stared at 
 her through the dusk, glorifying her into the eternal 
 beautiful, I have no doubt, because she was new and 
 
144 THE TRYST 
 
 his; and Julia looked at the city and said nothing. 
 It was my one hour, not to shine, not to acquire, not 
 to do in any sense a memorable deed, but to sit in 
 the same visible universe with Julia Dove. Once I 
 got a little drunk with it, the wonder of it, the inef 
 fable compassion of the upper powers to allow me 
 this heavenly anodyne before my heart beat itself 
 out with lonesome misery, and I found myself 
 repeating idiotically: 
 
 " Only to kiss the air " There I stopped, and 
 got hold of myself for a fool; but Mrs. Billy clacked 
 in with her complacent note, perfectly ready for all 
 challenges of give or take: 
 
 "What s that, Mr. Olmstead? Is it a new song? " 
 
 "Not absolutely new," said I stupidly, "though 
 it s for all time. It s been running in my head. 
 I ve been trying to get the last line." 
 
 "Why, I know it," said Julia, with no hesitation 
 in her clear young voice: 
 
 Only to kiss that air 
 That lately kissed thee. 
 I know it all." 
 
 And then, as if the immortals loved me, and meant 
 to accord me one more blissful cup to live on till I 
 died of surfeit and despair, she sat here with the 
 lights of Naples below her in a seemly humbleness 
 and the stars shining like her own galaxy, and re 
 peated it all. 
 
 "Shall I write it down for you?" she asked, at 
 the end. 
 
 "No," said I. "I shall remember." I got on my 
 
THE TRYST 145 
 
 feet. I d had all I could carry. "Good-night," I 
 said. 
 
 Then I was wishing them joy all round joy and 
 a fortunate trip, in a manner that, I hope, satisfied 
 the lightly conventional; but Jack, for some reason, 
 would not hear of losing me. 
 
 "Breakfast with us," he said. I have had an 
 idea since that because I was staying at a meagre 
 pension below he had confirmed his estimate of my 
 poverty. "Then come on to Pompeii." 
 
 I didn t want Pompeii, or any further spectacle 
 of marital felicity. I remembered the gentle eternal 
 sunlit gloom of the dead city, as I had seen it before, 
 and it appeared to me that, superadded to my own 
 grounded sense that life itself was pretty well over, 
 I should as soon choose an after-dinner stroll in the 
 catacombs. 
 
 "Awfully good of you," I said, "but I m due at 
 Capri. I m afraid I shall have to be leaving rather 
 early in the morning to make it." 
 
 I was due there because I had to have a pretext, 
 and that would serve as well as any. 
 
 "Who s at Capri?" inquired Mrs. Billy skittishly, 
 and I tried dismally to look as if somebody very 
 fetching indeed might be there; whereupon she for 
 got she was mated and settled again, and bridled in 
 the old way. " Well, we ll let you off from Pompeii," 
 she conceded, "but you simply must meet us at 
 
 Immediately, not because she said it, for what she 
 said meant to me, as it did to every man save Billy, 
 
146 THE TRYST 
 
 less than the crackling of thorns under a pot for I 
 suppose a sufficient crackling might boil the dinner, 
 and Billy is the raw material that boils easily but 
 for some reason hidden even from that inner self 
 which is forever hearing unexpected calls and chal 
 lenges, immediately I felt mad to go to Psestum. 
 
 "Yes," said Jack, from his perennial desire to 
 challenge everybody to "come on" whither he is 
 going, "yes, come on to Psestum. That ll be Thurs 
 day. We make it from La Cava." 
 
 I knew Cava of the Tyrrhenians, all blue moun 
 tain and silent valley and hills and hollow distances 
 and balconies moonlighted. And now it was full 
 moon, and my merciless fancy pictured me Julia in 
 the sea of it, and Jack commonplace Jack, yet he 
 was young! he adoring her. I would have none of 
 Cava. But Psestum was still drawing me; it had 
 me with an iron grip. 
 
 "We re doomed to Psestum because Julia wants 
 it," said Jack fondly, with the husband s young 
 pride of being under dominion. "Think it over, 
 Jule. It s as full of malaria as it can stick. Come 
 on to Capri with Olmstead, and I ll give you a black 
 pearl." 
 
 "I m sorry," said Julia, in her dear voice pierced 
 with a thrill of something I had never heard in it 
 resistance, maybe, not of him but for the sake of 
 what she was obliged to do. "I have to go there," 
 
 " Have to, child? Why have you? " 
 
 I looked at her and wondered -why: not from wil- 
 fulness, for that wasn t in her, but for some reason 
 
THE TRYST 147 
 
 so rigid that not only could she not permit it to be 
 withstood, but she herself, from its unknown power, 
 could not withstand it. Now the fair territory of 
 her face was unfeignedly perplexed. 
 
 "I don t know," she owned. "I have to go, 
 that s all. I know I have to." 
 
 " Gammon, " said Jack, still fondly. If it had been 
 less than a lover s acquiescent pride I couldn t have 
 suffered him. "What if we let you go alone?" 
 
 "I should have to, then," she said, in the same 
 serious wistfulness of wonder. "I can t bear to be 
 so obstinate; but truly I ve got to go." 
 
 Jack laughed. He liked her sudden tyranny, and 
 took her hand and swung it back and forth. 
 
 " All right then," said he, " we ve got to go. Olm- 
 stead, how about you? Can t you reconsider?" 
 
 "Assuredly," I said, with no volition, it seemed to 
 me afterward, to say that particular thing. "I ve 
 got to go, too. I ll meet you there." 
 
 So we looked out times and trains and made our 
 final pact. I had privately decided that, for all my 
 mythical engagement at Capri, I should probably 
 stay on at Naples up to the point of being due at 
 Psestum for due there I was, I solemnly knew, for 
 other reason than that I had vowed to meet the 
 lately married there. But what the reason was, I 
 could no more say than Julia could, of hers. Only 
 there was a reason. 
 
 The few days passed, and I occupied them as well 
 as I could for thinking of the moon at Cava, in run 
 ning back over my own life, meagre though it was of 
 
148 THE TRYST 
 
 incident, to see, once for all, whether I could have 
 made it different. I didn t find that I could. At 
 every point where other men score, in the brave 
 crisis, the big distances, I had slipped a cog. When a 
 man was needed at the vital spot, I simply couldn t 
 be there. When life demanded testimony of me, I 
 might have it to offer, but court was never sitting 
 that day. The whole thing was consistent. It had 
 happened to me over and over. It wasn t that I 
 was faint-hearted and weak-backed, or that my legs 
 were not strong enough to make a pace. I was 
 becalmed in some zone of the soul. Information 
 never reached me. Boats couldn t get into my lati 
 tude with the news of the battles that were going to 
 be, or the great treaties that would prevent my strik 
 ing futile blows for a quarrel that was lost. It had 
 all been like a retribution for some misdeed of mine. 
 I felt that strongly, for I believed in the justice that 
 dogs us like a loving hound, and I knew it was part 
 of the beneficent scheme of things that if we are hit 
 over the head, it is that we have at some time bought 
 the blow. Only, how had I deserved precisely this? 
 Why was I "come-tardy-of " in all the games of 
 life? How had it been managed that I shouldn t 
 find Julia three months before the fresh-colored Jack 
 brought his conquering cravats into the field? I 
 hadn t even had a chance and why? I felt it 
 would help me for the home stretch, which had, after 
 all, to be run with ardor, even if to a decreed igno 
 miny, to know. 
 
 The morning came, and all fell out as we had said. 
 
THE TRYST 149 
 
 We met at Paestum station, the five of us, they with 
 little canvas bags of luncheon from the paternal 
 Hotel de Londres, an extra portion for me. There 
 was not a single tourist beside ourselves "a single, 
 blooming tourist," Billy said and the sky was 
 Italian blue, and a light wind moving to welcome 
 us, when between dry fields where wild larkspur 
 bloomed we walked toward the temple and I, by 
 what seemed some fated chance, walked with Julia, 
 while Jack leaped the low walls to bring her larkspur 
 and crowd it into her hands. She was silent, and 
 I seemed to know it was because the moment, the 
 day, meant something to her nobody could share 
 nobody but me, perhaps, for I, too, knew it meant 
 tremendously. And then we were in face of the 
 great yellow-pillared splendor, and we dared to 
 enter and wander up and down its ruined aisles. 
 The gods were there, I knew perfectly well, and said 
 so; but I chanced to say it was Apollo, for I heard 
 him, and Mrs. Billy kept chirping: 
 
 "But why do you say Apollo, Mr. Olmstead, when 
 this is the Temple of Neptune? Don t you know 
 it s the Temple of Neptune, Mr. Olmstead? Isn t 
 it Neptune you mean?" 
 
 And then I got meek and patient because there 
 was no other way of hushing her, and said, "Yes, I 
 did mean Neptune." But about this time we all 
 began to notice Julia. She had stayed apart from 
 us, in our wandering up and down, our profane feet 
 where priests had ministered, and now she was 
 hurrying back and forth, peering out between col- 
 
150 THE TRYST 
 
 umns, even so far as the line of distant saline blue, 
 and her face had piteously changed. It was gray- 
 pale and her eyes were black and anguished. Her 
 husband saw it about as soon as I did, and started 
 for her over grassy gulfs between the slabs. But 
 when he would have touched her, she waved him 
 off. She almost pushed him. 
 
 "What is it, darling?" I heard him say, and she 
 looked so unfriended that I was glad the tender word 
 was ready for her. "Lost something?" 
 
 She started and looked at him, not, I could have 
 sworn, knowing him at all, and then put both her 
 hands to her head in an unaffected gesture of wild 
 perplexity. 
 
 "I don t know," she said. "I don t know." 
 And then, "Where is the ship?" 
 
 He took her by the arm and led her along perforce 
 and made her sit. 
 
 "She feels the heat," I heard him say to Mrs. 
 Billy who was staring. "Get the apollinaris, Bill. 
 Wet a handkerchief in it, somebody." 
 
 But there was really no heat to feel. The little 
 breeze was still doing its kindest for us. Julia 
 laughed out now. Her color had come back as if, 
 having got into another part of the temple, she had 
 escaped an especial territory of influence. 
 
 "What are you giving me apollinaris for?" she 
 asked. " Jack, you re dripping that handkerchief over 
 Mrs, Billy s dress. Want it on my head? Of course 
 I don t want a great wet dab on my head ! Come, let s 
 read the guide-book and then have luncheon." 
 
THE TRYST 151 
 
 So we avoided looking at one another, the rest of 
 us, and went rather hastily into activities, as if 
 we had witnessed some special madness that had 
 blessedly passed, and must never be thought of any 
 more. And in due time we had our luncheon, and 
 fed the lean dogs that came, evidently by habit, to 
 yearn for bits, and then it was in the air that the 
 Temple of Ceres must be visited, and everybody, well 
 primed by Jack s conscientious perorations from the 
 guide-book, rose to go. All but me, and, for a 
 moment, all but Julia. 
 
 "Come, come," said Jack to her. It was im 
 patient, but the impatience of a solicitude most 
 tender. " Get a move on, missus. The day s most 
 
 over." 
 
 She shook her head. The puzzled look had come 
 back to her. 
 
 "I don t believe I can," she said, and she spoke 
 with some difficulty, as they do who have imper 
 fectly rehearsed their subject-matter. "I might 
 be late." 
 
 He gave her arm a little shake. 
 
 "Come, come, dear," said he. "You re not going 
 to worry me again?" 
 
 That seemed to bring her back with a wrench to 
 what we are pleased to call reasonableness, and she 
 laughed and turned with him obediently enough. 
 They were midway out of the temple, all of them, 
 when they remembered me. 
 
 " Come along, Olmstead," Jack threw back at me. 
 He was entirely good-natured now he had his own 
 
152 THE TRYST 
 
 special prize under convoy. "You mustn t keep 
 Ceres waiting. They don t like it." 
 
 "I m not going," I said. "I ll take a nap. See 
 you at the train." 
 
 At that, Julia, his wife, stopped short and gave me 
 that puzzled but now almost recognizing look; but 
 he reminded her by a touch on the arm, and she went 
 on with him, patient, I could see, and droopingly. 
 And Billy tossed me a cigar, and Mrs. Billy shook 
 her parasol at me, and they were gone, and had left 
 me to the oblivion I candidly knew I wanted. I 
 put my head back on the calm old pillar I was 
 conscious of wishing I were as old, so that I could 
 perhaps be as indifferent and shut my eyes. I was 
 horribly tired, and at the same time most unbearably 
 excited with it all. With what? I didn t know. 
 Was this panic? Was I Pan-struck, as one might 
 well be on this ground of colossal shadowy deities? 
 I felt that I was nervous as a green girl, and threw 
 all sorts of obloquy at my senile state for admitting 
 such a thing. And I kept my eyes shut to rest them 
 from the vision of things seen, and so they stayed 
 until I heard a voice. It was a woman s voice, a 
 voice I could have sworn was Julia s, and it spoke 
 my name. Now I am not going to tell what my 
 name is, because it is Greek, and old, and funny 
 when I sign it to a reply to a dinner invitation, though 
 it does very well for a scholar who has dry conclusions 
 to make upon living facts. My father was a scholar, 
 and he gave it to me, and perhaps for that reason, 
 perhaps for some unknown other, I have always been 
 
THE TRYST 15$ 
 
 content with it. I have had, indeed, connected with 
 it, a certain inevitable feeling I can t describe, as if 
 nothing else could ever possibly have been my name. 
 But when I opened my eyes I saw it could not have 
 been I who was called. The tourists indeed were 
 upon me, a man and a woman, both young, and they 
 walked together outside the temple, and talked 
 together with a trouble and haste I could hardly 
 forbear to share, even by an eye-beam, it was in itself 
 so passionate. It seemed to draw lesser intelligences 
 to it, as the sun compels the earth. I thought I 
 knew who they were, this from their costume. They 
 were in white, the flowing robes of an ancient time, 
 and I guessed at once that they were out of a troupe 
 of actors of classical Greek plays, who had been going 
 about London and Paris, during my stay there, in 
 the free beauty of their borrowed dress. But I 
 began to hear them speak, and took no shame in 
 listening. I seemed, indeed, to be there to listen, to 
 share, to partake with them of the tragic imminence 
 of their fate. They spoke rapidly, but in the melody 
 of a majestic tongue which was not mine. Yet, 
 though I could not that night transcribe a word of 
 it, I followed it with the ease of a leaf on a flowing 
 river. She was entreating him, this man of my name, 
 to undo some irrevocable deed. What it was I could 
 not at first determine. Then, from her heart 
 broken reproaches, and his hurlings back of the 
 "No!" that seemed inevitable, I gradually gathered 
 knowledge. He had sold the state s secret some 
 secret he had been paid by the enemy some enemy 
 
154 THE TRYST 
 
 and what he had been paid was to enrich him to 
 the point of seizing her from the arms of the hated 
 lover she was decreed to, and fleeing with her in 
 the enemy s ship. And the ship was out there 
 across the blue line. 
 
 But the girl would not go. She was adjuring 
 him, in the name of all the gods, to deliver himself 
 up to justice, to inevitable death. Here was where 
 she had appointed their meeting, here by the sacred 
 temple, here where their whisperings might be 
 heard, the better that they should, that priests 
 and gods combined might slay them both and so 
 hasten his expiation. As they walked back an3 
 forth in the sunlight, and once she set her foot 
 unconsciously on a snake and I saw it did not move 
 even by a tremor of its shining length, my eyes 
 dwelt with a love and pity I cannot measure upon 
 the filleted gold of her small head. I seemed to 
 partake with her of anguish lest he fail, yet to know 
 it was a foregone fate, and my sadness settled into 
 the acquiescence of despair. He desired nothing 
 but to save her, yet he would not save them both, as 
 they do who play for honors, by giving up himself. 
 And as if I were in his skin I saw why. He loved her 
 too fervidly, too passionately, as earth is tempting, 
 forcing, pushing us to love, and as the big law we 
 only now and then catch a glimpse of, will not have 
 us. And curiously from that far time, from the 
 misty gates of it, my mind leaped with a throb, a 
 vault down the centuries, to the cavalier who made an 
 immortal discovery and wrote it in immortal words : 
 
THE TRYST 155 
 
 I could not love thee, Dear, so much, 
 
 Loved I not Honor more. 
 
 This, in substance, she represented to him in the 
 passion of her noble phrases, unconsidered, born like 
 tears out of a breaking heart. She was his dearest, 
 she said, she thanked the gods, but nevertheless the 
 gods themselves must be still dearer to him, they 
 and the state. What was it compared with the 
 dishonor he had bought that her poor body should 
 be stained by the mastery of a hated spouse? At 
 that he cried aloud, and she hushed him while my 
 mind had time to flash aside to another mandate 
 made for perpetuity concerning them that kill the 
 body and have not power to kill the soul. Her voice 
 continued in its lyric rise and fall. There was no 
 help for either of them, she told him, he in his present 
 disaster and she before her coming slavery, no help 
 save death, and that might happily be now. But all 
 the same, while the bright rapiers of their argument 
 were glancing, I knew he would not yield: that they 
 were to be discovered, that since she must not go 
 with him, he would snatch at her with the force of 
 love run wild, and, trusting in the ship, resolve in 
 his madness to bear her to it across the parching 
 leagues. That she would cry out to the gods to 
 save them and they would be saved he by the knife 
 at his throat and she to sink into so ill a mind that 
 no man would take her to him with her bright 
 beauty faded. 
 
 All this I seemed indubitably and with a high sad 
 ness to know, and athwart the web of it, like some- 
 
156 THE TRYST 
 
 thing sharply remembered, I heard other voices, 
 insistently familiar ones of the common day. Some 
 one was calling, Jack, Billy and Mrs. Billy, she 
 waving her parasol up and down, in a pump-handle 
 fashion, across the bright vista through which they 
 ran. Did they shock the other visitants to a scene 
 beloved and throw them out of the aura where they 
 were for the moment visible? Had the time been 
 preeminently ripe and right that they these two 
 beautiful young beings had returned for a fleeting 
 hour of a day no longer existent, to play their parts 
 again in faithful rigor to a vanished past, or had I, 
 incalculably endowed, seen but the picture of them, 
 woven for all time into the waving tapestry of the 
 air? However it was, they were gone, not of a 
 sudden, not either walking away or vanishing, but 
 in some quite familiar and convincing fashion, as if 
 I had seen beautiful young lovers go thus, as con 
 clusively as if it were through a gate. And at the 
 instant that I felt they were gone, and knew myself 
 to be in some way the richer, the more complete 
 for having seen them, I heard a cry not from those 
 three chorusing on behind, but a light, hurried call 
 in a voice I knew. Yet never had I heard it so 
 moved, so jubilant, so full of life. And as I turned 
 to it, she came Julia came, flying. Her face was 
 pink like dawn, and her glad eyes hailed me. She 
 made no hesitant pause or pretense that it was 
 anything but me and what I stood for she had come 
 to find. Both hands out, she rushed to me, and I 
 with my two hands received her. Standing so, 
 
THE TRYST 157 
 
 palm to palm, she looked up in my face, one glad 
 smile of recognition. So might the girl I had just 
 seen have looked at her lover if she had, instead of 
 dooming him to death, beckoned him to life with her. 
 
 "Am I too late?" she was imploring me, yet with 
 the sweetest certainty that she was not. " Oh, don t 
 tell me I m too late!" 
 
 " No, no," I answered her, worship on my lips, in my 
 eyes, I felt, as in my heart. " No. I was here. I saw 
 them. What difference whether it was you or I?" 
 
 "What difference!" she echoed out of a deep- 
 breathed, heavenly tranquillity of happiness. "Oh, 
 what difference!" Then she looked at me for a long 
 minute, as if she saw behind my lean old face what 
 jocund youth I should have been the last to under 
 stand, but not to believe. I knew and believed it 
 all. *It is the last now," she said. She was grow 
 ing fragmentary, like one recalled to an existence not 
 yet comprehended, and only able to stay in it for a 
 minute, and now, the minute over, fading out of it 
 as the two others had faded to my eyes. But I 
 understood. The last parting, she had meant to 
 say. "Next time" she stammered sweetly, in her 
 lovely hesitancy, like a child of heaven learning 
 the new language and as yet imperfect in it. And 
 then I saw her the one who had looked at me, who 
 had spoken, who had known the hour was nearly 
 accomplished, and next time, in whatever age and 
 whatever star, would see the bridegroom claim his 
 bride I saw her fading out into Julia Dove, the 
 young mate of Jack, who was anxiously hailing her 
 
158 THE TRYST 
 
 as he ran: for she, in that wonder of predestined 
 flight, had outstripped them all. And I did not 
 care. I did not care that she was to return with him 
 to moonlight and bells at Cava, for that, too, must 
 be mysteriously accomplished. He was beside her 
 now, and I dropped her hands. She looked down 
 at them, as I did it, surprised a little, it seemed, to 
 know why I had been holding them. 
 
 "What is it?" Jack was insisting, out of a rage of 
 anxious love. "What in thunder is it, dear?" 
 
 Mrs. Billy came up, panting and creaking, and her 
 parasol might have dinted the sacred stones, so did 
 she punctuate her haste. 
 
 "What is what, dear?" Julia echoed, lightly and 
 most honestly. "Did I hurry? I was bidding Mr. 
 Olmstead good-by." 
 
 " Come along then," said Jack, mopping his smooth 
 young brow, and almost a little fractious at having 
 been fretted into more perplexities. "That train 
 will be in in about three minutes and a half. Come 
 along, Olmstead." 
 
 "No," said I. "I m not going." 
 
 I felt light-headed, drunk with the delirium and 
 the certainty of it. 
 
 "Not going? You won t get anywhere tonight." 
 
 "I don t want to," said I. "I m somewhere now. 
 There ll be some kind of a little hostelry." 
 
 "Don t be a fool, man," said Billy, and Mrs. Billy 
 shrieked "Malaria!" italicising with her parasol. 
 
 "Well, there s a minute gone, and we can t stop 
 here," said Jack, and I didn t blame him. One 
 
THE TRYST 159 
 
 doesn t lightly subject wives to even a mythical 
 malaria. " Come on, Olmstead. We re off." 
 
 Julia turned willingly and obediently with him; 
 but at ten paces she stopped. She ran back toward 
 me. The other look fleeted into her face. "Don t 
 you smell them," she cried. "Roses!" 
 
 "Yes," I said, afire with my exultation, and again 
 my mind challenged my own century and found the 
 right word from another man s pen: " Roses from 
 Paestan rosaries! 
 
 "Next time" she faltered, as if she herself least 
 of all understood what she might be saying. The 
 look had faded. 
 
 "Julia! Julia!" Jack was calling, and Mrs. 
 Billy piped me out one more warning: 
 
 "Malaria, Mr. Olmstead! Remember!" 
 
 But I stood there happier, younger, more , at 
 peace than anything, I believed, on earth. I could 
 think of but one word to call: the word any man 
 would be likest to leave in the keeping of his dearest, 
 if they were to be parted for a lifetime or two. Mrs. 
 Billy thought it was her word; but it was Julia s, to 
 her soul alone, though it meant no more to her, 
 with the memory washed out of her face, than if 
 a butterfly had settled for an instant on her gown, 
 and she, flying with Jack, had had no eyes for it. I 
 called it after them, and Mrs. Billy, thinking it the 
 echo of her own, shook her parasol despairingly. 
 Out of my kingdom of youth regained and love 
 inalienably assured I called, and it rang splendidly: 
 
 "Remember!" 
 
V 
 
 WAVES 
 
 IT seemed to Jeffrey Wheelock and his wife, Anne, 
 that their ridiculous apartment in New York had 
 acquired a meaning and a distinction since Aunt 
 Sybil came to visit them. She was a thin blonde 
 aunt, something over sixty, with sparse auburn hair 
 brought smoothly into spirals of curls behind her 
 ears, a perennial smile, all benevolence, and a most 
 childlike glance through the gold-bowed glasses of 
 which she was so proud. She had earned them out 
 of eggs and butter, and it exhilarated her to think 
 how reckless she had been in eschewing a baser metal. 
 Her ways were comfortable country ones, brought 
 gaily into the heart of a city turmoil she admired, 
 and there displayed with no faltering over their in 
 congruity. In the two days of her visit, she had 
 gone with Anne to a picture exhibition and a half 
 dozen of the more spectacular shops (Anne anxiously 
 selecting such pageantry as cost nothing), in the 
 calmest surety that, if her cashmere shawl and her 
 bonnet of another epoch inspired any remark, it 
 could be only of a kindly tone. 
 
 At home she made hourly pictures, sitting by the 
 window darning stockings that had been cast into 
 the obscurity of a drawer where Anne never had 
 time to go, and sewing buttons on with a swift regu 
 larity and a twirl of her thread about the base that 
 
 160 
 
WAVES 161 
 
 fascinated Jeff as much now in his mature estate as 
 it had twenty years before, when he sat roasting his 
 apple by the kitchen hearth. He began to think he 
 had never fully estimated Aunt Sybil s decorative 
 value. It seemed as if he might even build her into 
 a play, or that he might have done it at an earlier 
 moment when he had the enthusiasm attendant on 
 untried desires, and before he had bitterly learned 
 that the doors of the great tribunal of dramatic 
 agent and potent manager swing rustily on their 
 hinges. 
 
 But all this appreciation of Aunt Sybil s affec 
 tionate pleasure in being with them made only a 
 secluded little retiring-room for the young couple s 
 thought, a shady spot where they could drop in for a 
 moment to rest upon old affections and loyalties, in 
 the pauses of stolen consultation over their extreme 
 and menacing poverty and their kind conspiracy to 
 give Aunt Sybil a rousing good time until she should 
 go back and tell the neighbors how splendidly Jeff 
 was doing in New York. 
 
 It had been best to ask her now, because now they 
 had the apartment, and even another month might 
 find them unable to pay for it; and out of her long 
 kindness Aunt Sybil had earned the right to an en 
 during picture of their worldly felicity before they 
 settled down, in one room, to meals out of small bake- 
 shops and tin cans. 
 
 This morning Jeff was out on one of his lorn quests 
 after the ladylike head of a dramatic agency, who 
 had written him enthusiastic praise of his melo- 
 
162 WAVES 
 
 drama, alternating with mysterious reasons for not 
 landing it upon the great Mr. Nasmyth, the king of 
 the managers. 
 
 Aunt Sybil laid down her work and slipped her 
 glasses off to wipe them. She looked about the little 
 sitting-room with its Winged Victory, at the other 
 delusive wedding presents, each testifying to more 
 ease than the young couple could possibly live up to, 
 and said, with great satisfaction: 
 
 "Well, you certain are fixed complete." 
 
 Anne thought of the Victory swinging outside the 
 window on its way into a house with stairs too nar 
 row for its advent, fancied the stiff Japanese em 
 broidery near neighbor to a kerosene-stove, and 
 giggled. 
 
 "We like it," she said speciously. 
 
 "Some said" Aunt Sybil went on sewing, and 
 stated the case candidly, "some of em at home said 
 Jeff was ravin crazy to give up school -keepin to 
 write plays. Our minister said, Why don t he 
 write his plays first, nights and so, and when he s 
 had one took, then burn his bridges?" 
 
 "O wise young judge!" murmured Anne irre- 
 pressibly. 
 
 "What d you say, dear?" inquired Aunt Sybil, 
 glancing up. 
 
 "That might be the way for some," Anne hedged. 
 
 "Not for anybody that could do it and knew he 
 could. So I says, dear. And I wrote to the minis 
 ter last night. They re as snug as ever you see/ 
 says I. Got em a nice little tenement, everything 
 
WAVES 163 
 
 complete. And Jeff s got his play done, and it s in 
 somebody s hands. Who is it that s got it, dear?" 
 
 "Miss Belton has it." 
 
 "Yes. Miss Belton. I ll remember it so s I can 
 tell em when I get home. When do the royalties 
 begin, dear?" 
 
 "Plays are usually brought out at the beginning 
 of the season," Anne conceded miserably. 
 
 "Next fall? Then that s when the royalties ll 
 begin. My! You could have knocked me down 
 first time I read in the paper how much, them royal 
 ties mount up to." 
 
 "It s a good business," said Anne. 
 
 "I guess so. Well, it s all come out better n any 
 body had reason to hope. There was a month or 
 two, when Jeff first give up his place, I worried con 
 siderable. I used to lay awake nights. That was 
 before I found out abou.t the waves." 
 
 "Waves, Aunt Sybil?" 
 
 "Yes. There was a lecturer to the hall. He told 
 us there was waves. He said, you just think things 
 are goin to be good and they are good. If you think 
 they ll be bad, why so t ll be. When we think, 
 dear, we kinder make waves in the air " 
 
 "Thought- waves?" 
 
 "I dunno. I didn t ketch exactly what they were. 
 Only they were waves. And they keep on and on, 
 and mebbe they wash down some things and build 
 up others. I dunno exactly how it is; but anyway 
 it s your thought that makes em, and there s nothin 
 they can t do." 
 
164 WAVES 
 
 "There s Jeff." 
 
 Aunt Sybil was not listening. Her ears were at 
 tuned to the murmuring of subtle influences on 
 far-off shores. "I ve tried it, dear," she said. "I 
 know." 
 
 "The waves?" Anne was out of her chair, poised 
 for a flight to the hall, to meet Jeff and give him the 
 relief of telling his news quickly. 
 
 "Yes. When I got kinder struck up over Jeff s 
 givin up his business and takin to plays, I says to 
 myself: Well, if there s waves, I ll make em. So 
 instead of worryin I d say I guess a hundred times 
 a day I said it Now there s Jeff and Anne Jeff s 
 writin the best play ever anybody see, and there s 
 money comin to em. Bymeby I could see it rollin 
 in. It was a kind of a stream, all gold, and the waves 
 was washin it along." 
 
 Anne halted in the doorway. Tears were in her 
 eyes. "Did you, Aunt Sybil?" she said. Then 
 she met Jeff in the hall. "What is it?" she asked. 
 "Did you see her?" 
 
 He drew her toward their bedrbom and, inside it, 
 shut the door. His step, faltering out failure, had 
 prepared her for his face. He threw off his hat 
 and passed a hand over his forehead. He looked 
 haggard. 
 
 "No," he said. "I didn t see her. Miss Belton 
 was out. There s no such thing as a visible Miss 
 Belton. Had they tried to place my play? The 
 girl was sure Miss Belton had made every effort. I 
 said I d take it with me. She couldn t find it, Anne. 
 
WAVES 165 
 
 They d actually pigeonholed it so effectually it 
 couldn t be found." 
 
 "They did find it?" 
 
 "Yes, after it was apparent I meant to sit there 
 till the day after to-morrow. Yes, she found it, in 
 the same wrapper I sent it in, untouched, fresh as 
 paint. It hadn t been read." 
 
 "You took it?" 
 
 "Oh, yes, I took it." 
 
 "Where is it?" 
 
 "I met Jessie Horton on the way back, and she 
 got it away from me." 
 
 Anne gave his shoulder a little shake. "Got it 
 away from you, Jeff? Don t be crazy." 
 
 "I told her what I d done," he went on, as if it 
 were a dull story, yet necessarily to be rehearsed. 
 "She put me up to one or two things I d better have 
 known earlier. She thought I was rather green, 
 Jessie did, to expect the girls at Belton s to hunt up a 
 play unless I greased the wheels. A five-dollar bill 
 does wonders. Ten works a miracle." 
 
 "Surely not!" 
 
 "So she said. Anyhow, I hadn t any ten dollars 
 to spend that way, nor five, nor one. She told me 
 something else. Belton couldn t show my play, nor 
 any play, to Nasmyth. They ve quarreled." 
 
 "Then show it to Nasmyth yourself!" 
 
 "You re raving foolish, Anne. How am I going to 
 get at him? I m one of forty thousand suppliants. 
 Jessie said the same thing. Then she said, Send it 
 to an actor. I had sent it, I told her, to half a dozen 
 
166 WAVES 
 
 already. They lose em in country hotels on the 
 road. They take em for shaving-papers and toss 
 em out of car-windows. It s a bottomless abyss. 
 The poor devil of a writer might as well go down in a 
 diving-bell as try to plumb it." 
 
 "What did she say to that?" 
 
 "I don t know." He mused miserably. "Any 
 how, she s got the play. She s going to read it." 
 
 "Jessie Horton! Jessie can paint miniatures. 
 She can t boost a play." 
 
 "She s going to have in a dozen or so, artists of 
 low degree, and read the play to them. I think she 
 has a vague idea they may know some fledgling news 
 paper man. It s all she can do, she says. It may 
 start a ripple." 
 
 "Jessie s kind of ripple won t get anywhere." 
 
 "Maybe not. But she s a brick." 
 
 "Oh, yes, Jessie s a brick. When is the reading 
 to be?" 
 
 "Next Wednesday, in the studio." 
 
 "Why don t you read it yourself?" 
 
 "She wanted me to. I wouldn t. I haven t the 
 voice nor the heart." 
 
 "It ll be one more thing to take Aunt Sybil to," 
 said Anne thriftily. "She ll think it s one of her 
 waves." 
 
 "Her what?" 
 
 Anne set forth the theory of waves; their cares 
 fell from them, and they hung upon each other and 
 went into spasms of foolish laughter. They sped in 
 to Aunt Sybil on the tide of it, and she looked benevo- 
 
WAVES 167 
 
 lently up at them, thinking how good it is to be young 
 and clever and prospectively rich. 
 
 At luncheon, Anne announced to her with the air 
 of proclaiming something inconceivable, that Jeff s 
 play was to be read. Jessie Horton would read it. 
 
 "She the one that s goin to act in it?" inquired 
 Aunt Sybil. 
 
 Jeff allowed Anne to meet all these searchers. She 
 was more facile not less truthful, but better adapted 
 to skirt upon the edges of truth and take a little flut 
 ter in it often enough to come up with a sparkle on 
 her wings. 
 
 "No," said Anne, with composure. "She s an 
 artist. She thinks it well to have the play known 
 more or less before it s acted." 
 
 "Certain!" agreed Aunt Sybil. "Well, I should 
 admire to go." 
 
 "We may not think the play as good as it really 
 is," Anne felt obliged to warn her. "Jessie doesn t 
 read particularly well. It wouldn t be at all like 
 having an actress do it, for example. You mustn t 
 be disappointed." 
 
 "I should kinder thought they d got an actress," 
 remarked Aunt Sybil. "They all busy at this sea 
 son o the year?" 
 
 "Pretty busy," returned Anne, in haste. "More 
 tea, Aunt Sybil? Well, maybe Jessie can read better 
 than we fear." 
 
 "We ll think she reads complete," said Aunt Sybil, 
 "the best that ever was. Then it ll all come out 
 right. That s the waves, you know." 
 
168 WAVES 
 
 The play was to be read at three in the afternoon, 
 and on the morning of that Wednesday Jeff and 
 Anne made careful selection among their bric-a-brac, 
 and carried most of the portable articles over to the 
 studio. This was a futile elaboration, yet they had 
 a somber pleasure in it. It was only gracious in 
 them to respond to Jessie with the cheerful implica 
 tion that the day meant as much to them as she had 
 generously intended. But after they had done hard 
 service in the studio for two hours, draped the chair 
 on the model throne, hung tapestries, and gloomily 
 regarded the best vantage points for jugs and screens, 
 their hearts fell dismally. Jeff could have cursed the 
 silly ending of a venture whereon he had so valiantly 
 embarked. 
 
 Unassailable, there towered in his mind the cer 
 tainty that he had written a good play. It might 
 even be great. That, after all, was for the sovereign 
 people to declare. But that it was warm with youth 
 and high romance, firm of workmanship, just in con 
 clusion, he knew. And to this market had it come: 
 the judgment of a small circle from another art, men 
 whose most honest intent could never hoist it a step 
 on the legitimate way. 
 
 At twelve o clock he stood on the pavement again, 
 with Anne. 
 
 "Car? "he offered. 
 
 She shook her head. "No, I must have a breath 
 and get rid of my cobwebs before I see Aunt Sybil." 
 
 "Poor Aunt Sybil!" 
 
 "Poor us! Aunt Sybil s all right. By the time 
 
WAVES 169 
 
 we re bankrupt she ll have had her visit and gone 
 placidly home. Shall we apply at a teacher s 
 agency?" 
 
 "It s a bad time of year," said Jeff quietly. 
 
 She looked at him. The line of his mouth made 
 a savage curve, and as she had traced every step of 
 the way to this inglorious conclusion, so now she 
 knew the present smart. Jeff was not suffering 
 because they were poor and saw every prospect of a 
 barer poverty. It was because he loved his play 
 and he believed in it. This was the highest con 
 ception he had of action, the best he knew of poetry. 
 Nobody had seen in it what he had tried to put there, 
 and his headlong temperament told him nobody ever 
 would see it. Out of her sorrow for him, her words 
 were bitter. 
 
 They went on in silence, and suddenly, pierced by 
 the irony of fortune, she laughed. "Why, Jeff," 
 said she, "the waves!" 
 
 He was far away, rebelliously seeking out the 
 causes of things. "The waves?" 
 
 "Aunt Sybil s. We re to think palaces, and 
 houses will sprout into turrets. We re to think 
 diamonds, and the coal-bin will glitter. Let s play 
 that way. It s turned Aunt Sybil into a tight-rope 
 optimist. There she goes, morning, noon and night, 
 in her spangled petticoat, balancing her stick and 
 smiling at the audience, and saying it s all coming 
 out right because she thinks so." 
 
 "We can t play that game," said Jeff absently. 
 "We re of the blood of Thomas, the Doubter." 
 
170 WAVES 
 
 "But play, child, play! Get a laugh out of it." 
 
 "Ay, ay, sir! You begin," 
 
 "We re to assume that everything s at the top 
 notch. I begin to see how exhilarating it might be 
 a sort of transcendental, blameless way of getting 
 drunk. We need it, Jeff. We re depleted by reali 
 ties. Here s a table set with nothing on it. Pour 
 the wine." 
 
 Jeff roused himself. 
 
 "Very well," said he. "The waves! Your play. 
 I ll come in when I can." 
 
 At Twenty-third Street a labor procession was 
 crossing and they were immediately ensnared in a 
 swirling crowd. There was prospect of their wait 
 ing some time for the knot to untangle, and Anne 
 took her hand from his arm where she had laid it, 
 country -fashion. She turned upon him in the pleas 
 ure of an evident surprise. 
 
 "Why, Mr. Wheelock," she interjected brightly. 
 "Are you really in town?" 
 
 Jeff took off his hat with as gallant an abandon as 
 the throng, elbow to tight elbow, would allow. 
 
 "Delighted to see you," he answered in kind. 
 " And you of all people ! How well you are looking ! " 
 
 "You, too! on the top wave, aren t you?" 
 
 "The tip of the top," said Jeff merrily. "Don t 
 look at my old clo . I m perennially shabby nowa 
 days. Can t get time to hunt up my tailor." 
 
 "What s this I hear about a play?" 
 
 The crowd surged a little, and they settled into 
 place. Jeff got a grip of her underarm to steady 
 
WAVES 171 
 
 her. Anne hated mobs. They made her panicky; 
 and he began gaily to defend her from guessing how 
 thick humanity was about them. 
 
 "Oh, the play! It s like a fairy-story. I ve 
 written a melodrama, and they re simply fighting 
 for it." 
 
 " Nasmyth ? The great Nasmy th ? " 
 
 "No. That s the joke. The great Nasmyth 
 isn t in it. He doesn t even know about it. Miss 
 Belton has absolutely forbidden a whisper in his 
 direction." 
 
 "She wants it?" 
 
 "Precisely. For the other side." 
 
 "Will they do as well for you as Nasmyth?" 
 
 Jeff cocked his head, and tried to hold her eye as 
 the crowd thickened. 
 
 "As well!" he trumpeted, with bravado. "Why, 
 my dear friend, I m made. I ve only to sit down 
 now and sign checks. Though I haven t accepted, 
 mind you." 
 
 "But you will?" 
 
 "Oh, undoubtedly! We sign the contract to 
 morrow. Meanwhile, the play s to be read this 
 afternoon." 
 
 "Really? Might I hear it? " 
 
 " Delighted. Three o clock, at Flaxman Studios." 
 His quick eye had caught a rift in the crowd. 
 "Scoot, Anne," he said, in her ear. "That way; 
 I ll keep hold of you." His hands on her waist, he 
 got her through the press, and after a breathless 
 minute they were looking back from a safe curb. 
 
172 WAVES 
 
 "Heavens!" breathed Anne. "I should have 
 fainted if I d known. I thought it was five deep. 
 It s a hundred." 
 
 He laughed. "What you don t know never hurts 
 you. Waves, Anne, waves !" 
 
 They went home to luncheon, which Aunt Sybil 
 benevolently had ready, then* young spirits back 
 again, and they laughed all through the meal. 
 
 At five minutes before three, twenty people were 
 seated comfortably in Jessie Horton s studio. The 
 candles were lighted. Mirrors reflected shining 
 brasses and dull tapestries. It all had a look of sub 
 dued gaiety and importance, as if a great deal of 
 trouble had been taken to make fit surroundings for 
 something worthy of applause. Jeff, looking about 
 him, thought with bitterness that here was a simu 
 lation, in little, of the goal he had meant to touch. 
 Here was his beautiful play. Here was a handful of 
 people to listen to it. But in a moment the candles 
 would be out, the bric-a-brac returned to its niche, 
 the studio would be the scene of Jessie s solitary 
 supper, and the play no step nearer to its goal. 
 
 Aunt Sybil, in her embroidered crepe shawl, her 
 little curls tighter than eye could believe from the 
 rigorous pains with which she had constructed them, 
 sat in the front row close by the model throne. She 
 had turned a beaming face upon Anne, haggard at 
 her side Anne for whom even this reading of the 
 beloved lines meant agony, lest some ear or mind 
 should be holden to their beauty. 
 
 Anne smiled faintly in answer. She cc Id inter- 
 
WAVES 173 
 
 pret the look. They were to hope for the best, im 
 agine and will the best. There were to be waves. 
 Jessie, manuscript in hand, was about to mount the 
 platform. At that moment Anne turned to Jeff, 
 whispering: 
 
 "Who is that man? There, at the doorway. He 
 was close by us this morning in the crowd." 
 
 Jeff looked. A tall blond man in a fur-lined coat 
 stood just inside the door, holding his hat rather 
 deferentially, as if he begged the privilege of coming 
 in. Jeff s breath quickened while his heart pounded. 
 
 "My God! that s Nasmyth himself!" 
 
 Nobody saw the man but these two. Now it 
 appeared that Jessie s skirt had caught on a tack 
 and somebody was loosening it solicitously. Na 
 smyth still stood there waiting to be asked in. Jeff, 
 not formulating what he meant to do, was on his 
 feet and had taken a stride over the corner of the 
 throne. At Jessie s elbow he bent, and while the 
 other man laboriously freed the lace, whispered in 
 her ear: 
 
 "Go and ask him in." 
 
 "Who?" said Jessie, coming to her feet, and giving 
 her liberated skirt a shake. 
 
 "There in the doorway. Nasmyth can t you 
 see? Ask him in. Give him a seat. I ll read." 
 
 He pulled the manuscript from her hand, and 
 Jessie turned automatically, saw Nasmyth, and 
 walked over to him. Jeff, on the platform, first act 
 in hand, felt the ripple of surprise about him, and 
 knew, with the prescience that had become in that 
 
174 WAVES 
 
 instant the product of his entire bodily sense and not 
 of vision alone, that she was giving Nasmyth a 
 seat. Then he heard his own voice, clear and as 
 decisive as the little jacks that strike piano keys, 
 announcing : 
 
 "Time, the present. Place, a ranch in Montana/ 
 
 From that moment he read in a waking trance and 
 read to Nasmyth. The man seemed to be the auto 
 crat of a small yet infinitely desirable world, and 
 Jeff had brought his trained puppets to be judged as 
 to their fitness for living in that world and making 
 merry there. While his voice read, his mind kept 
 up a running argument to the man, always in the 
 person of the puppets themselves. 
 
 "Hear us," it kept saying. "Only hear us. Let 
 us prove we have some blood in us and can make 
 your houses laugh and cry. Listen to us! Listen!" 
 
 The play went on, and with it the argument in the 
 playwright s mind. Jeff did not once look at Na 
 smyth. Nor did he glance at his own two dear 
 women sitting down there in front Anne, he knew, 
 with excitement straining her face, and Aunt Sybil 
 with the smile that signified how hard she was whip 
 ping up the waves. He looked over them all and 
 threw his voice into the shadows at their back. It 
 might have been the auditorium, and he and his 
 puppets, on a lighted stage, still continuing that 
 grave and steady plea to be heard, only to be heard. 
 
 The first act was over, and with only an interval 
 for a breath he had begun the next. Now he was 
 conscious of a fear lest Nasmyth should go out. If 
 
WAVES 175 
 
 Nasmyth went out he felt sure something would 
 break. The scene would dissolve. His own voice 
 would cease, and he would go crashing down among 
 what seemed to be chairs and listening people. Then 
 he began to reason with himself, and find arguments 
 for speeding through it calmly. This was the cul 
 mination of the months of work on the play and the 
 strain of his heart-sickness over it. Nothing would 
 be more likely than his breaking down; yet he must 
 avoid that because it would frighten Anne and hor 
 rify Aunt Sybil. 
 
 But Nasmyth simply must not go out. He 
 thought of reading faster, lest Nasmyth should need 
 to take a train, and then decided that, for some rea 
 son unknown to him, it was safer to keep on at this 
 measured pace. Some one came up and put a glass 
 of water at his hand. He felt a momentary im 
 patience that any one could think of fortifying him 
 by obvious means for such a task as this. Then he 
 longed for the water inordinately, but dared not 
 drink, lest, in the pause, Nasmyth should go out. 
 
 Act two was ended. He marshaled his fagged 
 puppets and read on through acts three and four. 
 When he had finished, he gathered up the manuscript 
 from the little table, and rolled it mechanically. 
 The studio looked rather dark, and he heard Anne 
 saying, in a high, artificial voice: 
 
 "Do you think so? I shall tell him. Thank you 
 so much." But as for him, he had stepped down 
 from the model throne and he was face to face with 
 Nasmyth. 
 
176 WAVES 
 
 "Have you sold your rights?" the great man 
 asked, without prologue. 
 
 "No," he heard himself answering in his clear 
 reading voice, a voice he hardly knew he had. 
 
 "I want it. Can you come round to-morrow?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "At ten?" 
 
 "At ten." 
 
 "Better say nine. Somebody else has an option on 
 it, I understand." Jeff felt himself coming awake. 
 His brilliant certainties, builded on a joke, collapsed. 
 
 "Nobody s got an option on it," he said miserably. 
 Hot tears came into his eyes and hurt and startled 
 him. "You overheard us. We were playing fool." 
 
 For that the great man did not care. 
 
 "It s a good play," he said. "That is, it has 
 possibilities. A few changes, and we can bring em 
 out." Then he melted, and Jeff could see that he 
 was remembering the puppets and their message of 
 life and love. "It s a corker," said Nasmyth. 
 "Bring it along. Now I must apologize to the lady 
 for butting in." 
 
 There was tea, and Jeff went home with his 
 womenfolk, one on each side. He looked straight 
 ahead into the radiant future. Anne did not speak 
 because she was in awe at the bigness of Fate. Aunt 
 Sybil was absorbed in the pageant of the streets. 
 When they were at home, Jeff sat down and put his 
 head in his hands. 
 
 "Lawzy!" said Aunt Sybil, "you re all beat out. 
 Well, twas quite a spell to read right along." 
 
WAVES 177 
 
 "Yes," said Anne hastily her hand on his shoulder, 
 "he s beat out/" 
 
 There was very little said in the house that night. 
 It seemed to Anne and Jeff that something was crys 
 tallizing, and they must be careful not even to dis 
 turb the air. Aunt Sybil, judging, as she often 
 cheerfully did, from a set of general precepts she had 
 brought with her, that they must have mutual con 
 fidences to make, went to bed early. 
 
 When she came out to breakfast, Jeff was gone. 
 Anne had agreed with him that it was best for him 
 to walk to his appointment, and get himself into 
 some kind of shape. All that forenoon Anne, with 
 the face of a martyr, sat by while Aunt Sybil rocked 
 and sewed. Once she broke down. 
 
 "O, Aunt Sybil!" she moaned, "keep your mind 
 on Jeff. Don t take it off an instant. Wish him 
 luck, just luck!" 
 
 Aunt Sybil asked no questions. 
 
 "Law, child!" said she, "my mind s mostly on 
 Jeff, when it ain t on both of you together. Them 
 waves are runnin mountain-high." 
 
 At twelve he came. He was pale, but his eyes 
 shone as they had the first time Anne had told him 
 she "liked him very much." He threw a long en 
 velope into her lap. 
 
 "There it is," he said huskily. "We begin re 
 hearsals next week. And I m to adapt a thing from 
 the French and get five hundred down. Aunt Sybil, 
 light of my soul, do you want a diamond sunburst, 
 or a horse and buggy or only a kiss?" 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 NEAL DIXWELL, in the one train a day that went 
 down to Paradise Cove now that the fall weather was 
 on and summer residents had fled, felt an agreeable 
 sense of adventure. It was his own house he was 
 going to, where his wife had chosen to stay later than 
 usual, even though he had been called to town, and 
 the trip through marshes, a bewilderment of brilliant 
 brown grass and blue water, was enough to gainsay 
 the intelligence of anyone who could consent to 
 forego it while it kept up to such a pitch. It was a 
 route Dixwell had taken for years through the sum 
 mer, yet to-day it was different, not only from the 
 season s change, but under the reflection of his own 
 mood. Everything was diversified like the bars in 
 the spectrum, though in an unfamiliar order. This 
 was as memory talked to him, like a sad yet in 
 exorably exact whisperer at his ear. There was the 
 intense violet of the time when he had bought the 
 house and taken Amy there to spend their first mar 
 ried summer. It had continued violet of a sort for 
 a few years after that. At least, if it had not, his 
 eyes, accustomed to violet, had seen what they 
 looked for. Then he had blinked them open, be 
 cause it had surely faded. After that it had been 
 rather a garish red, while they tried to bring other 
 people into their atmosphere, to look on, to admire, 
 
 178 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 179 
 
 and perhaps, by a delicate measure of applause, con 
 vince them that they were happy, after all. Then 
 even this had changed into a hard hue that had no 
 beauty in it, yet was warranted to wear. But it 
 was not wearing. It had ugly splotches, and he was 
 going down now to show the splotches to Amy, to 
 ask her if she saw them as clearly as he did, and if 
 they mightn t as well wash the whole thing out and 
 not pretend to seeing any color at all. 
 
 Hitherto, as to this fading of the hues of youth, 
 they had kept a well-bred reticence. Even to him 
 self he had not owned Amy s share in the threadbare 
 condition of the web. He had said that he was grow 
 ing old, though not yet fifty, that life was made that 
 way, and that you couldn t possibly expect an 
 elderly dusk to fulfil the promise of a bird-haunted 
 dawn. Yet now, within a few days, since he had 
 been alone at the town house taking a ruthless look 
 over their bankrupt stock, he owned of necessity, 
 since he had determined to be honest at last, that 
 Amy, as well as he and the course of the years, must 
 bear the responsibility of their failure. Amy was 
 there in the picture that illustrated their common 
 fall, and at last she must accept her share of cul 
 pability. 
 
 As the train took him through the yellowed marshes 
 at a not too hurried pace for it was a considerate 
 train, willing to deposit milk cans and morning 
 papers he asked himself, while his eyes absently 
 recorded the beauty of bright-blue inlets with lean 
 ing boats at rest in them and the rich, fringing border 
 
180 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 of grass, exactly what his quarrel was with life. 
 Taken in the large, it was perhaps that the appear 
 ance of things had deceived him deliberately and 
 with purpose. Nature. had wanted to get something 
 out of him his total of contribution in response to 
 her warm promise of emolument and when he had 
 given all that was in him she had told him : 
 
 "Perhaps that s all you can do. I can t stop to 
 explain why the rewards I offered you are not pre 
 cisely in proportion to your anticipation. I ve got 
 to shake my banners before somebody else younger 
 than you are. That s all." 
 
 Even his book-writing, productive as it had been 
 of praise, merely made him a little sick when he 
 dared confront its gathered fruits. He had aimed 
 at the ineffable, the word beyond, and he had ac 
 complished nothing more than the obvious that 
 people were eager to praise when they could entice 
 him to teas and author s readings. He really had 
 had the vision, once. He knew that ecstasy of ex 
 pression which is as real as the religious rapture, the 
 leap into the air for words as they pass in winged pro 
 cessional. And somehow he had succeeded only in 
 a molded precision which the unlearned call style. 
 And in place of his rapt contemplation of the divin 
 ity of things he had little more than a hurt wonder at 
 finding them as they are. They had outlines now, 
 surfaces. They did not swim like angelic forms in a 
 transfiguring mist. The face of life, as it presented 
 itself, had become intolerable, and at last he had 
 determined, in what he clutched at as a last revulsion, 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 181 
 
 to escape, to go away in search once more of the 
 spirit of things. And he would have to go alone. 
 That was the point. Amy, with her massage and her 
 rules for health, an ever-changing bulwark against 
 the fear of growing old, was not to go with him. And 
 that to-day he meant to tell her. She had become 
 the symbol of the hateful outer world that is always 
 trying to break in on the confines of the spirit. She 
 was like the importunate person who insists on read 
 ing the newspaper to you when you want to lie on 
 your back and look at glory overhead. Since his 
 week alone in the town house he had begun to think 
 he actually could not bear to set eyes on Amy again. 
 But he had to, to tell her how far he was going away 
 from her, perhaps not yet how far he had already 
 gone. 
 
 When he alighted at the station, it was to be 
 greeted by official solicitude because his own car had 
 gone back to the house, having brought Mrs. Dix- 
 well to the up-train. Dixwell passed over that with 
 a little quizzical uplift of the brows. He had come, 
 unannounced, to see Amy, and Amy, not knowing 
 her cue, had, unannounced, gone up, not to see him, 
 but, his prophetic soul suggested, a masseuse or 
 manicure. Then there was, the station master men 
 tioned with great interest in submitting all the 
 facts in the case, the other lady who had come 
 by motor from the Junction, and, not finding Mrs. 
 Dixwell, was going back by train. There she was 
 now. 
 
 She was an inconspicuous figure in brown, walking 
 
182 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 at the end of the platform, and Dixwell at once made 
 his way to her. At his near approach she turned, 
 and he had time to see she was brown-eyed and grey- 
 haired, with an indescribable hint of lightness and 
 fitness for action, when her rather serious face, moved 
 by some quick thought, lightened and bloomed 
 abundantly. He had scarcely ever seen a face 
 change into such radiant anticipation. Joy, it 
 must be, that so transformed it, though why she 
 should be stirred at sight of him he would have been 
 puzzled to tell. 
 
 " Why," said she, " of all luck in the world ! " 
 
 She was smiling at him, and he was indubitably 
 expected to smile. But she could translate that 
 hesitancy of his. She was not disheartened by it. 
 
 "You won t know me," she said, "though, of 
 course, I know you. I ve got you pasted all through 
 my literary scrap-book. I m only Margaret Whid- 
 den. Your wife Amy calls me Meg." 
 
 But meanwhile they were shaking hands. She 
 had a firm, elastic clasp, and Dixwell was glad to en 
 counter it, even if it brought no credentials. But 
 now he could meet her on common ground. 
 
 "Of course," said he. "I don t even need to 
 know you re Meg. You write stories. Do you 
 suppose I haven t read em?" 
 
 She laughed and showed a desirable brand of 
 teeth. 
 
 "Of course you haven t," she parried. "You 
 might once or twice, to please Amy. But they re 
 just little workaday stories. Not champagne, some- 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 183 
 
 body said of em once: just good, honest hard 
 eider." 
 
 "But why aren t you up at the house?" he asked. 
 "Staying the night? Waiting for Amy?" 
 
 " Can t stop. I haven t the time. I m just back 
 from Cuba, where I ve been hunting some local 
 color (hideous phrase!), and I felt I d simply got to 
 see Amy. It was a matter of self-preservation. 
 Amy seemed to me the one person that could keep 
 me alive." 
 
 Dixwell caught himself back from a candid ex 
 pression of wonder. It was Amy who was keeping 
 him from living, in any vivid sense, and here was 
 somebody fleeing to her for succor. 
 
 "She s away for the day only," said he. "Of 
 course you ll stay." 
 
 "No. Honestly, I have to be back to take ship 
 again to-morrow. I m not to see her. It wasn t 
 meant. But I ve seen you." 
 
 The naive wonder of the tone smote him with some 
 sort of remorse at being, by his own valuation, so 
 little worth seeing. 
 
 "Why not come on to the house with me?" he 
 offered. "You had the day for Amy. You could 
 give it to me." 
 
 She was frankly delighted. 
 
 "I can t imagine anything so wonderful," she de 
 clared. "You see, I know you. So far as a body 
 can through your books, I know you. And it s 
 incredible to see you and hear you inviting plain 
 Meg to eat up a whole day of your time." 
 
184 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 " We can drive up the house," said he. "Or" he 
 put it even persuasively "we could walk. Good 
 for two miles?" 
 
 "Twenty," said she. "To the Pole, if you like, 
 or through the Dark Continent." 
 
 "Then I ll telephone them to have lunch ready, 
 and we ll take a trot." 
 
 He led her straight away from the station down to 
 the cinder-strewn street where the coal- wharves are, 
 and the fish-shops and pleasant runs where men were 
 shocking clams and prowling cats sought out fish- 
 heads. Abruptly this way of maritime trade turned 
 yet more intimately toward the water, and they took 
 a shingly path where the waves came lappingly. 
 Then Dixwell picked up the unfinished thread of 
 talk where he had dropped it. 
 
 "If you think I m such great shakes, you needn t 
 have waited so long to see me. Why didn t you 
 come before? " 
 
 "Oh," said she, "I didn t want to see you." 
 She was thinking of the water now as well as of 
 the happy chance of meeting him. She could 
 hardly keep her eyes away from the little boats at 
 work offshore, but, in their beauty, so evidently at 
 play. "That s why I telephoned to your house 
 this morning to find out where Amy was, where you 
 were. If you were down here, I wasn t coming." 
 
 "Why not?" 
 
 "Because you re such a splendid person. If I 
 found you any less splendid than I thought, I simply 
 couldn t bear it." 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 185 
 
 "Why not, again?" 
 
 "Oh, because it means so much to have an ab 
 solutely indestructible fire-proof hero." 
 
 "We re not heroes because we write books," said 
 Dixwell shamefacedly. 
 
 "No, but you re pretty nice, you know. You ve 
 done the square thing right along. You haven t 
 posed. You keep out of the limelight. You cut 
 your hair and wear stiff collars. And you ve made 
 Amy happy." 
 
 This was rather sickening in view of the ordeal 
 he had prepared for Amy. 
 
 "How do you know I ve made Amy happy?" he 
 asked miserably. 
 
 "It s easy to find out. I ve seen people that know 
 her. They tell me she doesn t change. She keeps 
 her figure and her complexion and her hair. If that 
 isn t the story of a happy woman, I d like to know 
 what is. And you ve done it," she ended trium 
 phantly. 
 
 There wasn t really anything for capping so patent 
 a conclusion, and he could only rejoin, in a half 
 hearted way : 
 
 "You know you re flattering me most outra 
 geously." 
 
 "Oh, no, I m not," said she. This time she was 
 even gravely convincing about it. "I m told Amy 
 hasn t grown old. And she would have if you hadn t 
 seen to it. Every woman does unless her heart s 
 satisfied. She can t help it." 
 
186 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 Dixwell had an almost overwhelming impulse of 
 candor. He wanted to say: 
 
 "My dear Meg Whidden, since that is your name, 
 Amy has simply not grown old because she has de 
 voted every fibre of her being to keeping the out 
 ward signs of youth. She began to fight wrinkles 
 before the wrinkles came. She has been for the 
 last twenty -five years in a perpetual state of mobiliza 
 tion, and as soon as the foe peers over the border 
 Amy is there to smash him. She massages, she 
 diets, she walks, she waves, she powders, she vi 
 brates, she bathes in the devil knows what. That s 
 why Amy is a well-conditioned little animal at an 
 age when she might be a grandmother, and look like 
 
 one." 
 
 It seemed to him, as he stared at the curling waves 
 and smelled the tang of air and seaweed, and the 
 keen sun warmed his face, that on such a day, in 
 such company, he might speak the truth. It would 
 be like getting a burden off his soul and handing it 
 to some one else who was strong and willing, and 
 would carry it for a while. If he could tell this Meg 
 how he hated life as Amy and he had combined to 
 make it, the hatefulness of it might be slightly 
 purged away. But what he did elect was a dull re 
 turn to a late milestone in their talk. 
 
 "You don t say why you re so discouraged your 
 self. Why do you think Amy could set you up 
 again?" 
 
 She turned the brightest of looks on him, all made 
 up of a gallant courage and the peculiar hardihood 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 187 
 
 of those for whose discomfiture nobody cares so very 
 much, and who have therefore ceased to care them 
 selves. 
 
 "Why," said she, "I m growing old." 
 
 Dixwell stopped in his walk to look at her, lost a 
 step, and then went on again. Was that how they 
 were afflicted, the three of them? Were they over 
 whelmed by middle age already and too weakened to 
 withstand the onslaught of the later enemy, so that 
 they could only lie palsied in the trenches awaiting 
 an attack they had no weapons to repulse? He 
 considered her now keenly in his artist s way of 
 memorizing the human creature he might want to 
 reproduce. She was, in this breeze and sun, which 
 had called the blood into her tanned cheeks, bril 
 liantly wholesome. Only she had the indefinable 
 air of not caring for the detail of her clothes or for 
 her bearing. She was rather like a snug, strong 
 bird fitted for the life of the air and not heeding its 
 own shining feathers so long as they insured fleet- 
 ness and warmth. What could she know about the 
 smaller vanities of womankind? 
 
 "You wouldn t mind wrinkles?" he ventured. 
 "When they come you won t care. You ll be think 
 ing about something else. Better things, bigger. 
 I can t imagine you flinching." 
 
 "But I do flinch," said she, "I think of it all 
 the time." 
 
 "It?" 
 
 "Yes. Growing old. I m willing to die. I m not 
 willing to change." The mention of it had brought a 
 
188 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 hot rebellion into her voice. She looked at him, he 
 thought, as if he had made the laws of change. 
 
 "I can t see," he said, "how Amy is going to help 
 you." 
 
 "Why, because she hasn t altered. Because, at 
 my age, she is young and sweet and dear, and she 
 will be to the end. You ll attend to that. And I 
 thought it would rest me to see her." 
 
 She said this so wistfully that Dixwell suddenly 
 hated himself because he couldn t comfort her. 
 
 "But, God bless me!" he said, "you re not dwell 
 ing on these things?" 
 
 "Yes," she said, from her unthinking candor 
 "all the time." 
 
 So was Amy, he could have told her. And it was 
 a good thing Amy had not been here this day, or 
 they might have sat down to a confabulation over 
 the treatment of chins and the proper diet for the 
 middle-aged. 
 
 "That is," she went on, "it s in the background. 
 I believe it is for every woman, if she s got a little 
 hateful thermometer to register things. Vanity? 
 No. It s not vanity. Something deep as nature. 
 Why, I know the very day a certain wrinkle came 
 over the edge of my left eyebrow. I know the year 
 my right thumb-nail got a little ribbed. I m telling 
 you all this because you are you, and I never shall 
 see you again. And you re not like anybody else. 
 You know all kinds of secrets of all kinds of hearts. 
 And you keep them, too. You won t tell. But you 
 may tell. You may tell Amy." 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 189 
 
 " No," said he, gravely. " I sha n t tell Amy." 
 "And you ll wonder," she went on, "even you, 
 why I care so terribly, when I m not a beauty. 
 Well, I can t tell you. But it s my impression that if 
 a woman sees herself changing, growing less young, 
 it s harder than any death she will ever be called upon 
 to die." 
 
 "You amaze me," said he. "It s incredible." 
 "That s because you live with Amy, and you keep 
 her so contented she doesn t change. I don t be 
 lieve she even stops to think she might. That s 
 the wonder of a life like yours. You ve thought of 
 big things all the time till you don t remember the 
 little things exist." 
 
 He wanted to cry out upon her irritably that she d 
 no business to assume such things about him, such 
 star-piercing, mountain-climbing things. Here was 
 he at the end of his foolish tether, and she was telling 
 him he was quite gloriously free. And with no 
 proof save that it must be so. 
 
 The day brightened steadily as they went. Then 
 the kindly breeze died down, and the air was soft 
 as June. She took off her coat, and he carried it for 
 her. He even guessed, in his quick darts at unex 
 pected emotions, that, in her hero-worship, she 
 would prize the coat forever because he had carried 
 it. So many women had behaved like imbeciles 
 about a writing man. He had scorned them for it; 
 but with her he felt only an ache of pity. She was 
 clinging to him for heartening, and she did not know 
 how ineffective he was to cling to. 
 
190 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 "Sha n t we sit down," he said, "here by the 
 boulder?" * 
 
 "I m not tired." 
 
 "No. Not because we re tired, but because it s 
 fun. It s a. kind of playhouse, do you see? We can 
 make sand forts and gardens." 
 
 It was a shallow cave, the side of the boulder 
 turned to the sea, and Meg was immediately alive 
 to its playhouse possibilities. She sat flat in the 
 warm sand and began industriously building. At 
 first he built with her, but presently he lay back and 
 watched, and she built alone. He had a disturbing 
 sense of calling to her across the chasm made by her 
 misunderstanding, of begging her to leap it and ac 
 cept him for a plain, average man who had failed, and 
 see if she couldn t pull down his vision for him again 
 and hold it for a moment in her two hands till he 
 should feed his eyes upon it rapturously. But there 
 was her own need of him as she had imagined him. 
 He was her vision, he and Amy and their wedded 
 harmony. At least he wanted to talk hard and fast 
 and spur her on to talk, because this day was pre 
 cious to him, and there wouldn t be much more of it. 
 
 "I m sorry," he said, to start her, "you think 
 you re going to hate growing old." 
 
 She left her excavating for a moment and turned 
 to him her grave, absorbed face. 
 
 "It s the Dark Tower," she said. "You can t 
 tell what it will be till you get to it. But all the 
 time you ve got to keep on marching or riding 
 and suddenly you re there." 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 191 
 
 Something stronger than pity came over him, a 
 passion of sympathy he had not felt for years. He 
 wanted to tell her or to have some man tell her, for 
 that was the way he put it that the Tower wouldn t 
 have dungeons. It would have only light sweet 
 spaces, and love would be there and joyance, and her 
 cheek needn t grow pale because the blood could 
 be kissed into it. But he only said : 
 
 "Maybe there ll be sun on the Tower." 
 
 "Yes, there may. Enough to show how dark it is. 
 But inside it s black as pitch. With slits for win 
 dows I don t remember what they call them." 
 
 "Well," said he, "if we re all destined for the 
 Tower, what makes you assume Amy and I are going 
 to escape it?" 
 
 "Oh," said she, "you and Amy 11 get there, ul 
 timately, of course. Only you re so occupied in 
 looking at the scenery you won t have time to dread 
 the Tower at all. You ll get there before you know 
 it. And even then I dare say there ll be so much 
 light on the Tower your kind of light you won t 
 think it s dark at all." 
 
 He couldn t help being curious about her attitude 
 to the palliations Amy found soporific on her way to 
 the inevitable end. 
 
 " Now you know," said he "I speak as unavailing 
 man, you must remember there are alleviations, 
 they say when you actually come to it facial 
 massage and that sort of thing. When you actually 
 do begin to see the outline of the Tower you could 
 stop and organize for the final march." 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 "No," said she, sweeping down a sand-pile with a 
 turn of her brown hand, "that s no good." 
 
 "No good? The advertising pages of the maga 
 zines tell me it is the despairing last resort." 
 
 "I don t mean trumpery things of that sort," she 
 explained absently. "They re no more good than 
 this sand fort when the tide is on. Oh, no ! I mean 
 dying game, either being so splendid you aren t 
 absorbed in yourself at all, or so happy like Amy 
 and not sitting down to watch yourself wither. You 
 see, when we were young we had the vision. True 
 or false, we had it. And now it s gone for most of 
 
 us." 
 
 This was, pang for pang, his own disease. It was 
 almost word for word as he would have put it. 
 While he looked in silence at the play of her brown 
 hands, shaping and destroying the mobile drift of 
 sand, his inner hunger was crying out to her again 
 to answer him across the chasm of his silence. It 
 seemed to him at the moment that she only, through 
 her own hunger, knew how to estimate his. 
 
 "We are exactly alike," he wanted to tell her, 
 "sinking in the sea of inexorable change." 
 
 Amy was no more to him than the wreckage of 
 a dream. He and this other fugitive were alone, 
 banded by their common peril into a limitless com 
 munion. What if they could float together beyond 
 the margin of their fears to some beach in the sun? 
 the beach, he knew, was the inevitable suggestion of 
 this where they sat at their careless ease and com 
 pared notes about their past, the present shipwreck, 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 193 
 
 and the chances for the future. What bit of flotsam 
 would bear them up and keep them breathing while 
 they floated there? Suddenly, he saw, he must be 
 the rescuer. He must build the raft out of his own 
 discarded beatitudes, to take her to the land. She 
 would sit there alone and listen to the monotone of a 
 quiet sea, and in the old way of the spiritually credu 
 lous hold the shell of belief to her ear and fancy the 
 rushing of her own life was the sweep of eternity. 
 He mustn t, even if he could sacrifice Amy, ask her for 
 understanding, because he had got to accord it to 
 her. She saw in him the creature who, from an emi 
 nence of authority, was qualified to speak. There 
 fore out of his hunger and his fears he would make 
 the raft to float her. 
 
 "Look here," said he, "if I were you I wouldn t 
 be afraid of the Dark Tower." 
 
 "Wouldn t you?" She turned upon him a whim 
 sically bright face. "Oh, yes, you would if you 
 were I." 
 
 "No, because" he hit upon this quite at random; 
 indeed something seemed to put it into his head 
 "because, you know, I fancy we were intended to 
 hate the Dark Tower. It s a part of the beneficence 
 of things." 
 
 "Why is it?" 
 
 She was softly grave now, in an ingenuous way he 
 had hated in other women. This was the air they 
 had when they wanted him to dogmatize or do the 
 big bow-wow about his work. With them it made 
 him turn about and run, or at least grow quite 
 
194 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 crudely commonplace; but in her it was only soften 
 ing. 
 
 "Don t you see, if we hate the Tower we shall try 
 to get out of it just as fast as we can? And find out 
 what s on the other side, or at least set our minds on 
 it." 
 
 She knit her brows. 
 
 "Let me see," she said, "what is the Tower now, 
 old age or death?" 
 
 "Age. After that the other side, the side you 
 can t in the least see as you re approaching. I fancy 
 you d begin to see it from the slits of windows on the 
 other side. That s why you can t go round the 
 Tower. You ve got to go through." 
 
 "You think," she said, "we re to be allowed to 
 hate our bodies, to be willing to give them up?" 
 
 "Yes. The chrysalis is rather a tight kind of 
 shroud, you know. I suppose it gets tighter and 
 tighter while the wings are forming." 
 
 He could have laughed at this, the pious platitude 
 adapted to minds more primitive than hers. But she 
 was in such deadly earnest she couldn t even see it 
 was a platitude, and he carried such accredited 
 authority that whatever he said she accepted humbly. 
 He wondered if that was the way the preacher some 
 times felt, chanting the offices while his heart bled 
 with doubt. 
 
 "If I could think it!" she began, passionately. 
 "But I will think it. You tell me, and it must be 
 
 so." 
 
 We must meet again," he said hurriedly. 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 195 
 
 This slipped out. After all, he knew they couldn t 
 meet. They couldn t have this lovely race, running 
 side by side, each with glance fixed on the goal and 
 yet always side by side. They had left Amy behind 
 at her tiring-glass. She wouldn t even know they 
 were off on their quest for the farther stars. She 
 would be too absorbed in painting out the lines 
 of life from her faded face. The woman here filled 
 his vision. She topped the sea and sky. It was 
 not only that she felt his hunger, but that she was, in 
 an inexplicable way, his. It was immaterial that he 
 alone knew it. If they were allowed to live along to 
 gether, she would grow into oneness with him with 
 out a pang, for she need never see the lesser self in 
 him. Her idealism was in equal measure with her 
 honesty. She would offer her hero all kinds of wor 
 ship, because a hero may demand and must receive. 
 But she was denying him at the outset. 
 
 "No," she said. "I told you I m going to sail 
 to-morrow. And it s just as well. You ve given me 
 enough to live on for a long, long life." 
 
 "And you won t see Amy?" 
 
 He wanted to assure himself of that. 
 
 "I can t. And it s just as well. Tell her about 
 it. Tell her how you ve helped me, and tell her I m 
 going to keep her and her youth and her happiness 
 for my vision." 
 
 Then Dixwell pulled his hat over his eyes so that 
 he should seem to be looking at the sea, but he looked 
 only at her hands, busy there in the sand, shaping 
 and destroying and so wonderfully alive. Perhaps 
 
196 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 he half hid his face from her because he could spare 
 thought to wonder what she might see in it, what 
 moved ecstasy of love and longing. And she did 
 turn to him at last. 
 
 "Really," said she, "you have straightened it all 
 out. You ve made it seem life, I mean like a 
 journey. Not a blooming and decay. I sha n t 
 forget. You and Amy will be in New York this 
 winter?" 
 
 Suddenly he laughed. This was the winter he 
 had meant to start on his adventure, but chiefly 
 an adventure of the mind and without Amy. 
 
 "Yes," said he. "We shall be in New York 
 as usual." 
 
 "What made you laugh?" 
 
 He considered. 
 
 "Well," said he, "it was partly because you re 
 such an idealizing little person, and our staying in 
 New York is so humdrum. I shall be at work 
 just as usual. And Amy ll be just as usual." 
 
 "She ll help you work." 
 
 Again he hesitated, and then he said, still gravely: 
 
 "Amy ll do her very best." 
 
 After that he helped her plan a garden in the sand, 
 and they quarreled over it, and she swept out his 
 paths with a flick of her hand, and then, talking 
 about gardens, they found they really agreed per 
 fectly, and also about houses, too. When he pulled 
 out his watch he couldn t believe it, and couldn t 
 believe the sun punctually overhead. 
 
 "When the waves get to that three-cornered rock 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 197 
 
 down there," said he, "it ll be time to run for 
 luncheon." 
 
 So they played a little more, and the wave came, 
 and Dixwell got on his feet and gave her a hand, and 
 she childishly besought him not to destroy their last 
 garden, but leave it for the sea. And they climbed 
 the cliff and went on to his proud house, where 
 autumn yellows lighted the great garden, and he, 
 with a quickened heart and some ceremony she did 
 not see the truth of, brought her under his roof. At 
 the table he noted with a wild momentary delight 
 that she had been put in Amy s place, and that they 
 were to have for an hour at least the intimacy of 
 household ways. She had what he knew she would 
 always remember as a beautiful time, and from his 
 dream he watched her in a still content. She 
 laughed at them both for being so hungry; but, 
 though he ate, he hardly knew what, and it was she 
 who roused him out of his dream. It was nearly 
 three, she said, and she had to take the little local 
 train to the town where she had left her friend and 
 the friend s car. She had not allowed it to come for 
 her. She wasn t very fond of cars, and it suited her 
 better to go a part of the way by train. So they 
 started out together for the station. Again she 
 elected to walk, and Dixwell had a sense now of 
 holding her back, mentally, of some part of him cry 
 ing out to her: 
 
 " Don t leave me. Don t go." 
 
 He wondered what she would do if he should take 
 her hand as they walked and hold it all the way. 
 
198 THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 
 
 He had an idea she would gravely permit it, as one 
 permits a hero s indisputable rights. What if he 
 said: 
 
 "I love you and we re going together." 
 
 Then he would have to explain that he was not the 
 sort of fellow to say it after every afternoon at the 
 sea, that he had in fact never said it in his life except 
 to Amy. And it would bring the sky down about 
 then* ears. It might crush him, that avenging sky, 
 and for that he didn t care. It would disarrange 
 Amy, and for that he didn t care much, either, as 
 suming that Amy would find ample resource in 
 her campaign against the god of time. But what 
 it would surely crush, the shattered sky, would be 
 the raft of escape he had built that afternoon for 
 Meg Whidden built it strongly out of hero wor 
 ship and platitudes and sheer love for her. He 
 could see how the water would splash up about it as 
 she and the raft went down. No, of all earthly 
 things, that raft must float. 
 
 She had only a minute before her train, and in 
 that minute he got a firm grip of her hand and held 
 it. 
 
 "Love to Amy," said she, and looked at him with 
 clear, candid eyes. 
 
 "Yes," he said, "and love to you." 
 
 This he thought he could permit himself. The 
 ribbon of steam was forming down the track, and 
 suddenly his sense of her dearness and his loss broke 
 from him in the one word of old significance: 
 
 "Remember!" 
 
THE FLAGS ON THE TOWER 199 
 
 She smiled happily; whatever the day had meant 
 for her, she would not forget. 
 
 "We won t be afraid," she said. "Of the Dark 
 Tower, you know. We ll put flags on it." 
 
 Then the ribbon of steam was nearer, and then 
 was flying back to him like a signal, and his empty 
 hand was warm. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 THE Benedicts were at Amalfi when they got the 
 letter from Ferdie which set them all by the ears. 
 They were sitting in the Cappuccini cloister eating 
 bread and honey and drinking tea at five in the after 
 noon: Gregory Benedict, the head of the family, a 
 compact man of a modest portliness and a disposi 
 tion to yield you the right of way in any matter not 
 concerning his particular business; Mrs. Benedict, 
 of an equal age and a complete set of carefully ar 
 ranged ideals; Helen, a tall daughter with a surprised 
 and inquiring expression of countenance; and Bene 
 dict s sister, known as Aunt Harriet. She, this 
 aunt, who stood to the family and indeed to herself 
 as one decreed to be an aunt and little more, was 
 not yet fifty; but she had taught in a country semi 
 nary too fixed in its inherited traditions ever to 
 become a college, and her standards of beauty and 
 conduct were those of a day when women in like 
 responsible positions wore dresses prematurely mid 
 dle-aged and perhaps did their own hemstitching. 
 Aunt Harriet was really extremely handsome, except 
 that she lacked the bravado which is inevitable to 
 all but the purest beauty. She had no audacity to 
 set her off. When her brown eyes sought you they 
 said: "Please excuse me. I am not intrusive. I 
 really have a purpose in looking. I am going to make 
 
 200 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 201 
 
 a remark." Of any calculated commerce of glances 
 and the repertory known in literature under "flash 
 ing," "glancing," "sparkling," she had the vaguest 
 knowledge by hearsay. Her wonderfully white 
 teeth disclosed themselves only when something 
 accredited as humorous dared them to display. 
 And her clothes, like the clothes of all female Bene 
 dicts, were made by a dressmaker of high ideals but 
 inadequate equipment, who needed the work; they 
 were, as Ferdie, Helen s married sister, had confided 
 to her husband, after three months travel and the 
 moulting of like raiment, "sights." But they were 
 flagrantly honest clothes. They looked like what 
 they were, the covering of a highly self-respecting 
 family of inherited modesty of station, living outside 
 a country town so that father might be near his 
 manufacturing plant. 
 
 It was six months before that Aunt Laura, Mr. 
 Benedict s aunt, had died and left him her very 
 considerable fortune, and it had seemed best then 
 to fulfil the breathless purpose of years and go abroad 
 for the summer. They had never contemplated 
 going save as a body. They were a very united 
 family. But Ferdie, named Fernandina, in regular 
 descent from an ancestor whose father had been 
 wrecked on the coast of Africa, had gone three 
 months before them with her husband, who was 
 general superintendent of the Benedict factory. 
 It had meant a good deal to Benedict to give him 
 up at that time; but Ferdie had been so passionately 
 set upon it that the ordinary ways of withstanding 
 
202 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 her had been exhausted about the time she developed 
 nerves. This was her unimagined trump-card, and 
 the family had played all they had. So Ferdie had 
 gone, and here was the letter to say that she and 
 Preble would meet them at Ravello, and they could 
 talk over things there. She thought it best to give 
 them an idea, so that they might be considering it. 
 She wanted to leave Preble. She meant to live 
 abroad. It would be perfectly easy on what father 
 could allow her (it never occurred to her that Aunt 
 Laura s money did not belong to all the family 
 equally, and it certainly did not occur to the family 
 as they read). She supposed they d noticed that 
 she and Preble weren t suited to each other. She 
 realized now that she d always known it, though 
 coming over here had made it so apparent that she 
 simply found there was but one thing to do. 
 
 This letter it was that turned the Benedicts home 
 sick in the face of Italy. It robbed the honey of its 
 tang and made the enchantment of that shore as 
 idle as a painted screen. Mrs. Benedict, after a 
 half -cup of tea, had taken the letter again out of her 
 bag and read it for the fifth time. It was not a 
 long one. She really knew it by heart. There had 
 been no discussion of it; but now she addressed a 
 question as directly to her husband as if he and she 
 had been alone. 
 
 "I never noticed she and Preble didn t get on all 
 right, did you?" 
 
 He shook his head. He could scarcely trust him 
 self with a subject so shockingly alien to business. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 These crude avowals of incompatibility were what, 
 with a fastidiousness of which he had almost been 
 ashamed, as too finicking, he had always wished the 
 girls wouldn t read in the morning paper. And 
 yet he had been too finicking even to forbid their 
 being read. 
 
 "Treble s a queer Dick," said Helen. "He never 
 has anything to say for himself." 
 
 She offered it impetuously, her cheeks flushing, as 
 if it were difficult to confide to her elders even so 
 small an instance of emotional bias. This was an 
 old-fashioned family. They had the most intimate 
 confidences in regard to the renewal of rugs and the 
 desirability of transplanting the phlox, and they did 
 pass letters about at the breakfast-table. They 
 would have said they had no secrets from one an 
 other, and now that Ferdie had winged them equally 
 with this arrow cunningly contrived to pin them all 
 in a bunch, they hung there, with no power beyond 
 a sympathetic flutter. 
 
 Aunt Harriet spoke now, with a like impetuous 
 appearance of not daring to hesitate lest she find 
 herself choked by custom. 
 
 "I understand what Ferdie means. I understand 
 perfectly." 
 
 Mrs. Benedict turned upon her in an extremity of 
 surprise, took up her lorgnon, and then dropped it 
 with an apparent recollection that this was only 
 Harriet and supplementary lenses needn t help. 
 Mr. Benedict, too, turned, and with more purpose. 
 His plump person bumped slightly in its chair, as 
 
204 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 if it remarked, "Is it really Harriet speaking?" 
 But all he could say was to inquire of Harriet, with 
 a species of hostility, as if to ask also how a mere 
 aunt could be so clever when the authors of Ferdie s 
 being found themselves mired: 
 
 "You do, do you?" 
 
 Aunt Harriet had flushed a deep, becoming red. 
 She knew, in the depths of her memory, why she 
 could speak up for Ferdie and the miscalculated 
 forces of nature. Aunt Harriet had her secret, not 
 more than three weeks old. It went back to a night 
 in Naples when she had run out of the pension bare 
 headed to post a letter. Immediately she was out 
 side the court, the brazen spell of the city had as 
 sailed her, and she had fled on, a green letterbox, 
 such as she knew at home, for her objective, but 
 really with something crying out inside her, bidding 
 her speed and speed, and never stop until she came 
 on illimitable joy whereof this pageant was the 
 herald. And as she paused to look up at the Bertol- 
 ini, in its fire-fly sea of lights, she felt an arm about 
 her waist. It did not feel startling, although no 
 arm save that of a worshipping school-girl had ever 
 lain there before. It was as familiar as her belt, and 
 Harriet turned, with a pleased expectancy, and saw 
 beside her an Italian officer. His expression suited 
 the act he had just performed. It was audacious, 
 yet humbly adoring, and Aunt Harriet found it 
 exactly right. She did turn about, her letter still 
 in her hand, and he turned with her, and thus en 
 circled she walked back again to the pension in a 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 205 
 
 trance of acquiescence. At the door she paused, and 
 the arm fell from her waist. There was a step on 
 the stone-paved court within: the porter, Harriet, 
 and perhaps her officer also, knew. He fell back a 
 little into the shadow, brought his heels together, 
 and made her an enchanting bow. Aunt Harriet 
 went in, her letter still in her hand. She had for 
 gotten that the porter might post it, and indeed it 
 was never posted, for it was to one of her pupils, 
 and Aunt Harriet, with a vague besetment that it 
 had somehow shared in the profligacy of her adven 
 ture, tore it up as unworthy to invade the maiden 
 precincts of the young. But that progress had told 
 her what flames might be burning under the inher 
 ited tradition of New England snows. Aunt Har 
 riet knew in her soul that the gold-laced swain had 
 but spent an idle moment in the assault of her waist, 
 and yet something in her told her a veil of high 
 meaning had dropped on it from the romance of 
 the world. He would never see her again; she never 
 wanted to see him again and yet somewhere, said 
 that voice of lying paradox, he was seeking her, 
 somewhere, in a fuller paradise than Italy, they 
 would meet. So it was out of a more extended 
 experience than any Benedict, she believed, had ever 
 enjoyed that she faced her brother, whom she 
 respected illimitably both as man and brother, and 
 returned : 
 
 "Yes. I know all about it. I think Ferdie s 
 probably right." 
 
 Gregory continued looking at her and, quite 
 
206 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 unaided by any natural facility, accomplished the 
 feat of becoming pop-eyed. 
 
 "Well," said he, "by George!" 
 
 "But, Harriet," said Mrs. Benedict, also regarding 
 her from a high degree of amazement, "you don t 
 mean you re prepared for it? Has Ferdie ever 
 brought this up before?" 
 
 "No," said Aunt Harriet defiantly, "but I m not 
 surprised." 
 
 They were all three looking at her, she knew, with 
 unvarying degrees of perplexity, at which she was, 
 again, not surprised. They could not see the Italian 
 officer in the background. 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Benedict, "of course we shall 
 all stand by Ferdie." 
 
 " God ! " said Gregory, the solemn adjuration as un 
 expected to him as to the others. "I guess we shall." 
 
 Of the accompanying shock that Preble, whom he 
 had considered worthy of marrying a Benedict, 
 had been found wanting by one of the most precious 
 Benedicts of the clan, he could not speak. It was 
 all very well to stand by Ferdie. That was nature. 
 But that a chap he had believed in as he had in 
 Preble, liked him, indeed, too much to need to say 
 anything about it, that Preble should in some unpar 
 donable fashion kick over the traces, shook the 
 foundations of his house. Preble s side of it was too 
 awful to be spoken of, except perhaps by Helen, who 
 hadn t the experience to know what she was talking 
 about anyway, and was as likely as not to judge a 
 man for the cut of his hair. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 207 
 
 Thereupon they abandoned the sight of the siren 
 coast to such as might have free minds for looking 
 at it, and went off to pack all but Aunt Harriet, 
 who sat in her dream by the railing and watched the 
 fishermen, vaguely like Peter and Paul in the Bible 
 picture, hauling their nets. Once a splendid figure 
 ran up the steps to the Cappuccini, and she drew 
 back with a flood of certainty that this was he and 
 he mustn t see her. And then her saner mind assured 
 her that it was not he, and that if it were, this all- 
 revealing daylight would hide her, in her middle- 
 aged honesty, from him who had found her under 
 the spell of night; and she leaned forward again and 
 saw he was a man as old as herself and not Young 
 Love at all. 
 
 That night they were at Ravello, established at the 
 very top, all rather light-headed with the sudden 
 lift from sea level, but Gregory and his wife keeping 
 their minds strictly upon the business of standing 
 by Ferdie. 
 
 "Guess we d better take her along with us," he 
 had said, as they were brushing their teeth with a 
 rhythmic unanimity at neighboring stands, while 
 the moon of Italy silently bade them take heed of 
 the heart which alone shall rule. 
 
 "Mm," said Mrs. Benedict. "I never realized 
 how much attached I was to Preble; but if Ferdie 
 wants to get rid of him, you can depend upon it 
 there s a reason for it." 
 
 And it was on the first day at Ravello that Ferdie 
 and Preble were upon them, she almost running to 
 
208 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 the summer-house at the end of the terrace to find 
 them, and he stalking gauntly in her wake. As he 
 approached them and they escaped from the pretty 
 assault of Ferdie s caresses to greet him for this one 
 of the last times when they meant to accept him at 
 all, they saw, as with a common vision, how he had 
 changed. Preble strikingly resembled the younger 
 pictures of Abraham Lincoln. He had the same 
 large-featured benevolence of gaze, and he had also 
 one characteristic of the later Lincoln portraits: 
 that look of most pathetic weariness. His face did 
 not lighten in the least in greeting them, though he 
 had, as Mrs. Benedict thought rather indignantly at 
 noting his flaccidness, only the pleasantest recollec 
 tions of them. And having shaken hands in a bony, 
 perfunctory fashion, he turned about and left them, 
 with a remark about seeing to the luggage. But 
 Ferdie was with them, and they exclaimed over the 
 wonder of her. Ferdie had changed. She was the 
 plain one of the family, small without slenderness, 
 and with no one feature to be thankful for. But, 
 since they had seen her, Ferdie had attained dis 
 tinction. She had in her hand that marvellous and 
 priceless gift to earth s daughters who mean to 
 inherit: she believed in herself. A number of artists 
 had gone to the support of her in this arduous 
 adventure. Ferdie had rather thin hair of no 
 particular distinction, but it had been waved and 
 twisted and turned until her small head was a marvel 
 of modish prettiness. She had no better features 
 than are needed for conducting the acts of seeing, 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 209 
 
 smelling, and their sister offices in a wholesome man 
 ner; but the slight expression of arrogance she had 
 attained seemed to bring them into a harmonious 
 agreement. Her clothes were just such as Aunt 
 Harriet and Helen, on the way through Europe, had 
 found in Regent Street windows, and despairingly 
 regarded. And now this apotheosis of the old 
 Ferdie who had worn flannel shirtwaists at home and 
 even made a rhubarb pie with lattice work on top, 
 for Preble s degustation, produced a vanity box, 
 took a serious look at the state of her countenance, 
 and here, in open conclave, rubbed a powder paper 
 over her nose. But she didn t omit speaking while 
 these rites were being accomplished. 
 
 "He hasn t gone to look after the luggage. We 
 left it in our rooms. I told him I was going to begin 
 upon you the minute I saw you. He hates talk more 
 than ever. He says he wishes he was deaf and 
 dumb." 
 
 "Well," said Mrs. Benedict, "that s a good deal 
 for Preble to say." 
 
 "I suppose he is tired of it," said Ferdie, with a 
 bright alertness, pulling her veil down over her face 
 and settling it with some of those mysterious mouth 
 contortions women adopt toward veils. "You see, 
 I ve had to talk so much. I ve had to do a lot of 
 it at night, because we ve been sight-seeing by day, 
 and of course he s tired. I am, I m sure, tired as a 
 dog." 
 
 But her air of gay equipment, of being equal to 
 any situation, gave her the lie. A creature so ready 
 
210 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 for life, it said, so familiar with its outermost suprem 
 acies, could hardly yield to so crude a thing as physi 
 cal weariness. She challenged them all round, 
 admiring face after admiring face. 
 
 "Well," she said, "you got my letter. I told you 
 what I meant to do." 
 
 Her mother bowed in a solemn manner, as if she 
 felt a crown being fitted to her head; but Gregory 
 Benedict asserted, from a ponderous sobriety: 
 
 "We stand by you, Ferdie. I d have sworn by 
 Preb as I would by myself. But it s no use going 
 over that now. I m for having the fellow drop off 
 right here and our staying on a spell. Then we ll 
 put for home." 
 
 "Oh, but you see," said Ferdie, with the same air 
 of holding the interview in her hands and tossing it 
 about as suited the game, "I don t want to put for 
 home. I want to stay over here." 
 
 "Why, Ferdie," said her mother, and in spite of 
 careful habit she lapsed into a phrasing of her less- 
 cultured yesterdays, "you don t want to stay any 
 longer than father wants you should." 
 
 Ferdie s eyes were shining. What with her new 
 accoutrements and her triumph, she looked actually 
 pretty. 
 
 "The fact is," she said, "I ve written a story." 
 
 "Short story?" Helen came pelting in. Her 
 eyes, too, were shining. She had never imagined 
 such doings in the house of Benedict. They might 
 even, some time, by infection, get to her. 
 
 "Yes," said Ferdie. "And the Torch Bearer has 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 taken it and asked for another. So you see I ve 
 simply got to give myself to my work." 
 
 "You don t feel as if you could do it after you got 
 home?" her mother suggested. 
 
 "It isn t that I can t write after I get home," said 
 Ferdie, with a perfect air of exploiting everything 
 time and travel could do for her. "It s simply that 
 I ve got to live over here and be be different." 
 
 Here she stumbled from her height of perfect 
 poise; but they all understood her better so. 
 
 "What does Preb say?" her father inquired, as 
 if he couldn t yet visualize the rock of shipwreck 
 and wanted the testimony of a man who had really 
 struck on it. 
 
 "Oh, he said he d stand for it as far as he could," 
 said Ferdie. "But I can t call on him. He doesn t 
 care for one of the things I care for not one. Pic 
 tures, music imagine Preb caring one snap." 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Benedict musingly, "I don t 
 know as I ever heard Preble express any interest in 
 music. That s why I always thought twas so good 
 in him to let you have those lessons in town that 
 winter." Inadvertently she was shifting to the side 
 of the defence. "You know that was the time of 
 the strike, and we couldn t even keep one girl, and 
 Preb got up and made your coffee so you could 
 take the early train." 
 
 "Yes," said Ferdie, with assurance, "of course 
 I had to save my hands. I practised awfully hard 
 that winter. I may take lessons over here." 
 
 They sat staring at her, Gregory in a fever of 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 perplexity because, as yet, he had nothing sufficiently 
 tangible to go on, and the three women breathless 
 with appreciation of Ferdie as they saw her. Greg 
 ory, too, was duly influenced by her marvellous 
 equipment; but he failed to translate it into plumes 
 and cloth. He thought only how glad he was to 
 see her, and how much nicer even than usual she 
 seemed which, indeed, was the effect of her bra 
 vado and her hat. But the three women studied 
 her clothes with ravishment. They were not so 
 dull as to fail to see that here was accomplished 
 that simplicity which is the last word of art. And 
 the way she wore them! Ferdie was no prettier 
 than she was before, and if the eye turned to follow 
 her it was because she was a matter of line and 
 contour, of silk and lace, a last cry of fashion, but 
 a shriek of audacity, too. She was not so much 
 modish as grotesque, but the grotesqueness voiced 
 an assurance that bespoke some big pretension in 
 the background. Surely Ferdie couldn t look like 
 this, couldn t sit up like beauty enthroned and 
 punctuate her talk with neat little gestures, if she 
 weren t, in some fashion, more important than the 
 Ferdie they had left. And the clothes spoke for 
 her. Every wave of her hair stamped her right to 
 be as she was. "Look at me," they said. And 
 because they said it in such a complacent, manda 
 tory tone, it was evident that Ferdie was worth 
 their championship. 
 
 Aunt Harriet was the one who seemed to be seeking 
 out the real Ferdie within her clothes. Her expres- 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 213 
 
 sion said she didn t care how shiny you made your 
 hair with unguents pretending to be nature s own, 
 and she didn t care how graciously the sun lay on 
 the crests of it, nor how cannily the veil fitted over 
 them. She was used to girls, and she could pluck 
 out the heart of their mysteries. 
 
 "Ferdie," said she, in her school-ma am voice. 
 
 Ferdie sat up a trifle straighter, if that might be, 
 and gave her veil another little reconciling adjust 
 ment with the lips. 
 
 "Ferdie," said Aunt Harriet, "there s somebody 
 else in this. You ve met some man over here." 
 
 "Harriet!" breathed Mrs. Benedict, in a pained 
 invocation of propriety. 
 
 Helen regarded the heaven about her and felt, 
 not as if she were inexpressibly confused, as she 
 must have been at Salem Field, if anybody had 
 mentioned illicit love, but rightly curious. A sail 
 was being dropped on the blue water below. It 
 seemed like a fairy sail on a fairy boat, or at least 
 a sail woven from the unreality of the stage. It 
 couldn t have done so insignificant a thing as to 
 bring a fisherman, or if it had, he would break into 
 an aria and his entire purpose would have to do, 
 not with fish, but with emotions that are eternally 
 beautiful and so eternally right. But all this Helen 
 did not think, in any explicit way, being a simple 
 maiden with no imaginative equipment; she merely 
 had a sense of ineffable acquiescence in whatever this 
 ecstatic scene brought about, and she was not in the 
 least shocked to hear Ferdie accused of erring love. 
 
214 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 Gregory Benedict, who was not troubling himself 
 acutely about Italian scenery, was the only one who, 
 in the face of it, could keep his head. He looked at 
 Aunt Harriet after her projectile had been launched, 
 and ejaculated: 
 
 "What the devil, Hat!" 
 
 This last he had not called her since she had 
 begun to teach, but Aunt Harriet was not moved 
 by its curtness. There were some things, she con 
 cluded, that brother didn t know. No Italian officer 
 had ever laid an arm about his waist. But Ferdie, 
 unabashed, was looking straight at Aunt Harriet, 
 glance for glance. 
 
 "I don t wonder you ask," she said. "Of course 
 it s the most natural thing in the world. But there s 
 nothing in it. I m not leaving Preble for another 
 man. I m simply leaving him because we re not 
 congenial. I m very fond of Preb." 
 
 Gregory was frowning a little now, but with 
 perplexity. 
 
 "We ve got to go into this matter of Preb," he 
 began. "Shouldn t you rather I d see him by him 
 self and get it out of him?" 
 
 "Get what out of him?" asked Ferdie. 
 
 She had the air of wondering whether there were 
 any more to be got out of him than she had got al 
 ready, and if that were so of being ready to make a 
 new essay. 
 
 "Why, whatever there is," said Gregory testily. 
 He hated to be made to speak before Helen. " What 
 you accuse him of." 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 215 
 
 Ferdie gave a little laugh, as nicely calculated as 
 her clothes. "Why, bless you," said she, "I don t 
 accuse Preble of anything. He s a dear old boy. 
 I just want to leave him, that s all." 
 
 Gregory sat staring at her, again with that effect 
 of straining eyes. Then he shook his head. 
 
 "You re shielding him," he told her. "It s very 
 creditable to you, Ferdie. But you just answer me 
 a question or two. Before we started, Preble cabled 
 me to sell out some stock of his and send him the 
 money. You didn t have a very big letter of credit, 
 you two, but twas all you could afford. Now what d 
 Preble get into over here that made him cable for 
 more?" 
 
 "Oh, that was all right," said Ferdie, with a care 
 lessness not at all elaborated. "We simply had to 
 have it. You have to, you know." 
 
 "But you hadn t been over here six weeks," 
 Gregory pursued. "You couldn t have spent your 
 letter of credit if you travelled as you d ought to, as 
 we re travelling, for instance." 
 
 "Well!" said Ferdie. Her eyebrows went up, 
 and she glanced about at the other women with an 
 affectionate acceptance of them as they were, but 
 still from a perfect comprehension of how droll they 
 looked. "Mother and Helen haven t had any 
 clothes not a thing." 
 
 "We planned it that way, you know, dear," said 
 Mrs. Benedict. "It s saved us time for our sight 
 seeing; and, besides, there won t be any complica 
 tions with the custom-house." 
 
216 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 "Well, I sha n t be complicated with the custom 
 house," said Ferdie. "I m not going back. I ve 
 spent under eighteen hundred dollars, and I think 
 I ve really done pretty well." 
 
 "You ve spent eighteen hundred dollars in 
 clothes?" said Gregory. He grasped the railing be 
 side him as if he felt an impulse to jump down the 
 declivity. 
 
 "Why, that isn t much, father," said Ferdie. 
 "If you could see the things they showed me!" 
 
 "Do you mean to tell me Preb footed that bill 
 without a murmur, and simply cabled home for 
 more?" pursued her father, still with his desperate 
 clutch on the rail. 
 
 "Why, he had to," said Ferdie patiently. "I 
 had to have the clothes, and they certainly had to 
 be paid for. You wouldn t have had me go about 
 in a shirt-waist made in Salem Field, would you?" 
 
 Helen looked down at her own silk waist not so 
 much in dissatisfaction as a surprised certainty of 
 perhaps never having met it socially before. Mrs. 
 Benedict was speaking timidly but with a certain 
 coldness: 
 
 "I don t wonder your father s surprised at the 
 price of things, my dear; but I can t help thinking if 
 you find Preble so hard to live with, it s on account 
 of other things you don t want to speak about. 
 Helen, I wish you d get my blue shawl out of the 
 top of my trunk. Here s the key. Now, Ferdie, 
 you tell. I ve been trying to think over cases 
 where there was dissatisfaction. There s Romola. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 217 
 
 But Tito was very different from Preble. And 
 there was Rosamond Vincy. But twas her con 
 duct more than his. I don t seem to remember in 
 Thackeray" 
 
 "O mother," said Ferdie, "that s all reading club. 
 This is entirely different. I just tell you I want 
 father to give me some money, so I can stay over 
 here and let Preble go home. It s as simple as 
 a b c." 
 
 But Mrs. Benedict went back to her precedents. 
 
 "I don t see what we could do better, dear, than 
 take the best books we know," said she. "And 
 George Eliot has always been praised for her lifelike 
 characters." 
 
 "There! there, mother!" said Gregory. "Ferdie, 
 as near as I can make out, you ve no case against 
 Preble. You simply want to shake him." 
 
 Mrs. Benedict gave a murmur; but Ferdie, to 
 whom slang was not tabu, assented cordially. 
 
 "You want to stay over here and study music 
 and write stories and spend eighteen hundred dollars 
 in clothes whenever you feel inclined." 
 
 "I shouldn t have to spend anything for a long 
 time," Ferdie corrected him. "I got a very good 
 outfit in case." 
 
 "It s lunch time," said Aunt Harriet, dropping 
 her eye-glass on the little hook attached to her silk 
 waist. "You d better go in and take your hat off, 
 Ferdie." 
 
 "I sha n t need to take off my hat," said Ferdie. 
 "But I ll wake Preb." 
 
218 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 Preble appeared with her at luncheon, gaunt and 
 taciturn. Benedict made some gruff confidences 
 to him on the news from the factory; but there was 
 an air of uneasiness over them, all except Ferdie. 
 The veil of silence didn t seem to touch her at all, 
 or if it did she had been able to lift a corner of it 
 and peer out with an almost pert self-sufficiency. 
 There were other people at the table, a party motor 
 ing through and carrying the very air of worldly 
 equipment that Ferdie had been mysteriously able 
 to filch. They talked to Ferdie as of their own kind, 
 and she answered them with a sophistication that 
 left even Aunt Harriet gasping. She told them the 
 Vandewaters were at Spa and Aunt Clara s rheuma 
 tism was much improved; and when Helen, in an 
 unquenchable curiosity, asked her afterward how 
 she knew the Vandewaters, she said she had seen 
 them at the hotel at Spa and the old lady had talked 
 with her about her rheumatism. 
 
 "Well!" said Helen, "I thought, from the way 
 you spoke, you really knew the Vandewaters." 
 
 "Well," said Ferdie, "of course you have to talk 
 to people about what they know. You ll have to 
 pin that waist down, Nell." 
 
 But it was not only Aunt Clara Vandewater s 
 rheumatism of which she had cognizance. She 
 knew what was being played in Paris, and even the 
 mysterious names at the Comedie. She had a little 
 gossip about what Bernhardt whose name she 
 pronounced in a way to veil its identity from the 
 denizens of Salem Field had said to Mrs. Kendall. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 219 
 
 "How in blazes does she manage it?" Aunt Har 
 riet found herself saying to Helen that night when 
 they were braiding their hair in the moonlight of 
 Ravello. 
 
 "Why, Aunt Harriet, you said * blazes! " Helen 
 switched off the topic to exclaim. 
 
 "Did I?" said Aunt Harriet dreamily. "Well, 
 it s a word I never used before. I dare say I sha n t 
 again." 
 
 But she didn t mention that just now it didn t 
 seem necessary to cavil at words; she had no prej 
 udice, so they were telling enough. What were 
 they? Symbols. And this was Life. But she 
 thought, as she lay awake in the moon-rays that 
 seemed to her the true effulgence of Diana s axles, 
 that it wasn t so difficult to understand how Ferdie 
 had managed it. Ferdie was studying the world 
 now as if it were a guide-book to sophistication. 
 With a mind quickened under this sun and moon, 
 she was snatching at every straw to build her nest 
 of knowingness. 
 
 The next day they found Ferdie had been up early 
 and gone to walk by herself. She came, vivacious 
 and breathless, to breakfast, drawing off long gloves. 
 
 "I left Preb asleep," she explained. "He didn t 
 get any sleep the first part of the night. We talked. 
 But I wasn t going to miss this morning air. Don t 
 you know that essay, The dewy chrism of the day ? 
 I wasn t going to lose that." 
 
 "You might have waked me," said Helen, much 
 aggrieved, "and let me have it, too." 
 
220 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 To this Ferdie didn t reply. She was sweetly 
 good-natured to Preble, to the waiters, to the family. 
 She had found that out, too: that the mantle of the 
 socially equipped is an impregnable composure and 
 ability to make things go. The family didn t know 
 how to take her. She was excellent company, if 
 you were willing to strain up to her height of cog 
 nizance; but she made them a little afraid. Helen, 
 who regarded her from the bog of a sisterhood which 
 had had no such social boost and where shirt-waists 
 needed perennially pulling down, yielded to a mali 
 cious desire to hear what Preble thought of her, he 
 who had been by while the statue was in process of 
 moulding. She hadn t been sprung upon him as 
 she had on them, full-armed from the head of Jove. 
 
 But Ferdie was not hiding her nest. She left 
 them in no doubt of an intention to settle her future 
 without delay. 
 
 "Let s go out to that lovely seat," she said, in 
 cluding them all. "Then we can talk things over. 
 Come along, Preb." 
 
 Gregory had wanted a word with Preble by him 
 self; but that was not to be accorded him, and he 
 lighted his cigar frowningly and paced along in the 
 rear. Ferdie was vivacity itself. No wonder, Helen 
 thought, still aggrieved, when she was the one for 
 whom the banners were going to fly and the shouting 
 to be raised. She was the center of the picture. 
 She looked as if she always meant to be. Some of 
 us were going home to wear flannel waists again, and, 
 in the discouragement of our state, perhaps insuf- 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 ficiently to pin them down. No woman of the three 
 had forgiven Ferdie her clothes. They were in no 
 condition to forgive from the slough of antithetical 
 abasement where they found themselves. 
 
 "Well," said Ferdie. She lighted Treble s cigar 
 for him very prettily, took a little silver case from 
 her bag, and was about to open it, but seemed to 
 think better of it and returned it to the bag. But 
 Aunt Harriet knew what was in the case. She had 
 once dealt with a pupil detected in smoking ciga 
 rettes, a circumstance that looked now as remote as 
 "battles long ago." It seemed at this moment a 
 matter of indifference whether Ferdie smoked or 
 whether she didn t. Only it would be a pity to 
 shock Ferdie s mother, which was, she supposed, 
 why Ferdie had wisely abandoned the indulgence. 
 But Ferdie was speaking. 
 
 "It s no use going over it all again. Preble and 
 I just agree to separate, that s all. And of course I 
 want you to know it, so it will be perfectly above- 
 board and easy. And I want to stay over here, and 
 of course dad ll make it easy for me. I don t need 
 to ask you that, do I, dad?" 
 
 She had never called him dad before, and Gregory 
 didn t object to an innovation in the way of names; 
 but he failed to reply with the efficacy she had looked 
 for. Indeed, he didn t reply at all. He had caught 
 a glimpse of Treble s face, not only the face, but the 
 man back of the man s mere appearance, and, un 
 imaginative though he was, it shocked him. It was 
 really the shock he might have had if he had seen 
 
222 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 Preble drop dead. He drew his breath sharply 
 between his teeth, and Helen, who was "father s 
 girl," and always guessing him out under his silences, 
 said quickly, "What is it?" 
 
 But Gregory had hold of himself now, though he 
 still avoided looking at Preble. Having once seen 
 the bleeding body of a man s happiness, he found it 
 too terrible ever to encounter again. Gregory had 
 seldom realized anything with the vividness of this 
 sight of Preble s misery. The pageant of life, in its 
 uneven values, was displayed before him. Ferdie, 
 he saw, had darted ahead. She was at the first of 
 the series of worldly goals. Old Preble lounged 
 about the starting-post, and here she was, breath 
 less but triumphant. She had learned to play the 
 game more deftly than he. Poor old Preble! he 
 never would play just this game. Gregory felt as 
 if he himself were judge and jury in one. His 
 predilections were swinging round to the defendant. 
 If the judge side of him had to charge the jury side 
 just at this moment, he felt that, in reviewing the 
 evidence, he should have to lay stress on everything 
 Preble had done to help Ferdie out in her clutchings 
 at a more rarefied life, while they were at Salem 
 Field, and what he was ready to do now. He heard 
 a rustle of mother s dress as she rose and reseated 
 herself, and the thought came over him, to the 
 accompaniment of a shudder and an actual crawling 
 of the flesh, "Suppose mother had proposed leaving 
 him, way back when they were both as young as 
 Preble and Ferdie, just because she had been hungry 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 for more life than he could give her, more silks, more 
 rustling things and excitements and talk about 
 Vande waters?" His house of life, a solid structure 
 with a tower and a mansard roof, seemed to be 
 toppling down about him as he thought it. He felt 
 like giving Preble a hand, and saying, "Hang on to 
 me, old man. I ll see you through." And what 
 was this Harriet was saying? 
 
 "You d better consider that this is Italy. You 
 won t feel the same when you get home." 
 
 Ferdie took out her vanity box and powdered her 
 nose. She appeared to find some moral support in 
 the act. 
 
 "Nobody feels the same in Italy," Harriet was 
 boldly asserting. "I don t know how it would be if 
 we stayed longer. But the first taste of it s like 
 getting drunk." 
 
 "Harriet!" breathed Mrs. Benedict. Then she 
 drew her lips in primly. "I can only say," she 
 announced, in the manner of one to whom the task 
 has fallen of leading the last hope, "that I have felt 
 no temptation to become intoxicated. Nor has 
 Helen. Nor have I seen any indication of it in my 
 husband." 
 
 She seemed intentionally to leave out Aunt Har 
 riet: a kind of purgatory by exclusion. 
 
 Aunt Harriet was not to be halted. 
 
 "I ve had serious thoughts myself," she said, "of 
 drawing out my savings and staying here till they re 
 gone. When you re here it seems the only thing to 
 do. But everybody can t live in Italy. Somebody s 
 
324 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 got to stay in Salem Field, or the world won t bal 
 
 ance." 
 
 It became evident that Aunt Harriet was the 
 counsel for the defence. Preble turned a dull eye 
 upon her. She seemed to be advising Ferdie to stay 
 with him, and so she must be on his side. But 
 Ferdie was answering brightly : 
 
 "Good for you, Aunt Harriet. You stay over 
 here with me and we ll take an apartment in 
 Rome." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Aunt Harriet grimly. "I m going 
 back to teach school. I m going to take Italy in 
 my pocket and pull it out and look at it." 
 
 "There! there!" said Gregory. "Don t get off the 
 key, Harriet. We ve got to talk this thing out." 
 
 "So," said Aunt Harriet to Ferdie, quite unmoved 
 by any side issue of interruption, "I feel as if you d 
 make a mistake if you give up Preble for anything 
 so far away from what you ve been born to as as 
 this." She threw a comprehensive wave of the 
 hand at the heaven of slope and sea below them. 
 "You must remember, if it doesn t turn out as you 
 think and you get rid of Preble and Preble gets rid 
 of you" here both Ferdie and Preble gave a little 
 passionate murmur, which might mean one thing or 
 another "after you ve once got a divorce, you 
 can t go back on it." 
 
 "My stars, Aunt Harriet, I didn t say a divorce!" 
 cried Ferdie. Her whole face was flaming, and she 
 thrust the vanity box into her little bag as if she had 
 to thrust at something. "I said a separation." 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 Preble threw his cigar over the parapet, got up 
 and put his hands in his pockets, and stared at the 
 sky. 
 
 "Why, of course you won t do such a contemptible 
 thing as to separate from Preble," said Aunt Harriet, 
 with the severity of the teacher who sets a disciplin 
 ary task of irregular verbs. "Send him back to 
 Salem Field to fight it out alone? You ve got to 
 let him get a divorce, and not raise a finger, so he 
 can marry again and make himself a home while 
 he s young enough to enjoy it." 
 
 The Benedict family sat staring at Aunt Harriet 
 as if she were its uncomprehended sibyl. Preble 
 stared at the sky. What he thought no one could 
 tell from his back. He seemed to be turning it on 
 the entire Benedict family. There was no doubt 
 that Aunt Harriet, by force of audacity, it might be, 
 had made a hit. Gregory was the head of the family, 
 assuredly the judge, but Aunt Harriet was taking the 
 argument out of his hands. It was she who was 
 charging the jury. 
 
 "Oh, come, Harriet," said he, "you don t know 
 what you re talking about." But he said it weakly. 
 
 "As to your writing," said Aunt Harriet inexorably, 
 addressing herself to Ferdie, "if you ve got it in you, 
 you can write about Salem Field." 
 
 "I don t want to write about Salem Field," said 
 Ferdie. "Do you suppose I mean to tag on behind, 
 writing dialect stories, like " She paused rather 
 scornfully, and then two angry tears came into her 
 eyes. "I m not so awfully young," said Ferdie. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 "I may look it, and I intend to look it. You can do 
 almost anything with yourself now, if you keep up 
 with things. And I want to live as other people do." 
 
 "What people?" asked Aunt Harriet, and the 
 Benedict consciousness trembled because a fibre of 
 it was being wrenched to the bar. 
 
 "Like everybody that lives at all," said Ferdie. 
 "You don t know the kind of novels I want to do. 
 I want to do them like Marion Crawford and Henry 
 James and others. Father and Preble haven t 
 even heard of em." 
 
 "Look here, Ferdie," said Aunt Harriet. She 
 rose and stretched out her hands toward the sky 
 with an unconscious magnificence. For a moment 
 she held them so, and then, with an equal majesty, 
 let them relax and fall. "I ve taught literature, and 
 I can tell you you couldn t do the kind of thing you 
 want to if you should live here for the next twenty 
 years. Some women could. You can t. You re 
 not that kind. But" 
 
 They were all -watching her, really hanging on her 
 words. She seemed to hold the entire Benedict 
 family in her grasp. 
 
 "I tell you what," said Aunt Harriet. She forgot 
 the Benedicts. She remembered Young Love and 
 Naples. "If I could be putting out to sea down 
 there with somebody I liked, I d rather do it than 
 teach English literature or write like Henry James. 
 And you can go down there and take a boat. You 
 can go with Preble. Preble just worships the ground 
 you tread on. You do all the writing you want to. 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 But don t you think you ve got to have the scene 
 set for it, and you ve got to live in Italy, and you ve 
 got to throw over your folks because you re not 
 a big enough woman, Ferdie, to go walking over 
 things like that." 
 
 Ferdie surprised them. She began to sob. 
 
 "You don t know, Aunt Harriet," said she. " You 
 don t know how big I can be." 
 
 "I don t care," said Aunt Harriet, "how big you 
 are if you re throwing over a man you ve made your 
 home with when you haven t got a shadow of com 
 plaint against him." 
 
 "Treble s been a good husband to you," said 
 Gregory, to his own amaze. He had no idea that 
 his attitude had shifted or that he wasn t standing 
 by Ferdie. "I don t say I won t do anything in 
 reason in the way of money. I never ve stinted 
 you girls and I never shall. But when it comes to 
 your saying Preble ain t up to the scratch, and that 
 sort of thing, I don t stand for it, Ferdie." 
 
 "I do feel," murmured Mrs. Benedict, "that 
 Treble s done everything in the world for you a 
 husband could." 
 
 "Seems to me," said Helen no one expected her 
 to speak, but she dashed in with the alertness of a 
 sisterly certainty that Ferdie might need taking 
 down a peg " seems to me, everything we ve brought 
 out shows how Treble s got down in the dust every 
 single time and let Ferdie just walk over him." 
 
 Ferdie looked from one to another of them in a 
 panic-struck surprise. No Benedict had ever, in 
 
228 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 her experience, turned against another Benedict. 
 At that instant Preble threw himself round and faced 
 them. Gregory, in one brief look at him, saw how 
 crumpled his face was, and how savage a misery 
 dwelt in the eyes, and had to look away again. He 
 had never seen a man cry. 
 
 "Now," said Preble, "I ll speak. Ferdie s going 
 to have whatever she wants, and she s going to take 
 it from me, and when I can t give it to her I ll say 
 I ain t man enough to live and put a bullet through 
 my head. If she s going to stay over here, I can 
 sell the home place and board. I don t want any 
 place without Ferdie. It s going to be enough for 
 me to know she s living the way she wants to live. 
 You don t any of you understand Ferdie." 
 
 Like Aunt Harriet, he looked big against the sky, 
 a colossal figure made for protection, on which the 
 lesser waves of life could dash leaving him unscarred 
 a little worn, perhaps, after a good deal of it, but 
 never overthrown. The group before him dissolved, 
 broke up, and shifted. Helen frankly put her 
 handkerchief to her face and cried. Gregory blew 
 his nose violently, and his wife murmured, "There!" 
 Aunt Harriet stood at the rim of the world made by 
 the edge of the terrace, another heroic figure that 
 might, with Preble, know the meaning of life through 
 nearness to the larger calls of earth. 
 
 But Ferdie had run to Preble like a child, and 
 stood by him holding his big hand. It almost looked 
 as if she were protecting him, perhaps by her silken 
 touch from the ache that even giants may feel in 
 
THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 giant hearts. They turned together, he and she, 
 and went off along the terrace, Ferdie still holding 
 his hand until, in a moment, Aunt Harriet saw him 
 put his arm about her waist and draw her to him. 
 In a moment too, without a conclusive word, the 
 other Benedicts dispersed to their letters or their 
 guide-books. All that day they didn t have a 
 glimpse of Preble and Ferdie. But at night when 
 they made their moonlit way along the terrace, 
 Helen, in advance, turned back to them. 
 
 "The seat s been taken," said she. "They re 
 lovers, making love." Italy and moonlight were 
 upon her, too, and it seemed as if she couldn t repeat 
 the word enough. "Lovers!" 
 
 Then some one laughed: a girl s laugh, Ferdie s. 
 A man s laugh answered it: Preble s. 
 
 "Come on," called Ferdie. "Come on, Family. 
 We ve got it all settled. We re going to stay three 
 months more than we intended, and then we re 
 going home together." 
 
 Then they all sat down and talked plans, and 
 Preble, Ferdie s head on his shoulder, told a story 
 he d heard the day before in a smoking-room. It 
 was a stupid story, but Ferdie led the laughter. 
 Mother Benedict, from her demesne of matrimonial 
 experience, realized that Ferdie, from some of those 
 mysterious forces that prevail in matrimony, again 
 considered her husband "about right." Gregory 
 gave himself up to his cigar with an untainted satis 
 faction, and Helen, the warmth of virginal youth 
 throbbing at her breast, wondered what made Ferdie 
 
230 THE TRIAL AT RAVELLO 
 
 get up such a row if she really meant to stick to 
 Preble after all. But Aunt Harriet, standing in the 
 moonlight, the shower of it on her face and shoulders 
 like a silver rain, thought back to the morning when 
 she had made her plea for the defendant. The plea 
 had been well directed, the verdict was benign. And 
 yet, if Ferdie had left her husband and gone forth 
 emotionally unloosed, Aunt Harriet wondered, with 
 a throb of wildest envy, what she would have found 
 in Italy. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 WHEN Mrs. Abergenny came down to meet her 
 young friend, Philippa Foxcroft, who had been an 
 nounced perhaps five minutes before, she found Phil 
 ippa standing near the long window outlined by 
 two Doric pillars of the veranda, and shaking hands 
 with Inga, the maid. Rather it seemed that she 
 was holding Inga s hand in affectionate detention. 
 She dropped it, though not with the haste of having 
 been interrupted in a social eccentricity, and turned 
 to give the hand, no less cordially and no more, to 
 Mrs. Abergenny. Inga, on the contrary, withered 
 slightly in the changed atmosphere of the room, 
 induced by the entrance of the lady from whom she 
 received her wages and the right inculcation of 
 conduct. 
 
 "Good-by, Eva," said Philippa, touching the 
 initial vowel with a cosmopolitan grace. "Re 
 hearsal to-night and to-morrow noon." 
 
 Then Inga, become temporarily Eva, with a little 
 more red in her cheeks than was customary, though 
 not more than proved becoming, also with downcast 
 lids, went out in her list slippers, her little card-tray 
 at her side like a fairy shield not yet wanted. Mrs. 
 Abergenny stood for a moment looking up at Phil 
 ippa, whom she found sometimes, with an inexplica 
 ble irritation, too tall, too full of the west wind of curt 
 
 281 
 
232 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 incisive fact. Philippa was splendid, Mrs. Aber 
 genny s husband told her, an Amazon. She needed 
 only shiny breastplates and a spear to walk on the 
 stage and sing her confidence in life. But she lacked 
 a good many of the fringing softnesses Mrs. Aber- 
 genny had felt necessities in her own day. There 
 was no atmosphere about her save perhaps the 
 honest dawn no questioning reverence in the tent 
 of her superiors. Mrs. Abergenny knew that her 
 husband, who wrote novels, was Philippa s superior: 
 and yet Philippa seemed to have nothing to learn 
 of him. She always spoke to him with a gay un 
 consciousness of anything beyond their neighborly 
 affiliations, perhaps as Parkman s uncle, and with a 
 shade of frank solicitude when she wanted to hear 
 from Park. Sometimes Mrs. Abergenny had an 
 impulse to reach up and lay hold of her strong 
 shoulders, shake her into attention, and say : 
 
 "You tall, gaunt girl, don t you know Robert 
 Abergenny has written novels translated into 
 foreign tongues and praised in England?" 
 
 In the second while they stood looking at each 
 other, delicate, plump, peach-colored matron and 
 well-equipped girl, some of these antagonisms came 
 out, but in a glance only and this from Mrs. Aber 
 genny. Philippa s limpid grayness of eye beamed 
 forth pure affection, an inability perhaps to be 
 moved save from abstract causes. 
 
 "Eva is going to play in the mystery play," 
 said she, when they had seated themselves. 
 
 "You call her Eva," said Mrs. Abergenny. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 233 
 
 "Yes, that s her name. Isn t her name Eva? " 
 "I believe I do remember it was something dif 
 ferent," said Mrs. Abergenny, wrinkling her brow 
 slightly in the effort of concentration. "We called 
 her Inga because that nice girl that got married was 
 Inga. We ve had three Ingas now. It s so much 
 
 easier." 
 
 "Could she rehearse to-morrow at noon?" asked 
 Philippa. "Eva didn t like to ask. It s a bad hour, 
 but it s the only one the mill-hands have. And 
 that s the last rehearsal. Performance to-morrow 
 night, you know." 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Abergenny, with dignity. 
 " Cook will wait on us at dinner, I m sure." 
 
 "When s Park coming?" asked Philippa, with a 
 plump directness staggering to Park s aunt. 
 
 When Mrs. Abergenny had lived in the shadowy, 
 iridescent-vapored land of tentative engagement to 
 her husband, she couldn t have mentioned his name 
 in such evident fervor of interest, even if he had been 
 away the eight months Park had used up in his on 
 slaughts on the camps of city journalism. 
 
 "Mr. Abergenny will be home to-night," she said 
 rather primly. "He will be likely to know the 
 latest." 
 
 "Has Mr. Abergenny been in New York?" 
 
 "Yes, for three days. He thinks it wise to go on 
 once in a while to make the rounds of the editors. 
 I fancy it s partly to see Park. He gets homesick 
 for him." 
 
 Philippa was wrinkling her brow now, unbe- 
 
234 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 comingly yet frankly, with a hard intensity. There 
 was nothing of the wistful pray-do-tell-me-if-you- 
 know about it that makes a girl s pure brow so 
 charming. It said rather: 
 
 "I m thinking. In a few minutes I shall have 
 weighed the matter. Then I ll inform you ac 
 curately." 
 
 "I want awfully to get hold of Park," said she. 
 "You see, Mary Crewe has been collating her mill- 
 operative data. I want to know what Park thinks 
 about it : whether he d advise her to get it into shape 
 for half a dozen articles or more. If he could just sit 
 down and listen to her, it would save a lot of writing 
 back and forth." 
 
 Were not she and Park then writing back and 
 forth, weaving the fabric of their dream, or did they 
 wait for crucial topics like data to spur them to 
 epistolary haste? 
 
 "I m sure Park would be delighted to do anything 
 he could," said Mrs. Abergenny, the least stiffness 
 of unsatisfied inquiry in her tone. "Is Miss Crewe 
 a college friend? " 
 
 "Yes," said Philippa. Waves of brightness were 
 flushing over her face. She evidently believed in her 
 friend tremendously. " She s visited me a lot." 
 
 "I don t think I ever met her." 
 
 "No. There never s been any time for calling. 
 Besides, for the last year she hasn t come here at all. 
 She s been working in the mills." 
 
 "In the mills?" Mrs. Abergenny repeated, with an 
 involuntary warmth of pity . Poor child ! 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 235 
 
 "Oh, no," said Philippa, "not that way. She s 
 not working for a living. Mary has her own money 
 now. She is simply going round and hiring out 
 under assumed names, working in the same condi 
 tions with other girls to find out what the conditions 
 really are." 
 
 A flush crept into Mrs. Abergenny s face. She 
 looked a dignified remonstrance. 
 
 "That certainly doesn t seem to me," she said, 
 "the thing for a young lady to do. Pardon me, 
 Philippa. But even if she is your friend " 
 
 Philippa didn t blame her. She had a large, 
 kind way with Mrs. Abergenny. It sometimes mir 
 rored, in the older woman s mind, the toleration of 
 her orthodox friends for her defined Unitarianism. 
 They hardly recognized it as a faith, but they re 
 garded it, she thought, as too inconsiderable to be 
 rejected. But Philippa was speaking in a warm, 
 moved voice, born out of enthusiasm over Mary s 
 deeds. 
 
 "Mary s done a lot. The eight-hour bill in Hill 
 Haven really was due to her. There s Mr. Aber 
 genny." 
 
 A town hack was crawling up the driveway, and 
 by the time Mrs. Abergenny had the door open, her 
 husband had paid his quarter and picked up his 
 suit-case from the veranda where the driver had de 
 posited it with a friendly ease, and was smilingly in 
 evidence. He was a tall, personable man over 
 sixty, looking out of kind eyes set round with wrinkles 
 and ambushed under well-cut brows. He made a 
 
236 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 distinguished figure, wearing the caped coat and soft 
 hat his wife thrust on him as fitting her especial 
 taste. Abergenny found them sufficiently com 
 fortable. He would have hooted if he had come on 
 the childlike subtlety of her motive, that they made 
 him, as an author, picturesque. He kissed her, not 
 in a matrimonial meagreness, but with a soft en 
 thusiasm. 
 
 "All right, Ellen?" he asked. 
 
 Ellen had flushed in a perfect delight. She was 
 more than all right. She was his with a young in 
 tensity. Philippa, also receptive, had come into the 
 hall, and he shook hands with her. She was ready 
 with the instant question: 
 
 "When s Park coming?" 
 
 "Why," said Mr. Abergenny, in a gay conscious 
 ness of having his answer pat, "Park s coming to 
 night." 
 
 "To-night!" 
 
 Both women echoed it. 
 
 He nodded. 
 
 "He wasn t in New York. I haven t see him. 
 He s been in Minneapolis with Eaton Lang. They re 
 putting on a play of Lang s." 
 
 "Trying it out," supplied Philippa. "But com 
 ing here?" 
 
 "On the way. Be here a day or two I under 
 stand. I ll tell him a young lady s been inquiring 
 for him." 
 
 Mrs. Abergenny threw him a quick, repressing 
 look. "Don t chaff," it said. "Philippa really 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 237 
 
 shouldn t have asked for him. Don t encourage 
 her." 
 
 "Tell him to come over," said Philippa, the 
 brusqueness of it qualified by her bright eyes. "Or, 
 no, you needn t. He s got precious little time. 
 Mary and I ll run over here." 
 
 She had shut the front door behind her, and Aber- 
 genny had got off his coat, before his wife knew really 
 what comment it was fair to make on a girl they 
 liked as they did Philippa. But when he had gone 
 into the front room and mended the fire and stretched 
 his legs to it, in a frank relief at finding himself at 
 home, she allowed herself the interjection, "Did you 
 ever!" That was safe. It was so safe that Aber- 
 genny saw nothing in it. He took her hand, patted 
 it, kissed it, pulled her little chair nearer, and put her 
 into it. Then, the flush gone from his face and the 
 light of recognition from his eyes, he settled into a 
 muse of his own, and in that she caught him. 
 
 "Why, Rob," said she, " you re tired." He pulled 
 himself back. 
 
 "No," said he, "I don t believe I m tired very." 
 
 "Did you have a good time?" 
 
 "Well enough." 
 
 "See all the men you meant to?" 
 
 "Yes, I guess so. Yes, I did." 
 
 "What did Ellis say about the serial?" 
 
 "Well" there he dragged himself still further out 
 of his muse, and the laughing lines knit round his 
 eyes "I didn t mention it." 
 
 " You didn t? Why, that s what you went for." 
 
238 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 "I tried to." He seemed to be justifying himself 
 to her, justifying his failure to himself. "This is 
 what Ellis said to me: Abergenny, the magazine s 
 going splendidly. All the Jews are writing to me 
 about the immigration series. Circulation s gone 
 up like the deuce. 
 
 "But you don t object to his pleasing the Jews." 
 
 "Dear, no! Like to please em myself. But 
 listen to what he said next : I ve got three stories of 
 yours in the safe. Well, after that " 
 
 "Yes," said Mrs. Abergenny thoughtfully, "I 
 see." But she recalled herself to her office as heart- 
 ener of the hearth. " I think you re too sensitive." 
 
 "No," said Abergenny, in a smiling consideration, 
 "I don t think I m too sensitive. I think I m just 
 sensitive enough." 
 
 "Well, where else d you go?" 
 
 "Oh, I dropped in at the Islander office, and they 
 didn t mention the magazine at all. They asked me 
 to lunch." 
 
 "D you go to lunch?" 
 
 " No. I wasn t hungry." 
 
 The wave of her partisanship towered and rushed 
 upon him, bringing the salt tang of allegiance. 
 
 "ORob!" 
 
 "You see, Ellen," he went on he had begun pat 
 ting her hand again; it looked as if he had something 
 to break to her "while I ve been sitting in my study 
 here, the world s been moving." 
 
 "Well!" said Ellen. "My patience! but haven t 
 we moved with it?" 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 239 
 
 "I can t continue the terrene figure," said Aber- 
 genny, "but I ve a strong conviction that I ve got 
 left." 
 
 "You don t mean it s what that doctor said some 
 where about not working after forty?" 
 
 "No, no, plenty of em are working after forty 
 after fifty after seventy, working to beat the band. 
 I m not in step somehow. I fitted a certain time. 
 I was the round peg in the round hole. The time s 
 only something to be remembered now. I m there 
 just the same, in my round hole, but I don t move 
 a cog." 
 
 "What is it?" cried his wife, in a passion of re 
 sentful wonder. "What s happened to everything? 
 That s what I d like to know. It s the same thing 
 throughout. It s what makes Philippa s feet so 
 big." 
 
 Having thus embodied her distaste of the ath 
 letic and well developed, she was immediately 
 ashamed. However, he understood her, though 
 Philippa s feet had never been used by him to the 
 disparagement of modernity. He always saw them 
 walking on the mountain-tops of hope. 
 
 "You see," said he, "I m not timely." 
 
 "What do you mean by timely?" she pursued him. 
 
 "I mean chiefly," said Abergenny, "brotherly 
 love." 
 
 He said it gravely, and yet with a curious distaste, 
 as if he couldn t accept it in its present guise. 
 
 "Why! why!" She could scarcely control her 
 baffled wonder. To her he was brotherly love. She 
 
240 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 knew the kindness of him, the humility, the things 
 he had done and been. 
 
 "Dear girl," said Robert, "it s a science now, and 
 you and I haven t taken that course. We don t 
 know the terms. We couldn t use em if we did. 
 It s like saying their creed in their sleep. We only 
 say it when we re awake. They re chanting their 
 creed, they re printing it, putting up posters, turn 
 ing out pamphlets, cheap editions, Editions de luxe." 
 
 She stopped following him there. He had got into 
 the cloud where he hid sometimes and talked to him 
 self, and she was content because the obscurity of 
 the cloud was soothing to him, and she could always 
 think it over afterward. 
 
 "It s an esoteric society," said he, "with pass 
 words. Do you love your brother man? If you 
 don t say so, you don t. Repeat the misdeeds of the 
 industrials. Give the lineage of the conspicuous 
 railroad robberies. If you can t, you ll get left. 
 Ellen, as sure as shooting, I am left." 
 
 He was making a joke of it. That was serious, ap 
 palling. The puppets he had dressed up for jokes 
 had been skeletons, spooks he was actually afraid of. 
 Tears were spotting the pretty gray of Ellen s dress. 
 For one of the few times in his life, Abergenny failed 
 to see them. 
 
 "Going to New York isn t an adventure any 
 more," he discoursed. 
 
 "You ve been so many times," she reminded him. 
 
 "Ah, but it used to be an adventure. I felt as if 
 I were carrying on nuggets of gold, all in my brain. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 241 
 
 They wanted it then, the merchants that squatted 
 in the market-place. They acted as if I d got a 
 virgin mine, and was a cunning artificer besides. 
 They crowded about me. Now they re round the 
 corner looking at samples from the other mines." 
 
 "You can do exactly as good work as you ever 
 did," she countered hotly. 
 
 "Of my own pattern. Don t forget that. But 
 I d like one stupendous adventure yet before I die 
 throw myself into something neck and heels. That 
 was being young, I suppose, Ellen. We never knew 
 what was coming. We never cared. That was the 
 witchery of it. If I could have an adventure even a 
 poor elderly adventure an adventure on paper 
 Hullo ! there they are." 
 
 Eaton Lang and Park were putting their heads out 
 of the low-browed cab. They seemed to accomplish 
 it all in a rush, flung the man his coin, seized their 
 suitcases, pelted up the steps, and Park enriched 
 Aunt Ellen with his home-coming kiss. From that 
 moment the house took on a tumultuous warmth 
 of preparation. The "boys" went to their rooms, 
 and Mrs. Abergenny invaded the kitchen and 
 herself impressed cook with the deeply significant 
 nature of the next repast. It was not dinner. No 
 one dined in those white-pillared houses. They 
 simply sat down to something indifferently called 
 tea, an assemblage of dishes as rich as hospitality 
 and inherited cook-books could manage. Mrs. 
 Abergenny put on her lilac silk and she and her hus 
 band were ready to go into the dining-room when the 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 boys came down. Looking at Park, who, though 
 Robert s nephew, was, as she told them both, the 
 only son she had, she warmed with maternal pride. 
 Park was not tall. That had seemed a pity, a few 
 years ago; but now he had broadened out, and he was 
 hard and strong. His clean-shaven face had much 
 of the Abergenny distinction, though none of the 
 whimsical query that made her husband s dear 
 to her. Park questioned nothing. He was sure. 
 Eaton Lang was the same type of fellow. They 
 might have come out of an illustration in a modern 
 book. They ate a great deal, with a frank enjoy 
 ment, and were very nice to their hostess. Park was 
 chaffing her about the coquetry of her lavender and 
 lace, and condescending to her in a fashion she liked. 
 It was a little cocky, a purely masculine brand, and 
 she never objected to even a young man s method of 
 setting her sex right. She liked, she said, their 
 point of view. But now she caught Eaton s ques 
 tion to her husband. 
 
 "What percentage of Letts are there here in the 
 mills?" 
 
 Abergenny hesitated, and Abergenny s nephew 
 burst into a laugh, quick with affectionate tolerance. 
 
 "He can t tell you, can you, Uncle Rob? He 
 don t know a Lett from a hindrance." 
 
 "Come, come, now," said Abergenny. "I m a 
 very intelligent uncle, give me time." 
 
 Park had turned frankly to his friend, who, he 
 knew, was always snatching the reins of talk. And 
 he did handle them capably, though with a perfect 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 243 
 
 unconsciousness that there are serviceable modes of 
 driving not approved in the conventions of whips. 
 
 "I told you what sort of a town this is. Uncle 
 don t know a soul out of his class." 
 
 "Oh, come now," said uncle, again tolerantly, 
 "what is my class? " 
 
 But this Park smilingly waived, as if both he and 
 uncle knew. 
 
 "It isn t you alone, uncle, it s the whole bloomin* 
 town. Your class refuses to see that there s been 
 anything new since the shipbuilding days. Mean 
 time the population s shifted. There s a big per 
 centage of Italians, Syrians, Lithuanians, Poles. 
 They re citizens. They vote. Their bosses sway 
 the vote. But uncle" he was talking to Eaton 
 now "uncle only knows he meets shiny-eyed 
 foreigners in the street when he s pottering down to 
 the post-office to get an English review, and they 
 make him think of Italy, and he goes off into a pipe- 
 dream about his sabbatical spree, don t you, dad? 
 Park was very affectionate when he said "dad." 
 
 Mrs. Abergenny, listening, felt the angry color in 
 her face. Her pretty hand found itself trembling as 
 she lifted her fork, and she laid it down again with a 
 delicate composure. She was afraid to look at her 
 husband lest she should catch the quiver of eld shown 
 up by youth. But Abergenny was explaining now to 
 Eaton, and his unmoved, genial voice gave her a new 
 thrill of partisanship. She was old enough to know 
 composure costs something. 
 
 "Park told you about our sabbatical spree? We 
 
244 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 inherited a few thousands, and when I feel my joints 
 stiffening and can t write (because I can t get a good 
 pen), can t read (because my arm isn t long enough) 
 you know the reasons we find for getting turned 
 out to pasture and keeping our self-respect then 
 my wife and I are going to Italy on a regular bat. 
 It s going to be my last piggishness. She s doing it 
 all for me and I m letting her. She d rather sit 
 down here and see the grass grow, wouldn t you, 
 Ellen?" 
 
 "I want to go very much," said she. But she 
 didn t and she knew he knew it. These were the 
 pious rites of her worship. 
 
 "Good scheme," said honest Eaton. "I tell 
 father and mother to spend every cent they can for 
 the next five years. After that it s all downhill. 
 Sure to be." 
 
 Again Mrs. Abergenny flashed a hot look at her 
 husband. It found him smiling. 
 
 "A bit of ham, Eaton?" he was saying. "See 
 this little thin fellow with the ring of fat. Doesn t 
 that tempt you, my boy? " 
 
 It did, and while Eaton s plate went up, Eaton 
 himself insisted f atef ully : 
 
 "What s the percentage of all the foreigners in the 
 mills?" 
 
 "I don t know," said Park. "Phil could tell you. 
 How is Phil?" 
 
 "Very well," said Mrs. Abergenny. She felt 
 disconcertingly remote from her nephew at that 
 moment. He seemed to be committing Use majesU 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 245 
 
 all round. "Philippa was here this afternoon. She 
 has a college friend staying with her." An acrid 
 impulse prompted her to add, "A girl who has been 
 going about hiring herself out in mills and telling what 
 she saw." 
 
 "By George!" said Eaton. He had lost muscular 
 control of his eye-glasses, in his recognition of the 
 distinguished Mary, and sat looking at Mrs. Aber- 
 genny with a myopic softness of gaze which seemed 
 somehow to reflect Mary Crewe in person. "Mary 
 Crewe ! " he offered. Then he got his glasses on again 
 and with them resumed his front of armed sufficiency. 
 
 "Of course it s Mary Crewe," said Park. "I ll 
 telephone Phil and see if we can get em over here 
 this evening." 
 
 "Parkman!" breathed his aunt. She had de 
 termined, after the first incursion of these redoubtable 
 young Scythians, not to be surprised. The infant 
 generations shouldn t catch her napping. She would 
 even entertain their catchwords as legitimate Eng 
 lish and no bastard brood. But she had to add, be 
 cause the discipline of manners demanded it, "Don t 
 you think you d better ask if you might call? " 
 
 Park was innocent of anybody s ban. 
 
 "They d better come here," said he. "They re 
 great girls. Dad ll love to hear em." 
 
 "Do you know Philippa s friend?" Mrs. Aber- 
 genny was asking Eaton, fixing him at the moment, 
 all unconsciously, with a gaze of frigor bidding him 
 beware how he spoke of young ladies with the laxity 
 Park had so unhappily betrayed. 
 
246 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 "Not personally," said Eaton. "Know her work, 
 of course." 
 
 "Oh, we ve got to have em," said Park, "unless 
 they ve something on to-night. Is Mary advertised 
 to speak? " 
 
 "Not that I have heard," said Mrs. Abergenny, 
 with an inclusive dignity encircling all young women 
 who might speak. 
 
 Park did telephone, and the girls would be de 
 lighted to come, though late. They had to go first 
 to the mystery -play rehearsal. And they did come 
 by nine, after an interval of De Koven and Victor 
 Herbert, rendered happily by the boys in turn at the 
 piano. 
 
 "Fancy!" said Abergenny to his wife, in an in 
 credulous delight at the moment when Park was 
 letting the girls in at the door. "They don t bring 
 their slippers now. They bring their brains." 
 
 By the time then* hostess got to them they had 
 their hats off in the hall, and instantly, in an incur 
 sion of youth tumultuously splendid, they were in 
 before the fire. Philippa wore her morning suit, the 
 tailored skirt, the shirt-waist and stiff collar, but 
 Mary Crewe, a redundant type of beauty, was in 
 blue silk, lacy and tumbled from long-continued pack 
 ing and an imperfect understanding of what a hot 
 iron can do. She had drooping slantwise lids and an 
 irregular, enchanting mouth, full bloom of the cheeks, 
 and an irresistible laugh. 
 
 "How that girl has escaped marriage! " Abergenny 
 managed in an aside to his wife while the others were 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 247 
 
 playing a quick game of question and reply. There 
 they were at this village hearth, the shrine of se 
 curity, loud in what seemed to be an investigation of 
 turmoil in the corners of the earth. China and Mo 
 rocco were pawns in their hands; Persia was a card 
 of destiny. Mexico! they struck that like a warning 
 note to summon the continent, all continents, to ac 
 countability for the condition of the man who worked 
 with his hands. This man he was known by a big 
 generic Labor seemed to be the atom for whom the 
 earth was swung and the moon and stars created. 
 
 Inga, pink from her run home after rehearsal, came 
 in to bring a basket of wood for the fire, and Mrs. 
 Abergenny glanced up at her sharply to see whether 
 she wore another look. She must, if Labor was the 
 true mistress of the world. She wouldn t have been 
 surprised to see Inga with a definite circlet on her 
 brow, such as queens used to wear with no foreboding, 
 or Inga grown colossal like the Melian Victory. 
 But Inga was unchanged, soft-footed, deft, and the 
 others didn t see her at all. Only Philippa gave her 
 a little smiling nod, and moved a chair slightly to let 
 her pass, and Abergenny got up and took the wood 
 from her and said: 
 
 "Don t do that again, Inga. It s too heavy. If 
 Jake isn t there, call me." 
 
 But how the news of the world coruscated in 
 sparks from the running wheel of talk! The air 
 beat with the aroma of young blood, young breath. 
 The four adventurers into their new continent of 
 hope were triumphant with the working possibilities 
 
248 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 of the land. It was all promise within a hair of ful 
 filment. They named the paths they had cut 
 through the country of their conception. They 
 brought big tales of smashing the natives and the 
 toll of the slain: so many capitalists dead by the 
 Mauser of investigation, so many railroads posted 
 with cautionary guide-posts, "This way to hell." 
 Abergenny, on the run, followed them like a game 
 old dog at the wake of the pack. He had his special 
 intoxication: the seething of young life, the glitter 
 of untried knights athirst for battle. 
 
 "But don t slay more than you can resurrect," 
 he caught himself murmuring. And then, 
 
 With my cross-bow I shot the albatross 
 
 Nobody heard him, nobody but his wife, and when 
 she called from her end of the semicircle : 
 
 "What is it, Rob?" he gave her a little crooked 
 reassuring smile that bade her be silent as he meant 
 to be. But presently there came a name he knew. 
 It was an English name of some repute in ink. He 
 did want to speak there. If anything was his 
 province, it was the charted shore about the sea of 
 ink. But they used their catchwords here too, and 
 Abergenny had to remind himself that he had had 
 catchwords in his day, imbibed from authority, forty 
 years ago, only he had thought them academic. 
 
 "Galsworthy is It at present," said Mary, and 
 Lang capped the verdict by pronouncement on 
 Shaw: "the biggest thing since Aristophanes." 
 
 Mrs. Abergenny wasn t entirely controlled by her 
 
THE "MID-VICTORIAN 249 
 
 husband s warning look. Here she did cast her 
 trembling ballot, wondering why Rob couldn t 
 represent her. 
 
 " Shaw is a vulgar man. I saw one of his plays once, 
 and I shouldn t willingly see another. If either of you 
 girls are ever invited to go I hope you ll refuse." 
 
 "Dear auntie!" said Park, generously. 
 
 He laid his hand on hers, and she let it lie there and 
 hoped he didn t feel the pulses beating underneath. 
 But Eaton was talking to Abergenny. 
 
 "You see, Mr. Abergenny, we can t ignore the 
 tremendous movement over there in England among 
 the younger men." 
 
 "There s always been a good deal of young blood 
 in young men," said Abergenny, with a mild ap 
 pearance of offering a dish likely to be refused. 
 
 "Oh, yes, but not like this, Mr. Abergenny." 
 
 "They ve had their bread riots, they repealed 
 their corn laws, they even abolished the slave trade 
 in their dear old dominion. They ve had some 
 rather broad schemes of colonization. Had their 
 visionists, too. Even old Southey dreamed about 
 the Susquehanna. Also there was a disquieting 
 French Revolution next door and Boney imminent. 
 Oh, there s been something doing in that vicinity 
 for quite a number of years." 
 
 "But not like this," chanted the young voices, 
 in a harmony almost too gay to fit the sombre 
 theme. "No, it s not like this." 
 
 "No," said Abergenny, "I m not prepared to say 
 it was like this." 
 
250 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 Mrs. Abergenny looked across the young pink 
 faces in a rage of revolt against them all. 
 
 "It is like this," she wanted to cry out. "If 
 Robert says it is, it is." 
 
 But for a moment then she was placated. For it 
 appeared that Eaton Lang, who, with the precocity 
 of the age, had produced two plays, was putting the 
 barrels of money he had amassed into a magazine, and 
 she made no doubt, when he began to tout his scheme, 
 that Robert was to come in for a serial. Park, it 
 appeared, had two shares in the concern. He had 
 written no play. All his potentiality for invest 
 ment lay in his hand-to-mouth journalism. But he 
 was investigating, organizing. He was "on to" 
 a few things. He d show them yet. But it also 
 became obvious that Lang had no leaning toward 
 serials, unless, indeed, they concerned the Syrian 
 immigrant. Philippa, taking him to the mystery 
 play, was conferring an editorial benefit. 
 
 "You know the sort of fellows he wants, Phil," 
 said Parkman: "cobblers or mill-hands, that can 
 sit down and reel off the facts. We ll dig out an 
 interpreter and maybe get a stenographer, and we re 
 made. It s a cinch." 
 
 Philippa knew perfectly. She could put her hand 
 on half a dozen men, all conversant with want at 
 home, all with the wit to remember the process by 
 which unskilled labor was lured over here to the 
 ideal conditions that slumped to chaos, once the 
 workman grappled with them. She had a fluent as- 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 251 
 
 semblage of strange names ready for him. These 
 men were of her special friends. 
 
 It was throughout an evening of talk full of light 
 and color and go. Though it began late it lasted 
 into the night. At the end Park and Eaton took 
 the young women home Mrs. Abergenny wondered, 
 with a flouting humor foreign to her, if Park would 
 have to be prompted and when they came back 
 they were not talking about the general decadence of 
 the world. They were discussing Mary Crewe s 
 equipment for conquest. 
 
 "A very crumby little person," Eaton Lang was 
 vociferating in a pleased excitement. 
 
 "Very crumby indeed," said Park succinctly. 
 "Mary s all right. So s old Phil. Going to bed, 
 Aunt Ellen? Guess we shall have to sit up a spell 
 and smoke." 
 
 Abergenny, too, had meant to hang about for 
 half an hour and smoke, partly to set his mind in 
 order and, it might be, to meet his young Scythians 
 man to man, with no womenfolk by to ease tensions 
 and deflect the stream. He never had understood 
 Park so little. In the eight months since he had 
 seen him the boy had hardened into a mould of 
 individual life. Still Abergenny thought even he, 
 whose serials were not demanded, had a knack at 
 meeting fellows under his own age, perhaps because 
 he liked young wine as it frothed out of the butt. 
 But he found himself going meekly up to bed with 
 Aunt Ellen. In his dressing-room he stood a mo 
 ment, hands in his pockets, and grinned. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 "I wonder what made me do that," said he. "I 
 wonder why I didn t say, Sit down, boys; try 
 one of these. I imported them myself. " ! 
 
 "Did you speak, Rob?" his wife was calling. 
 
 "No, darling," said he, grinning still, "I didn t 
 speak." But he began talking then profanely 
 about his cravat. 
 
 Mrs. Abergenny retained a very confused impres 
 sion of that night. It was moonlight, and she sat 
 up on the white island of her bed and saw the pat 
 tern of the curtain on the wall. Her husband, too, 
 awoke and he saw her sitting there, a white fluff 
 tied round her head because she was afraid of the 
 night air, and she looked to him like some sort of 
 angel with a frosty pow. But she was wringing her 
 hands, and her voice seemed to wring itself too. 
 
 "O Rob," she said, "O Rob! I don t want them 
 to love their brothers better than you do." 
 
 "Come here, old girl," said Robert. He left his 
 white island and came to hers, and drew the fluff 
 to his shoulder. "Don t you worry. They ve 
 formed a trust, that s all." 
 
 Then the alien tongue the others had talked that 
 night grew hot in her mouth, and she heard herself 
 saying: "Has it got to be busted, Rob? Has that 
 trust got to be busted, too?" 
 
 "No, dear," said Rob. "It can t be busted- 
 It ll last as long as the leaves grow in the spring and 
 there is a lover of his kind that wants to die. Not 
 that these boys and girls want to die. They re 
 topful of life. They re onto the game." 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 253 
 
 She found herself a little dizzy, even with that 
 security of his shoulder. 
 
 "They seem to feel things so much," she said. 
 "Do you suppose they feel them so much more than 
 you do, Rob?" 
 
 "Weltschmerz?" asked Rob. "Some of them ac 
 tually do feel it. There s always been your priest 
 and your martyr. Some of them feel so because 
 they like to be in the know. Some of them get a 
 salary out of it. Some of them are sentimental. 
 Some are forensic. Some are cocky. But the louder 
 they talk the more it ll get into the ears of the world, 
 and possibly the old world ll hypnotize itself into 
 thinking it really does love its brother. And by and 
 by there ll be things it ll be ashamed to do." 
 
 "Will they change it?" she heard herself moaning. 
 "Will they change the world so we sha n t know it?" 
 
 "Oh, we shall know it all right," said Rob rather 
 grimly. "For the present they ll chiefly strike the 
 fetters off one leg and put them on the other. 
 They ll overthrow Dagon that is Capital and set up 
 Dagon that is Labor. And as soon as Dagon that 
 is Labor finds he s god, he will behave exactly as 
 Dagon that is Capital did and snuff out of his brazen 
 nostrils for human sacrifice." 
 
 "Don t, Rob," said she, for the moonlight seemed 
 to tremble on the wall. "God won t let them do 
 such things. At least I hope he won t." 
 
 "Do you think any of it s done without him? Do 
 you think it s these atomies of children that are 
 making all the pother? It s God himself, you little 
 
254 THE MID- VICTORIAN 
 
 Unitarian, you. He s increasing the police force. 
 Lots of the force are being bribed, but still they ve 
 got the badge." 
 
 "Is God on their side?" Ellen was crying. "Is 
 He in it, too?" 
 
 "He s on everybody s side, you simpleton," said 
 Rob. "Didn t you know that? Also they ve got 
 science up their sleeve." 
 
 "I don t want science," said his Ellen. "I m not 
 accustomed to it. I m accustomed to religion." 
 
 "Poor duckie," said the voice. "Poor old duck." 
 
 In the morning she awoke with that apprehensive 
 feeling of expecting to see the spectres of the night 
 before. But the room looked quite the same, and 
 the sunlight on her pin-cushion was reassuring. 
 Rob strode about whistling in his dressing-room, and 
 she called to ask if he was all right. 
 
 "Yep," said he, a paraphrase he never used unless 
 he was right indeed. 
 
 Ellen, as soon as her hair was done, went in to 
 give him his morning kiss. 
 
 "Did anything happen in the night?" she asked 
 him. 
 
 Rob looked fresh-colored and agreeable. No, he 
 told her. Nothing particular, he guessed. Same 
 old night. 
 
 "I feel as if I d talked in my sleep," said Ellen. 
 " I wish I could remember all of it. Some of it I can. 
 I ll try to tell you when there s time." 
 
 But after putting the pin in her lace collar she 
 came back. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 255 
 
 "Rob," she said, "don t you suppose Eaton will 
 ask you to do a serial for his magazine? Don t you 
 suppose that s what he s really here for?" 
 
 "No, child," said Rob. "Don t think it. He 
 wants a serial on the way to tell ditch-diggers how 
 to make railroad kings sit up. He doesn t want a 
 story about common middle-class folks like you and 
 
 me." 
 
 "It s outrageous," said Ellen, "and I m very 
 much hurt to find Park is every inch as bad. Noth 
 ing interests him nothing nothing but finding 
 out how wicked somebody has been and saying so 
 in a magazine. And because you wouldn t do that 
 because you re a gentleman " 
 
 Park and Eaton came to the table frothing over 
 with the high spirits they had carried to bed with 
 them. There were no lees in last night s cup, no 
 monotonies, no lassitude. They seemed to be, from 
 a temperamental point of view, perpetually pulling 
 corks and tossing down a draught that vivified and 
 never undermined. Yet even when they were kind 
 est to her, Ellen found herself inwardly withstanding 
 them. What were they, after all, but children en 
 dowed with a disproportioned power to change the 
 fashion of serials as a tailor sways the mode of sleeves 
 and collars? Ellen was having her eyes opened, and 
 it hurt. Excess of light was it light or only glare 
 cruelly and ingeniously contrived from artificial sur 
 faces? half -blinded her. Hitherto she had piously 
 believed that there was but one manner of serial, 
 as it were the earthly similitude of a heavenly 
 
256 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 type (see Plato on serials) and that was Rob s. 
 Others might differ from it as one star from another, 
 but all were in harmony, for none could really con 
 travene Rob s, which, with Dickens s and Thack 
 eray s, fitted the heavenly archetype. And here 
 were two boys sitting in the seats of authoritative 
 selection, and Rob, since we must use the speech of 
 the day, "not in it." 
 
 "We won t come back for luncheon," said Park. 
 "I told Phil and Mary we d drop in for rehearsal and 
 see if there wasn t something we could do." 
 
 "By George," said Abergenny, "I d like to butt 
 in there." 
 
 "Sure," said Park. "Go to the play. We ll 
 all go. Take you, Aunt Ellen." 
 
 "I d like mighty well to see the rehearsal when the 
 people are themselves," said Abergenny. "Why 
 didn t I know this was going on? Syrians, aren t 
 they?" 
 
 " Yes. All of em in the mill. They re taking the 
 noon hour for a last go. Phil s ordered in crackers 
 and coffee." 
 
 "I d even bring some cheese if they d take me in," 
 said Abergenny humbly. He felt like a very little 
 boy begging absurdly for what he mustn t have. 
 
 But Park wasn t refusing him. He didn t even 
 see the little boy was begging. 
 
 "Be back by five, Aunt Ellen," he contributed. 
 "There ll be something to do to the stage. Always 
 
 is." 
 
 They went robustly down the path, each with his 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 257 
 
 film of smoke behind him. Ellen spoke then, in- 
 temperately, as she used to speak when she and Rob 
 were young married folk. 
 
 "I m as mad as fire." 
 
 "Oh, no," said Rob, "they re only inheriting the 
 earth in their turn. We heard Dickens read." 
 
 "But that," said Ellen, in a perplexed irrele 
 vance, "was a long time ago." 
 
 "Yes," said Rob, "that s the mischief." 
 
 That night they did go to the play. Ellen washed 
 off her temper in shame, wore her gray silk and 
 amethyst pendant, and tried to be affectionately soft 
 to Park. Yet Park, in his defined preoccupations, 
 didn t need her easements. He and Eaton dis 
 appeared behind the scenes, and Ellen, in the con 
 fusion and hammering before the prologue, guessed 
 at their activities. But Rob wasn t thinking of the 
 boys. He was looking about him in an even grateful 
 delight over the picturesqueness of the new harmoni 
 ous scene. This was a little old church built on the 
 severe lines of the early meeting-house. The gal 
 leries were beautifully panelled. Topping the win 
 dows were fan-lights. The Unitarians, ever since 
 they sold it, in a madness of prosperity induced by 
 the gift of a new sandstone church righteously and 
 inalienably Gothic, had been rather sore on not at 
 least preserving it as a memorial of their faith. 
 The Syrians had it now. An early comer that night 
 might have looked to see New England ladies of an 
 older time come rustling in, in softest silks and 
 bonnets lined with rosy wreaths; but Ellen Aber- 
 
258 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 genny was the only one of that dim lineage. When 
 the audience did come, late, quick-breathed from the 
 haste of preparation after work, it was an incursion 
 of the East. Abergenny s eyes lighted fires of that 
 delight the artist only knows : over the dusk of their 
 hair, the flash of glance and teeth, their lithe sym 
 metry, or the teeming physical life in them. They 
 were, Ellen thought, noting their scarfs, overlaid in 
 scales like spangled snakes, and, too, the encompass 
 ing modern hat, very much dressed. There were 
 girls all beauty, made by nature for her imperious 
 uses, as unconscious as the nymphs born only to lead 
 in the dawn. The men came, most of them, in their 
 working clothes, lustrous-eyed creatures, swarthy, 
 certainly lowering, perhaps morose. That was the 
 illusive story the type told of itself, its darkness, its 
 terrifying brilliance. And then it smiled, and what 
 sunshine, what ingenuous candor! Ellen was, she 
 knew, even though so slightly, out of her element. 
 None of her friends had come. She missed the 
 warmth of neighborly recognitions. But Rob was 
 happy. She felt the weather of it. 
 
 "Look at em," he whispered. "Everybody s 
 young. No, they re not. There s a grandmother. 
 But, hang it! the others flash so, you don t see any 
 body over thirty-five. And every man Jack of em s 
 in the midst of his adventure, if it s only cobbling 
 boots." 
 
 Then, before she could assemble half uncompre 
 hending sympathies to meet him, the curtain was 
 pulled aside and the play began. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 259 
 
 The play was the story of the poor maid who sets 
 her little room ready to receive the Christmas King, 
 and then, in wistful sacrifice, gives the cot, the bread, 
 the wine, to the wandering three, father, mother and 
 child, who have been turned from other doors. And 
 later, when the kings and magi follow the star to her 
 low roof, there wait the family she has sheltered, and 
 it is Joseph and Mary and the little Jesus, in their 
 right radiance. An interpreter rehearsed the story 
 of each scene to his people in their own tongue. The 
 actors had the sincerity of life. Even their clothes 
 were shreds and patches of reality. The Aber- 
 gennys knew this. Philippa had told them. These 
 were not costumes hired from a shop. They were 
 intimate bits of the old life at home, treasured heir 
 looms from chests in poor dark lodgings or lent by 
 neighbors from as serious intent. The stage was 
 lighted with candelabra only; but that insured a 
 trembling beauty. The dim interiors were like 
 priceless pictures mellowed, in the safety of old gal 
 leries, by the airs of time. 
 
 Ellen Abergenny found herself floating back to 
 Nazareth. The simplicity of the play beat at her 
 heart. The painstaking, broken words, the oriental 
 dress what were these but the living memory of 
 Sunday afternoons fifty years ago, when she had 
 been allowed to turn the leaves of the great picture 
 Bible and follow out the story? An indefinable 
 harmony pervaded the room. Raucous winds of the 
 present might be blowing outside these fan-lighted 
 panes, but the minds of the people met and abode in 
 
260 THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 consonance on an isle of inextinguishable beauty and 
 so of calm. To Ellen Abergenny the little irritations 
 that hurt the flesh became like pebbles on the road 
 to pilgrimage. They bruised, but the flesh would 
 heal, and in the pilgrimage accomplished even sharper 
 ills would be forgotten. The water of life at that 
 altar of unerring adjustment which eye hath not 
 yet seen would wash and heal the sting. 
 
 Still she felt the march of time, though now its 
 kindliness. The fashion of this world was passing 
 away. The stream was running and on it her little 
 craft, so swiftly that when she sought to take her 
 childish reckoning the spot where she would have 
 recorded it had been sucked back into the abysm of 
 time. Whatever peaceful backwater she might 
 find, it would still be to see the stream rushing un 
 endingly by. The stream had always been rushing, 
 she knew; but once she had had the spirit to love 
 the buoyancy of the boat, the strength to snatch at 
 flowers low-growing on the shore. If there was 
 stability anywhere, was it not this wherein she was 
 bound by chains of inherited belief to Nazareth? 
 And these were bound with her: the workmen out 
 of the East, the uncomprehended obscurity of his 
 mind the stage for this story of the God made man. 
 Even when at the story s close the Virgin, with an 
 ineffable welcome of humid eyes and smiling mouth, 
 received the maid, now all amaze, it was no shock 
 that Mary, Mother of God, was Inga. It was not 
 Inga in the illusion of the flesh. It was Inga s in 
 ner self that used Inga s body for its working garb. 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 261 
 
 When it was over, Ellen wished she could have hur 
 ried home, her little pictures of the Nativity clasped 
 to her breast. How should they stay unbroken 
 when the shiny-eyed audience dissolved into the 
 gay fellowship of men and women relaxed after the 
 tension of "sitting at a play"? The actors came 
 from behind, still in costume, as if immediately from 
 the East. Park and Eaton came, and Mary and 
 Philippa. The young Scythians were in high 
 feather. Philippa was openly proud, her people 
 had done so well. They went about among the 
 crowd with most familiar greetings. Eaton was put 
 into the hands of three black-eyed men who had 
 facts to give him volubly though in this unaccus 
 tomed tongue: the special facts up-to-date editors 
 are thirsting for. There were gay little encounters 
 in swirls and eddies, and Abergenny and his wife, 
 rather shaken from the quality of emotion the even 
 ing had brought, stood aside, quite out of it, yet not 
 pathetically so. They were both carrying, in 
 quickened minds, their little pictures of the Nativity. 
 Ellen was wondering she could not help it from 
 no sense of aesthetic privilege, if she and Rob were 
 the only ones to have felt the beauty of it over 
 whelmingly. She asked him that, in a self -dis 
 trustful commonplace. 
 
 "Do you think they saw how lovely it was?" 
 
 Robert gave her his quick comprehending look. 
 
 "These people? Not a doubt of it. Park and the 
 girls don t know much about it because they were 
 pulling the wires. Don t you see, these boys and 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 
 
 girls are too busy keeping the marionettes moving 
 to get much effect of emotional beauty. They re 
 doing things. They re doing everything. It s great 
 in a way." 
 
 Inga, the Virgin s veil put off for her black dress 
 and jacket, came down the aisle. She was hurrying 
 as well as she might for the greetings ready for her, 
 hurrying away from the greetings, it seemed, for 
 matters more immediate. There was nothing of the 
 festival about Inga. A serious wistfulness made 
 her pale face wonderful. Her eyes met Mrs. Aber- 
 genny s. They seemed to ask pardon for something: 
 perhaps for not walking in her list slippers and being 
 armed with the little tray. Perhaps really they asked 
 why Mrs. Abergenny was there. Mrs. Abergenny 
 bent to her with an impulse outside her will. 
 
 "Don t hurry, Eva," she said. 
 
 "I shall be there before you, Mrs. Abergenny," 
 said Inga, in her precise English. "Cook will be 
 ready to serve." 
 
 "Stay here," said Mrs. Abergenny, "while the 
 others do." 
 
 " Oh, no," said Inga. " Thank you, Mrs. Aber 
 genny." 
 
 " Stay and talk," said Abergenny, his warm, kind 
 smile upon her. " Stay as long as the rest do, as 
 long as you like." 
 
 " When you come home," said his wife, " have 
 something to eat and go to bed. I can manage sup 
 per. You re tired, child." 
 
 Inga looked her in the face. She had, perhaps, 
 
THE MID-VICTORIAN 263 
 
 never done that before with so full an assurance.* 
 The eyes of the two women met and exchanged un- 
 fashioned messages, announcements that the souls 
 of them might possibly understand and find no means 
 of communicating to the outer selves that lived by 
 formulae. What Inga felt Ellen Abergenny could 
 not know. But she knew one thing she thought of 
 Inga. The blood had run into the girl s cheeks and 
 trembled on her lips. In her face was something 
 moved and humid. 
 
 "She is nothing," Mrs. Abergenny thought, with 
 a shock of wonder, "but a child." 
 
 The glance broke. Inga gave a little "Thank 
 you," and Abergenny and his wife moved out. 
 They needn t wait for the dear Scythians who had 
 forgotten them. At the door Abergenny halted and 
 looked once more. Still the room was gay with 
 talk. Eaton Lang, mobbed by Syrian eloquence, 
 was listening, listening, and Mary Crewe stood by 
 him, the solvent apparently between the workmen 
 who knew and trusted her and the avid magazine 
 man. Park and Philippa, too, had collected a group; 
 theirs was comedy. 
 
 Abergenny and his wife turned again and went 
 home to overlook their careful hospitalities. 
 
 "They seem to have paired off," said Abergenny. 
 He put his hand over Ellen s lying on his arm. It 
 was an old custom. 
 
 "You can t tell," said Ellen vaguely. "Manners 
 are so different now. Still I believe Park and Phil 
 ippa if Park gets ahead." 
 
264 THE MID- VICTORIAN 
 
 Then they were silent, though Abergenny looked 
 up and said, as if he had discovered a constellation 
 to the good: 
 
 "There s the dipper." 
 
 But they were thinking according things: of the 
 whirling of the world and the constant stars that yet 
 are whirling too, of the Nativity and the one star that 
 had led them to this place. 
 
 "It ll be nice in Italy," said Ellen with no preface, 
 when they came to their own door. 
 
 Abergenny had his hand on the latch. But he 
 withdrew it and looked up at the heavens again. 
 
 "No," said he, "I sha n t go to Italy." 
 
 "Not go?" 
 
 "No. We ll turn that money over to Park for 
 shares in their freebooter magazines. I ll buy him 
 a pou sto, and he shall push the world. Let em 
 push. I m willing to be their fulcrum. It s about 
 all I can do for em. And, by George, I m going to 
 be in it. It s my last adventure." 
 
FATHER 
 
 SANDY BAR, the green amphitheater backed by 
 hills where the Esoterics held their summer con 
 ference, was marked on the east by a line of shingly 
 beach, and here the younger Esoterics paced and 
 murmured after the evening talk. There was from 
 time to time an alien visitor, often a reporter hu 
 morous enough to wonder what the sea thought of 
 such palaverings at its threshold: how old Triton, 
 come up to "blow his wreathed horn," took these 
 mysteries of the East revamped for the apprehension 
 of the West, and what the mermaids, in gregarious 
 midnight hair-combings, tittered to one another 
 about this cultured interchange of earth men 
 and maids. People without even a slant toward 
 mysticism liked to come here for "the course," 
 because the spot itself was so idyllic, and the prac 
 tical side of high thinking so admirably arranged. 
 The food was exquisite and reasonable. "Of course 
 it s all in the air," solid matrons would own, after 
 confessing they had stayed at Sandy Bar every 
 minute they could filch from a holiday due some 
 where else, "but it s really very amusing. Excellent 
 table. Same cook, you know, three of them, broth 
 ers. They come every summer. It s quite remark 
 able what they do with cream and nuts." Every 
 body went away soothed and always fatter; content, 
 
 265 
 
266 FATHER 
 
 too, in a holy way, because they had been fingering 
 strange religions, and had not got burned, but only 
 pleasantly warmed to a sense of then* own broad- 
 mindedness. 
 
 Mrs. Evelyn Dart arrived with Evie, her nineteen- 
 year-old daughter, at five o clock in the afternoon 
 of a calm June day. Mrs. Dart had not come to 
 eat or to pique her religious emotions. She was a 
 speaker in the course, a woman who was said to make 
 an audience "sit up" nearly as soon as she opened 
 her mouth. Her face was compounded of oddments 
 of hints and expressions. It bore marks of the 
 mystic: the high forehead, the wistful, pale gaze of 
 the creature who has looked on the outside of life 
 and found nothing to satisfy, the delicate mouth 
 ready to quiver as to a challenge, and through the 
 very tissue of expression an urge of fiery energy. 
 She wore trailing robes of a subdued violet, and 
 falls of lace over her slender hands. Evie, the 
 daughter, was more definite. Offspring of her 
 mother s youth, she seemed to bear no relation to 
 any mood of her maturity, the blossom of a by-gone 
 year, and of no continuing spiritual state of being. 
 Her clothes were not snatched out of old portraits 
 or filched from presses of Queen Elizabeth. They 
 were the tailored uniform of the time, put on with an 
 extreme care. She "knew her way about." She 
 also convoyed her mother in accurate comfort over 
 the miles of railway which Mrs. Dart regarded 
 vaguely as shining tracks from speech to speech. 
 Mrs. Dart found the practical conditions of life 
 
FATHER 267 
 
 tolerable, though fluctuating. She was always 
 being passed about, chiefly from one motor to an 
 other, and in this multiplicity of friendly cars such 
 was the continuity of service she might have fancied 
 she owned one of a protean form. And if, as seemed 
 unlikely, even hostesses were to fail, Evie was always 
 there to study time-tables and check luggage and 
 find a quiet room with the right exposure. 
 
 Evie had just now consigned their luggage to a 
 truck, and since they were not yet expected, decreed 
 that she and mother should walk along a bosky way 
 direct to the amphitheater and its cottages. Even 
 in its approaches Sandy Bar waved a poetic welcome. 
 You had no sooner left the train than you found its 
 spell at work upon you; as if Eastern sages and doc 
 tored religions were not enough, here were rustling 
 leaves and a floral roadside carpeting. The way 
 was empty now, because this was lecture-hour; and 
 Evie walked swingingly, in a wholesome response 
 to the familiar greenness and the delightful air. She 
 was feeling to the full the bright joy of contrast; they 
 had fled from a heated city for this world of leaves 
 and, in the minds at least of her mother and the 
 Esoterics, the persuasiveness of philosophy and its 
 implication of everlasting calm. She knew the 
 place well, and tolerantly welcomed it. She had 
 plumbed Sandy Bar of old, and it held no disappoint 
 ments for her: only the same tepid story of good 
 people seeking to be more holy than the world allows 
 and lamentably backing off from cruder challenges. 
 Her mother, though light of foot, and with every 
 
368 FATHER 
 
 reason for sharing this exhilaration, walked drag- 
 gingly. Evie, suddenly aware of it, threw her the 
 questioning glance of experience in cases of physical 
 overthrow. 
 
 "What s the matter, mummy?" she inquired. 
 
 As if the question had been her cue for giving out 
 altogether, Mrs. Dart glanced around vaguely for 
 some support and sank on an empty bench by the 
 way. 
 
 "Sit down, Evie," she said. "I suppose we d bet 
 ter have it out here." 
 
 Evie continued looking at her, in grave expecta 
 tion but not alarmed: only as one ready to face an 
 emergency at its inception and "down" it without 
 delay. She caught the newspaper from her mother s 
 grasp and began to fan her with it; but Mrs. Dart, 
 lifting an impatient hand, swept it aside. 
 
 "No," said she, "I m not faint nor tired. I m 
 distracted." 
 
 " What about? " asked Evie. " What s happened? " 
 
 Mrs. Dart now laid a hand upon the paper and 
 drew it toward her impressively, as if it were her 
 corroborating witness. 
 
 "Something in this paper," she said. "I saw it 
 coming down. I didn t tell you then. I thought 
 I could do it better when we were in our own rooms. 
 But we didn t take a carriage we re walking we 
 might meet anybody." 
 
 "But you could have taken a carriage," Evie said, 
 brusquely, yet kindly, too. "Did you want to? 
 Why didn t you say so?" 
 
FATHER 269 
 
 Mrs. Dart grew more and more confused. 
 
 "Oh," she said, "I didn t think how it would be. 
 But when I realized we might meet him, and you 
 unprepared Evie, your father s here." 
 
 The girl stood perfectly silent; only her face turned 
 crimson and the feruled end of her umbrella ran 
 noiselessly into the earth. Her mother glanced up 
 at her, timidly even, as if she expected to be re 
 proached; and it was true that when Evie did speak 
 the words had a ring of bitterness. 
 
 "You needn t have considered me. You forget 
 I ve never seen him." 
 
 "Oh, don t say that," Mrs. Dart besought her, 
 as if the accuracy of testimony were the end in view. 
 "You were two and a half." 
 
 "When you were divorced?" prompted Evie, with 
 a ruthless clarity. "Well, I don t remember back 
 of two and a half. I can t recall him." 
 
 Mrs. Dart, nervously in haste, sought over the 
 newspaper. The paragraph was easily found; she 
 had read no more since it struck her brain. 
 
 "Here it is: John Symonds Dart has been en 
 gaged for three lectures on "Recent Explorations 
 in Egypt and their Relation to the Past," in place 
 of Professor Crandall, put down for "The Spirit of 
 the East." " 
 
 "I shouldn t think they d want a man like 
 father," said Evie. "He doesn t belong in a show 
 like this. He s just a plain, common professor at 
 Yale. Oh yes, he is. I know all about him. I ve 
 read a lot. The fellows like him. His classes 
 
270 FATHER 
 
 are full. But he s no more like these Johnnies 
 here" 
 
 "Don t!" said Mrs. Dart. She disliked the men 
 tion of Johnnies, and had not, even after hearing 
 prolific use of it, succeeded in defining the word with 
 any degree of clarity. Everything, it seemed, which 
 was not obvious was, in the vocabulary of Evie, a 
 Johnnie. "He wouldn t have come, I suppose," she 
 continued, "if I had been advertised to speak. But 
 there s the coincidence of it: I am supposed to be in 
 Europe. I return unexpectedly. Somebody drops 
 out of the Conference, and I am asked to take her 
 place. Just as your father is, don t you see? So 
 here we are together." 
 
 "Well," said Evie shortly, "we can t turn tail 
 and run." 
 
 "No," said Mrs. Dart. She held her fine head 
 slightly higher. "We must behave with dignity. 
 It is easy comparatively easy. Your father is a 
 considerate person, very. But I am only afraid, 
 Evie, of the effect on you." 
 
 "Why?" said Evie. "I haven t been divorced." 
 
 It was cruel, and it gave pain, and it was never 
 meant to. Yet Mrs. Dart couldn t blame her. She 
 didn t even wince: for out of these years of Evie s 
 growing up she had learned a great deal. One item, 
 on which she dwelt with a mild amazement, was that 
 though Evie had often the manner of a bluff boy, 
 she never wilfully hurt. The manner itself was 
 the armor of a curious age where young women 
 seemed to have no proper sentiment, or bid inevi- 
 
FATHER JWl 
 
 table romance under a crusted gaiety. But the 
 slight outer hardness of the time had its value. It 
 induced a lightness of demeanor in face of some of 
 the bigger complications that was quite admirable. 
 Evie had behaved with a perfect restraint over the 
 question of her mother s divorce. But here, in this 
 green walk to the amphitheater, she was breaking 
 her code. She asked a question shocking in its 
 crudity. 
 
 "What s the matter with father? Was he bad?" 
 
 Mrs. Dart turned distended eyes upon her. 
 
 "Your father?" she gasped. "Bad? What can 
 you mean by that?" 
 
 "Was father a bad man?" repeated Evie clearly. 
 "No, I don t mean that exactly. I mean, what 
 kind of bad was he? What made you divorce him? " 
 
 "Your father," said Mrs. Dart, with dignity, as 
 if to pledge her word that the sanctity of the hearth 
 stone had not been involved, "was one of the best 
 men that ever lived." 
 
 "He threw up his job, anyway. He deserted you, 
 didn t he?" Evie pursued inexorably. "I don t call 
 that honorable in a married man." 
 
 "It was part of his chivalry," Mrs. Dart declared, 
 still in her manner of hot defense. "He knew I 
 wanted freedom, and he gave it to me. I had 
 enough to live on. So he simply withdrew. He 
 went abroad. That gave me my divorce." 
 
 Evie was looking at her now in pure amazement. 
 
 "Do you mean to say," she inquired, "that you 
 allowed a man like father, a public man, a man with 
 
272 FATHER 
 
 a profession, to do a thing like that? desert his 
 wife, desert why, me! he deserted me, too and 
 stand up against it and live it down and go on teach 
 ing when he found a chance? And get a professor 
 ship? Why, father s magnificent. Father s a brick. 
 Why didn t you tell me that before?" 
 
 Mrs. Dart answered from her eminence of perfect 
 certainty founded upon conversance with compara 
 tive religion on a substructure of nice womanly 
 feeling. 
 
 "You hadn t asked me. You were very little at 
 the time." 
 
 "But," said Evie, now the defenses were all down 
 and her pent-up curiosity could flood the plain of 
 their habitual intercourse, "if father was such a 
 brick as to let you do a thing like that, I don t see 
 why you wanted a divorce at all." 
 
 It was easier to say the word with every repetition. 
 It was not easier for Mrs. Dart to hear it. But she 
 answered with a dignity that was almost pride in 
 the phrases she had long ago adopted in formulating 
 to herself the expansion her daughter could tuck so 
 neatly into one word. 
 
 "I needed entire spiritual freedom. I wanted a 
 fuller life." 
 
 "Well, whatever you mean by that, he d have 
 given it to you," Evie was insisting, in an almost 
 humorous horror over the airiness of the web that 
 had held them. "If he did an absurd thing like 
 that, went off and risked his credit and gave up his 
 home think of it! he d have let you go batting 
 
FATHER 273 
 
 round as you ve always done and never said a 
 word." 
 
 Mrs. Dart had now a little scarlet spot high on 
 each cheek. 
 
 "It would not," said she, "have been fair to him. 
 I wished to leave him the same spiritual freedom I 
 was claiming for myself." 
 
 "Oh!" groaned Evie. 
 
 It was a sound that said you couldn t get any 
 where when the ineffable sat in judgment on the 
 obvious. This feeling of blank discouragement was 
 the unconscious silent response she was always 
 offering to her mother s natural trend. She was 
 often proud of her mother, proud when the spark 
 came into Mrs. Dart s eyes and the gift of tongues 
 descended upon her. She wondered how mother, 
 who never knew anything about trains and was 
 willing to wear clothes of a generation past, could 
 possibly rush over all created life in a chariot of 
 fiery possession. This acceptance of mother as 
 she was had done a good deal to enlarge Evie s 
 tolerance. It was not that she had any sympathy 
 for the endless discussion of an ideal way of life. 
 The life seemed to her merely erratic. She frankly 
 hated it. Still, it had to be accepted, like volcanoes, 
 that are not such kindly breasts of earth as the 
 green New England hills, but are in the landscape 
 somewhere. She knew there must really be some 
 eccentric chart to explain her mother s piercing 
 aspiration and unsatisfied desire. That must be 
 the Ideal, Evie thought. She had heard it often 
 
274 FATHER 
 
 enough to hate it, and she patiently respected 
 it. But now her mind clung to the issue of the 
 moment. 
 
 "Well," said she, "I shall speak to father." 
 "I hope," said Mrs. Dart, with that moving 
 sweetness of tone a moral challenge always won from 
 her "I hope there is no question of speaking or 
 not speaking among mortal creatures cognizant of 
 immortality." 
 
 She rose, buoyed by a phrase, and walked lightly 
 along, and Evie followed. Evie was ever tender of 
 mother s formulas. She knew how they sustained 
 her, and she welcomed this slight hint of an abstrac 
 tion as an end toward getting to the cottage where 
 they were to lodge. It was like taking a prescrip 
 tion to a chemist and coming away heartened by 
 the proof that remedies exist and you have one in a 
 bottle. And of late, too, she had been especially 
 tender of all mother s queernesses, that must be 
 normal somewhere, for she found mother too often 
 tired, and concluded, in her practical way of looking 
 on at life and doctoring it up, that mother wasn t so 
 young as she had been. Evie never read Emerson 
 when she could help it, though she had done an oft- 
 repeated task of looking up quotations ; but she, like 
 him, knew there was a time to "take in sail." She 
 thought of it often, indeed, because she had seen 
 aged platform ladies convoyed to posts of honor and 
 called on for a "few words" where they had once 
 been urged to extended speech and given a place on 
 programs. She wondered how mother would bear 
 
FATHER 275 
 
 it when her time came to find a newer age super 
 seding her. 
 
 All that day they lived in a vague, unspoken 
 excitement, which cooled at night when it was 
 announced that Professor Dart had not come, and 
 was not at once expected Then immediately Evie 
 dismissed him from her conscious mind, because 
 another great meeting befell her. She heard young 
 Richard Haynes speak on the Zeitgeist, and came out 
 of the little theater, a sound as of the sea in her ears 
 and the voice of many waters in her soul. 
 
 Haynes was so beautiful a person that it hardly 
 made any difference what he said, or whether he was 
 the profound scholar the Esoterics took him for or 
 a clever artificer in borrowed goods. He had the 
 gift of words and a fine Greek nose. Convincing 
 ness lay in his stature and persuasion in his lovely 
 voice. Evie, seeing him, understood a great many 
 things. The green amphitheater, instead of being 
 an oasis where wandering Arabs of the mind met 
 to chatter in their various jargons, became a holy 
 place. She understood now the intention, at least, 
 of all the languages. She thought humbly of her 
 mother who had taken the daring step of allying 
 herself to this territory of the other world sprung 
 up so vividly, like a bright garden, in the midst of 
 this. The boys she had played tennis with at for 
 tunate moments when her wanderings had let her 
 exchange signals with her kind were far away, with 
 drawn into as crude a past as her own childhood and 
 its childish things. Richard Haynes alone remained, 
 
276 FATHER 
 
 standing there in his beauty on the platform that 
 seemed an eminence for overlooking the world, 
 weighing its past and prophesying futures. 
 
 So great was the immediate change in her that her 
 mother marveled. The boyish bluffness had gone. 
 Evie appealed, almost, in every word she spoke, yet 
 not consciously. Her real self at last dwelt too far 
 from common intercourse. Her eyes almost humid 
 in then* liquid beauty, her movements soft and still, 
 she went about humming little snatches of song and 
 answering absently. The change in her was moving 
 to her mother, almost terrifying. She had never 
 known such an Evie. 
 
 It was only a day that the change had lasted, and 
 in the afternoon of it they met Richard Haynes 
 in a shaded walk, and were formally named to him 
 by one of Mrs. Dart s disciples. Evie was a marvel 
 of stillness, but he read her at once. Whether she 
 had for him the significance he had for her, or whether 
 he liked the homage of a radiant girl, he detached 
 her from the group, and they walked away together 
 at a sufficient nearness to her mother to satisfy nice 
 custom. That night, after a lecture, when Mrs. 
 Dart was again surrounded by her devotees, he 
 made his way straight to Evie and asked her to go 
 down to the beach. She turned instantly. Mrs. 
 Dart thought she heard her say, "Coming, mother?" 
 but it was with no evident expectation of being 
 taken up; and that moment, incredibly, though 
 they seemed to move with no haste, the two were 
 gone. That Mrs. Dart could not plausibly follow 
 
FATHER 277 
 
 them was, she knew, the fault of her own disciples, 
 crowding about her with glib banalities. 
 
 And outside the theater, the heavenly night itself 
 dispersing them with its calls to the enchantment of 
 moonlight on the sea, she came face to face with him 
 who had been her husband, a little grayer, sadder 
 about the eyes, significances she would mark by 
 day, but still incredibly familiar, and so, at this 
 moment of need, still hers. In the manner of the 
 idle mind running over its own chances, she had 
 often pictured what she should do if this meeting 
 happened to her. It would be, she had always 
 known, full of dignity and a faint sadness like elusive 
 fragrances. Their spirits would hail, remembering 
 the fleeting nature of a past communion, and 
 go on, each cognizant that there had been nothing 
 eternal in the bond. But what she did was to 
 stop before him and ask, in the tone of the mother 
 whose boy has "gone in swimming" in a bottom 
 less hole: 
 
 "Oh, have you seen Evie?" 
 
 What John Symonds Dart thought, exactly what 
 hail his spirit had been prepared to make, not even 
 he knew accurately. He was a man of few words 
 and no recognized psychical complexities. After 
 an appreciable pause while the disciples surged past 
 them, and Mrs. Dart waited in a suspense that 
 predicted Evie as anywhere, he said, in a perfectly 
 commonplace tone: 
 
 "No, I haven t seen her." He might have added 
 that this was an Evie he had never seen at all, but 
 
278 FATHER 
 
 the moment didn t seem to call for it. "Where do 
 you think she is?" 
 
 "On the beach with Richard Haynes," said Mrs. 
 Dart, in the same choked voice, one she knew no 
 more than he did. There had been no obstacles in 
 her road with Evie as a daughter frankly well- 
 behaved. "I m afraid so." 
 
 "Well," said Dart, "let s walk down there and find 
 her." 
 
 Others, walking to find moon and sea in conjunc 
 tion, went more slowly, and Dart and Evelyn were 
 presently in the bayberry-fringed path to the long 
 beach. It was wide enough to walk abreast, and 
 Mrs. Dart needed no help. Nor did he offer any, 
 save once when her trailing dress caught a "follower." 
 This he disengaged, a rose spray, with some pains 
 to his hands, and then he did say, practically: 
 
 "You d better take that up." 
 
 She did, in a kind of humble obedience, he seemed 
 so bound to release her from her fears and Evie from 
 the wizard s spell. 
 
 "You see," she said, "I shouldn t feel so worried, 
 but it s this night. It s enchantment. Look at the 
 moon. Hear the sea. And June, too! It couldn t 
 be worse." 
 
 Dart stepped a little faster. 
 
 "You re afraid they ll go out?" he said. "It s a 
 calm sea. The fellow can t row? Is that it?** 
 
 "Oh, dear, no," said Mrs. Dart. "It isn t the 
 water. I m afraid he ll propose to her and she ll 
 accept him." 
 
FATHER 279 
 
 "Don t you want her to accept him?" he asked 
 practically. "What s the matter with him?" 
 
 The question beat upon her like an echo, and in 
 clutching for an answer she remembered it was the 
 very one Evie had put to her about her own husband 
 and Evie s father. But she couldn t stop to fit 
 coincidences. The argument of the instant had to 
 be framed. 
 
 "He s not " she said and hesitated. Then she 
 ended in the only terms that came to her: "Richard 
 Haynes isn t the kind of man to marry. He s not 
 practical." 
 
 "All the better to live with," said Dart. "That 
 is, if he s got something to live on. And if he hasn t, 
 I could turn in something to start em." There was 
 nothing unexpected in the sound of this to either of 
 them. It seemed a most logical thing that they 
 should be walking there in the moonlight, thinking 
 how to start Evie. " How long has she known him? " 
 Dart inquired. 
 
 "Since yesterday." 
 
 "The devil! What do they mean by going off 
 and engaging themselves when they ve only known 
 each other since yesterday?" 
 
 "Oh, I don t know that they have engaged them 
 selves," said Mrs. Dart, in the very tone of a wife 
 denied a perfect marital comprehension. "It s only 
 what I told you the moonlight and the sea 
 and the way he looked at her. And he s exactly 
 the kind of man to do it in a rush. There s some 
 body in a light cloak. Could that be Evie?" 
 
280 FATHER 
 
 Dart, not as an efflorescence of tact, but because 
 he was trying too hard to grasp the bearings of the 
 case, did not see his chance of reminding her that 
 if he met Evie by bright daylight he should not know 
 her. 
 
 "You can t prevent their getting engaged by 
 coming on them now and whipping her off home," 
 he said. "It ll only antagonize em. Don t you 
 know it will?" 
 
 "I want time," said Mrs. Dart passionately. "I 
 don t intend to have her run her neck into a noose 
 and not know it till too late." 
 
 "Oh!" said Dart, rather stiffly. "You don t 
 want her to marry at all. You call it a noose, do 
 
 you?" 
 
 "I do want her to marry," said Mrs. Dart. "Of 
 course I do. It s normal and it s right. But it s 
 got to be a different kind of man from that." 
 
 "What kind?" asked Dart curiously. 
 
 They were standing still now on a little scrubby 
 ridge watching the couples pacing on the sand below. 
 The moon had laid her lessening track to the farthest 
 verge, and the sea was murmuring. 
 
 "Why," said Mrs. Dart, "a real man, one that 
 can give her a home, and not go round talking about 
 other worlds. * Homes of the spirit, that s what he 
 talks about. He did last night, the first time she 
 saw him." 
 
 Evelyn heard herself as if it were a stranger in 
 revolt. She didn t know these whirling words and 
 the thoughts that bred them. It seemed to her, 
 
FATHER 281 
 
 as it had many a time within the last year, as if 
 she were in the grip of a power bigger than herself. 
 The power might even be the universe. It had got 
 into the habit of saying lately: "You re only an 
 atom, and you re a tired one. In the bottom of your 
 heart you wish there were safe places to creep into, 
 where nobody is entertaining you, and nobody 
 talks except about homely things. You re bored 
 with hospitality, and you envy the women with 
 stationary thresholds and own folks." Now, from 
 this germ of discontent within her she found herself 
 amplifying picturesquely; but that, she knew, was 
 her habit. Give her a theme and she could always 
 improvise. 
 
 " I know him. I know precisely his kind. Why, 
 I don t care if she marries an expressman or a 
 plumber but I want her to have a house to live in, 
 and a husband to come home nights and talk about 
 the baby s throat and the color to paint the floor." 
 
 She had an amazed man beside her. In all his 
 few years with her, Dart had never heard her express 
 a longing for crude verities. Nor did Mrs. Dart 
 really know she had it in her, scarcely that she had 
 opened the secret chamber of her heart and let out 
 some of the tired longings that lay there like dust 
 unstirred. She was alive with mother love and 
 apprehension, tingling all over her like the pricking 
 of an acute nervousness. Besides normal mother 
 consciousness, part jealousy and part wild fostering, 
 she felt fear. Her darling, inside the stockade of 
 maidenly indifference, had up to now been safe. 
 
282 FATHER 
 
 But the look in Evie s eyes had told a story. Her 
 defenses were down, and Richard Haynes, unhin 
 dered, could walk in. 
 
 "There s nothing the matter with him," she 
 reiterated, as if in justice to him. "But at first 
 Evie couldn t stand him. She s fascinated now. 
 You know how it is with a girl. And I know Evie. 
 She s got to marry a man! the kind of man that 
 does things and won t make any fuss about it. He 
 needn t talk. That wouldn t cut any ice with Evie 
 after the fascination s gone." 
 
 If Mrs. Dart, the lecturer, had been told that 
 she would apply to Evie s own vocabulary for a 
 reference to ice-cutting, she would have smiled 
 patiently and returned to her study of the Hindu 
 sages. But now, so single was her mood, that she 
 was quite innocent of having made a foray outside 
 her own preserves. 
 
 "There!" she said. "There they are, by that 
 snag." 
 
 She started on the instant and plunged down the 
 ridges, her skirt, again released in her excitement, 
 trailing after and making her to Dart, who followed, 
 abnormally tall. 
 
 "But, Evelyn," he said, and this was the first 
 time he had used her name for years without the 
 pang of loss, "what are you going to do?" 
 
 "Anything," she threw back at him, in a desperate 
 whisper. "You get acquainted with him. Size 
 him up. Don t leave them. Don t leave me." 
 In the next instant she was inquiring, in the smooth 
 
FATHER S8S 
 
 tone of woman s guile, "Are you warm enough, 
 Evie?" 
 
 "Perfectly," said Evie. Her voice in itself was 
 exciting to her mother, who had known it in its old 
 brusque tones. It throbbed like an instrument 
 ready tuned and now touched suddenly. 
 
 "Mr. Haynes?" Dart was inquiring. "How do 
 you do, sir?" He had an old-fashioned way of 
 saying "sir," and Evie liked the sound of it. "Bet 
 ter have something on your head, Evie," he recom 
 mended. Then she knew who he was. "Here s 
 my handkerchief." 
 
 He shook out its folds, doubled it crosswise, and, 
 with a slow care, put it on her head and tied it under 
 her chin. Evie hated things on her head, but she 
 accepted this humbly. She couldn t thank him 
 easily, for she felt her lips trembling. Her chin 
 trembled, too. She was warm with sensitive feeling. 
 His slow, awkward care, the grave concern in his 
 voice, were pain to her. 
 
 "Father! " she wanted to say, and say it over and 
 over, just the one word. "You dear old father! 
 Father!" 
 
 "There," said Dart, "I guess you re fixed now. 
 Mr. Haynes, I wasn t down in time to hear you. 
 They tell me the ladies call you the new apostle." 
 
 Haynes laughed consciously, and, new though her 
 enchantment was, Evie winced. "Father" had 
 spoken bluffly, and Haynes responded like a girl. 
 It was embarrassment, she knew, perhaps distaste 
 for the flavor added by "the ladies," but she wished 
 
284 FATHER 
 
 a man of his shoulders had found another way of 
 hiding it. 
 
 Dart hadn t waited for his answer. 
 
 "Let s take a boat," he said, "and row out there 
 a piece." 
 
 He might have meant the sparkling track laid by 
 the moon. Evie was drawn by the moon way with 
 an ecstasy of longing, and her mother trembled 
 before some power that was luring them all. What 
 she knew, she who had spent her life in digging 
 meanings out of facts, was that the night was lovely 
 and full of pain. Evie laughed out suddenly. She 
 was thinking she loved everything about this father 
 who tied up daughters heads in handkerchiefs. 
 He had the tone of homely things. 
 
 Haynes took his place to row, and did it with a 
 considered ease that let them float, the ripple lap, 
 lap against their keel. He was heading for the 
 moon, and Evie said, dreamily, yet as if ashamed of 
 the unaccustomed vagueness of her thought: 
 
 "I never can get used to rowing in the track of 
 light, and yet not having it light under the boat. 
 It seems as if we ought to see we re in the moon 
 path." 
 
 Mrs. Dart s mind was used, through native bent 
 and also long accustomedness, to seizing the aphor 
 ism that dwells within the fact. Wearily she realized 
 what, at another moment, she might have said; but 
 though her tired mind mechanically responded with 
 the aphorism, she couldn t accept it from any pre 
 tense even of using it. Once she would have handed 
 
FATHER 285 
 
 back some neat phrase to the effect that light lies 
 always in the path before us, not in the field of mo 
 mentary action or repose. But at this moment of 
 bald anxiety it didn t pertain. She was on pins 
 with impatience, wondering why Dart didn t talk, 
 talk to Haynes, challenge him to response, and pluck 
 out the heart of his unsuit ability. Presently, as if 
 seeing nobody else meant to do it, Dart did begin, 
 but inadequately, Evelyn thought, about athletics 
 and their permanent value. She wanted to hear 
 Haynes falling into traps and yielding intimate 
 avowals. The young man ought to be made to 
 declare himself on big points, recite his moral and 
 esthetic creed, lay himself bare to anxious parent 
 hood. But it was Evie who answered. She wanted 
 to know all about the collegiate life her father pre 
 sided over, always as it touched the side of sports, 
 and her responses were couched in what her mother 
 winced at as technical jargon, but that Dart under 
 stood as belonging to the custom of the topic 
 and answered quietly. He was conservative about 
 sports, Evie told him, though in other words, and 
 he owned it. 
 
 "I do want the boys developed," he said, "up to 
 the top notch. But I can t help thinking, when I 
 see them putting all they ve got into a game that s 
 being betted on and yelled at well, I know what 
 it s doing to their young hearts. I know they ll 
 need em later." 
 
 Yet, strangely, he did not seem to Evie any sort of 
 mollycoddle. She couldn t agree with him, but she 
 
286 FATHER 
 
 accepted him tenderly as one whose age had made 
 him set undue value on conserving. Mrs. Dart, 
 again mechanically responsive to the stimulus for 
 poetic illustration, murmured something about 
 Pheidippides, and was instantly angry with herself 
 for having done it, knowing Haynes was the only 
 one likely to follow her. But Dart was not so far 
 behind. 
 
 "Who was that?" he asked, unashamed. "The 
 Greek runner? Yes, but you see we can do that 
 now by wireless." He turned to Haynes. "What 
 do you think? Which side are you on, training or 
 over-training?" 
 
 Haynes answered in a crisp tone Evie had not 
 heard from him. 
 
 "I ve been there. I went over to Cambridge with 
 the crew, and I ve run in two Marathons. I don t 
 suppose it hurt me. I didn t care then whether it 
 did or not." 
 
 Then why, Evie s mind prompted, if you ve lived 
 such things as boat-races and Marathons, have I 
 been tugging after you on this trail of platitude? 
 Why not have come into my open field and played 
 my games with me? 
 
 Mrs. Dart lashed her own flagging energies and 
 began upon the Greeks, but really flitting along the 
 path where Browning s chariot-wheels had rolled 
 and celebrating the wonder of running to announce 
 a victory. Here, to her surprise, Dart, who in 
 their old days had always lingered in a background 
 of acquiescence, took her up and set her down again. 
 
FATHER 387 
 
 He knew, it came out, something more about the 
 Greeks than she did, though it only appeared by 
 implication. He was dwelling on their reverence 
 for proportion and the mean, the "nothing too 
 much." It was one thing, he said, to run over hill 
 and dale, "like a stubble the fire burned through," 
 to carry the news of victory, and even drop in the 
 market-place. It was another thing to pander to 
 the lust for a game among a people who had lost 
 sight of the nothing too much indeed, had never 
 seen it at all, and didn t suspect it of existing. They 
 wanted everything too much money, "go," the 
 rattle of the wheels of power. 
 
 It was Evie who suggested that they should turn 
 about. Mother, she said, was going to speak to 
 morrow. She d be tired. Dart looked at his watch 
 and begged Evelyn s pardon, in a tone of honest 
 concern. He d "no idea it was so late." 
 
 The next day it seemed to come about naturally 
 for them to fall into an ease of intimate relation. 
 The three speakers appeared at one another s lec 
 tures, and Evie went to all. As to the weather, it 
 was a season of miraculous calm, and every night 
 they rowed on the gentlest of seas. The Esoterics 
 looked on, and, by virtue of their training, smiled in 
 a recognition that the Darts had vaulted to a ground 
 enviably high. The outer circle frankly wondered 
 what was going to happen. For Evelyn there were 
 a good many surprises, chiefly concerned with Dart. 
 Once she had analyzed, defined, and bounded him 
 with what seemed to her a perfect adequacy. Now, 
 
288 FATHER 
 
 from no resistance of his own, but chiefly out of his 
 reaction on her, he seemed to defy such processes. 
 He was a personage, and he loomed large. He had 
 outlines, resistances, and their firmness made her 
 feel her own processes somewhat vague. She had 
 always floated on the surface of things, and it had 
 seemed charming to float. But now suddenly, in 
 a queer way, she felt slatternly, as if she were wan 
 dering about the house of life, not ordering it. It 
 was Dart who made the pivot of their group. She 
 saw him sometimes in a morning when she was 
 dictating to Evie, or trying a sequence of thought 
 on her, walking with Haynes in free but, as she knew 
 from snatches she caught, perfectly commonplace 
 talk. 
 
 Evie followed her father about in a silent, frank 
 devotion Mrs. Dart dared not question lest she 
 evoke some comment she might find it hard to 
 bear. Now that Evie had set foot inside her 
 mother s groundwork of motive, Mrs. Dart feared 
 her to an extent that almost made her seem to 
 herself to be skulking. She could not bear to 
 know how she looked to Evie in this light of ap 
 preciation thrown about "father" who was no less 
 father for being called by no definite name. At a 
 somewhat earlier date in life, Mrs. Dart would have 
 analyzed this state of things to exhaustion. Now 
 she felt herself too tired. The gusto of analysis had 
 gone. One thing she did feel: that Dart, however 
 solid a corner-stone he had become in their present 
 edifice, was not rescuing Evie, at least in any obvious 
 
FATHER S89 
 
 fashion. Evie herself was less alone with Haynes 
 because she inclined to be with father; but about 
 any inclination she might have felt, she kept a per 
 fect silence. She seemed to be growing, in some hid 
 den, normal way, like a plant increasing in beauty s 
 leafage by night and astonishing the beholder who 
 finds it in the morning. If she was feeling emotion, 
 she didn t show it. She simply lived a light-footed, 
 gay- voiced life, and slept and ate her fill. Was it 
 because Evie was in love? Evelyn tried to remem 
 ber how it had been when she was in love with Dart; 
 but the year was hazy. It seemed to have been an 
 unrest, never, to her mind, even promising peace, 
 but rather a future of transcending emotion, always 
 to be and never there. 
 
 Dart finished his lectures and still he stayed. Mrs. 
 Dart, in a grave approval, thought he had developed 
 sufficiently to appreciate the place. 
 
 It was at last the night before Richard s going, 
 and that could not be deferred, because he had 
 lectures at a summer school. Mrs. Dart, a little 
 excited, rather tired now that the battle had been 
 so far fought out, and he had not yet proposed to 
 Evie, felt a drop in temperature. Things seemed 
 no longer tragic or romantic; they looked common 
 place and also pleasant, as if she and Dart together 
 had succeeded in protecting their daughter from a 
 peril, and now the peril was past. 
 
 "He s going in the morning," she said to Dart, as 
 he appeared at the cottage where she had been 
 lodged. "Why," she said then, "you re tired?" 
 
90 FATHER 
 
 "No," said Dart, while his voice denied it, "I 
 guess not." 
 
 He mounted the veranda steps, and she left her 
 chair and took another, to give him the bigger one. 
 His whole face showed a droop of flaccid muscles 
 and his eyes looked the pathos of lonely middle 
 age. Evelyn, whether from the loosed tension of 
 the moment or some pleasure she had in seeing him, 
 broke out jubilantly: 
 
 "Perhaps he didn t want her, after all!" 
 
 "Oh, yes, he did," said Dart, smoking quietly. 
 "He said so." 
 
 "He said so? He told you about it? He asked 
 you for Evie?" 
 
 Her voice rose in an incredulous crescendo. 
 
 "Practically. Said he wanted to marry her." 
 
 "Really? So that was your chance, wasn t it?" 
 Evelyn almost stroked him now, in her exultancy. 
 "How did you put it? What did you say?" 
 
 Dart seemed to be absorbed in making a smoke 
 wreath, but he gave it up and threw his cigar into a 
 patch of jewel-weed. 
 
 "Why," said he, "I don t exactly know. I asked 
 him what his prospects were. That was what it 
 amounted to." 
 
 This didn t seem at all like the high challenges 
 Evelyn had seen an opening for. 
 
 "His prospects are good enough," she said, "if 
 you mean money. He simply rakes it in. He can 
 get an engagement as easy as turn his hand over, 
 and they pay him astounding rates." 
 
FATHER 291 
 
 "Well," said Dart, "he doesn t care for the busi 
 ness. He d like to leave it. If he could get Evie, 
 he would." 
 
 "Leave it? "she echoed. "GetEvie? Whatwould 
 he support her on?" 
 
 "He d like to be an actor." 
 
 She felt a quick distaste. 
 
 "If that s not like him just my idea of him! 
 He s simply been in the lecture field for money, and 
 this is where it s led him. More money, more 
 applause. He s the image of a matinee idol. That s 
 what would suit him, too." 
 
 "Oh, he s always wanted to be an actor," said 
 Dart, still with the air of needing no haste to prove 
 his points. "But he didn t make good. Thought 
 he would have, finally, but his father got into a 
 financial scrape, and he began this to help him out. 
 Quick returns. Now his father s on his feet, and 
 Haynes wants to go back to the stage." 
 
 "Well, that settles it," she breathed. "Hasn t 
 she had an escape!" 
 
 " Evie? Why, I don t know. He s a good fellow. 
 It s all a question of whether Evie s fond of him." 
 
 Mrs. Dart suddenly wished she could tell him all 
 she knew about the life of wandering. 
 
 "I should think," said she, "you would be the 
 last man in the world to let a child" she was about 
 to say, "of yours," but the words failed her "to 
 let a girl like Evie marry any man that hasn t a 
 settled home." 
 
 "The point is," said Dart, as if he had thought a 
 
292 FATHER 
 
 great deal about it and were now considering only 
 the way to express his very clear conclusions "the 
 point is, to marry the person you ve made up your 
 mind you want to marry." 
 
 Evelyn felt her face grow hot. \ 
 
 "Well," said she, "that s one way to come to 
 grief. We can t let Evie come to grief. We don t 
 want any marriage for her unless it s the perfect 
 marriage." 
 
 "Oh, well," said Dart, quietly, with apparently 
 no thought of her as a warm factor in these con 
 clusions, and so with no fear of hurting her, "there 
 isn t any perfect marriage, so to speak." 
 
 Evelyn s heart gave a little jump, with the result 
 of something like a sob from her lips. 
 
 "What s that?" said Dart, starting and turning 
 toward her. "Anything the matter?" 
 
 "No," said she. But she wanted to go back to 
 the question of the perfect marriage. It had been 
 one of her texts. She had believed in it, preached 
 it: the fulfilled relation, the eternal mate. "What 
 makes you say there are no perfect marriages?" she 
 faltered. 
 
 "Oh, that was generally speaking," said Dart, 
 cheerfully. "Of course there are happy marriages, 
 happy as possible. You can t imagine them any 
 better. But I mean, in matters of that kind you ve 
 got to go it blind. In that sense, I suppose a per 
 son s your destiny and you call him so. Your fate. 
 That s the word, isn t it? your fate? You ve got 
 to plunge in and take your experience, unless you 
 
FATHER 398 
 
 grab at illicit experiences, and that s outside the 
 question. Don t like em. Don t like to talk about 
 
 em." 
 
 "But," said Evelyn, groping after him and not in 
 the least seeing whether the path led high or low or 
 across the plain of man s peculiar reasoning, "would 
 n t you guide anyone s choice? The case of Evie 
 now. Do you want Evie to plunge in and go it 
 blind?" 
 
 "No, oh, no," said Dart, "not so far as essentials 
 go. If a man s vicious or lazy or, oh, any dozen 
 things. But Haynes is a good fellow. He hasn t a 
 vice except he doesn t smoke! And if he can sup 
 port her, she s a right to try him." 
 
 "But you can t try," Evelyn began, and then 
 stopped, her face hot in the dark. It occurred to 
 her that she had tried and given the experiment up. 
 "He s nomadic," she said, weakly. "He can t help 
 wandering, and she s got to follow him or throw him 
 
 over." 
 
 "Then," said Dart, quietly, as if he had thought 
 these things out, "let her follow him if she cares 
 about him enough; or if she doesn t, let her give 
 him up." 
 
 "But that" She wanted to tell him what she 
 seemed to have discovered within a year: that it was 
 so arid and unsatisfied a way. 
 
 "Nice to talk to you, Evelyn," said Dart cosily. 
 "I haven t talked to anybody about these things for 
 years and years. You can t, you know. But how 
 I feel about marriage is this. It isn t the most 
 
294 FATHER 
 
 important thing in the world. The books make it 
 so, but it isn t." 
 
 Her emotion seemed to mount to her head and 
 start sounds to buzzing there. What she felt hurt 
 her like an extreme mortification. 
 
 "What is?" she managed. "What is the most 
 important thing?" 
 
 "Depends on the person. Sometimes it s one 
 thing, sometimes another." 
 
 "But love!" she said, more boldly. 
 
 "Well, there are different kinds of love," said 
 Dart. "There s a diffusive sort we call kindness. 
 That s what we seem to come to in the end. But 
 there are some other brands, mighty good ones, I 
 tell you. I ve set up a pretty good article for Evie, 
 these weeks. I m fond of Evie." 
 
 Evelyn seemed to herself to be the prey of all the 
 depleting foes of life, the things that make a woman 
 pallid and old and of no account. She was also 
 suddenly angry. She put up her head a little. 
 
 "I m glad you re fond of Evie," she said. "But 
 I can t help wishing it made you a little more critical 
 of wandering young men." 
 
 "I am critical," he protested. "Haynes isn t 
 just the ticket, but he ll do. He ll do mighty well. 
 Why, look here, Evelyn." He was growing more 
 and more confidential, and, in spite of her soreness, 
 it was a manner she liked. "You mustn t cry down 
 anything that brings color into anybody s life. 
 There s precious little chance for it after thirty, and 
 by and by there isn t any at all unless you splash it 
 
FATHER 95 
 
 on somehow yourself and that s no good. But 
 when you re as old as I am, you look back and you 
 see what color there was, and it s dear to you by 
 George! it s dear." 
 
 "But what could there have been?" she was 
 asking passionately, out of her mortification. "Who 
 gave it to you? I didn t. I was always making a 
 fuss." 
 
 She laughed a little there, piteously, hoping he 
 could laugh with her and paint her poor self a little 
 less tawdry in her eyes. 
 
 But he didn t laugh. He turned toward her and 
 answered, in a quick, grave tone: 
 
 "Why, yes, Evelyn, you gave me all the color I ve 
 ever had. Didn t you know that?" 
 
 She shook her head. She was crying, and she 
 hoped he didn t know it. The time had been when 
 every tear she shed she had wished to exhibit to him 
 like a gem for which he d got to pay. 
 
 "But I wasn t," she said, "I wasn t satisfac 
 tory." 
 
 "Why, nobody s satisfactory," said Dart gently, 
 "when they re living together. Didn t you know 
 that, either? But while they re living together 
 the big thing goes on life that s the big thing, 
 and they ve had it together, and it s mighty well 
 worth while." 
 
 She saw a good many things in one of the pano 
 ramic flashes that came to her quick mind: how a 
 woman could live with a man and serve him and 
 open gates to him all the time, even gates to the 
 
296 FATHER 
 
 daily sunset or bread at breakfast. And so rhyth 
 mic would be the weaving of her homely tender 
 nesses about him that he would be caught in the 
 web of them, and they would make his chrysalis, 
 perhaps, from which he came out winged. A good 
 man like this there seemed no limit to the content 
 you might find with John Symonds Dart. 
 
 "You mustn t ever forget that, Evelyn," he was 
 saying gravely. "I never do. You see you meant 
 a lot to me and those things don t stop." 
 
 "I wish," she said, in an irrepressible longing for 
 some sweet-smelling life that, it seemed to her now, 
 her senses had been not too fine but too crude to 
 catch "I wish it hadn t stopped." 
 
 It was not the words. It was something in her 
 voice, not the thrill that made the audiences "sit 
 up," but the one note of naked need that never is 
 mistaken. John Dart waited after it got hold of 
 him and shook it off, as if it had been a spell, and 
 gave himself time to decide what he wanted for her. 
 
 "You don t mean," he said, "you d be willing to 
 come back? " 
 
 Evelyn, on her part, did not balance either her 
 desires or his deserts. She answered at once, in 
 words that seemed to her inevitable: 
 
 "You wouldn t take me, would you?" 
 
 "Why," said he, "there hasn t been a minute 
 since you and Evie went " 
 
 He put his hand under her chin, turned her face 
 toward him, and kissed her. It was the honest 
 marital kiss she remembered, but it had a welcome 
 
FATHER 297 
 
 flavor: perhaps of loyalties mysteriously alive. 
 Evelyn, making her own response to it, thought 
 his face was wet with tears that were not all hers. 
 
 "Come," said he, "let s walk a little. I want to 
 get my arm round my girl." 
 
 They walked up and down the veranda as youth 
 was walking on the beach, and when they stopped 
 by the rail to note the moon s punctual coming and 
 Dart kissed her again, the general sense of romantic 
 love, even in the marital kiss, waked Evelyn to the 
 peril she had but laid aside. 
 
 "Oh," said she, "where s Evie?" 
 
 "Rowing," he told her cheerfully. "Haynes 
 asked me if they could go, and he could try his 
 chances. I said he could." 
 
 "You ve let them go they re out there in the 
 moonlight!" she struggled confusedly out of her 
 dream-like sense of her own timid incursion into 
 the rights of moon ways and summer nights. 
 
 "He s got to have his chance," said Dart. His 
 arm brought her a little nearer. "Evie s got to 
 have hers. We ve had ours." 
 
 Even then he wondered whether she would with 
 stand him, but to his deep amazement she answered: 
 
 " Well ! You know best." 
 
 "Oh, there they are," said he. A white gleam 
 was in the pathway. "Want me to stop hugging 
 you till Evie gets used to the notion? She may not 
 fancy an elderly dad hanging round, trying to cut 
 her out." 
 
 Evelyn withdrew from him a pace. 
 
298 FATHER 
 
 "It s EVie," she said, "but she s alone." 
 
 Evie came up the steps at a run. 
 
 "You here, folks?" she called. "That you?" 
 She was before them almost with the words. "I 
 want to tell you," she said, in the haste of pushing a 
 difficult and considered speech "I want to tell 
 you quick." 
 
 "Yes, yes," said Evelyn, in misery, "we know, 
 dear." 
 
 "No, you don t," said Evie; "you can t. I ve 
 been making up my mind for two weeks, but I 
 didn t do it till to-night. Mother, it ll be awful to 
 leave you, but I ve decided I ve got to spend part of 
 every year with father. Maybe you won t take me, 
 father, but I guess you ll have to, for a while. I 
 kind of need it." 
 
 Dart lifted both hands toward her and then 
 dropped them. If there were some mysterious hurt 
 to his wife in this, he wanted to wait until she d taken 
 the first step. 
 
 "What does he say about it?" Evelyn asked 
 jealously. 
 
 "Dick Haynes? I haven t asked him. I ve 
 refused him. You might as well know it, so we 
 needn t talk about it ever any more." 
 
 Evelyn had one of her exuberant thankfulnesses. 
 
 "O Evie, I was so afraid you d like him. You 
 didn t, did you?" 
 
 "Why, no," said Evie, in a species of reconsider 
 ing. "I didn t like him. Maybe I did at first, 
 but not after I knew father. Father s great!" 
 
NEMESIS 
 
 FOR a long time, though he had written of other 
 things and indeed this had hardly tempted him, 
 being too colossal for his type of fiction he had 
 thought absorbedly of Nemesis. He was Alan 
 Scarsdale, now over forty, who had reached an ex 
 alted plane of novel-writing where he found himself 
 grouped with three or four preeminent men of letters, 
 and only he could have told whether he hoped 
 to quit even their austere company and climb on, 
 to the apex of renown. When he began to think 
 about Nemesis with a personal and vital receptive- 
 ness, all the events of his life seemed to have crowded 
 to a focus, and he could trace back the lines from their 
 meeting-point to the causes of things, and so learn, 
 in a fascination even greater than the glamour of 
 early love, the roads that led to rewards and punish 
 ment. The law itself he adored for its delicate 
 precision and iron strength. And after he had 
 followed its course as it affected his life and those im 
 mediate to him, it occurred to him that, since Nem 
 esis always paid in kind, it might be possible, by 
 noting the transgression, to guard against penalty. 
 
 This was about the time that his wife, who was of 
 an abnormally sensitive nature, degenerating through 
 sheer laxness of will into physical cowardice, failed 
 to answer her mother s summons to join her abroad. 
 The mother, too, was a victim of fancies and a 
 
 299 
 
300 NEMESIS 
 
 permanent malaise of living. She had traveled for 
 years in search of serenity and to avoid herself, and 
 now she wrote her daughter that she was sure the 
 end was near. Would Mildred come? Mildred 
 had no reason to believe the crisis was more acute 
 than it had been for years. Besides, she too was 
 having crises of her own; so she wrote comforting 
 letters from week to week and delayed her going. 
 Then the mother, to Mildred s grief and ingenuous 
 surprise, really did fulfil what seemed only an hys 
 terical threat, really did die; and from her journal, 
 sent home with other effects, it was evident that she 
 had died feeling herself deserted. Alan, who had 
 to encounter the pathetic survival and classifying 
 of the things she had owned and lived with, read the 
 journal and took upon himself the responsibility of 
 keeping it from his wife. It would, he knew, bring 
 down upon her a crushing anguish. She had not 
 meant to desert the dying woman, but her apathy 
 and delay had compassed that effect; and Nemesis, 
 he knew, would not consider extenuating circum 
 stances. It was then that he began to seek about 
 for means to evade the penalty. He reasoned that, 
 if you knew what sin you had committed, you might 
 possibly effect some compensating balance, and in 
 voke Nemesis on the side of reward, not of punish 
 ment. You might equalize the penalty by some ade 
 quate good. Mildred, he believed, had, however 
 innocently, deserted her mother. Therefore Mildred 
 would, probably in the last stages of her own life, 
 find herself deserted, or at least feel herself so. Not 
 
NEMESIS 301 
 
 even Nemesis could help it, unless indeed the scale 
 could be made to tip the other way, perhaps by 
 some inconceivable sacrifice of his own. 
 
 One afternoon, as he walked home by the city 
 streets, glamourously beautiful under lights through 
 a falling snow, he was thinking of these things and his 
 hope of outwitting destiny, his mind all a softness of 
 compassion over Mildred and her helplessness in the 
 face of these big powers. She had never ceased to 
 pull at his heart through her beauty and inability 
 to defend herself from the forces she innocently in 
 voked. He let himself in, and ran upstairs to her 
 sitting-room, where he knew exactly how he should 
 find her, in a languor of endurance perpetually 
 though innocently appealing to him. But the scene 
 was startlingly of another sort. The room had lost 
 its air of cloistered defense. The lights were not 
 low; they were brilliant within their amber shades 
 and they had paled the fire shine by contrast. 
 Mildred herself was not on her couch, a harmony in 
 lace and the delicate bloom of silk; she was pacing 
 back and forth through the room. There was even 
 a flush on her cheeks, and the movement with which 
 she turned to him was girlish and abrupt. He was 
 used, when he came in, to recalling her from some 
 elusive, wistful atmosphere of her own, and even 
 hesitatingly opening before her the sheaf of news he 
 might have gathered. But now she had her own 
 news to proffer. 
 
 "Alan," said she, in a tone he had not heard from 
 her for years, "Annette has come, little Annette." 
 
302 NEMESIS 
 
 For the moment he did not remember who An 
 nette was. Then it came to him. Annette was a 
 younger cousin of Mildred s, many times removed. 
 She had visited them years ago in her short-dress 
 and pig-tail stage, an awkward girl with a talent for 
 the piano and open-eyed wonder over the junketings 
 they gave her: for she lived in an obscure town and 
 she was poor. 
 
 "Of course," said he, at a loss over the significance 
 of the arrival, "Annette." 
 
 Meanwhile he was persuading his wife to her sofa, 
 and she allowed herself to be seated there and drew 
 him down beside her. 
 
 "Annette," she went on, with eager interest, "has 
 come to study the piano. She has saved a little 
 money earned it, dear child; I wouldn t ask her 
 how some grubby drudgery her poor little hands! 
 they re so ill-kept! and she s taken a room at the 
 woman s exchange, and just called here to say how- 
 d ye-do." 
 
 "Yes," said Alan, "I see." 
 
 "Alan," said his wife, "she s a dear, a perfect dear. 
 And it came over me while she sat telling her little 
 story she s tremendously happy, you must know, 
 in her tiny room with a chance to practise at some 
 conservatory it came over me if we had had a 
 daughter she might have been as old as Annette." 
 
 Alan gave her a little silent hug. That was it, 
 then. She had not for years spoken of children. 
 He thought she had given up wanting them. And 
 perhaps she had ; but here was the warm living child, 
 
NEMESIS SOS 
 
 and the vision had beguiled her. She was going on: 
 "Maybe I shouldn t have thought of it if she had 
 been just like other girls one sees so many ill- 
 mannered, athletic things ! but she was so pathetic, 
 somehow, with her poor little clothes and her rough 
 little hands! Alan, could she come here and live?" 
 
 Alan was amazed. He had offered her dogs and 
 horses and conservatories and trips about the world, 
 and a guarded journey to see her mother who was 
 dying, and she had waved them all aside. But per 
 haps child-hunger had all the time been growing up 
 in her, and now it was devouring her. He was silent 
 so long that she broke in upon him passionately: 
 
 "I know. I understand. You couldn t endure a 
 piano-playing girl. Though she could practise in 
 the billiard-room. Still, it is too much to expect." 
 
 "Dear girl," he said, "I should like nothing 
 better." 
 
 " Really? " She threw herself upon him in a frank 
 abandon of delight. "When could she come?" 
 
 "To-night?" 
 
 Then they both laughed, and Mildred owned that 
 to-morrow would do perfectly. Besides, it had got 
 to be broken to Annette. Not a word of it had been 
 hinted during the call. Would he say the word? 
 Would he tell her through the telephone that she 
 was to pack to-night and be ready in the morning by 
 ten? They d send the car. Alan was used to ec 
 centric missions, from discharging cooks to inter 
 viewing doctors who might not, eventually, "suit" 
 any more than the cook, and he undertook his new 
 
304 NEMESIS 
 
 task cheerfully, if with a slight inward ruefulness. 
 It was accomplished before Mildred thought of giv 
 ing up to the routine of massage and reading that led 
 to her night s sleep. He found Annette, through the 
 impersonal medium of the telephone, a docile, rather 
 surprised but acquiescent person with a charming 
 voice. And next morning, after learning that his 
 wife had given all necessary directions for her com 
 fort when she should arrive, he betook himself down 
 town, craftily announcing that he should lunch at the 
 club. Mildred offered no demur. She evidently 
 agreed with him that she could sustain the advent 
 of Annette unaided. 
 
 Alan not only lunched at the club, but he found a 
 crony there who asked him to motor out into the 
 country, and, after telephoning Mildred and finding 
 her, through the medium of the maid, promptly in 
 clined to spare him, he accepted. Really he was a 
 little craven about Annette. He didn t know how to 
 meet her and oversee so difficult a task as the coali 
 tion with Mildred, and he decided to follow out this 
 beginning and let Mildred manage it alone. When 
 he did get home, only in time to dress for dinner, he 
 found his wife s door closed. The nurse stood on the 
 landing. Evidently the state of things loomed so 
 portentous that she wanted the dramatic satisfac 
 tion of presenting it to him. Mrs. Scarsdale was 
 dressing. She was coming down to dinner. 
 
 "Oh," said Alan, blankly. "Oh, yes, thanks. I 
 
 see." 
 
 But he didn t see at all. Mildred hadn t been 
 
NEMESIS 805 
 
 equal to dinner downstairs for a very long time. 
 She always had a tray in her own room, and some 
 times Alan, in the excess of his solicitude, had a tray 
 with her. 
 
 When he came out of his room her door was open, 
 but only the maid was there, bringing order out of 
 the chaos of dropped finery. A sound of voices rose 
 from below, and he ran down to find his wife and 
 Annette waiting. At first he could not really look 
 at Annette with any appraising glance, the change 
 in his wife so challenged him. She was not, it is 
 true, in conventional evening dress. There was still 
 the suggestion of the invalid in her fluttering robes, 
 but her vividness, almost her gaiety, fitted nothing 
 but the end of day when the exhilaration of the night 
 begins. She came forward to him, leading Annette 
 with the air of having something triumphantly 
 splendid to display, and she was quite unconscious 
 that for the moment Alan had eyes for herself alone. 
 
 "Here she is," said Mildred. "See if you d re 
 member her." 
 
 Of course he made flattering disclaimer, implying 
 that Annette had grown into something too rare to 
 be recognized; but it was not until they were seated 
 at the table that he saw her really, saw her with his 
 quick, discerning eyes that knew how to get at the 
 soul under betraying physiognomies and actually 
 call it good or ill. And this girl he called very good 
 indeed. She was ingenuous, he decided, honest, full 
 of enthusiasm palpably, after her piano, for Mil 
 dred and she was delightedly overjoyed and 
 
806 NEMESIS 
 
 amazed to be there. She was, he made no delay in 
 deciding, a plain girl. He did not know her clothes 
 were her worst enemy. Mildred did, and had al 
 ready schemed out combinations of line and color 
 that should not so much change her into another 
 sort of creature as bring out the creature that was 
 shyly there. They talked chiefly of music, adapted 
 to her desires as a budding student, and though she 
 proved diffident she was sufficiently receptive. 
 After dinner she offered to play to them, and Alan 
 was on the point of refusing. Mildred had had 
 enough, he thought; she would be exhausted. But, 
 on the contrary, Mildred desired nothing more than 
 to hear Annette play, and they had an hour of con 
 scientious "pieces" and then erratic, wild, moving 
 improvisations. The little hard- worked hands were 
 flexible. They had a witchery of their own, even if 
 one couldn t call it an accomplished technique. 
 Alan was frankly moved and delighted. He told 
 the girl so when she came away from the piano and 
 went, at once a commonplace creature, devoid of 
 her gift, to sit beside Mildred and regard her with 
 adoring eyes that she was an artist. She d do. 
 She flushed pink at his praise, but still looked at 
 Mildred who was evidently the center of her con 
 siderations. 
 
 Mildred rose. 
 
 "Come," she said. "We musn t tire you out. 
 Is it lesson day to-morrow? I thought so. Go to 
 bed, child. Sleep well." 
 
 Annette, after a timid handshake and the implica- 
 
NEMESIS 307 
 
 tion that she could be kissed if it were agreeable, got 
 out of the room as gracefully, Alan decided, as could 
 be expected from a person with that cut of skirt. 
 And then, a soft little rustle and Mildred was at his 
 side. 
 
 "Don t you see," she said ecstatically, "what can 
 be made of her?" 
 
 "She s got a ripping touch," said he, "and a style 
 quite her own. Some day she ll make em sit up. 
 If she works and I guess she ll work." 
 
 "Oh, yes," said Mildred softly, in a triumphant 
 staccato to herself. "I see what can be made of 
 her." 
 
 It was not a month before Alan, too, saw, and it 
 was not music alone that was being made. Annette 
 herself was faithful to the music. She wouldn t have 
 to be led or spurred. But while she marched pa 
 tiently or ran with delight along her difficult road, 
 Mildred was, by the most delicate stages, transform 
 ing her from a dowdy genius into a beauty. Alan, 
 when he saw her one night running down to dinner in 
 a creation of cloudy chiffon with her wonderful hair 
 artfully dressed, came suddenly awake to it all. 
 
 "Good Lord!" he said to Mildred under his 
 breath. "The girl s a beauty ! " 
 
 Mildred gave a low little laugh of satisfied delight. 
 
 " Yes," she said. " I knew it at once." 
 
 And as Annette came up to them, smiling and 
 glowing in the not yet recognized miracle of the 
 fostering house and their outspoken praises, she took 
 her hand and for the first time called her daughter. 
 
308 NEMESIS 
 
 It was that night that Alan, sitting up alone in his 
 study, began to think again about the household 
 Nemesis. Annette was, he saw, after these weeks of 
 proof, the object of Mildred s thwarted mother love. 
 It had risen up in her, this defeated passion, a thou 
 sand times stronger than if she had borne a child and 
 reared it to Annette s age. Nature had this way, he 
 knew, of coming back upon you. Hold her off, if you 
 dare, while you are young and she is suing you to pay 
 your tribute; she may not revenge herself at the 
 time, but in your later years, when you have less 
 strength to gainsay her, she hurls herself back on you 
 with the same old arguments, futile now, but at last 
 irresistible, and in all probability crushes you. 
 Mildred, having practically deserted her own mother, 
 it was through this child, the more deeply loved be 
 cause so lately found, that Nemesis would have at 
 her. Mildred in her turn would be deserted, and 
 by the child. And being definitely convinced of 
 that, he set himself to thwarting Nemesis. Annette 
 should be made so happy with them that not even 
 her art should coax her from them. Her possible 
 marriage he did not take into account. She was 
 not the sort of girl, he concluded, to think of it 
 prematurely, and when it came he could treat it as 
 the emergency it was, and grapple with it according 
 to its strength and his. He was always meeting 
 emergencies in this varied defense of Mildred, and 
 he always found his nerve and spirits rising for the 
 encounter. Perhaps, after all, he sometimes hu 
 morously thought, he actually enjoyed bis daily 
 
NEMESIS 809 
 
 skirmishing; and now, if there were anything of the 
 wizard left in him, he would give himself to the task 
 of charming the child and chaining her with fairy 
 bonds to Mildred s fireside. 
 
 He had been leaving her and Mildred to their 
 evening talks alone, while he took up an old habit of 
 writing by night; but now he stayed with them after 
 dinner and set himself to make the pace a gay one, 
 such as suited the steps of youth. When Mildred 
 was palpably tired for she did lag sometimes in the 
 pace he read aloud to them. He even read one of 
 his own manuscripts, a novel nearly ready for the 
 printer, and, seeing Annette absorbed and excited 
 by finding herself so near the mysterious process of 
 making books, he went a step further and talked to 
 her about his art. The most reserved of workmen, 
 he tossed material and processes into the hopper with 
 a lavish hand, and hoped the mill was at least grind 
 ing out discomfiture of Nemesis. And he got unex 
 pectedly his daily reward. He was opening her 
 mind to life and books indeed for reasons of his 
 own, but he did feel the fascination of her response. 
 She was an impressionable creature, and, to what 
 ever result, he was molding her and she was charm 
 ing in her pliancy, Mildred adored him for his 
 goodness. It was incredible, she felt, that he should 
 leave his own intimate house of life where he dwelt 
 with this art and where she herself had never gained 
 foothold for more than a shy minute, to walk hand 
 in hand with a little raw girl, and tell the fairy tale 
 of what was in the house. Perhaps he even opened 
 
310 NEMESIS 
 
 the door of the house a crack big enough for Annette 
 to squeeze timidly in. 
 
 Before the winter was half over Mildred had asked 
 him to take Annette to hear music. She must have 
 more music than she could get in the daytime, more 
 opera than the matinees would give her. Would he 
 take her? Mildred, though she was stanchly getting 
 the best of her nerves with a rapidity that amazed 
 everybody, still shrank from the impact of a crowd. 
 So Alan and Annette, truly contrite at leaving her, 
 yet absorbed in the rush and go of it all she in 
 the beautiful game of life and he in outwitting 
 Nemesis would hurry off together, walking usually, 
 they had so much life to spare, he amazedly young 
 because of her and she old enough through her gift 
 and her understanding of his to be the readiest 
 comrade. 
 
 And then came the night of "Tristan." They had 
 left the tumult of the applauding house to get home 
 quickly, remorseful over Mildred because she had 
 not shared the dream and wonder. Alan was think 
 ing of her as he had not thought in these last long 
 days of his compassion for her, and of love love, 
 and Mildred the heart of it. Annette seemed answer 
 ing his unspoken thought when she said: 
 
 "And she didn t hear it. I can t bear to think of 
 that." 
 
 Alan made no answer. The car was running fast; 
 it was getting him home to her, but all too slowly. 
 
 "Look!" said Annette. "Oh, look!" 
 
 It was the moon, opulent, splendid absurd, too, 
 
NEMESIS 811 
 
 hanging there over the garish city. Alan thought 
 of the sea. He heard breakers and smelt the 
 brine. 
 
 "Oh, I wish" Annette began. 
 
 "What do you wish?" 
 
 "I wish we were on a road going down to the sea." 
 
 Alan signaled the man and gave an order. They 
 turned about, eastward. 
 
 "Where are we going?" asked Annette. 
 
 "Where you said," he answered. "To the sea." 
 
 She accepted it. Indeed, with their turning, an 
 acquiescence fell upon them, an abandonment to the 
 dream. And what was the dream? Whatever it 
 was, it was their own and imperfectly understood. 
 They ran faster through a whitening world. The 
 moonlight sifted down. They were in a bath of 
 light. Neither was thinking of the other. They 
 were rushing, it seemed, to some land of beauty 
 greater than music, greater than the death of im 
 mortal lovers long ago. Alan had often called Wag 
 ner the most immoral of pagan forces because he 
 released in you untamed desires and convinced you, 
 at the same moment, of their inalienable rights. 
 The spell was upon him, a perfume, an appeal. He 
 drifted with it and again felt young. What was it to 
 Annette? She was not Annette. She was the atom 
 that vibrated with him, also an atom, in the world 
 delirium. Then came the swerving of the car, the 
 crash and overturn. Alan, shocked out of his 
 ecstasy, dragged up out of it by ugly fact, knew they 
 were in for it. And at the instant he felt her cold 
 
312 NEMESIS 
 
 cheek pressed to his and then the movement of her 
 passionate lips. 
 
 "Are you hurt?" she was sobbing. "O God! are 
 you hurt?" 
 
 "No, no," he said. "They ll get us out." 
 
 Yet he doubted it and who they were going to be, 
 on a lonely road, he did not know. But presently 
 it was evident that two other cars had stopped and 
 somebody, strong and clever, was getting them out. 
 In perhaps an hour they were standing by the road 
 side and the chauffeur, with angry futility, was in 
 vestigating his disabled car. Alan was shaking, 
 cursing himself inwardly, in an angry surprise, for 
 his unstable nerves. Annette there beside him 
 seemed to him the stillest creature in the universe. 
 He took her hand. It yielded to him. 
 
 "Come," he said. "We ll go back by train. 
 There s a station over there." 
 
 But somebody offered to take them back, and in 
 the dark morning they entered their own door. 
 Alan turned to look at her. She was pale and 
 ravaged, inconceivably older. That circumstance 
 could have shaped so tragic a mask from the girl 
 face he knew was incredible to him. 
 
 " You are hurt," he said. " You re hiding it." 
 
 "No." She was looking at him with somber 
 eyes. " We mustn t talk. She ll hear." 
 
 At the same instant they were aware that Mildred 
 was on the landing, looking down at them. She was in 
 white. Her long braids of hair made the straight 
 lines of her gown the more stark and saint-like. 
 
NEMESIS SIS 
 
 "Something did happen," she called. "I knew 
 it." 
 
 Alan ran up to her. Annette followed slowly. 
 With a peremptory little push he turned Mildred 
 about to her room. 
 
 "Run back to bed," he said. "I ll tell you by 
 and by. We had some sort of an overturn I don t 
 know what. Anyway, it held us up. But here we 
 are." 
 
 "But where were you?" Mildred was insisting. 
 "It s so late." 
 
 She looked over her shoulder at Annette, but Alan 
 still persuaded her along. 
 
 "Trying to find the moon," said he. Then he 
 laughed, and the laugh had an angry sound. "Or 
 the sea, or something. I forget. But here we are. 
 Say good night, you two. No, Mildred, you re not 
 going to talk to her. Why, it s morning. Run 
 along, Annette." 
 
 Mildred yielded to him, and Annette went si 
 lently off to her own room. 
 
 He was down early. He had had a short, haunted 
 sleep and it had done him no good. It would have 
 been better, he thought, with the irritation of jaded 
 nerves, not to have slept at all, but carried on the 
 acquired control of the night into the problematic 
 day. Before he had finished his coffee, Annette 
 came down. She walked gravely, her girlish light 
 ness gone. More than that, most disturbingly, she 
 had turned into a plain little girl. That he saw. 
 He did not see also that she had assumed the dull 
 
314 NEMESIS 
 
 disguise of the clothes she had worn when she came 
 into what she called their fairy house, and that now 
 again their uncouthness tarnished and belied her 
 subtle beauty. They took their coffee together and 
 she passed indifferently by his solicitude over her 
 recovery from the shock of the night. 
 
 "Could we," she said, abruptly, when they had 
 finished, "go to walk?" 
 
 "Don t you want to practise?" 
 
 She shook her head. 
 
 " No. I want to see you." 
 
 He got up to close the door. 
 
 "No," she demurred, "I can t say it in the house. 
 I ll get my hat." 
 
 Presently she appeared in the poor, plain hat she 
 had trimmed herself before she came to town to seek 
 her fortune, the ill-fitting jacket, the meager little 
 furs. She did not wait for him to open the door, 
 but opened it herself and stepped out hurriedly, 
 turned toward the Park where their daily walks had 
 led them and set a rapid pace. Alan kept glancing 
 at her in a frank wonder. How beautiful she had 
 been, but a day before, how harmonious, and now 
 the gray veil of some strange aloofness enwrapped her 
 and removed her from him. There seemed to be 
 no likelihood of renewing, at least to-day, their past 
 light communion of glancing wits. In the Park, as 
 if she felt relief at finding her objective, her pace 
 slackened, and she stopped before a bench. 
 
 " Could we sit down? " she asked. Then when they 
 were seated she turned to him and seemed to pounce. 
 
NEMESIS 515 
 
 "I must go away," she said. 
 
 Alan simply stared, not at her, but the thin ice 
 melted on the walk in front of them. He knew the 
 answer, not to her but Nemesis, and he found himself 
 nodding in confirmation of that inexorable deity. 
 Annette was only the mouth-piece of the deity. 
 "Of course," he was saying inwardly. "Of course 
 you re going away. I could have told you that." 
 
 But he did say aloud : 
 
 "You can t go away. What would she do without 
 you?" 
 
 "That s it," Annette continued, in a perfectly 
 commonplace tone. "She does want me, but that s 
 because I needed her so terribly. She d never seen 
 anybody who needed her so much anybody so 
 gauche, ignorant, altogether poverty-stricken every 
 way. She s made me over. She s given and given. 
 And what have I done for her? Turned round and 
 worshipped you." 
 
 He could only keep on staring straight in front of 
 him where now, at the edge of the shrubbery, a 
 sparrow was pecking at some stony delicacy and 
 stopping to bicker with its clan. Could he possibly, 
 he thought, under the savage impulse to laugh, with 
 all the exquisite cleverness of his trained pen, have 
 guessed how to write the story of a girl confessing 
 her love for an elderly man? Yet she was doing it 
 with calmness, not, it seemed, with an eye to her own 
 humiliation or the lawlessness of her emotion as it 
 would affect either of them only as it might affect 
 Mildred. 
 
310 NEMESIS 
 
 "You see," she said, "I didn t know it myself 
 until last night. And then, when I thought you 
 might be hurt, I knew I d rather die than have you. 
 I knew " 
 
 "My child," said Alan, in enormous relief now 
 that he had some recognized ground to stand on, 
 "that wasn t you and I. It was * Tristan. That 
 devilish Teutonic paganism works everybody up 
 into a temporary madness. Whether it s good magic 
 or bad depends on what you are. You re full of 
 kindness, dearness; so your madness makes you 
 want to give somebody something beautiful. And 
 you know I don t deserve very much, and out of your 
 beautifulness you hit on me. And you re a dear. 
 But stop thinking it s anything but your beautiful- 
 ness. Look at that sparrow there trying to brain 
 the other one. Bloodthirsty little devils!" 
 
 But she wouldn t look at the fighting sparrows. 
 She stared gloomily over them into the bushes. 
 "It isn t like anything else," she said, "being with 
 you. You ve been wonderful to me." 
 
 "Dear child," said Alan, "of course I m wonderful. 
 That comes of being an old fellow and studying the 
 moves in the game of life. I ve studied them ex 
 haustively, on account of her, you know. I ve had 
 to keep her amused, so far as I could." 
 
 The girl nodded. 
 
 "I know," she said. "And I got the overflow. 
 You wanted to pay me for loving her. Perhaps you 
 wanted to make me so happy I shouldn t go away. 
 I thought of that." 
 
NEMESIS 317 
 
 Alan felt miserably that he was caught. He had 
 indeed sacrificed her, so far as he had played upon 
 her fancy, but there had been another and an honest 
 . side to it. If he had tried to watch and tend her like 
 a flower in Mildred s garden of life, he had also 
 found his undeserved compensation in her growing 
 charm. And, so he resolved, the child should not 
 be forced to suffer, in the jaded after days of emotion 
 spent, from thinking she had been no more than the 
 sport of his cunning egotism. 
 
 "You mustn t forget," he said, "Mildred and I 
 have no children. You must remember how tre 
 mendously fond we are of you." 
 
 But she only said: "I think of you all the time. 
 You re everywhere, in everything I do." 
 
 And still it was the dispassionate statement of an 
 inevitable and unwelcome fact. 
 
 "Oh, the dickens!" said Alan grotesquely. "I m 
 not, either. You ve just had the formula of that 
 kind of thing forced on you by that infernal opera. 
 And a formula taken like that with a blare of sound 
 and fiddles on your spinal marrow it s no joke, 
 I tell you. Discount it, same as I do as we all do." 
 
 "Yes," she repeated, somberly, "you re every 
 where. Once I was lost on the plains. I kept 
 looking at the bright horizon, and when I looked 
 higher there was the black line before my eyes. 
 You re like that, the line. That s why I must go 
 away. It would be sickening to stay on. She d 
 see, finally. She d think I was a fool. It would 
 hurt her horribly." 
 
S18 NEMESIS 
 
 He wanted to tell her he had all the plots in fiction 
 stored away in his brain, a precautionary measure 
 against plagiarizing, and that the next move in the 
 drama would be his forbidding her to go and offer 
 ing to go instead. And somehow, though he knew it 
 was merely the move on the board, he found himself 
 incredibly making it. 
 
 "No," he said, "you can t go away. I ll go myself 
 and leave you to see what a little stupid you are to 
 upset the kettle of fish all over your piano." 
 
 "And what I wanted to say was this," she con 
 tinued, not seeming to see his persuasive lead. 
 "When I m gone, you must make her keep on think 
 ing I m nice " 
 
 "You are nice, child," he threw in, from his de 
 spair. 
 
 "So she won t ever repent liking me. And you 
 couldn t do it really unless you knew I was going for 
 a big reason. If you thought it was only a little one 
 you d think I might have stayed. And she d find 
 out what you thought, and all she s done for me 
 would seem wasted, and I ungrateful!" 
 
 She was so simple, so dispassionate really, that 
 she made the tragic circumstance, if not common 
 place, yet something that had to be met in a com 
 monplace way. He tried returning, with a desperate 
 vault even, to the outer aspect of the miserable 
 business. 
 
 "But where are you going?" he asked. "Back 
 to your girls club, or whatever it was?" 
 
 "No. I m going home/ 
 
NEMESIS 319 
 
 "Home, to your manufacturing town?" 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "And give up your music?" 
 
 " I sha n t give it up. I shall teach." 
 
 "But you ll be giving up" it sounded ridicu 
 lously cut-and-dried, but it insisted on being said 
 and in that most obvious way "your career." 
 
 "I can teach well enough," she said indifferently. 
 "As for the rest well, it s no matter." 
 
 He wanted to tell her the volumes his middle-age 
 had accumulated, of the falls youth gets in its mag 
 nificent ride to the stars, and of his own proven cer 
 tainty that, having been thrown, there s nothing to 
 do but pick one s self up and, if the gay steed of 
 glamour has galloped away, plod along on two feet. 
 But that she couldn t listen to now. She wasn t 
 ready for it. His chance would come when she had 
 traversed the vale of illusion, when she had found he 
 was no such hero of renown as her intemperate 
 fancy had pictured him. Then, after her forces 
 surged up again, as the forces of youth will, he could 
 tell her how to train and temper them. 
 
 She had risen, and he rose, too, and stood waiting 
 for her. 
 
 "It ll be easy enough to find a reason," she said. 
 "Mother isn t well. I had a letter from her this 
 morning. Poor mother! She might not have given 
 out if I hadn t been in such a hurry to leave her. 
 She was just getting over her illness, you know. If 
 I d stayed even a month or two Well, I ll go back 
 
 now." 
 
320 NEMESIS 
 
 They walked to the house in silence, and again very 
 fast. As he kept pace with her hurrying steps he 
 found himself breathless with the consciousness of 
 her quickening mood. At the door he left her. 
 
 "Tell her I sha n t be back to luncheon," he said. 
 
 "Yes," she answered, "I ll tell her," and, without 
 looking at him, she went in. 
 
 Alan found himself at home that night unwill 
 ingly, irritated, too, because Nemesis had brought 
 the peace of his household about his ears. When he 
 opened the door, it was to an indefinable atmosphere 
 of change. The lights were lower, it seemed to him. 
 The house had returned to the twilight solitude suited 
 to Mildred s unstable nerves. In her own room he 
 found her, prone on her couch, drawn of face and 
 piteous in look. 
 
 " She has gone," was her first word. 
 
 "Don t mind it," he implored her. "Don t let 
 it get the best of us." 
 
 By this he meant Nemesis; but Mildred, who had 
 not his private and personal knowledge of the god 
 dess, passed over his cold comfort as the perfunctory 
 commonplace it seemed. 
 
 "It s her mother," she continued. "Her mother 
 needs her. I offered to bring her here, but Annette 
 refuses. She says she ought to go. And she ought, 
 Alan, oughtn t she, if her mother needs her? " 
 
 "Maybe," he said miserably. 
 
 "I know she ought," said Mildred. "But all the 
 same I feel deserted." 
 
 He, too, at that moment, he suddenly realized, 
 
NEMESIS 
 
 felt deserted. Where was the April presence of the 
 girl about the house, her unconscious joy, the daily 
 budding of her sweet intelligence? What should he 
 do without it? But Mildred was opening her last 
 reserve of lonely panic. 
 
 "I was lonesome before she went. You two to 
 gether, always! You laughed so much. You were 
 so young. You will never be the same without her. 
 Don t you know you never will?" 
 
 She lay there looking up at him, and he looked 
 blankly down at her. But, close as they were, 
 there was something between them the wraith of 
 young loveliness, of April days. He gathered him 
 self, as he always had at her call, to leap abysses with 
 her or stumble through the morass. The figure he 
 had meant to use to persuade and hearten Annette 
 came to him, and he smiled at Mildred, almost his 
 old patient smile. 
 
 "We ve got to pick ourselves up again," he said, 
 " and go along. And we re going together." 
 
 PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 
 
HP HE following pages contain advertisements of 
 1 Macmillan books by the same author. 
 
Bromley Neighborhood 
 
 BY ALICE BROWN 
 
 Author of "The Prisoner/ "Children of Earth/ "Road to 
 Castaly," etc. 
 
 , $1.50 
 
 It is as. the novelist of New England that Alice Brown 
 has won the hearts of thousands of readers. Few writers 
 have been able to portray with the sympathy and the under 
 standing that are hers the sturdy folk "way down east" or to 
 picture so truly the environment in which they have lived. 
 As the years go by Miss Brown loses none of her skill in 
 her chosen field ; in fact each book seems to be richer in char 
 acterization and more rbsorbing in theme. Bromley Neighbor- 
 hood, Miss Brown s new novel, is no exception. It is a story 
 of a little community much like the other communities which 
 Miss Brown has described, and of the sorrows and joys of 
 its people. 
 
 Particularly, Bromley Neighborhood has to ao with the 
 Neales, the hard, unflinching head of the house; Mary, his 
 wife, who in her long life with him revolts only once at the 
 law which he lays down, and their two sons Ben, likeable but 
 weak, and Hugh, a bit of a visionary, but guided by high 
 ideals, a thorough man. Of equal importance in the little 
 drama that is worked out is Ellen, daughter of a neighbor, 
 who shuns men s society, to whom the v/ord love is almost 
 repulsive, but to whom love comes in a moment and forever. 
 Aunt Tabitha, the silent, mouse-like creature who lives in 
 mortal dread of her brother, Thomas Neale, with whom by 
 the terms of their father s will she has been given a home, 
 and who rarely dares venture out of her room for fear of 
 encountering the stern presence of her relative; "Grissie" 
 Gleason, light-hearted, a lover of pretty things, who almost 
 comes to grief through her own thoughtlessness and that of 
 Ben, and above all Larry Greene, possibly the most charming 
 character in the book, a giver of good advice, genial, a man 
 of parts, whose only failing is a top great fondness for drink 
 these are some of the others in Bromley Neighborhood 
 around whom Miss Brown has written a most engaging 
 romance. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Children of Earth 
 
 Cloth, i2mo, 
 
 This is the ten thousand dollar American prize play. 
 From thousands of manuscripts submitted to Mr. Ames 
 of the Little Theater, Miss Brown s was chosen as being 
 the most notable, both in theme and characterization. Miss 
 Brown has a large following as novelist and short story 
 writer, and her play exhibits those rare qualities of writ 
 ing and those keen analyses of human motives which have 
 given her eminence in other forms of literature. 
 
 " A page from the truly native life of the nation, magnifi 
 cently written." New York Tribune. 
 
 "Ranks with the best achievements of the American 
 theater." Boston Transcript. 
 
 "Apple-trees and larkspur and lilacs in bloom, shimmer 
 ing gowns and rose-trimmed bonnets of an older time, sap 
 mounting and everything breaking bounds because of 
 springtime and love in New England, all this adds charm 
 to the graceful manner in which Miss Alice Brown has 
 presented her theme in the play, Children of Earth. " 
 The Dial. 
 
 "It has the essential quality of great art verity, and 
 that intangible, elusive something that for lack of a more 
 definite term we call humanness." New York Sun. 
 
 "Fine alike in craftsmanship and conception. Delicately 
 touching, finished with characteristic perfection, it is at 
 once convincing and elusively romantic. It proves beyond 
 question that humanity s big passions may be discussed 
 in manner vital yet decent, that sin does not necessarily 
 triumph for the securing of good effects." Chicago 
 Herald. 
 
 " There is no writer who has conveyed to printed pages 
 more intelligently and sympathetically than this one the 
 impress of lives and characters in our rugged East. That 
 Miss Brown has known better than some other authors how 
 to add the right touch of poetry to human aspects otherwise 
 somewhat grim is plainer perhaps in the drama than in her 
 tales conventionally told." New York World. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 The Prisoner 
 
 Cloth, I2mo, $1.50 
 
 This novel of Alice Brown s is one of her most ambitious, 
 and the most important of her contributions to literature. 
 "The Prisoner" is a man released from a term of penal servi 
 tude, returned to the world, to his father, wife and sisters. 
 His relations with them, as well as theirs to each other, are 
 subjects to which the author devotes her keen insight, her 
 ability to analyze mental states and to present to her readers 
 subtle complexities of thought and of motive. She writes 
 with a charm of manner quite her own, easily and clearly, 
 with a wealth of atmosphere and an absorbing interest of plot 
 that carry the reader through to the end of the book. 
 
 The Road to Castaly 
 
 $1.50 
 
 Readers of Children of Earth, and of many other of Miss 
 Brown s books for that matter, must have seen many an evi 
 dence about them of the really natural poet. Some years ago, 
 furthermore, she published a little collection of verse which 
 was warmly received by the critics, and which served to 
 intensify the desire for more. This volume, then, will be 
 welcome to Miss Brown s admirers, and to literature lovers 
 generally. It contains the earlier poems referred to, which 
 were, as a matter of fact, also issued under the title of The 
 Road to Castaly, and much new material as well the poet s 
 latest and most mature work. 
 
 "A fine book for the home library this, because responsive 
 to so many moods, attuned to such varied fancies. Here is 
 true poetry, neither academic nor sensational, narrow-gauged, 
 scattering nor morbid; here, on the contrary, is work fine and 
 sweet and delightful, from inspiring message to finish and fit 
 ting mode." Chicago Herald. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 My Love and I 
 
 Decorated Cloth, I2mo t $1.50 
 
 "My Love and I takes rank with the best work of the 
 best modern English and American novelists. . . . The 
 book which originally appeared under the Nom de plume of 
 Martin Redfield is now reissued with its real author s name 
 on the title page." Indianapolis News. 
 
 "... a compelling story, one that is full of dignity and 
 truth and that subtly calls forth and displays the nobilities 
 of human nature that respond to suffering." Argonaut. 
 
 ". . . the story has a quality of its own that makes it 
 notably worth while." North American Review. 
 
 "A story which is strong, readable, and of a quality far 
 above the ordinary run of fiction." Boston Times. 
 
 "A book of care, tenderness, deep pathos and wise under 
 standing of the human heart." The Bookman. 
 
 "A superior, splendid story; it is filled with strong senti 
 ment without being sentimental. Some of the situations 
 are not pleasant, but the treatment of them is never dis 
 agreeable." Los Angeles Times. 
 
 "It is a powerful story, powerful in purpose and in 
 method." Christian Work. 
 
 "A superfine love story." New York World. 
 
 "The strength and appeal of the book are in its wonderful 
 revelations of the depths of a man s soul." Bujfalo Express. 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 
BY THE SAME AUTHOR 
 
 Robin Hood s Barn /p***** /*<> 
 
 ". . . abounds in quiet humor and wholesome idealism, 
 and is dramatic with the tenseness of human heart throbs. 
 It is very enjoyable to read interesting, original, whole 
 some." Boston Times. 
 
 "... a psychological romance which moves interestingly 
 and strongly from start to finish." Springfield Republican. 
 
 "A tale of buoyant optimism." Boston Transcript. 
 
 "The author has displayed much quaint humor, skill in 
 character drawing, and dramatic force." Christian Ad 
 vocate. 
 
 The Secret of the Clan 
 
 Illustrated, Cloth, I2mo, $1.3$ 
 
 "Alice Brown has written a decidedly original story of girl 
 life in The Secret of the Clan for it is perhaps the first 
 time that any one has recognized that side of healthy girl 
 character which delights in making believe on a large scale." 
 
 Town Talk, San Francisco. 
 
 "It is a bright story delightfully told." Chicago News. 
 
 "A story with unfailing vivacity and much literary 
 charm." Pittsburgh Post. 
 
 "The author shows an unfailing understanding of the heart 
 of girlhood." Christian Advocate. 
 
 "It is fine and sweet, and a good tale as well Alice 
 Brown may be trusted for that." The Independent. 
 
 "A charming story of children and for children though 
 grown-ups in numbers will read and enjoy it, too." Boston 
 Times. 
 
 "A fresh, wholesome story for younger girls." Baltimore 
 News. _ 
 
 THE MACMILLAN COMPANY 
 
 Publishers 64-66 Fifth Avenue New York 
 

I LJ / 
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY