PILGRIMS INTO FOLLY WALLACE IRWIN PILGRIMS INTO FOLLY ROMANTIC EXCURSIONS BY WALLACE IRWIN e considered. A front window was open, and the boy climbed silently out. It was a harder matter than he at first imagined to rescue the beleagured Hannibal. At Henry's approach, the Chow re- treated to a distance, where he sat shaggily and showed his humorous tongue like a bear that had been eating huckleberries. Hannibal, with the stupid cautiousness of the feline, continued to back up and up as Henry advanced, disdaining his coax- ing tones and lingering tantalisingly beyond his fingers. At last, by a crafty shake of a bough, Han- nibal was caught like a flying-squirrel in midair, the bough under Henry abruptly bent double, and a motley mingling of boy and cat came avalanching to earth. Aunt Fanny entered the parlour and gazed hor- rendously about. There was no useful orphan to be seen or heard. The crystals on the chandelier hung practically as they were when she had last examined them save for the fact that two had been broken. As she was engaged in this inspection Henry came quietly in. There was a gory scratch across his forehead, one of his fingers was bleeding. 2io Pilgrims Into Folly "Where have you been?" enquired Aunt Fanny, her smile tightening to a slit. "Miss Colby's cat was " "That will do ! You have been fighting again." At dinner, Daniel Plothier made humorous com- ment on the rich red tattoo-mark over Henry's left eyebrow. The boy snickered nervously, but Aunt Fanny sat like a graven image. Later on, Daniel came upon her in the parlour nourishing her brain from Saleeby's "Parenthood and Race Culture." Under her elbow Daniel picked up a plump volume, and turned up the title. " 'Studies in National Eugenics/ ' he read. "Well, Aunt Fanny, what the " "I'm reading up," snapped Aunt Fanny. "I think we have a very bad boy on our hands." "You don't mean Henry!" "I do mean Henry," she corrected him. "If diso- bedience, rowdyism, vulgarity, and untruth fulness count for anything, I think you've brought quite a serious problem into our home. And when I tried to correct him in the gentlest possible way, do you know what he said to me?" She rummaged in her reticule and brought forth an envelope with a pencil jotting on the back. She handed it to Daniel, who read: "What's it to you?" "I made a note of it at the time, so I could re- member the exact phrase, which he hurled at me in the roughest possible slum voice," she explained. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 211 Daniel seemed inclined to humour, until she, cat- egorically, went over a list of Henry's felonies. The Rev. Mr. Dowle was complaining of his law- lessness; he was coming home from school later and later each night; he was developing shocking slang; he was absconding apples from the kitchen for between-meal luncheons ; and yesterday she had found the lock to the toy-cabinet broken, and the unscrewed fragments of the antique stationary en- gine strewn about the bedroom. "The toys were made to play with/' Daniel pro- tested. "Daniel !" She eyed him deliberately. "Did you thoroughly enquire into that boy's parentage before you took him from the asylum?" "They told me his father and mother were good Scotch Presbyterians." "Some Scotchmen are drunkards. Did you ask , if they were drunkards?" "Why, no. I took it for granted they were sober, industrious " "Before giving a strange boy your name you should take nothing for granted. I suppose you also overlooked such small matters as idiocy, insanity, degeneracy, criminality, and hereditary taint in his ancestry ?" "I took him for what he was a good, clean-cut, intelligent boy." "I don't suppose you are familiar with Galton's law of heredity," she charged scornfully, "but to 212 Pilgrims Into Folly those who realise the importance of parenthood the work is invaluable, showing the futility of making good fruit out of bad. Brainthwaite and Saleeby both tell us that our public institutions and I in- clude orphan asylums are peopled with the off- spring of persons unfit for parenthood. From what I have been reading, I should rather take a leper into my home than the child of a clironic drunk- ard." "But nobody has said Henry's parents were chronic drunkards/' "Nobody has said they were not/' she insisted. "I have eyes to see with. Henry is certainly not a normal, law-abiding child." "He'll grow out of this." "You owe it to yourself, Daniel Plothier, to go to the Shelter for the Innocents and insist upon see- ing the records of Henry's origin and parentage. You certainly owe it to yourself." Aunt Fanny gathered up her books, her reticule, her spectacles, and her crocheted scarf, and limped upstairs. As Daniel entered the library, Henry looked up from "The Glories of Egypt." "Dad," he enquired, "here's about a statue called theSpink. What's a spink ?" "A fierce old woman who asked riddles," replied Daniel. "And now, boy, I want you to be decent about everything, won't you?" Henry saw an indescribable change in the man- ner of this man he liked. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 213 VI Something was certainly happening to the Shelter for the Innocents. A gang of noisy artisans were planing vast yards of ugly stain off the floors and woodwork. Up aloft, paper-hangers were already beginning to adorn the walls with strips of grey- blue cartridge-paper. Everywhere was the destruc- tive chaos that comes before progress. In the midst of alarms stood a rather short, rather stout middle-aged man who wore his black derby hat above a new grey business suit. He fingered his close-cropped mustache and studied blue-prints through eye-glasses which were no brighter than the dancing eyes behind them. Whoever this man was, he was an alert, wholesome, intelligent member of the community. "Dr. Nicholas," said a workman in overalls, ap- proaching with an armful of framed mottoes. "I found these all over the place. What shall I do with 'em?" Dr. Nicholas turned his flashing glasses upon the lot. " 'In the Shadow of His Wings/ " he read, se- lecting two from the armful. " 'When Skies Are Cold and Winds Are Wild, How Sweet to Shield the Orphan Child.' ' He handed the mottoes back to their bearer. "Give them to Mike, the janitor," 214 Pilgrims Into Folly he said. "He has a brother in the undertaking busi- >ness." Daniel Plothier came to the open door and rang the bell, but, as nobody heeded it, he walked into the midst of battle and addressed the field marshal. "I am looking for the superintendent," Daniel began. "I am the superintendent/' said the Doctor. "Oh! I thought it was Mrs. Sulley." "Mrs. Sulley has um retired. This institution has gone under modern control. It is being thor- oughly fumigated of past traditions, and will here- after make a noble effort to catch up." "Was it behind the times ?" "It was about contemporary with the Vandal conquests, I should say." "My name is Plothier," Daniel began nervously. "I adopted a boy from this place." "Yes. A boy named Anderson. I know about the case," said the Doctor, looking up sharply. "You do! What about it?" "I suppose the late lamented handed him over to you in the good, old-fashioned way, with a happy smile and a God-will-provide?" "Something like that." The superintendent motioned him toward his library upstairs, and the adopted father's heart sank with every step up. The big room they entered was shining with an array of card-index files rivalling the reference library of a life-insurance company. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 215 Two stenographers were making out cards, and a young woman in a pink waist was sorting cards into their proper nests. Dr. Nicholas spoke a word to the latter, and, returning to Plothier, motioned him to a chair. "In modern orphanages," he began, "Mr. Gal- ton's idea of eugenics " "Good Lord!" groaned Daniel. "Are you going to give me eugenics?" "You and the world," smiled the Doctor. "Gal- ton's discovery is as useful to my work as the sys- tem of Bertillon to the wardens of our prisons. With all due consideration for the parentless child, we feel it a crime for a responsible institution to foist on a wholesome family the hereditary victim of 'racial poison' alcohol and disease. Don't imagine, from what I say, that we refuse to take any parentless child into our home; but we never permit him to go into full adoption until we have looked him up." "How?" said Plothier. "The modern orphan asylums of this country have in their employ a force of secret investigators, detectives, you might call them, smaller but fully as well equipped as those working for our great banking associations. You wish to adopt John Smith, let us say. You present your creden- tials and become acquainted with the child. Mean- while' our investigators are out searching the rec- ords. John Smith's father might have been a 2i6 Pilgrims Into Folly preacher, a pillar of the community; but we take nothing for granted. Who was his grandfather? His grandmother? Was Smith, the clergyman, ad- dicted to secret tipple or a drug habit? Was there disease in his family ? Our investigators can gather you a moral genealogy in a month's time or, if it takes longer, the child cannot be adopted until we positively know. Meanwhile we are investigating you." The doctor removed his bright eye-glasses and pointed them accusingly at Daniel Plothier. 'The adopting party has to pass, too?" asked Daniel, looking anxiously toward the maze of files, where the librarian was still busily pulling out al- phabetic slides. "You little realise what a searchlight we can put on your character, sir, without you knowing any- thing about it. If you pass our test you are quali- fied, I assure you, to enter Bradstreet's or the king- dom of heaven. But the point at issue with us now is the boy. Ah, here we are!" The young woman in the pink waist was handing to Dr. Nicholas a bundle of cards. The Doctor glanced over them. "Henry Anderson/' he said. "There is no use going over the whole form. His mother was a scrubwoman working in office buildings in New York. His father a truckman, when employed. Mother a chronic alcoholic. Father convicted of petty thieving. Mother died in City Hospital, de- lirium tre " Can't Get Away from Grandfather 217 "My God!" The tall man rose. "Why did that Sulley woman lie to me ? She told me the boy was of sober Scotch Presbyterian parentage " "Mrs. Sulley was a paretic old hen," announced the physician. "There was a boy here, named Tom Anderson, whose parents were sober Scotch Pres- byterians. Mrs. Sulley's life seemed devoted to mixing the records of Tom Anderson and Henry Anderson. And you have reaped the harvest." "Good morning !" gasped Daniel Plothier, stamp- ing out of the place and into his short-winded auto- mobile by the door. Dr. Nicholas gazed contemplatively from the window at the stern man in the car outside. "Fine American stock, that man," he mused. "Old Ironsides of a grandfather, probably. Why does he need to adopt children?" VII The cool barrier of suspicion, now raised between Daniel Plothier and his adopted son, widened rap- idly; and the largest stones, I fear, were laid there by the restless, naughty hands of Henry Anderson Plothier. Daniel was amazed at the hurt his disap- pointment gave him. All the affection of the par- ental type had arisen in him during the boy's first months of probation. It frightened the man to think how much his father-heart had grown toward 218 Pilgrims Into Folly this amusing, engaging little lad, who looked at you with eyes so honest, yet refused to obey any law. But you can't take sound fruit out of a rotten barrel, as Aunt Fanny had said. March was now blowing into showery April, and they had long since given up sending Henry to school, due to a series of disgraceful but exciting events which publicly proclaimed Mr. Plothier's mistake before Mr. Dowle's Academy for Boys. All the eyes of the school had said "Henry Plo- thier!" when Mr. Dowle's waste-paper basket turned over and walked away one morning during prayers, the power of locomotion emanating from a collie pup inside the basket. Being more skilful at figures than any other boy in his grade, Henry was proclaimed a young Marconi for a week, due to his secret system of finger-signals, whereby a cor- rect answer in mental arithmetic could be at once transmitted to the mental paralytic under examina- tion by the Chief Inquisitor. Thick-skulled little Norbert Pierce, failing in the act of catching these helpful flashes, had turned state's evidence, and again Henry was pilloried. Henry's bitter ending at Mr. Dowle's school ar- rived one still afternoon, when a restless score of boys sat in the assembly room, torturing dull brains over hard words. Henry suddenly petitioned the near-sighted Mr. Lewton for the simple right of a drink of water. Petition granted. It was not Henry's fault that the faucet at the end of the hall Can't Get Away from Grandfather 219 was near a window, or that the window led to a balcony, or that the balcony was right over a side entrance to the school, or that, just as the boy lin- gered for a momentary peep at the weather, who should come slouching down the avenue but Nick, the Athenian candy vender, pushing before him a tray of petrified confections. It was, apparently, the will of Allah that Henry should fall. On the window-ledge reposed a small green bas- ket littered with fragments of broken chalk. In Henry's pocket reposed a coil of fish-line sufficient to plumb the space between the window and the street. In seven seconds the line was attached to the handle of the basket, a dime deposited therein, and the basket was making its whirling journey to the street. Nicholas of Athens saw the basket, heeded the signal from above, and obeyed with a sly intelligence which well confirmed Mr. Virgil's fear of Greeks bearing tid-bits. Sixteen brown, dyspeptic bars were laid in the basket amid frag- ments of chalk. "Pull away/' signalled the Greek, and the basket began its perilous journey upward. The basket was dangling half way between the balcony and the street, when it happened. A gen- tleman in a black coat and black Alpine hat rounded the corner and started toward the side entrance. Nick pushed away rapidly. Henry, above, hesi- tated between action and repose. The gentleman 22O Pilgrims Into Folly cast a startled eye upward so suddenly as to cause a nervous twitching in Henry's wrist. The string, fouled on an ornamental ledge, abruptly severed, and down clattered chalk, basket, candy, and all. Vision of sudden death! Picture of black fedora, white chalk, smeary chocolate and the angry face looking up at Henry was that of the Rev. Mr. Dowle! Immediate carnage followed. "... I feel it incumbent upon me to say" (the Rev. Mr. Dowle's letter to Mr. Plothier ran) "that, perhaps due to his peculiar origin, the boy seems heedless of all authority. This can no doubt be corrected in time, as he is quick to learn; but the high moral character of my academy makes it im- perative for us to guard against influences inimical to the proper upbringing of youth. And several parents have submitted written and oral complaints of the lawlessness of your son/' "High animal spirits are no crime," said Daniel Plothier, in discussing his bad bargain with Aunt Fanny. "The records show that his father was a petty thief," replied Aunt Fanny without emotion. "His systematic cheating in arithmetic points to an en- tire lack of the moral sense. Nothing in the house is safe, I am sure/' "Fudge!" grunted Daniel, and went upstairs in search of an instrument little used in this genera- Can't Get Away from Grandfather 221 tion. In the store-room he came upon an old razor- strop, which he cut from its hook, carefully rolled up, and put in his hip pocket. "Come up to my bedroom!" he huskily com- manded of the boy, who followed, pale as a sheet. "Now, Henry," he began, carefully unrolling the razor-strop, "I've done everything I could for you. I've taken you out of an institution and put you in a good home. I've given you my name and tried to educate you to be a good man. And you've dis- graced me." "Yes, sir," agreed Henry, looking fixedly at his shoes. "I am sorry to do this, Henry, but there seems to be only one way. Take off your coat." The boy quietly removed his jacket and stepped forward to receive the blow which fell noisily be- tween his shoulders. "Dad!" cried he, every muscle tense and a look of agony in his eyes. "I didn't think you'd do this!" "Damn it, neither did I!" Daniel was saying to himself. But the ghost of Grandfather Plothier was whispering in his ear : "Do your duty, Daniel. Spare not the rod!" The steady spat-spat of the strop upstairs was melancholy music to the ears of Aunt Fanny be- low; yet the boy made never a sound. At last the deed was done, and Daniel Plothier stalked from 222 Pilgrims Into Folly the room, giddy as an executioner who has be- headed a friend. The door was closed. The strop lay on the floor, neglected where it had fallen. Henry opened his pocket-knife and cut it into a thousand strips be- fore throwing himself on the bed, a prey to disil- lusionment. VIII On the rare days when Aunt Fanny relented, and that was seldom, now, Henry flew on en- chanted errands at the side of Miss Carrots in the grey car. Being chums, there was a conspiracy between them. He was to learn how to drive her car, and some day, she made the fairy promise, some day when he was an inch taller, he should be suddenly promoted to full control of the machine, and alone, solemnly, one hand on the wheel and the other on the brake, per instructions, he should pull up at the Plothier gate and sing out, "Come out for a ride, Dad!" "But he wouldn't," Henry objected hopelessly. "Why not?" "He don't think anything I do is smart any more. I'm a bad kid, you know, Miss Carrots. Dad's found it out, and he's gave up trying to make any- thing out of me. I've gave up tryin', too. You can't take good fruit out of a rotten barrel." Hen- ry's self-analysis was inexorable. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 223 "Who told you that rubbish?" She turned the sea-grey crystals full on him. "Aunt Fanny. She's gave up, too. She says I'm a eugenic." "I think she gave up before she began," scoffed Barbara. Then, recollecting herself, she resumed her role of instructor. "Come now, Pawnee. Put your foot well on the clutch not so quick!" It was his third lesson, and Henry enthusiasm breeding precocity was already a sufficiently fin- ished chauffeur to round a corner with nobody but himself in control. "I'm glad you told me," she said, that night, as they swung into the home road. "About me?" "Yes. You'll always tell me things, won't you, Pawnee?" "You bet!" "And you and your dad ought to get to under- stand each other. He's really a very good man." "He's a peach, Miss Carrots. I sometimes think if he was around more, and would tell me things the way he used to, I wouldn't do lots of things. But he's gave me up. I guess he brought the wrong boy home when he fetched me." "You ought to talk to him like this frankly, you know," she said. "It's some stunt to talk with him/' he pointed out. "I wish we had you in the family too." "Hello! Here we are home already!" she ex- 224 Pilgrims Into Folly claimed brightly, stopping the car before the white gate. Grateful memory of her interest in him bred an unnatural righteousness in his bosom for a while. But she had no time to give automobile lessons in the ensuing few days, and when Henry saw her, surrounded by luggage, whisking conventionally away in the big touring car, brightness was sud- denly subtracted from the atmosphere of Yonkers. Dull weeks passed. Came a deadly Wednesday afternoon when Aunt Fanny was away reading a paper before the Fortnightly, and Henry languished in the library, preparing a lesson in American his- tory. A rattlety-banging ensued from the driveway without, and Henry, alert for diversion, beheld the Plothier automobile, recently consigned to a re- pair shop, rolling noisily home at the hand of a grimy young man in a sleeveless jersey. Henry was out of the window instanter and rac- ing after the blowing dragon in its progress to the garage. "Is it all fixed?" enquired Henry, kicking the tires critically. "Tell your pa the chain is all ground down and she needs a new spring in 'er right side," diagnosed the car doctor; "otherwise she's a perfectly good car. Now, run out, sonny; I want to close the door/' "I'll close it for you," Henry generously assured him. And the man swung down the path. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 225 It was a marvel for all the neighbourhood to see, that afternoon. An automobile of limited horse- power but unlimited noise went racing giddily around corners, with no one so it seemed at first glimpse to propel the flying miracle. At second gaze you could make out a small head just above level with the top of the wheel ; but what that head was trying to accomplish the startled and indignant pedestrian could not make out. For the machine proceeded up the wrong side on one street and down the wrong side on the other. Citizens of Yonkers shouted at the flying phenomenon without the slightest effect, for the elderly machine seemed bent on suicide in some peculiar spot chosen for senti- mental purposes. With skiddings, cavortings, back- firings, and a noisome smudge of oil, it tempera- mentally crossed the sidewalk just opposite a vacant lot, ran to within six inches of a picket fence, and suddenly stopped amid hideous clankings. The chain, just as the car doctor had observed, was u all ground down" and had providentially slipped its sprockets. Henry scrambled out of the seat, too joyful at the miraculous deliverance to reckon further costs. A crowd began stringing into the lot, surrounding him, with a thousand questions, while Henry non- chalantly gathered up the chain, assuming the air of a boss mechanic. "Does your father allow a child like you to take 226 Pilgrims Into Folly out a car alone?" asked a mild gentleman in a shocked tone. "Sure! I take it out 'most every day," lied Henry, made giddy by publicity. "Who's the car belong to?" asked some one else. "It belongs to me" suddenly spoke up a master voice coming out of the nowhere. And, looking up, Henry's gaze was impaled on the dagger glance of Daniel Plothier, towering among thunder-clouds. There was no repetition of the razor-strop ordeal that night. Henry was given the silent treatment, which has driven even soldiers to madness. At supper his elders and betters seemed ages older and eons better than he. They gave him the cold com- fort of politeness the politeness of twin pole-stars beaming upon a frozen earthworm. When he said good~ night their air was courtly. He was dis- missed. Across the reading-lamp Aunt Fanny said : "He is a moral defective. There is, of course, nothing to do but get rid of him." "Tie a flat-iron around his neck and drop him into a pond, for instance?" Up in his room Henry found a letter callowly ad- dressed to him in lead pencil and bearing the post- mark of New Rochelle. It must have come while Aunt Fanny was away, he reflected, else she would have opened it. The missive, scrawled large on lined paper, read : Can't Get Away from Grandfather 227 Dear Pawny: I have hit the rode I no wher you live & wil be ther tomorra at nine (9) night. Wil no me by 3 whissles. EDW. (KICKAPO). IX It was ten minutes of nine by Henry's dollar watch, when a face, as pale as the overhanging moon, lifted itself from the lilac bushes in the yard and, like the Ancient Mariner's horrid vision, whis- tled thrice. A lighted window above opened silently and the head of Henry Anderson Plothier came out. Slowly the figure below raised two hands and waved them right and left. Swiftly the figure above dis- played three fingers pointed to the moon. It was the more or less dread Indian sign, homemade but effective. Furtively Henry passed out by the servants' stair- way, unseen of Elizabeth, the cook. "Hullo, Pawny!" croaked a voice, coming out from among the lilac bushes. "Hullo, Kick!" responded Henry. Then, when the voice from the bushes began further parley, "Shut up!" And Henry reached among the leafage and dragged forth a figure a size larger than his own and conducted it noiselessly to the berry bushes down by the garage. It was plain to be seen that the other boy had advanced much farther in man- of-the-worldness than had Henry. He wore his 228 Pilgrims Into Folly trousers precociously long; his sweater vest was of an emerald green that glowed, even in the pale moonlight; his golf cap was of an eloquent plaid. "Say, that's a swell dump you live in/' com- mented he they called Kick, lifting a hawklike, rather aged face and showing front teeth with wide spaces between. "Uh, huh! Mr. Plothier's awful rich," Henry could not refrain from boasting, although awed by Eddie's sudden maturity. "I bet he's a dead one," commented the sophisti- cated Kick. "Most folks that 'dopts kids are. You remember Widow Cummings, that took me out of the home?" "She was a nice lady," ventured Henry. Eddie wrinkled a weary forehead. "Oh, nice enough but tiresome. I don't think women really understand me. Have a smoke?" Kick brought a back-broken cigarette from his pocket, twisted it into two unequal parts, and of- fered the smaller half to Henry. As a matter of fact, Henry didn't smoke, but he feared to acknowl- edge before the presence any deficiency in the arts of manhood. He lit the little stump and restrained a cough while the smudge blew into his eyes. "You smoke like a girl," gibed the larger boy, drawing deep. "It's great!" said Henry enthusiastically. "Say, remember 'Kickapoo Bill's Escape' we used to play?" Henry asked this question in the forlorn Can't Get Away from Grandfather 229 hope that Kick's mind might become diverted from the joys of nicotine and he could quietly throw his cigarette away. "Aw, that's kid stuff!" jeered the little old man. "Cowboys are fun/ 5 Henry ventured. "Nix on 'em !" Eddie insisted. "They're nothin' but Rubes on horseback. Y' oughta read 'Raf- fles/ ' Eddie outlined his shining plans for the future. He was resolved to cut away entirely from the Widow Cummings' effeminising influences. Sure, she gave him everything he wanted, he explained and showed, as evidence, a lady's-size gold watch prettily set with jewels. But Eddie heard the Red God calling. He knew a joint in Buffalo where he could live like a king, working in a billiard and pool parlour. "Come on along," said Eddie, at last "Let's you and me hit the road." To tell the truth, Henry had been thinking that very thought. It would be fine to go with Kick, whom he admired more than any other boy he had ever met. Aunt Fanny, he felt sure, would rejoice to be rid of him. He thought with some regret of the peculiar, quiet Daniel Plothier, who had at first been so good to him, and as suddenly had begun to frown upon everything he did. Strangely enough, he felt no resentment against his adopted father; but he wished passionately never again to behold Aunt Fanny's I-told-you-so smile. His gaze wan- 230 Pilgrims Into Folly dered to the pleasant, graceful outline of the Colby house resting under the moon, and his thoughts lin- gered there. "Well, Pawny, will you join me?" enquired the blase one. "Nope!" replied Henry, with sudden determina- tion. "Aw, why not?" "Don't want to." "You got cold feet Molly!" Thus the deepest insult of Boyville. "I ain't got cold feet; but I don't think it's right, after what Mr. Plothier's did for me." "Well, stay home and play the music-box, if you wanta," said Kick loftily. "I guess I'd better be poundin' the ties." He arose and pulled his golf cap farther over his ears. Meanwhile a cold night wind had risen, and both boys stood shivering under the moon. "Say," said Henry, after an embarrassed pause, "where you going to sleep ?" "Oh, I'll hit the hay some place," responded Ed- die, in a careless tone that managed to have a bleak and lonesome sound. "I'll tell you what!" Henry could now see Eliza- beth, the cook, plodding wearily toward the attic, lamp in hand. "I got a key to the kitchen. Eliza- beth keeps an awful big fire in the stove, and there's a couch down there. If I sneak y' in, will you promise to beat it before Elizabeth gets up?" Can't Get Away from Grandfather 231 "When does she get up ?" "Five o'clock." "Aw, I ought to be mushin' it for Buffalo." "Aw, come on. Y' got to sleep some place." So was the splendid Kick at last persuaded, and the two held their breath painfully, while two sets of feet tiptoed in through the rear door. The cosy, foody warmth of the kitchen gained, Eddie spread his magnificent person on the broken relics of a wal- nut sofa, while Henry covered him with a scorched section of blanket ordinarily used on the ironing- board. "Well, good luck !" whispered Henry, rather em- barrass'ed for the right thing to say. "Same to you," responded Kickapoo Ed, lying quite still, but very wide awake. "I'm awful sorry I can't join you. I'd rather go with you than any other kid," Henry confessed im- pulsively. "Thanks," replied Eddie, with cool brevity. Be- ing very old, he had no patience with "slop-overs." Henry came down late for breakfast next morn- ing. Mr. Plothier and Aunt Fanny were still at table, but the litter of dishes proved that the meal had waned. Henry hoped he didn't look as hag- gard as he felt. All night long he had been aware 232 Pilgrims Into Folly of the sleeping pilgrim in the kitchen, and at inter- vals he had started up, hearing creakings indicative of the descent of Elizabeth, on the point of discov- ering all. Why did they both look at him so uncomfortably as he sat down? He felt of his hair, to ascertain if he had forgotten to comb it. No; it was about as straight as usual. What did they see? "Henry/' said Aunt Fanny self-consciously, as soon as Gertrude, also self-consciously, had helped him to breakfast food, "did you happen to see my brooch my diamond brooch I left on the parlour table last night?" If an electric current had charged Henry's chair it could not have straightened him out more abruptly. "Wha what brooch?" he asked guiltily, horror thrilling him. "You know well enough," she cut in, her voice rising harshly. "There, there, Aunt Fanny," Daniel mollified. "You'll find it without making all that fuss." "I certainly will find it!" she snapped "and I'm not going to allow any false sentiment to stand in the way. Henry, where were you last night?" But the boy said nothing. He was beginning to cry silently into his breakfast. Daniel arose. He was simulating calm, but his bones seemed melting as he walked out of the room. In the library, he locked the door and looked up the Can't Get Away from Grandfather 233 telephone number of the Shelter for the Innocents. "Dr. Nicholas," he spoke into the receiver, as soon as proper connections were made, "you prom- ised to give me further advice concerning my the Anderson boy we were talking about. Come out to lunch to-day? That's very good of you. My car will meet you at the station eleven-fifteen. Good- bye!" Aunt Fanny knocked sharply on the library door and took her welcome for granted. "Now, Daniel," she began at once, "something's got to be decided, one way or another." "Well, what would you suggest?" he said coldly. He had not moved from the table by the telephone. "You evidently don't believe Henry took my brooch?" "There's not the slightest evidence that he did." "Oh!" Aunt Fanny walked dramatically to the door, and dramatically Elizabeth, the cook, was ushered in. "Elizabeth, tell Mr. Plothier what you saw." Elizabeth was dowered with the gift of reciting an entire melodrama in a single breath. "Last night, Mr. Plothier, I heard 'im creepin' about somethin' awful, and I was that scart I dassn't move for fear burglars maybe or ghosts was out, an' this mornin' I come downstairs extra early to turn the bread and land sakes ! I was near scart distracted when I looked out o' the back winda and seen Henry bustin' out by the kitchen winda an* 234 Pilgrims Into Folly run round the house, and when I got down there was the kitchen a sight and crumbs everywhere and a spongecake gone and another half et, and I says " "How did you know it was Henry you saw?" enquired Plothier sharply. "It was a boy I seen, an' they ain't no other boy in this house but Henry, as I ever seen." Her logic was final. "That will do, Elizabeth/' said Mr. Plothier stiffly. "Send the boy to me." Very small, awkward, red-eyed, guilt-confessing, the adopted son came in and took a chair as com- manded. The verdict was rendered, and the sen- tence without appeal. "You have been a failure," Daniel said, attempt- ing to control himself. "Before we go any further, I want to know what you have done with that brooch." "I won't tell you," answered the boy, without looking up. "We have tried to give you a reasonable amount of spending money, and you could have had more by asking for it. Why did you take the brooch ?" "I can't I won't tell." His response was per- fectly stupid in its stubbornness. And then Daniel Plothier kind, reasonable Dan- iel Plothier did a regrettable thing. He leaped to his feet, dragged the boy from his chair, and shook him roughly. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 235 "No son of mine, no son of mine!" he roared. "You've got my name, the law won't give it up, but you'll get nothing more from me. Do you hear ? Now go away go!" But, when the red lights had ceased to blind his eyes, he saw the boy still standing there, like a frightened animal. " Where shall I go?" asked Henry faintly. "To your room!" growled the adopted father, and closed the door after him. Plothier was too sick at heart to meet the Doctor at the station, as he had promised ; so a local livery- man met the train, bringing Dr. Nicholas to the gate at a quarter to one. The efficient little man sat in the library and pulled down lavender silk cuffs, kind glances showing through jewel-bright glasses, while Daniel reviewed the history of the case. "I have tried and tried," confessed the adopted father; "and the more I try, the worse it becomes." "How many parents of normal children have had the same experience?" asked the physician. "Eh?" "I'll grant you, Henry is a mischievous boy, Mr. Plothier what one of us has not been? Myself, I was expelled from three preparatory schools, as the records show, before I had reached the age of fourteen. And yet, I am rated a reasonably useful member of the community. Nothing you have told me about his case could be dignified by a harsher word than 'prank.' But you have erected out of 236 Pilgrims Into Folly odds and ends the scarecrow of heredity, and every normal naughtiness, coming to the normal boy, you have set down as " "Do you classify the stealing of a diamond brooch as a normal naughtiness ?" asked Daniel sharply. "You have not sufficient evidence on that score to hang the boy," said Dr. Nicholas. "People are too quick to condemn on prejudice. A sleepy servant tells you she saw a boy breaking out of the kitchen. In the light of dawn she might easily have taken a tramp for a tall boy. At any rate, and I am not a betting man, I'll wager you a hundred dollars that Henry never took that brooch." "Why do you feel so sure?" "He does not come of the sort of people who breed thieves," responded Dr. Nicholas strangely. "I can't fathom you, Doctor. Didn't you assure me, on the evidence of your card index, that his mother was an alcoholic and his father a petty thief?" Plothier sat wiping his forehead. Dr. Nicholas arose and walked to the window. "Mr. Plothier," he began, "you will justly con- demn me for what I am going to say; but I have come to confess that we have again made a mistake in the records of Henry Anderson's ancestry. Let me explain. The late Mrs. Sulley had so ingenu- ously mixed the records that, at the time you first called and enquired, the Augean stable had not even begun to be tidied. It has taken more than a year to arrange that chaos, and only last week was the Can't Get Away from Grandfather 237 correct library completed. In going over the files I came upon the revised cards in Henry Anderson's case, and found, to my amazement, that the case was as Mrs. Sulley had at first stated Henry was the son of the moral Scotch Presbyterian couple, as sound a parentage as any President could re- quire." Daniel simply stared. "You have perpetrated a fearful libel upon that boy !" he groaned at last. "I acknowledge the wrong I have done," replied the Doctor simply. "You asked me for the boy's parentage, and I gave you as near the truth as I knew at the time." The telephone jangled upon silence, and Daniel, for a while, filled the mouthpiece with numerous expletives, affirmatives, denials, and explanations. "You win!" he exclaimed at last, turning to the Doctor. "So soon?" "The constable at Fishkill caught a strange boy, about eight this morning, entering a warehouse. Among his possessions he seems to have a diamond brooch marked Tanny Troutt, Yonkers.' It couldn't be Henry; he was here at eight." "Then Henry is restored to citizenship," said the Doctor. Daniel's thumb went hastily to the housemaid's bell. The girl answered the fevered summons. 238 Pilgrims Into Folly "Go to Henry's room and tell him to come down,'* he commanded. "He ain't there, please, Mr. Plothier," she fal- tered. "Where is he?" "I dunno. I seen him leavin' this mornin' by the back gate, like he was goin' some place." XI "What's this about Henry running away ?" It was five days later, and Barbara Colby, who had just returned from a prolonged week-ending, looked across the hedge dividing her acres from his and addressed Daniel in accusing tones. She had on white gloves and a veil, adding dignity to her presence. "There's nothing about it but the truth. He's gone; that's all." Daniel thrust his hands in his pockets and spoke despairingly. "You mean you have driven out that precious man-child you and the De Medici there." Her eyes blazed as she indicated Aunt Fanny, seen lurk- ing behind the Plothier curtains. "It was a misunderstanding, Bab," began Daniel lamely. "And Henry got the worst of it, as usual. What was the culminating crime that drove poor Pawnee Can't Get Away from Grandfather 239 into the street?'' Tears were beginning to brighten her sea-grey eyes. "Everything looked against him," began Daniel, struggling to maintain a calm demeanour. "It was a plain case of circumstantial evidence; we had the asylum's records showing his bad origin and "What if you did? Did you adopt the boy for the purpose of turning him into a criminal ? What sort of fair-weather father are you?" "He needs a mother, I suppose," said Daniel sadly. "You both do," replied Barbara, no less pity- ingly. "Yes, Barbara, we do!" he urged. "And you must remember it's all your fault that I ever adopted this lad and made such a mess of his life and mine." "My fault?" If she suspected his meaning, she masked her knowledge. "Was it my fault that the only woman in the world continued to dangle me for twenty years, and that I woke up one morning wanting an heir in my house somebody I could give my name to?" She stood minutely examining a streak of smudge which she had rubbed from the hedge on to the forefinger of her white glove. "Do you want him back?" she asked suddenly, all gentleness. "Because, if you don't, I do." "I've notified every police station between New York and Buffalo," he explained. "That looks as if I wanted him back, doesn't it?" 240 Pilgrims Into Folly "He'll be a grown man before you find him that way/' she scoffed. "However, I can lead you to him, if you really want him." "You?" His mouth still gaped as she delved into a blue beaded-bag and brought forth a crumpled envel- ope. She handed it to Plothier, who read : Dear Miss Carrots, I hope you are well and am sorry to say goodby but must go becas nothing seemed to come out good, am here hoping to do belboy work in a hotel which is very good bizness. I think of you lots and wish you was stoping in this hotel but I will not tell the edress. Wei I must close Yours truly PAWNY. "Poor lamb !" sighed Barbara. "He's very mys- terious about his address! But the postmark says Poughkeepsie." "Working in a hotel in Poughkeepsie!" ex- claimed Daniel. "I must go there right away." "Let me go too," she urged. "Come in mother's big car it's faster. I ought to help you say it's partly my fault." In ten minutes the seven-passenger car, properly piloted by a chauffeur, was booming to the north. The man and woman in the tonneau said little. "A fast car's a blessing in an emergency like this," he admitted, as the flying vehicle was out- Can't Get Away from Grandfather 241 raging all speed regulations in the outskirts of Poughkeepsie. "You admit it?" enquired Barbara slyly. "I'm thinking of buying a racing runabout for myself/' he announced humbly. The car stopped at the door of the best hotel in town. A blond young clerk automatically pulled a pen from its potato sheath, dipped it, and pushed forth the register. "No such boy employed here/' he replied decis- ively, returning the unused pen with a jab to its proper potato. "Your son, madam ?" "No," said Barbara, showing a roseate cheek. "A relative." "We don't employ any boys under fourteen," added the clerk virtuously. "He's large for his age," Daniel explained. "Oh, Hugo !" The clerk addressed a bald, oblong individual about to descend by an obscure stairway. "Any new boys in the kitchen?" "Dere alvays iss," Hugo responded promptly "New poys iss our specialty." "Oh, show them to me!" cried Barbara, following him impulsively down the precipitous descent into a mildewed labyrinth. XII He whom they called Hugo led on through twi- light windings, then silently paused, motioned Bar- 242 Pilgrims Into Folly bara to stand in her tracks, and suddenly vanished into one of the crypts among the vast catacombs beneath the hotel. Barbara stood a very long time long enough, in fact, for her eyes to become owl- like in the gloom. Half an acre down the corridor, a door suddenly burst open, and a figure a small figure dragging a huge bucket tottered slowly to- ward her: a slavish troll of this enchanted cave no doubt. " 'White wings, they never grow wee-ry !' ' chanted an unmelodious treble, between tugs at the bucket. "Henry!" cried Barbara, rushing forward so swiftly that the gnome had no time to vanish, as per book. "Gee!" The bucket went noisily over, littering the cement floor with corn husks and potato par- ings, Henry taking a header over the mess, and pausing on all fours at Barbara's feet. "Gee!" he repeated. But his recovery was swift. He arose and backed against the wall, facing his goddess. His person was entirely obscured in an enormous blue denim apron, from which small, bare arms displayed their toil-scratched surfaces. "We've come to take you home, dear," said she, stooping down until they were about of a height. "Is Dad Mr. Plothier up there, Miss Carrots?" he asked very gravely. "Yes; we came together," she explained. "I haven't got no home, Miss Carrots," he said. Can't Get Away from Grandfather 243 "He don't want me there. I got a good job here, and I can earn my three a week an' learn the hotel bizness. I'm the best peeler of all the kids, and when I'm a year older I'll be a bell-hop." "But your father wants you, Henry," she pro- tested. "Aw, quit your kiddin', Miss Carrots. He told me he didn't" The boy's independence was alarming. "Pawnee, when we first became chums, do you remember what you promised me?" 'To tell everything? Say, I can't !" "A promise is a promise. Why can't you keep it now, Henry?" "You wanta know about that di-mond. Honest, I can't split on a friend o' mine!" The boy was beginning to sniff ominously. "Then a friend of yours did it?" "I didn't think he'd throw me like that, Miss Carrots but, honest, I can't tell " "We know who did it, Pawnee. It was Kick. They found him, and he told everything." "What d'ye think of that? Will he go to jail?" Tears were beginning to brim. "No, Pawny; he's safe. Aunt Fanny forgave him and he went back to New Rochelle." "I didn't think he'd do it!" Henry now wept shamelessly into a corner of his preposterous apron. "I took him into the kitchen to git warm, an' see 244 Pilgrims Into Folly what he done! Aw, I don't wanta tell on him!" He began to sob wildly, and the woman, with a mother-murmur of consolation, gathered him into her arms. "Hush!" she soothed the disconsolate, soiled little runaway. "Pawnee, I knew a chum of mine wouldn't do a thing like that I knew it, and I'm proud of you. Honey, your father wants you to come home. He's sorry for what he said we're all sorry and want to begin all over again. We'll make a great game out of everything now, Pawnee never be cross about anything any more. Won't you come and be with your father?" "I would if if " She was holding him close and he was weeping silently. "If what, Pawnee?" "If I could be with you, too." She rose and surveyed him. "Take off that hor- rid old apron, Henry," she laughed. "Go to the sink and wash your eyes and put on your coat. I'll wait here for you." Henry had dried his tears, and was beginning to scrape together the wreckage of potato peelings and restore them to their proper bucket. "I tell you what you do," he said, finally. "You go up to the lobby and wait. I gotta see a fella." "What fellow?" Barbara enquired. "The boss cook. I ain't goin' to quit without I get the two dollars he owes me on this week." Can't Get Away from Grandfather 245 XIII Daniel sat in the lobby, his eyes glued to the en- trance to limbo where Barbara had disappeared. The door finally opened and she came back alone ! "Wasn't he there?" asked the adopted father huskily. "Let's come over here and talk," she evaded, motioning to a horsehair couch in the reception- room. And, as soon as they were seated : "Daniel, I want to ask you two things." "Why don't you answer me ? Go ahead, if you've got to I" "Well first, will you marry me ?" "Barbara!" He snatched her two hands, and marked the traces of tears in her eyes. "Do you can you love me now, dear?" "I do I can I have for a long time, Dan. But it took something like this bad, adorable man-child of yours to reconcile our our grandfathers. And you'll promise me, Dan, when we're married, we'll talk over everything about Henry?" "Everything, Bab he'll be ours !" Hugo entered upon a scene that caused him to clear his hotel-accustomed throat ; and at his heels there trailed a seedy boy whose cheeks were glassy with kitchen soap and whose hair looked as if it had been combed with a match. 246 Pilgrims Into Folly "I'm glat you come to fetch J im," the large, solid man explained. "Sooch a leedle shaver shouldt not vork. But he vas a spunky leedle divvil sure Mike!" "I want to apologise, Henry," said Daniel Plo- thier, holding out his hand. "Forgit it, Dad!", replied Plothier Junior, with a wholesome grin. "I got my two dollars ofFn the boss!" XIV In the library of the Shelter for the Innocents a worldly, kindly little man sat groaning over a litter of unassorted cards at a table-desk. The girl in the pink waist was beside him, uttering complicated figures. "The righter we are, the wronger we are pic- ture puzzles pigs in clover. Beware the explosion of a patient man !" He swept the addled pile aside and tilted back in his chair. "By the way, Miss Crowell," he said, "will you bring me the cards in the case of Tom Anderson and Henry Anderson?" The cards were brought and laid on the desk, right and left. "Now, I want you to take the family record of Tom Anderson sober Scotch Presbyterian parents, perfect ancestry and copy them on a card labelled 'Henry Anderson/ whose parentage, as you see, is Can't Get Away from Grandfather 247 correctly recorded as 'dubious/ I am going to give Henry Anderson a clean record." "You mean " Miss Crowell hesitated. "For my own purposes an experiment in benev- olent psychology, you might call it I have told a certain story to Henry Anderson's adopted parent. It has succeeded splendidly, I understand, so the incident is closed." "Then which of these cards records Henry An- derson's true parentage?" enquired the young woman. "This," said the Doctor. And he laid his finger on a pile of cards describing the shameful exit of an alcoholic scrubwoman. "I bet he had a bully grandfather," he mused, "or Francis Galton is a fraud." THE TORPEDO THE Great War, which had brought desola- tion and exhaustion upon the European Continent, had been silent now for several years. An elderly Irish baronet, standing at the rail of an East-bound British liner, surveyed the pale blue ocean, tranquil under a summer sun. They were due at Oueenstown by four; and as a sort of sentimental duty the grey-haired passenger exam- ined his watch. It was half -past two o'clock al- most the exact hour, and they were sailing over the waters where the Saturnia lay sunken. "Excuse me," said a voice at his elbow. "If this is Sir Robert Malloy, I'd like to ask you a question." He turned his keen eyes and beheld a young man leaning against a life-boat. "Fm sorry to intrude," the interloper explained, "but I almost have an excuse. I was on the Satur- nia when she was torpedoed, you see. I'm an American and I saw my mother drown right be- fore my eyes when the small boat overturned." He hesitated, after the manner of one who recites an old bereavement. "Is there something you wanted to ask?" en- quired Malloy kindly. 248 The Torpedo 249 "Yes, sir. It's like this. I know you were very close to the English Admiralty office at the time the German submarines did the dirty job. And I thought you might tell me one thing that has al- ways puzzled me. Why did the captain of the Saturnia take it into his head to slow down at the particular spot where the Boches could torpedo her?" "That," replied Malloy, "was all threshed out in the investigation. I think the records are on file in " "They don't explain anything !" the American scoffed. "It was a game of button, button, who's got the button. Engineer blamed fireman, fireman blamed conductor, conductor blamed train-de- spatcher. There was no reason for that ship to loiter, that any one revealed. I have always wanted to know " ."The rules of the sea are complicated," observed Sir Robert. "Yes. To tell you the truth, I've always thought Sir Morgan Carsovan, who was at the head of the Admiralty at that time, never got what was coming to him." Sir Robert Malloy smiled tolerantly. A shade too tolerantly. "And where in the world did Carsovan disappear to?" the persistent interviewer went on. "British statesmen don't walk off the face of the earth." 250 Pilgrims Into Folly "Why, you read about his retirement, about that time, didn't you ?" Malloy enquired. "I know. But retirement doesn't blot men out of existence. At least in America A party of ladies, passing, beckoned the distin- guished Irishman from his dialogue. "Maybe you'd better look under the letter 'C in the Encyclopedia of Ex-Celebrities," he laughed, as he departed with a haste which, the American thought, was not unwilling. ii That moment in the late winter of 1913 when Alma Oldenbourg paused in front of the trim, grey building in the Wilhelmstrasse, meant a long jour- ney for her. She lifted her large, rather greenish eyes to the number over the door, then peeked into her purse to verify the address. She smiled a little nervously at the sweetness of the thrill that passed through her; had she not sworn it, standing like a soldier, hand upraised, "soul and brain and body" in the service of her Kaiser? And now she was hesitating womanishly on the brink of the great adventure. The orderly at the door regarded her curiously, so she no longer hesitated, but handed him her card. "To see Captain von Halden," she said. "This way, Fraulein," he directed. Passing down The Torpedo 251 the narrow corridor, through a door to the right, she came upon a large, bleakly furnished room ; and under a photographic group of his famous duelling corps, sat her cousin, stout, square, his bullet head so closely shorn that the redness of his complexion flamed through the prickly blond hair. He raised small eyes which showed the blue gleam of steel- tipped bullets. "Alma!" he said. "Ah!" He arose, clicked his heels and extended a big palm, his gaze the while roving over her in a fashion which plainly said, "Here is a pretty object how can we use it?" "Cousin Otto!" cried she, smiling archly as she took his hand. "One walks into your great dragon's den merely by presenting a card." "You were sent for," replied von Halden, un- smiling, because the jokes played by his department were usually of a deadly nature. "But ach him- mel! How it becomes you to be a woman grown!" "Have I aged so ?" she pouted while her cousin's appraising look passed over her, taking in her small, graceful figure, lingering in a heavy satisfaction upon her pliant mouth and the elf-curl of red hair above brows that tilted upward, always challenging. "Aged no!" he responded solemnly. "Twenty- eight is not that." "Twenty-nine, Herr Captain," she corrected. "You have reached the age, and the time has come in the world's history when you have the 252 Pilgrims Into Folly privilege of serving your Kaiser." Von Halden spoke with formal earnestness. "So I have been called?" she asked, all piquancy gone from her face. "You have not forgotten the vows you made twelve years ago?" "One does not forget that," she said gravely. "A great many things have happened to me but I have always remembered." "Ah. You have seen life, Mrs. Anderson?" He leaned forward with a ponderous smile, but the young woman faced him squarely. "Call me Alma Oldenbourg!" "So you have quit the English Captain?" Brutal questions were a fine art in the secret service, and Otto von Halden used the weapon advantageously. "That drunkard!" She brought down a small heel as she sat working her fingers into the uphol- stered arm of her chair. "I know." Otto nodded with the assurance of one who had the biography of every German sub- ject, revised to date, in his card library. "Nobody ever thought you would like him." "I have my family to thank for him," she said bitterly. "There were better men among our serv- ants. If I had had a real protector in the world a real father to look after me " "You have a very real father," von Halden slow- ly assured her. "Don't forget that, young woman. If the good of the Empire made it necessary for The Torpedo 253 him to drop you in a bad hour, it is not becoming that a woman of your blood and spirit should com- plain. See what he has done for you ! Up to your twentieth year there wasn't an advantage of travel or luxury denied you. Remember that. Politics are politics, my dear girl. And even though he doesn't acknowledge you, don't think he's not watch- ing out in every way " "To marry me to another detestable person ?" she enquired scornfully. "Alma," Captain von Halden resumed, after per- mitting her a moment in which to govern herself, "'do you love the greatness and glory and the fu- ture of your Fatherland?" "I love nothing else," she replied, her strange eyes flaming suddenly. "It is everything to me." "Good ! You have spoken like a " He was about to name the great family from which she had sprung so unwelcomely. "And now I am going to tell you why they mated you to your Englishman." Her elfin brows tilted an interrogative degree higher. "There was no particular reason for him, indi- vidually." Otto aimed at her the steel tips of his eyes. "Any Englishman would have done. Do you see?" "I can't say I do," she admitted. In retort he raised his voice to the scolding pitch which was, with him, a professional mannerism. "Stupid child! Can't you understand? The 254 Pilgrims Into Folly League chose Anderson for you. You were to marry an Englishman, not so much to know him as to know others of his countrymen." "Then my sacrifice began years ago/' she re- flected. "How useless it was! I never met many Englishmen after my marriage." "But before you knew several before?" he cross- questioned eagerly. "Several," she agreed. "Yes. And you're a very pretty woman, Alma. You studied in England, too." The young woman winced under his approval, which was like that of a stock-dealer at a county fair. "Wasn't there one Englishman especially smitten back in those days?" "How do I know?" she shrugged. "I flirted I suppose they all said they loved me. Perhaps I was in love with one or two myself." "Let's speak English," suggested von Halden, beaming his satisfaction as he addressed her with an accurate London accent. "You haven't forgot- ten their names, I take it?" "My memory is sound in spite of my advancing years," she smilingly assured him in the same lan- guage. "Superb!" grinned Otto. "Your English is yet better than mine. And now I will show you a pic- ture." Briskly he drew from his desk a square of card- The Torpedo 255 board. Alma looked at the photographic group at- tached thereto and beheld some two dozen figures, partly in English and German naval uniforms, part- ly in the long coats of ceremony. "English attaches and Parliament members visit- ing Kiel last spring," tersely announced the secret service officer. "Have you ever been well, ac- quainted with any Englishman in that group?" His gaze alternated between the mounted photo- graph and the travelling eyes of the woman who leaned over it. In a moment she had fixed her attention upon a lean, frock-coated figure to the right of the group. The long face, earnest and scholarly in spite of the frivolous twist of small, waxed moustaches, gazed out at her in a way which seemed to claim for him a certain distinction among the merely official faces around him. "He has grown a moustache !" was her first com- ment. "He looks very little older." "Then you do know him!" Captain von Hal- den's lips smacked as with the taste of rich beer. "He was one of those I knew best," she admit- ted archly. "A very charming man." "I know all this," the secret service agent admit- ted. "I am glad you picked out the man in the picture. This makes your work simpler." "I am to deal with him?" she asked. "That's why you were sent for," he answered. "Your friend there is one of three men in line for 256 Pilgrims Into Folly one of the most important cabinet positions in Eng- land the supreme position, in case of war. Un- less the signs fall, he'll accept the portfolio. Do you see, then ? Here is one who must be taken care of." "How?" asked Alma Oldenbourg, her peculiar eyes studying the photograph. "He is now, we are informed, taking a short rest on the Riviera. His address is 'Riviera Palace, Cannes/ You are ordered to go there and renew an old acquaintance. The object is to be as close to this man as possible and for as long a time as possible." "Why?" She stood twisting the picture irreso- lutely between small, gloved hands. "Are you ready to repudiate the vows you made your Kaiser?" von Halden questioned sharply, in- tolerantly. " 'Soul and brain and body' " came like a refrain to her ears before she found voice to answer him. "I shall follow him as you say," she replied. "What then?" "That you will leave to our office. We will tell you fast enough when the time comes," said Otto brusquely. "You are to go as an Englishwoman, to follow him to London. And you will be respon- sible for orders to the number Seventeen." "Seventeen," she repeated mechanically. "About money. You must know I have nothing." "I was coming to that," said Otto von Halden. The Torpedo 257 From a wallet he counted out twenty five-pound notes and laid them on the desk before her. "Eng- lish currency, you see," he explained. "You may expect as much to be supplied you monthly, wher- ever you are." "No further instructions?" asked Alma, rising. "Good morning, Mrs. Anderson," was his reply, in a formal tone. "Good morning, Captain von Halden." Her feet had touched the ornate blue tiling by the door when she hesitated and half turned. "What's the matter?" he hurled roughly at her. "Not afraid of the risk!" Her eyes had deepened to emeralds and her smooth, high-boned cheeks were radiant with colour as she turned upon him. "Risk!" she laughed. "My dear cousin, I love it!" in Her recognition of the man in the photograph simplified matters, as Cousin Otto had told her. She had taken passage to Cannes and put herself to the task of stage-managing an accident. She did it well. Rising out of a Riviera garden like some suavely petalled flower, she stood in the tender glory of the morning that mellowed upon the delicate pink of her summer gown. An avalanche of camel- lias tumbled down the terraces all around her; the 258 Pilgrims Into Folly sea was indigo beyond the solid, glossy foliage of ilex. No one could have told, from the unconscious air with which she breasted the fragrance of a young day, that the tall man, alone behind a news- paper, at a table on the terrace, held any claim to her attention. As a matter of truth, Alma Oldenbourg had sensed the heart-thump of the hunter as her eyes first lit upon her quarry, thus exposed and within easy range. It was so that she had wished to meet him; and guessing from old experience his restless habit of breakfasting like an American savage, sit- ting upright at a table, she had foregone her well- loved bedside coffee, had dressed and waited here a hungry hour until, at last, she had seen him strid- ing among the tables on the terrace. A waiter, observing the young woman's critical review of the arrayed and shining linen, came for- ward and indicated a table in the outskirts of the group, decorously placed for a lady alone. "del! There in the sun?" she asked irritably in French. The servant, humbled, let her have her way and she chose a place convenient to where the news-de- vouring Englishman sat. His face, she noted, was lined and careworn as he persisted in his abstrac- tion, utterly oblivious of anything more animated than the print before him. After a minute Am- broise, the celebrated captain of waiters, approached and leaned deferentially over the gentleman's chair. The Torpedo 259 Like a gifted sleight-of-hand performer, Ambroise bore in his left hand an orange of splendid pro- portions, and in his right a sharp silver-bladed knife. And as he chatted affably, he executed the marvel for which he was famed namely, to peel the or- ange with one twist of the knife and never break the perfect spiral of the falling rind. "Yes, monsieur," he was saying. "The gar- dens are very beautiful now. You have seen the striped camellias? You would do well not to miss them. Ah, they are exquisite along the west walk. Yes, monsieur, you will find "Ambroise !" She had raised her light voice to a little complaining trill. "You are provoking, never to do an orange so well for me. Yesterday you broke the skin. To-day you do not even pay any attention " Sir Morgan Carsovan cast an annoyed glance to- ward her, held the look an instant, then permitted his newspaper to go fluttering to the floor. The recognition was sudden on his part; and as to Alma Oldenbourg, her face betrayed a sort of cpnfused pleasure. "Alma !" he cried, coming toward her on his long legs. "I say, this is a bit of luck !" "Morgan ! How in the world could it have hap- pened? And I completely mad with loneliness you welcome, welcome ghost!" Her face beamed the joy she felt truly felt, for she had not consid- 260 Pilgrims Into Folly ered how glad she would be to re-encounter this girlhood romance. "It's jolly pleasant to be haunting this garden/' he declared, regarding her with more earnestness than the speech called for. She sat wondering what his verdict would be. "You've changed a trifle," she admitted. "Yes," he agreed. "I thought you'd notice it. They all do." "I didn't mention anything." "You needn't have. But it's there nevertheless. It's the sort of disease that should be diagnosed by a preacher, I fancy psychological hookworm." He laughed and showed deep lines between the cor- ners of his mouth and the lobes of his nose. She regarded him sharply before she spoke. "Have I?" "Changed, you mean?" She nodded. "You've grown to be a woman," he announced admiringly. It was almost a literal translation of what her cousin Otto had said to her. But from Morgan Carsovan she regarded it as quite the reverse of offensive. "And oh, let's have breakfast together," she cried. "The heavenly coffee I smell it. And com- pel wretched Ambroise to cut my orange as he did yours without maiming the poor thing." The Torpedo 261 "The poor Ambroise?" enquired Carsovan with a laugh. "The poor orange, monster!" she retorted. "You can't know how it bucks me up to be with you!" he declared; and certainly his face had lost its gloomy cast of early morning. "Tell me everything, every chapter, paragraph, comma of your life since you cruelly deserted me for another. You wrote me for a year or so, then some other enchantment claimed your pen. At any rate, you stopped. Was it because I married?" "Perhaps. Or because I did." He resumed the tired voice which was, in her estimation, the domi- nant change in him. "Oh! I didn't hear. Was it Lady Ann?" "Yes," he nodded, and stopped, then added "We're no end good friends." The chastened Ambroise had laid an orange, peeled to the perfection of his art, on the plate be- fore her. She was looking down at her breakfast, making no further effort to talk, when he enquired, "Your husband is he with you ?" She laughed. "His name is with me," she said. "The rest of him has gone the way of worthless men. He was very bad." Her tone, limping slightly under its shade of foreign accent, was childishly naive. "And he went away to America." "America!" He was looking moodily over the waters of the Mediterranean. "What a place for 262 Pilgrims Into Folly broken Englishmen !" He said no more but steadily regarded the sea beyond the ilex shadows. "Morgan! You're not discouraged !" Her hand moved toward him in a movement suggesting a sort of protective pity. "I've been whining, haven't I? What a slacker you must think me! One doesn't do that sort of thing, does one? This isn't my usual matin song, Alma, you understand. But, my word! you do have a way with you." "Poof, dear Morgan," she said impulsively and gave his hand a little pat. "It seems a bit fanciful, coming out of the blue like this after we've been ten years apart," he per- sisted, just as the waiter came between them, lay- ing on their plates a golden omelette aux -fines herbes. "Yes ?" she encouraged, raising a dainty fork. "I've often thought of the way I used to open my heart to you on every subject under the sun love, sport, the land tax, the immortality of the soul. How I blabbed out a bit of everything! Never since have I met a chap I could confide in as I did in you lucky, too, or I shouldn't be in pol- itics." "Weren't we brats then?" she trilled when, breakfast finished, they were sauntering down the terrace. They walked slowly among the twisted trees, Car- sovan chatting on with a boyish enthusiasm, Alma The Torpedo 263 lending so sympathetic an ear as to span as by magic the decade since they had met. "And you always were ambitious/' she exclaimed. "I was a brat, as you said," he replied, enthu- siasm dying. "How old I must be growing ! Last week I heard a piece of news that should have brought me up standing. Instead it left me lying on the broad of my lazy back, planning my farm in America." "What's come over the man?" she queried, sol- emn eyes and laughing lips. "Mildew," he replied, then with a sudden whimsi- cal, twisted smile, "Alma, I declare, I'm wretchedly in love with you again !" "Morgan, Morgan!" She keyed her voice to a note of amused scolding. "You lost your opportu- nity ten years ago." "Pshaw! I wasn't responsible then. A man's not out of the nursery until he's thirty. Also, I wasn't quite my own master " "You left me to go tagging after Lady Ann," she laughed. "I have an appointment with a bore at ten," he announced abruptly, coming to his feet as he con- sulted his watch. "Shall I see you again?" she asked timidly, giving him her hand. "At three o'clock?" he ventured. "Shall we mo- tor out to Grasse?" "At three, I shall be so glad! Morgan, a good 264 Pilgrims Into Folly angel has sent you to me," she declared, as he de- parted. Her tone was light, but as she watched his long figure striding away, she hoped fervently that he would never come back, that some accident of fate would intervene to save him from the mine she had come to lay for him. IV They were rolling smoothly along the old Roman road between Cannes and Grasse, dealing in pretty impersonalities ; the sliding silver shadows on olive- grown hills, the wonder of Corsica, hanging like a ghostly amethyst on the blue horizon island that had changed the face of the world by sending one son across that smiling stretch of waters ! "The sea!" said Sir Morgan. "What a world of bother it has been to us poor mortals." "Poetically?" "Politically," he replied with equal brevity. "Morgan," she began, looking slantingly up at him. "You're worried. You talk as though the sea were your personal responsibility." "You flatter my conceit." "Seriously. You're letting your new cabinet ap- pointment weigh too heavily." "What's this? Who told you I had a cabinet appointment?" He faced about and put the ques- tion sharply. The Torpedo 265 "Oh, I'm sorry !" She looked truly contrite. "I never for a moment imagined that I was intruding on a secret. You told me you had received the best news in the world and for a Member of Parlia- ment of your ambition and prospects Oh, please don't scold me!" She put forth her hand in a way that never failed to mollify him. "I'm scolding myself," he apologised. "Some one ought to read you a lecture," she per- sisted. "There's surely something wrong with your soul. The youngest man in the British cabinet, ap- pointed because of your brilliancy and success, you should be jubilant you would be forgiven for an unbearable vanity. Yet here you sit questioning the winds like a blighted Hamlet." "Psychological hookworm," he smiled wearily. "Poor boy! You do need pulling together," she mused. "See, we're getting on!" he explained, sinking back into his British reserve as he pointed out the little houses closely dotting the slopes. "We'll soon be in Grasse. You've been, I suppose?" "Not for years. Oh, wonderful!" She uttered a little scream of delight, beholding troups of chil- dren bearing great baskets of red and purple petals toward the old Parfumerie which gives the world its essences. They were threading now among low, brick buildings whose cool, black courts and mossy entrances were touched, dazzling bright, with occa- sional shafts of sunlight. The air was honey-sweet 266 Pilgrims Into Folly with the attar of blossoms. Women and girls, in the dark building which Alma and her companion entered, were squatted around a big cotton sheet into which they were strewing prodigious heaps of rosy petals. "Not a man's work roses," she laughed, noting his abstraction. "No. Steel is more in our line/' said he, grim- ness settling upon his long features. She studied him closely, and again it came over her how much there had been to like and admire in this man as she had known him before. The charm he had once held for her had changed in the flux of years. Had it still a drawing power for her? . . . The heavy fragrance of roses was creating a rich spell in her blood; and the cold passion of patriotism seemed to fade, momentarily, into the colours of life. "Let's go into the hills," she said. Soon they had taken an upper path and had seated themselves on a stone where they could look down on low roofs through the silver canopy of olives. "Has Lady Ann done anything for your ca- reer?" she asked, studying him, her pointed chin in her hand. "One doesn't blame his failures to his wife, does one?" he parried. The woman wondered at her own impertinence as she continued to analyse. "You speak of a lack in you. Where is it ? Me- The Torpedo 267 diocrities aren't hoisted into cabinet positions at the age of thirty-eight. Morgan, my dear, in a fort- night every chancellery in Europe and America will be speaking of you as they do of the British Gov- ernment. If the brutalities of life have hurt and crippled you" here her voice was lowered to a be- witching sweetness "I'm sorry. I know that ache. But, ah!" She reached across and twitched him gently by the elbow. "You need shaking, my boy ! Don't sulk under canvas, my poor Achilles !" "You are dosing me with Shorter Catechism, aren't you?" His grey eyes brightened whimsi- cally. "I say, Alma " He cleared his throat. "Yes?" "If I could have that sort of lecture once a day, during my encumbency of office!" "A lecturing stenographer?" "Friend, I should call it," he answered seriously. "Between men and women that's ridiculously dif- ficult," said she. "If I were the adventuress type, now " "There ! I have made a mess of it," he exclaimed, flushing in the schoolboy fashion she recalled. "I didn't mean to take you up short," she re- lented. "I don't believe you know," said he quietly, "how close you grew to me during that year at Oxford." "You have made your own life," she tempor- ised. "You could remake it for me, I think. I should 268 Pilgrims Into Folly like to feel you in the air ; to know you were within cabbing distance of the office where I worked." They were silent for a while, then he said, "Alma, do you know, before I met you this morning, I had made up my mind to refuse that portfolio?" "Oh! You aren't going to think of such a thing!" Her light, excited tone cut the stillness of the grove. "Not now," he assured her, smiling for the first time. "You have put new fight in me. And if I could talk with you every day by Jove, I could rule Britannia!" She awoke to the fact that her hand had been resting in his; and when he raised it suddenly to his lips, she arose and moved away a step. Strange, emotional tears had risen to her eyes. Neither spoke for a time. "Will you ever come to London?" he was ask- ing. "I'm intending to go," she responded. "I have business in London I may have to go I think I may stay for a long time." Sir Morgan Carsovan was called home that eve- ning; and it was something less than three days later that Mrs. Anderson's baggage was marked for London. It was in the spring of 1913 that Alma had packed and followed the English politician to Lon- The Torpedo 269 don. It was on an afternoon in the Fall of 1915 that she sat in the living-room of her flat, looking thoughtfully out upon the dull complexion of the day. Those two years had blasted away the old stones of civilisation ; and since she had talked with her lover on an olive-grown hill overlooking a peaceful industry of roses, Europe had felt the prick of that minor political murder which, through a vicious tangle of bureaucracies, had set a dozen Empires blood-mad, had impoverished a world- finance, had turned palaces into emergency hospi- tals, had thrown the women of seven races into mourning. With fabulous flying monsters of German crea- tion infesting the mid-air over English towns ; with the Channel closed like a private trout stream, netted with chains of steel to fend off von Tirpitz's school of destructive pickerel; with few lamps burning in the London streets at night, and by day a flight of earnest oratory on every corner, lashing half -con- vinced patriots toward the colours ; with all her as- pects altered and depressed by war, the London of 1915 was a city of espionage and suspicion. Ger- manic people were counted and vised ; yet Mrs. An- derson continued to occupy her lodgings in a com- fortably middle class section of town, undisturbed by the dragnet which had sent so many of her com- patriots to the Tower. This dull afternoon found her strangely contented with her lot guiltily contented, she felt, as she 270 Pilgrims Into Folly looked out into the muggy street and awaited the arrival of the man who, by methods inscrutable to her, she had been sent to ruin. She chided herself for having permitted the sacred emotion of patriot- ism to have become so dim a light. Yet she had done dutifully all her Government had asked of her; and they had required so sublimely little. Merely that she should live as close as possible to the English statesman. Where, then, was the trea- son which her Prussian conscience would not per- mit her to overlook ? It had seemed so natural, so inevitable, the drift- ing together of her life and Carsovan's. He man- aged always to touch her sympathy somewhere, and her help went out to him impulsively, without ef- fort. He had risen on the wings of her inspiration ; he could not get on without her. And what about herself ? For these two years no word of any kind had come from the Wilhelmstrasse. Regularly, on the second of each month, a typewritten envelope had come to her by express. It had always contained twenty five-pound notes. She was going it alone, she felt ; and she realised how little she had accom- plished. There were Germans about her, keenly watching, that she was sure. Only a few weeks before, when she had ridden to the stable, a little groom who addressed her in a Cockney twang, had stupidly insisted on putting her horse in the wrong stall. The Torpedo 271 "He goes in stall Twenty, I believe," Alma had said. "Oh, no, y'r lidyship Seventeen," the small, wizened man had replied distinctly. "Seventeen is the number, you'll remember." He had said this looking her steadily in the eye, and she had suddenly recalled Cousin Otto's injunc- tion, "You will be responsible for orders to Num- ber Seventeen." The groom had never ventured out of his pro- fessional shell, but she realised, with a feeling of impending drama, that she was waiting upon Re- sponsibility. Yet to-day, as she turned occasionally and sighed her impatience into the face of the Dres- den clock on the mantel, she was the picture of any woman to whom one man means happiness. A quarter after four. Morgan should have been here a half hour ago. Again she looked thoughtfully out into the street. The face she showed was more reposeful, fuller and gentler than it had been that day at Cannes. Yes, she was too serene . . . like a sentry who allows the warming influence of sleep to steal through his veins when the enemy is lurking right over there in the dark. The door opened softly and Alma, caught un- awares, permitted herself a little cry of delight as the tall man who entered leaned down and took her in his arms. "Morgan ! I've been watching so long. I didn't see you come up." 272 Pilgrims Into Folly "I came the other way/' he answered, as he kissed her. It was easy to see that his fortieth year had brought him strength and that his eye had learned to take the measure of the world. "I walked over from the Square/' he further explained. "My cab is waiting there with some luggage and a man who " "Morgan!" she exclaimed sharply. "Where are you going? What are you intending to do?" "I've come to tell you," he began rather awk- wardly as he settled down on the couch beside her. "My dear girl, things come up now and then, in our line, which you've got to take for granted." "Oh, let me go, too !" she plead, clinging to him like a small child. "We've never been apart, even for a day. Oh, I shall be afraid !" "Leibchen!" He never abandoned that blessed word of cursed German. "I shan't go far. I shall still be in London." "But you're making a frightful mystery of it. Why are you taking your bags and saying good-bye, like this, if you aren't leaving the city?" she en- quired accusingly. "It's only this. In these desperate times one must do peculiar things. It is important, for the next few days, that I shall be absolutely alone to work out my problems. There are only two persons who know where I am going; my second secretary and Sir Robert Malloy. I am taking Robert rather The Torpedo 273 than an official associate, because there are things only a friend can do for one." "And I can't even telephone you?" she askpd. "Not even that, my dear!" "Four or five days without you." She arose and walked over to the window. "Oh, I'm scared dreadfully, dreadfully!" "My girl!" He was at her side in an instant, comforting her. "Perhaps I'm acting like what you call a slacker," she told him. "But you must remember, after all's said, I am a German. And the city is alive with with terrible things. Suppose they should find me out. Only yesterday a great mob gathered on Oxford street, threatening to burn, to tear down, to kill " Her face was white with the horror of it. "There, there," he reassured her, patting her shoulder gently. "It's not so bad as that. You're always under my protection, dear." "Morgan," she said, looking whitely up at him, "during these years we have been together, have I ever asked anything that would hamper you in your work?" "Darling, you have been the greatest help in my life. There is no counsellor in the realm who could have done as much." "Ah!" She sighed contentedly and closed her eyes. "And I don't want to be a drag. But oh, Morgan! I do so need this one thing." 274 Pilgrims Into Folly 'The one thing I can't give?" he asked, step- ping away from her. She nodded and looked down. Carsovan stood by the table, abstractedly fingering the leaves of a magazine. "Alma," he said at last. "I have always been perfectly open and honest with you too much so, everybody would say. I have ignored the fact that you are a German woman, because I know you are my wife in the highest sense of the word and can- not be disloyal to any of my principles. Isn't that so?" "Yes, Morgan. That's so." "And I am going to give you a further trust, my dear, because I don't want to leave you nervous and miserable." He seated himself at a small desk in the corner, and, with a stubbed pencil, jotted a few figures on a sheet of paper. This he folded into an envelope which he sealed and handed to her. "I'll be at that address," he explained briefly, as she took the white square. "Ah, my man!" She clasped her slim arms around his neck. "And now I must be going," he said. "I've sealed the envelope, because there's no use of your knowing, in case you don't need to know." "And if I do?" she asked, searching his eyes. "Don't hesitate. Come come direct as a tor- pedo," he jested bravely. He kissed her and she stood leaning against the The Torpedo 275 door long after she had beheld him disappear down the winding staircase. VI The little groom with the Cockney twang led her bay mare from stall Seventeen next morning. His own horse was already standing by the mounting block, she noticed; and as she was about to place her foot in the stirrup the stunted, wizened fellow looked at her impudently and addressed her in Ger- man. "Where has Sir Morgan Carsovan gone?" Alma had long since realised that this man was from the Wilhelmstrasse office; but the question, coming with uncanny conciseness in her native tongue, startled her so dreadfully that she might have fallen, had not the attendant grasped her nim- bly by the elbow. "Don't be frightened," he continued, in the same low, confident tone. "Of course you understand that I am Number Seventeen, here to give you or- ders. Where has Carsovan gone?" "I do not know," she replied faintly. "Thank you!" was all he said as he helped her to her horse, and, mounting his own cob, followed re- spectfully in the rear. Her heart was pounding desperately and she rode a few brisk miles with the feeling that the German was behind, armed to shoot her if she turned. At length, when they had reached 276 Pilgrims Into Folly a quiet stretch in Hyde Park, Alma looked nerv- ously back and observed her groom jogging along stolidly. "Smith !" She beckoned him to her side. "Yes, ma'am." "Speak German, please." "Beg pardon, ma'am?" he touched his hat re- spectfully. "None of that," she commanded. "I should like to know how you are aware of Sir Morgan Carso- van's movements." "It is our business," he replied in his native gut- turals. "And I am to give you your instructions. You are to go to Carsovan at once, and " "On whose authority?" she asked proudly. "Captain Otto von Halden's," he replied. "Otto ! He isn't in England " "Since the war began. Conducting our campaign. And you are expected to go at once to Carsovan, and " "If Captain von Halden is here, I want my in- structions from him," she cried, panic-stricken at the crisis which, thus suddenly, faced her. "I'll tell him," said the groom, and, whirling his horse rapidly, galloped away. For two hours of mortal dread Alma Olden- bourg posted along the bridle paths, dreading an encounter with her fierce Prussian relative, whom her imagination pictured in every approaching equestrian. Could she be, she thought with a sort The Torpedo 277 of puzzled shame, the girl who once flamed with nation-love and swore blood-sacrifice to her Father- land's ideal? In the fanaticism of her girlhood dream she had seen herself, in some crisis like this, rushing eagerly upon the swords of martyrdom, obeying blindly the call to which she had devoted her life as unquestioningly as a novitiate lays her golden hair upon the altar. Now the time had struck and she, a timid rabbit, was scurrying for a cranny. The groom did not come to her again during her ride, and it was another man who helped her from her horse at the stable. Her apartment was a few blocks' walk away, and momentarily during her stroll, she anticipated the unwelcome visage of Otto von Halden peering forth from every areaway. Yet she walked to her apartment unaccosted, and many hours passed in a state of dreadful waiting. About three o'clock Susan, the maid, knocked and announced : "Man to mend the gas-jet, ma'am." "Send him in," commanded Alma, all a-tremble. And as the rough-clad workman slouched into the room she did not need to look twice to recognise her cousin under the greasy cap. He had done away with his military moustache and his chin was roughly stubbled, but his eyes held their native gleam. "Close the door," she said quietly. As soon as he had obeyed, she asked : 278 Pilgrims Into Folly "Otto, what do you want of me?" "In the first place/' he demanded, regarding her sternly, "why are you attempting to evade your duty?" "I don't understand/' she parried. "Our man Schmitz came to you this morning with orders. Instead of taking them as you were ex- pected to do, you have beaten about the bush and made it so that I have had to come out in the open at the risk of my neck." "I am sorry," said she. "I was not sure of your man. How did I know he wasn't in the English service, spying on me?" "Schmitz?" Otto barked. "Didn't he tell you he was Number Seventeen?" "What do you want me to do?" she questioned directly. "You must go at once to Sir Morgan Carsovan, wherever he's hidden himself, and get something from him." "Oh!" She turned away. "Are you in love with that Englishman?" Cap- tain von Halden pinned her with those twin bul- lets. "What nonsense! Why do you ask?" She con- fronted him. "How have you gotten so close to him? Hein? A man and a woman together for over a year I suspect you have carried out my instructions only The Torpedo 279 too well in that matter. Women become senti- mental over jobs like this." "I have had my Fatherland to think of, Captain von Halden," she answered coldly. "So? I am glad you have not forgotten/' he snapped. "And now your orders." "I am to go to Sir Morgan " "Yes. He is somewhere in London, engaged on a business of great importance with nobody near him except Sir Robert Malloy. But you probably know all about that." "I know absolutely nothing," she answered coldly. "I expect you to go to him," he went on, as if he had not heard her reply, "and get away from him, without his knowing it, a bit of informa- tion." "Something he is to tell me?" she asked, puz- zled. "A code signal," said Otto. "Carsovan and Mal- loy are working with the Naval Code Book. You will find it there among his effects. You musn't take the whole book, as that would be discovered. What we want is page 60, if possible. If you can't get that, there is one signal you must copy. You'll probably find it marked in handwriting, as Carsovan is too much of a civilian to remember these ciphers, and I am told he scrawls his code-book full of ex- planations." "What is the signal you require?" " 'Slow down to half speed,' " said Otto von 280 Pilgrims Into Folly Halden. "It is absolutely necessary that you get it before ten o'clock to-morrow morning.'' "Why do you want it, just now?" asked Alma. "How can I tell?" her cousin evaded. "It is re- quired in the routine of our office." "It is too late to see him to-day," she temporised. "Nonsense!" Otto came closer and grasped her rudely by the arm. "You know as well as I that Carsovan, wherever he is, is sleeping with his work." "I I'm quite unaware of his address," she said unsteadily. "Ah !" The German held her with his fierce eyes. "This is not the sort of treason we condone." "He did not tell me where he was going," she parleyed, half hypnotised by his undeviating stare. "You are lying," he growled. "Your country and your Kaiser are calling you; and if you fail you may look to the consequences. I myself will see to it that you are given, with full account of yourself, to the English police." "You wouldn't dare!" she cried, facing about. "If I were arrested, you would go with me." "Yes. And Sir Morgan Carsovan would be handcuffed to the two of us. He would be served the finest, I tell you, for the English dearly hate a traitor." "You must go now !" said Alma wearily, and she went slowly to the door which she opened for him. The Torpedo 281 "Ten to-morrow," he said casually in English, lest lurkers might hear too keenly. The hall door had no sooner slammed upon Otto von Halden than Alma Oldenbourg settled by the window and sat idly, her hands folded in her lap. She remained a great while unmoving as though she had fallen into some strange sleep which left her upright, her eyes wide open. It was long after the street outside had darkened that she stirred a little; and even then it was to assume that attitude of thought which is so often merely the outward form of a distracted mind. It was not until, look- ing dully out upon the heavy night, she saw a shabby man shuffle into the light of a shop window at the corner that she arose and moved away. She was in a tremble for fear he would cross over to her door. And yet, thought she, her Cousin Otto, in his fanatical threats against her, had been right. There was no justification for her should she funk the job to which she had voluntarily set herself. She had made her vow years ago when her Fatherland was smiling in the enjoyment of peace and pros- perity. To-day her country's need was pathetic, desperate, terrible. And she had sworn it, "heart and brain and body," to serve her Kaiser. . . . She had no dinner that night, but lay for hours, open-eyed, on her bed. Hours more she sat, try- ing to think, losing track of time. The city was 282 Pilgrims Into Folly very still when the telephone's jangling brought her nervously to her feet. "Mrs. Anderson?" asked a voice she recognised. "This is she." "It's Smith, m'm. There's been a bit of a fire at the steyble, ma'am several 'orses killed." "My Toto!" cried she, thinking of her adored mare. "Yes, ma'am. She's 'urt some. Would it be askin' too much for you to come round and see " "I'll come," she began impulsively, then checked herself. "I think I had better wait until morning," she announced decisively and hung up the receiver. Sleep again was out of the question. Smith's solicitous message was, undoubtedly, inspired by Otto von Halden who wished to meet her in some quiet part of town and renew his persecutions. But what if poor Toto were suffering now her splen- did mount, the gift of Morgan Carsovan. It was like leaving a fine, generous friend to die alone. Once she arose and started to dress. Her intention wavered in a moment. Smith was merely acting for her cousin, she was sure. During the endless reverie of that night she saw Otto von Halden in a new light. He was treating her cruelly, yet was he not wielding the cold steel of heroism? He was here working almost single- handed against an entire nation. He was brave and untiring, like his people, like those tens of thou- The Torpedo 283 sands, following other tens of thousands who had marched against certain death and been blasted out for an idea. She alone had proven weak and cring- ing in the face of duty. About five o'clock she sank into a weary sleep. The face of Otto von Halden appeared to her at a window; broadly it glared and blood had clotted over his jaws from a horrible wound. "Don't !" she cried, too late, for he had thrown some ghastly explosive thing under her bed. "It's only me, ma'am, layin' down the breakfast things," announced a cheerful voice beside her. Alma's slowly opening eyes beheld the snub-nosed profile of Susan, the maid. "I've been dreaming," she said, sitting up. "Yes, ma'am," Susan assured her. "But ain't it gratifyin'-like to know that nothin' in life is so orful as them nightmares." Alma ate her breakfast dully and again took up the thread of her miserable problem. Otto's last words had been, "By ten." It was after eight. "I mustn't stay here!" she thought in a sudden rush of terror. "He'll come after me I can't see him!" It was half-past eight when she left the house. Should Otto call and find her away, she argued vaguely, he might call upon some other person to carry out his plan. She did not foster this idea long; for there came reeling toward her, from be- 284 Pilgrims Into Folly hind a building near the corner, a slovenly drunk- ard whose hat-brim flopped loosely over his eyes. "Are you going now to carry out orders?" asked Otto von Halden's voice close to her shoulder. "No. That is, I'm " she stammered fool- ishly. "Getting closer to ten !" he grunted. "Remember, if we go to the Tower, Carsovan goes with us." "I'll do as you say!" she consented breathlessly. VII The cab stopped at last before a small house, standing in the midst of its ugly tribe on a mean street. The door was finally opened meagrely by a short, middle-aged gentleman with eyeglasses and a small, grey moustache. "I am sorry," he told her. "The family living here is named Hughes." Alma knew this gentleman to be Sir Robert Mal- loy, but as he chose not to recognise her she merely persisted. "Oh, Sir Morgan will see me!" Her voice as- sumed its most penetrating key. "Let him have my card, if you please." The door swung on a wider arc a moment later. "Come in," invited Sir Robert Malloy coldly. In a littered, ugly, stuffy room at the head of the stairs she found Sir Morgan seated at a shabby oak The Torpedo 285 desk, an Alpine avalanche of papers threatening to descend upon him. "You shouldn't have come," was his severe begin- ning, as he closed the door behind her. In spite of his unfriendly greeting a sort of hunter's thrill went through her at that instant, for her roving eyes had caught, half concealed among papers on his desk, the treasure she had been sent to steal. The 'Book! There was no mistaking its leaden covers, weighted, in case of necessity, to sink its secrets into deep oceans. "Oh, Morgan!'' she whimpered, comprehending his look, "Morgan they've found me they won't let me alone!" And, sinking into a chair, began to cry. "Who?" he asked, casting aside his off ended mien as he tried in vain to draw her hands away from her eyes. She could not have told him, even had she dared, so fierce was the fit of weeping that came upon her. "Tell me, darling have there been detectives?" She nodded. Even now she could see how grave and driven he looked, and she bravely conquered her tears. "English detectives ?" he asked narrowly. "Yes." She lied. An impulse urged her to shout the truth, to tell the plot that had been laid against him. But the vision of Otto restrained her. "There, there!" said the Englishman, smiling wanly as he held her head against his shoulder. 286 Pilgrims Into Folly "The bobbies shan't worry you any more. I'll put a stop to that sort of thing." "How can you?" "A scrap of white paper," he announced with an artificial lightness, fumbling in a pigeon-hole. Then, "What the deuce have I done with my cards," he muttered, and, rising, went into another room. A draft banged the door behind him. Alma's courage returned as she gazed into his open desk. A corner of the Book lay full in view. This was the instant . . . noiselessly she glided to- ward the desk. Miraculously the volume opened at page 60 as she slipped it out from under cover. Something moved in the other room. She stood still as a figure of wax. Then, when the alarm subsided, she pulled at the tough page which rasped frightfully as she tore it from its binding. Before the door opened again she had crumpled it into the bosom of her dress. As Sir Morgan Carsovan re-entered the room, waving between long thumb and forefinger a half sheet of letter paper, she could see from her chair that the Book lay, as be- fore, one corner exposed under its shelter. "Can't find a thing in this jumble," he said, smil- ing, handing her the note. "Mrs. Anderson, widow of Captain Kenneth An- derson, R.N., shall be shown every attention and courtesy. "MORGAN CARSOVAN." The Torpedo 287 "And you're risking your position for me!" she cried in a low tone. "We are borrowing a great deal of trouble, dear girl/' he replied with that same terrible lightness. "Hallo!" The telephone jangled, bringing Carsovan nerv- ously to his desk. "Yes. This is he. You've got her by wireless? Good! Full speed ahead? Rather! She'll be well within the Zone by now. No fear, if she keeps that up. Jove, I don't mind telling you she's given me a bit of a turn this trip. Let me know when yes. Good-bye!" He turned upon her a face so beaming that it seemed quite natural for her to enquire: "Is it some ship in danger?" "Has been," he informed her cheerily. "Her wireless apparatus has been misbehaving and we just got word from her." He grinned comfortably. "Going full speed ahead right through the infested spot." "Is she is she the Saturnia?" The name flashed into her mind just as she spoke it. The newspapers had been full of her peril for the past few days; accounts of German warnings sent her passengers before her departure from New York; rumours of von Tirpitz's vengeance lurking in her course. Carsovan nodded a pleased affirmation. "But isn't she in danger danger of submarines?" "Not if she keeps up the clip!" he assured her. 288 Pilgrims Into Folly "Twenty-six knots an hour. There's not one of those undersea blighters that can shoot within a mile of her wake at that speed." "But suppose something happened to slow her down?" "What on earth or the waters beneath the earth could slow her down?" he asked tolerantly. "En- gine trouble ? Poof ! She's the greatest liner afloat. Her engines are like the Bank of England never fail. Alma, what's ailing you? Have you friends among the passengers?" "No. But the thought is awful. There must be a great number of women and children " "Nearly a thousand, I fancy. They'll be singing welcome home at Queenstown by four o'clock." "I must be going," she said. And she departed without a word of farewell. She gave the cabman orders to take her to the stables; and she was no sooner settled among the dusty cushions than she felt the page from the code- book chafing harshly against her bosom. So this was the tragedy which Prussia had portioned out for her. It was nearing the hour of twelve and by four o'clock, he had told her, the women and children would be singing welcome home at Queens- town. She took the wadded paper from her blouse, smoothed out its creases and made careful examina- tion. There were long columns of figures, letters and words jumbled nonsensically together. Here The Torpedo 289 and there along the margin Sir Morgan's own hand had jotted explanations in brilliant ink. "Top speed" she came to this handwritten note next to a complicated cipher. "Stand by for orders" "Turn back" "Slow down to half speed"- She read the column twice, very carefully, then began scribbling figures on an ivory tablet in her memorandum book. They were driving along the sordid block that fledged the stables; Alma stuffed the page back in her dress. VIII It was past three o'clock when she paused in mid- flight and decided to return to Carsovan. Again Malloy opened the door for her, and so terrific was the emotion which swept her along that she did not see the baronet's disapproving looks, vainly barri- cading her advance. Straight up the stairway she stormed and into Sir Morgan's workroom. The latter looked up in mild abstraction at her wild en- trance. "Back again?" he gasped, still under the seda- tive influence of work. "Yes. I have no other place to go. I can't go home they'd kill me. I've come to you, you're all my help," she told him in a terribly pinched voice that seemed to creak somewhere on broken hinges. 290 Pilgrims Into Folly "I don't understand, my dear," he was making feeble protest. She sat all crumpled up in the chair opposite to him. "Let me tell you, Morgan I've come I've come " She looked foolishly away, groping for a plausible thread. "I want you to know that I'm not what you think I am. I haven't ever been not from the day you met me at Cannes. They sent me to you there from Berlin oh, I didn't want to, not from the first!" she cried. "They sent you?" His voice sounded so de- tached that she had a miserable feeling that he was thinking of something else, had not heard her. "I should have realised then that I was the wrong woman to do it. It needed strength and, oh, Mor- gan, I'm weak! I was under orders to live close to you ; Otto told me very explicitly to do that. But when I began to understand, and see that I was in love with you I wanted to run away and desert my duty." "Alma, you've got to pull yourself together and be clear," he commanded ; and she saw for the first time how steely hard he was tightening his atten- tion upon her. "I'm trying, trying," she wandered on in the same aimless tone. *'You see, it was my duty. When I was just a young girl, shortly before I first knew you at Oxford, I joined the League and swore it with the others, to serve 'Heart and brain and body.' And when they sent me out to watch The Torpedo 291 you, I thought I could win a sort of immortality. But I'm weak, I'm weak." She repeated this de- spairing refrain over and over again. "Who have been giving you orders?" His query was sharply staccatoed, but it only brought from her the same irrelevance. "I was so happy with you. That seemed to be- come my one responsibility in life just to be happy. I must have forgotten. Only yesterday they came to me ah, Morgan, I lied to you when I said I was afraid of the police they came to me and ordered me to find you, and and carry out orders " His expression was dazed, grief-stricken, alarmed. At times he looked at her as though he doubted her sanity, then a half-consciousness of what she was trying to tell seemed to fall upon him. "It's not so bad as you think, dear," she said vaguely. "I am bad; I have lied and lived a lie these two years. But when they asked me to steal it from your desk, I " "Steal what?" he demanded sharply. "Your code-book." It was as if a poison arrow had caused him to leap in sudden pain; and his hands were on the lead-covered book before he turned to her. "It's there, you see all safe, except oh, if I could only tell it as it occurred. You went to the other room to do me a kindness. Just see what a 292 Pilgrims Into Folly traitor I am to everything! You had no sooner closed the door " "Have you been tampering with that book?" She dared a look at him and saw how everything but terror had fled his face. "Morgan, Morgan, don't condemn me till you know everything/' she plead in a small voice. "They made me do it. Can't I explain ? They threatened to expose us, to send us both to the Tower if I disobeyed. It was for you as much as me that I acted don't look at me so! See, I've brought it back to you." She fumbled in her gown and handed to him a folded scrap of paper. He gazed blankly, then spread it open upon the desk before him. "How did you get this?" he demanded at last. "I told you I tore it from your book." "Have you shown this to anybody?" he asked huskily. "No, no, Morgan that's why I've come back to you. If they had seen it I should have drowned myself in the river. But I fooled them I fooled them!" she proclaimed with a sudden fierce jubi- lance. "What did they want with it?" He laid his hand carefully on the precious page. "They wanted the 'go slow' cipher to sink the Saturnia. Don't, Morgan!" For the man's body seemed rigid with horror. "Nothing happened, I The Torpedo 293 tell you. I was too quick for them. I saved your ship/' "What could you do?" he droned lifelessly. "I copied another signal from your book and when Schmitz met me at the stable I gave it to him and told him it meant 'Go slow/ " "What signal did you copy?" asked Carsovan drily. "The one you'd marked 'Full speed ahead/ I knew it would make the Saturnia go faster, and " Carsovan arose, spectral tall, and hurled open the door. "Malloy," he called. "Here, quick!" His associate came bounding up the stairs. "Bob," asked Carsovan, "what have you heard from the Saturnia?" "Nothing for half an hour. All was well at last report. I'm trying to get the office now." The telephone on Carsovan's desk jingled. Mal- loy held the receiver to his ear only an instant, then snapped it clattering back. "The Saturnia was torpedoed at half-past two and is sinking." "What is it? What have they done?" Her clear treble cut the pause. "The Saturnia has been torpedoed," said Malloy, turning upon her. "But no! Of course it can't be how could it be?" She sat twisting one glove aimlessly between 294 Pilgrims Into Folly frail fingers. " Where did they get the code signal ? Not from me! I told you the truth I gave them the wrong cipher purposely. Oh, what have I done?" There was perfect calm in the room. Out of it at last Carsovan's voice drawled, cracked and thin like the deathbed sarcasm of an old, old man. "I'll tell you what you've done. The page you stole from the book was marked with explanations ; yesterday's signals were reversed for today. The signal you saw marked 'Full speed ahead' was ac- tually the one now in use for 'Slow down to half speed.' That's what you've done sunk the Sa- turnia." Malloy, his face set to the unbending frown of a condemning angel, stood in the door. "Aren't you going to do anything?" he thun- dered at Carsovan. "Nothing," Carsovan answered. "Then I must," said Malloy and left them alone. Carsovan's look was that of a man for whom the future had been burnt away by disgraceful fires. Alma sat, faded and limp, like a small pink rose that had been stepped on. And when she spoke it was in the childish plaint of the weak and futile, world without end : "I didn't mean to do it ! I'm sorry sorry " THE IDEAL GENTLEMAN THIS is why Henry Brown, valet, abruptly quit the service of Ronald Hild, actor, for whom he had slaved for nine long years. Henry, tall, lean, sallow, by race some fashion of cockneyised Latin, came late one night to the great man's dressing-room and revealed the cause of his irritating delay: his wife had brought forth a child a week ahead of expectations. Henry was nerv- ously elated something different from the doglike servitor Hild had patronised these many seasons. "We're all in the lap of the gods," said the pom- pous actor as he pencilled his lashes. "Didn't know you were married." "Oh, yes, sir," answered Henry, doing homage at his master's bootlaces. "She was Miss Leclaire, sir you know she danced in the notch-gel scene, sir, before the 'ouse of the Sultan!" "Oh !" Hild vaguely remembered a plainish little English person who had faded from view less than a year ago. "And what shall we name the heir ap- parent Ronald Hild Brown, perhaps?" "Oh no, begging your pardon, sir. I want to name him after a gentleman, sir." 295 296 Pilgrims Into Folly Hild turned from his mirror and cast rebuking eyes at Henry. "A good name come to me this arfternoon, Mr. 'lid/' the valet went on. "Sam, the programme boy, gave it to me with some flowers to take to the 'ospital. Sam says, says he, ' 'Enry, it's too bad you'll be away to-night/ he says; 'it's going to be a great 'ouse. All the swells will be there. Be- cause why ? Because Mr. Norris J. Vanderhuyden, from Newport, will be occupying Box A, with 'is party/ Then the name come to me like a flash. Norris Vanderhuyden Brown that's the proper title for my boy." "Poor babe!'* The actor made comic moan. "Blighted in infancy !" "He needn't use it all at once, perhaps/' Henry qualified. "He could just sign it 'Norris V./ short- like, American style. But I'm very particular he should be named for Mr. Vanderhuyden, because that's the ideel gentleman I see him growing up to be used to horses, yachts, 'ighbred ladies, every- thing that goes with the part. The boy mayn't have the means to do all that, Mr. Tld, but I want him to start with a name to admire. And he ain't going to be raised a servant." There was an embarrassed stiffness in the valet's manner as he eased his master into his waistcoat. "There's something else, sir, if you don't mind." "Say on, my boy," responded Hild. He was The Ideal Gentleman 297 growing a trifle wearied by Henry's confidences and preferred to keep his mind on himself. "I wanted to ask if you'd take it unkind if I resigned my situation ?" "Going to quit me ?" Hild was plainly astounded. "It's not my own initiative, sir. You see, when I first began making up to Miss Leclaire that was, she took me for an actor, because you was so good as to let me come on the stage wearing a turban and say 'Allah ! Allah !' with the mob in the big Orien- tal scene. Yes, sir, I was vain-like and let her think I was an actor." "And she was disappointed to learn her husband was a valet?" "Something awful! But it ain't her so much I mind." The man's pose was drooping and awk- ward. "It's the baby. When I first looked at the little nipper lying there all bald and pink, some- thing struck me hard, and I says: 'No child of mine is ever going to be a servant or the son of a servant.' Maybe you'll understand, sir." "Hand me my hat!" commanded Ronald Hild. "But what are you going to do, Henry?" "I could start very small, indeed I could. May- be you would be so kind as to find me a clerical situation, in the box-office counting tickets, per- haps?" Hild was plainly indignant. He was going to lose a precious slave that the world might gain a human being. Also the pathetic appeal in Henry's 298 Pilgrims Into Folly voice incensed him as something unsuitable to the wooden life of a valet. "Henry/' he said, and his voice was not encour- aging, "I've looked after you for quite a while, and I think it's my duty to tell you the plain truth about yourself. Don't harbour any foolish delusions about life. Do your job and do it well; that's all God or man can ask of you. As a servant you're a dignified, human item; as something else, you'd be a cipher. Sometimes I'm tired to death of being an actor, but I refuse to take up law or portrait- painting. Simply because I'm trained for another field. Think over your talents, Henry. You can make the greatest servant in the world, but you'll never be anything else, because servitude is blown in the glass of your character." "You mean you can't help me, sir?" Henry Brown's face was very white, his lips pressed to- gether, his eyes lowered. "Don't be absurd, my boy," said Hild in a more kindly tone. "Then I fear I must give you two weeks' notice, sir." "Oh, go at once if you like." The eminent actor extended his hand toward the doorknob, but his slave was there as usual to bow him out. The Ideal Gentleman 299 ii The door with the scratched panels, overlooking the third dusty flight in Mrs. Macey's theatrical es- tablishment, had closed upon many despairs and opened to many revelations. It was nearly two months now since Henry Brown had resigned his valetry. The wiry Mrs. Brown, counting the birth of her child as a mere incident in her life of trial and effort, had returned weeks ago to her nautch- girl allurements in Mr. Hild's romantic production. Seasoned to music-hall society, inured to hard knocks, she saw no reason in the world why she should not turn the care of her baby over to Lyla Moore, an unemployed dancing partner who occu- pied the room next the Browns at Mrs. Macey's. Meanwhile Henry's career as a business man had added nothing to his pride of hers. A friend had helped him to a chore-boy's job in the offices of a gas company where he had worked two days, and found himself at last confusedly facing the traffic of Fourteenth Street, the insults of an angry super- intendent ringing in his ears. He had applied for work as a subway guard, had stumbled through a misty day as supernumerary in a moving-picture rehearsal and as a last disastrous adventure had bought a gross of electric-economy-flatirons, of which he had sold two and smuggled the rest under 300 Pilgrims Into Folly his white enamelled bed in Mrs. Macey's boarding- house. On a moist, depressing night in early June he re- turned late. As he grasped the knob of the door with the scratched panel, he could hear the feeble, irritating cries of his child in the next room, coming brainlessly, with the squawk of a mechanical toy. Martha, his wife, was sitting in a sky-blue kimono at the foot of the bed. She was a very disagreeable woman, it struck him at that moment, her scant, stringy peroxide hair f rowsled down her back. The valet in him saw instantaneously the pinched cruelty of her face, the coarseness of her complexion, her violence and fury. He said nothing at first, but hung his overcoat on the closet door. "Well," she drawled, after an interval of provok- ing silence, "back again!" Her round china-blue eyes regarded him scornfully as she spoke. "Who's minding the baby?" he asked sharply. "Lyla Moore. She's just stepped out." "What price that !" he growled, harking back to the water-front of Liverpool. "Don't come the fatherly on me, Henry Brown," shrilled the woman. "I don't see you providing much for care and comfort. Who's earning the bread and butter in this little home? If you want a fancy nurse for the baby, do it yourself. You ought to know, being a valet by trade." Without a reply Henry Brown strode into the next room, where he found the plaintive Norris V. The Ideal Gentleman 301 lying uncovered on Miss Moore's three-quarters bed. He lifted the child carefully in his arms, and the crying ceased. Thus burdened, he opened the door with the scratched panel and confronted his wife. The veins in the baby's white forehead showed blue, he could see, and there was something precociously apelike in the sickly face which puck- ered under the gaslight. "Looks scrawny!'' commented the husband. "Takes after his father," drawled the wife. "He's going to be a heap better than the old man," answered Henry doggedly as he pressed his burden tighter. "He'll have a chance, he will." "What chance? What chance?" She turned her chair suddenly and faced him with all the splenetic fury of a thwarted cat. "When I married you, I thought you was an actor a ham actor, perhaps, but something better than a valet." "I ain't a valet any more," replied Henry quietly. "I'm doing the best I can," he defended himself. "Best you can! Why don't you swallow your servant's pride and go back to Mr. Hild ? He's will- ing to take you he knows what you're good for a valet, a flunky." "I won't do that." Henry Brown's servile face looked suddenly strong as he stood there defiantly holding his child. "I told him I wouldn't be a valet no more, and so I won't. I am proud, as you say." "Run for Mayor of New York, if it does you any good!" 302 Pilgrims Into Folly "I've a good situation offered me. It ain't what you or I wanted, perhaps, but there's good wages in it and a chance to make more, and I can rub up against important people and look around for some- thing better." "The Duke of Norfolk speaks." She arose from her chair, stiff and slovenly with the fatigue of her night's work. "You can't fool me, Henry Brown. I'm onto you, boots and wig. I saw what you brought into this room, so sly and quiet last night." "Now, Martha!" protested Henry. He was white, and like a man preparing for a personal en- counter, he laid his sleeping child carefully on the bed. With one indignant bound, the wife rushed to the closet. Too agile for Henry's obstructing hands, she reached into the depths and dragged forth a pasteboard box which she threw so violently into the room that it burst its cover, and its con- tents were scattered across the floor. It was a rum- pled dress suit which lay at Henry's feet. "You're going to be a waiter!" she screamed. "You're going to be a waiter!" Henry Brown backed against the wall and re- garded her for a long time with his pathetic, intelli- gent brown eyes. "What if I am?" he said at last. "It's the swell- est restaurant in New York only temporary, just as I told you." "Once a flunky, always a flunky," quoth Mrs. Henry Brown, slamming the closet door. "Mean- The Ideal Gentleman 303 while you're broke, and I'm being both father and mother to your precious child. We won't worry you and your high ambition much longer. Me and Lyla has signed a contract with the Alhambra, Lon- don, twelve pounds a week, split." "Who takes care of our baby?" asked Henry, relaxing. "Can youf" enquired his wife with rasping sar- casm. "No ! You can fuss and rant all you please about his fine education, but when it comes to sup- plying the grub, it's me that does it. Go your way with those fancy dreams, Henry Brown! Work your way as high as you please by dint of your won- derful brain. Meanwhile I'm paying the rent arid I'm boss; and I say git out that's what I say." The woman had worked herself up to a passion; her scrawny hair was straggling, her fair complex- ion violet with rage. Without a word, Henry Brown began drawing on his faded, greenish-blue overcoat. His hands trembling, his dark eyes swim- ming, he bent for a moment over the baby on the bed. "Martha," he said at last, "you're a good sort when you ain't crusty. Take good care of Norris V., old girl, and when I'm up in the world I'll come over with all that's needed and make a gentleman out of him." Mrs. Henry Brown, whose features were set to a look of stony hate as she stood before the mirror, 304 Pilgrims Into Folly making a show of fixing her hair for the night, vol- unteered no comment. "And Martha/' he pleaded timidly, as he laid a hand lightly on her arm, "don't you ever tell him don't you ever let him know his father's been a servant." "No fear/' she drawled without looking around. "I wouldn't shame him with it/' in Many seasons ago Henry Brown's wife, raging querulously in a sordid boarding-house, had said to him: "Once a flunky, always a flunky." She was not an educated woman, but certainly she was a practical scholar of life; for eight round years after her scornful prophecy her ambitious spouse was found, more carefully dress-suited now and pol- ished to the uses of his trade, standing in a group of waiter-captains just inside the gilt-embowered dining-room of Tanquay's, New York's most fa- voured restaurant. Perhaps you were sufficiently prodigal to engage a table with magenta lights under a Flemish tapestry at Tanquay's during that period. If so, you would have encountered Henry Brown, but not by that name, for the public now addressed him as "Pierre." It was getting to be rather the thing to call for Pierre at Tanquay's; he was never officious and The Ideal Gentleman 305 bustling as many captains of waiters are. He had a kind and modest way of adjusting himself to your appetite, and although he abhorred the artless feeders who insisted on onions with their venison, yet even here he made his distinctions in diplomatic shadings. For eight years Pierre had arisen at Tanquay's, steadily, easily, from 'bus-boy to cap- tain, displaying always so perfect a feeling for his art that Alphonse, the famous head waiter, had twice recommended him to Mr. Tanquay himself. Upon Pierre's rare absences from post, the most important diners at Tanquay's were getting into the habit of asking after his health. Fame can go little further. But had you observed the human, unoffi- cial, under-the-skin Pierre one November night as, in his public manner, he stood talking bad French to a group of servants just inside the florid door of Tanquay's dining-room, you would have seen that he was neither a contented nor a successful man. His deep-lined, homely face, more settled and worldly than of old, held the look of one who is mysteriously ashamed. In fact, Pierre, the waiter, was all very well; but Henry T. Brown, father of Norris Vanderhuyden Brown, had for these eight years been making weak excuses to his conscience. To-night, as upon almost every night since his service at Tanquay's, Pierre was obliged to look the shameful fact between the eyes. He was un- worthy to be the father of his son. Fate had poured him into a canal from which there was no 306 Pilgrims Into Folly divergent stream and he was making good money unworthily in an atmosphere he detested. It was rather before the dinner hour when Pierre ' stood thus in review of his regrets. Tablecloths were being adjusted, final touches being added to* Tanquay's excellent dinner service. The staff of captains near the door and a few favoured waiters gossiped and planned and quarrelled. Alphonse the celebrated was not yet there to marshal his forces, and to this absence might be attributed the general laxity of discipline which caused 'bus-boys to slouch in corners, joking in Swiss German, and even the starchiest captains to indulge in sly confidences. Suddenly there loomed in the doorway a Pres- ence. All along the line there was a magic, psy- chological stiffening into discipline as though a kaiser had unexpectedly ridden upon a trench and found his soldiers shirking duty. The man at the door was short, stout, florid of complexion and at- tired in a suit of pin-check pattern. Mr. Tanquay seldom appeared in his dining-room, and his visits were epochal. His small grey eyes swept the space before him and settled finally upon the form of Pierre, standing with a correctly servile droop at his station beside the door. The proprietor crooked a fat finger, and the hosts of servitors quailed within as the one-time Henry Brown stepped forward and faced the man who owned his destiny. /^"Pierre," said Mr. Tanquay in a quiet voice, "Al- U)honse is no longer with us." The Ideal Gentleman 307 "Yes sir." The proprietor eyed his employe critically for a look of unwaiterlike surprise. "Hereafter you will take charge of the dining- room/' "Very good, sir." Again the kingly eye of Mr. Tanquay swept his demesne, and without another word he turned on his heel, having thus lightly conferred upon Pierre a title which meant nobility in waiterdom. Pierre stepped back into the dining-room and as- sumed his new leadership with modest efficiency. He realised that the head waiter whose successor he had so suddenly become had earned as much as thirty thousand a year in tips and perquisites the eminence of his position had made him famous in two continents and a man to be envied. "Good evening, Captain Annister!" A neat, slender, evening-clad figure, somewhat under middle age, stood in the doorway, and to this apparition Pierre bowed if not lower, at least with more admiration than was his wont. Captain Ce- dric Annister, R. N. (retired with merit), cast his clear, grey, rather arrogant eyes over the dining- , room and barely touched one tip of the well-twisted blond moustache which effectively divided his high- bridged, spirited nose from his small, sensitive mouth. "Good evening, Pierre. A bit higher up, I see," Captain Annister said, smiling slightly; and Pierre knew that the Englishman, instinctive to all the arts 308 Pilgrims Into Folly of good living, had immediately sensed his promo- tion. "Yes, Captain." Pierre in turn smiled discreetly and showed this favourite patron over to his regu- lar tabta/directly beneath the wounded knight in the G(?thic tapestry. A gilt chair was pushed re- spectfully under Captain Annister's well-clad knees. Almost reverentially a menu-card was proffered to this epicure who, although he had frequented Tan- quay's only for a matter of six months, had already established his prestige. Pierre's admiration for the man almost rivalled his idealisation of that prince of gentlemen, Mr. Norris J. Vanderhuyden, after whom he had named his son and whose brilliant so- cial career he had followed eagerly in newspapers and restaurant gossip. What won the heights of the waiter's regard for Captain Annister was his absolute taste in food and drink. His palate was attuned to the highest achievement in the culinary art a fine cut or a rare bird cooked with loving regard for its natural flavour and served without the dishonourable mask of spiced sauces. "The Southdown lamb is ready to-night, Captain Annister," Pierre announced as soon as the Cap- tain was seated. "Of course, it's not on the card." Annister looked at Pierre a moment, fixedly, coolly, after the manner of an officer inspecting the rank and file. "I knew it was due you see I am here to meet The Ideal Gentleman 309 it," he replied at last, never moving his clear, fine eyes. "You've been quite a stranger lately, sir. The place has missed you/* Pierre was so bold as to venture. "No doubt." There was no revealment in the Englishman's manner of reply. "Benoit did the lamb rather well when you had it here before. You might serve with it potatoes the way I fancy them, and also French peas as I have told you to do them you know cooked under glass." "Mr. Tanquay has been very much impressed by the peas, Captain. He has had them named for you and put on the bill petits pois Annister." "Thank him for me." He turned upon the head waiter a smile that was kindly patronising. "Pierre, what sort of a cook do you think I would make?" "Excellent !" replied Pierre solemnly. "But then a gentleman " "Wouldn't do that sort of thing?" Annister sup- plied by a query. "There have been more dishon- ourable professions. And Pierre, I'll have a pint of my usual brand." The wine thus lightly men- tioned was from a private stock of claret opened only for a few of Tanquay's best patrons. "And mind you don't boil it as you did last time." Pierre went about the business of gratifying the Captain's wishes to-night with especial gusto. In his new capacity as head waiter he felt a sense of 310 Pilgrims Into Folly increased responsibility toward the whims of this polished worldling to whom his waiter-soul ever paid tribute. His gentle, unobtrusive skill at snub- bing subordinates without waste of words, his cor- rect manner of requesting service, his air of breed- ing and the impression he so effortlessly conveyed of expending the interest from a substantial for- tune without the braggadocio of extravagance these were the merits which causedr Pierre to sigh adoringly : "Ah, there's a gentleman !" And as he sighed, he thought of his son. / The Captain's dinner was short, after the correct tradition of a gentleman about to go to the opera. When coffee was at last drawn from percolator to cup, the head waiter stood by the Captain's chair in an attitude which conveyed something beyond mere professional solicitude. The epicure set down his cup and granted the man at his side a look of ap- proval. "Excellent !" he said. "The lamb was very good you might tell Benoit." "Thank you, sir," replied Pierre, more gratefully, perhaps, than the compliment required. "I appre- ciate that from you, sir and " He advanced a nervous step nearer, for his important patron had paid his check and was making a movement as if to depaj^X^nd, Captain Annister, if I might not seem to take advantage " "Yes, Pierre?" Two fine eyebrows were arched upward. The Ideal Gentleman 311 "Would it be taking too much of your valuable time if I told you something about myself? It would be only a minute, sir." He stood dazzled by his own temerity, realising how serious the conse- quences might be for him should this exalted being choose to interpret this plea as an impertinence. "I have a few minutes, Pierre. What is it?" Annister smiled. "Alphonse is gone, as you noticed, sir, and I've been raised to head waiter here." He leaned some- what closer and spoke rapidly, but with quiet re- spect. "The rise is important to me, because I'll be rich, in a way, and I've got a son." "That's fortunate for the little fellow, isn't it?" replied the Captain sympathetically. "It should be, but I'm puzzled. You see, sir, my whole heart and soul was for that boy but my wife took him away from me eight years ago and I prom- ised her I'd never shame him by seeing him and letting him know I was a servant until I got out of this. His mother died last fall, and he's now in charge of an actress living in Paris. I'm still a servant, Captain a successful one, if I might say so, but still a servant. And my kiddie must never know." Had Captain Annister looked around, he would have beheld the story of all human misery in the man's face. "I see," replied Annister without revealing any emotion. 312 Pilgrims Into Folly "But I want him to be brought up proper. I want him to have the right clothes and manner. I want him to have class, to see everything and travel with the best people like he had a family to do him proud." Captain Annister looked quizzically at the head waiter, who had lapsed into embarrassed silence. "You're in a bit of a tangle, I take it," said the latter at last. "But then, it's jolly good luck you're making enough to support the little nipper." "It's just that point which is bothering me, sir," Pierre resumed. "Oh?" A slight turning in the chair indicated to the professional waiter that his customer was im- patient to go. At the risk of committing a brash indecorum, Pierre went on : "If it wouldn't be presuming, sir, I should like to ask some advice in regards to my boy." "But what could I do?" asked the Englishman, looking away. He was obviously becoming an- noyed. "It's only a hint I'm asking, and I wouldn't bother you, except it's the sort of thing you'd know better than anybody. You see this sudden rise in wages makes it so I can do a lot more, just as you say, sir. And I was wondering if you didn't know, sir I was wondering if you couldn't call to mind some gentleman out of funds who would undertake, for a good salary, to go over to Europe and make a gentleman out of my boy?" The Ideal Gentleman 313 Pierre's eyes were lowered, and lie was making a fussy show of arranging the table. His request had been horribly disrespectful that he sensed ; and he should never have spoken so, had he not been desperate with the great sacrificial passion of his life. His suspicion was justified by the way in which Captain Annister took it. 'That's rather a queer thing to ask me!" he drawled, rising slowly and meting out just fee from the tray of small change on the table. Pierre, as he followed him out, bowing, saw a vision of sudden disgrace in this calamitous performance. This in- fluential customer, annoyed by his unwaiterlike con- duct, would report him to the management. "Captain Annister, sir, I'm sorry/' he managed to say. "You needn't apologise," replied Annister stiffly, and strode out. Pierre stood among his subordi- nates, utterly forgetting the responsibilities of his position as forlornly he watched the black-clad fig- ure of the man he reverenced as a superior being disappear into the lobby. So deep was Pierre's despondent abstraction that he was not aware of his surroundings until a Swiss captain of waiters addressed him deferentially in guttural French. "Captain Annister wishes to see you outside." "He has already reported me," thought Pierre gloomily as he followed his guide. "Mr. Tanquay will probably be waiting there too, and I'll get the pink ticket before everybody." 314 Pilgrims Into Folly Somewhat to his relief, he discerned Captain An- nister, swaddled in his fur-lined overcoat, standing alone on the strip of red carpet near the flower- stand. His expression, however, looked to be one of dignified severity. "Pierre," he said loftily, as soon as the other had approached with proper respect, "that was a pe- culiar request, now, wasn't it coming from a head waiter on duty?" "Yes, sir, I realise that, sir, and I apologise again." He spoke now without any professional re- serve, and tears were plainly in his eyes. "I want you to see it the way I do, Captain. The boy's the only living thing in the world I ever loved or be- longed to." "As a matter of fact, Pierre," drawled Captain Annister with his usual lofty expression, "I've been considering the case very carefully " There was a terrifying pause as though doom impended for the unrighteous. "I've been thinking your case over," he repeated, "and I've come to the conclusion that I can find the man you want." "Oh, thank you, Captain!" mumbled Pierre, giddy with the joyful surprise of it "You want a gentleman temporarily embarrassed for funds, as you say. One who is used to the world, good living and spending money well, and all that sort of thing." Annister still spoke in that oddly, constrained voice. "Yes, sir," replied Pierre eagerly. "He should The Ideal Gentleman 315 teach my son how to get on with tiptop families. He should have class, sir." "Yes class !" The Englishman touched the vul- gar word. "Could you find the gentleman soon, sir?" Pierre pleaded. "You can regard him as hired on the spot," An- nister replied enigmatically. "But Captain, perhaps he might not like the ar- rangement. If I might say so, who is the gentle- man you suggest I employ to tutor my son?" The Englishman fixed Pierre with his clear, con- descending gaze ; and his answer, when it came, was of such a nature as to shatter all Pierre's precon- ceived notions of the law of gravitation. "The gentleman I have in mind," said Captain Annister, "is myself." if IV The month was December, and four years had elapsed since Annister's peculiar reply. On the verandah of the Grand Hotel, overlooking the bay of Naples, sat Captain Annister this afternoon, in riding-clothes. He was tired to-day, owing to sev- eral months of hard campaigning; and inwardly he wished that the boy, Norris Vanderhuyden Brown, might continue his jaunt with desirable compan- ions an hour or so longer and thus leave him peace. Casting indolent glances over the blue waters be- 316 Pilgrims Into Folly low, Annister permitted himself a feeling of pride. True, this wasn't the sort of work a gentleman would choose as a vocation, but he had fulfilled his office in the highest spirit of honour. He had worked four years with the boy, had used the nobly impoverished name of Annister in order to intro- duce Norris into the best of English schools, had employed Pierre's lavish allowances honestly in the places where it would do the most good, had taught the waiter's son to avoid base associates while shun- ning snobbish ideals. This course had cost Pierre about three thousand pounds a year; and Annister, his eyes fixed upon sleepy Southern waters, wondered if the head waiter had not received more than hi's money's worth. br example, the Englishman had gone to no end of pains this week to introduce Norris to little Lord Thornkyl, through the Earl of Kraik, his father, whom the Captain had known at Harrow. "Not included in the contract," mused Annister with more than usual cynicism, as he called a waiter and de- cided that a dash of brandy would add consolation to the watery glass before him. The sacrifices he had made of his family name were indeed a heavy toll to pay for his good living. Yet the boy Brown, irrespective of origin, had won his way to the Cap- tain's heart. Norris was growing up and learning to think for himself to ask questions. Questions! How much longer could Annister continue with the sophistries he had chronically employed to ward off The Ideal Gentleman 317 the evil hour? At any rate, Norris must never see his father, must never know himself as the son of a servant. . . . A small boy in an Eton jacket and broad collar appeared through an obscure door and gazed eag- erly about the verandah. He was a good-looking lad, with his father's Southern eyes and his mother's English complexion. He bore himself well, confi- dently, but without a swagger, and when he spoke, his words were accented in the London manner. "Hello, Uncle Ced!" "Ah, Norris ! Sit down, my boy. Here's a letter for you they've been holding it with our mail at Amalfi." The Captain handed a white square to the boy. "It's from Father," said Norris. These epistles came at six-monthly intervals and were usually brief. Norris read this letter quietly and passed it over to his instructor. It was written on plain white paper of excellent quality, with the line "Henry T. Brown, New York," embossed at the head. The handwriting was of a too businesslike correctness, and ran: My dearest son: Are you well and attending to studies? Write me a lot more than you do, because you must re- member your poor old daddy's lonesome away off from you and wants to know you're thinking about him as he's thinking about you all the time. I want you to mind Captain Annister and do everything he 318 Pilgrims Into Folly says. He is the finest gentleman I know, and can teach you all sorts of things which will make me proud of you. I want your life to be full of happiness, dear boy not the wrong kind of happiness which will bring you into bad company and low ideas, but the kind that makes you grow straight and not the servant of any man. Take plenty of exercise out of doors, the way the best people do. Learn how to be good to dependents under you without giving in too much. Keep your eyes always on the finest thoughts and deeds and appearances there are in the world. Let people instruct you, my dearest son, never forget and always write to Your affectionate father, HENRY BROWN. "Your father loves you a great deal," said An- nister suddenly, regarding the boy. "Then why doesn't he want to see me?" asked young Brown. He was casting moody glances over the sea. "Well, laddie, been jaunting about with Bobbie?" Annister enquired lightly, evasively. The Bobby referred to was the young Lord Thornkyl. "Yes, Uncle Ced," replied the boy briefly. "Hitting it off a bit well?" "Rather a good sort," announced Norris. "Bobby travels about with his father quite a bit every year." His tone was again sinking to the minor key. "They're no end good pals. We've been talking about fathers." The Ideal Gentleman 319 "Bobby and you?" Annister pretended a vast serenity. The boy nodded. "Bobby knows all about his father. He was Colonel in the Black Watch, and was promoted to Major General after the battle of Mafeking. They made him an Earl in nineteen hundred when his brother Clarence died, and " "My word! What have we here? The Alma- nach de Gotha?" chuckled Annister, but somewhat uncomfortably. "Then Bobby began asking me about my father. I tried to think of something something to say. Uncle Ced, I couldn't fib now, could I ? So I just told him Father was a bit of a top-holer in the States." "Right, my boy !" said the Captain. "But he wasn't satisfied with just that. He said Americans made money in bally queer ways, and he wanted to know how Father got his. Bobby's a bit of a cad, / say!" the boy blurted out with sudden petulance. "Tut! Tut !" the Captain admonished "And then he wanted to know he wanted to know " Norris V. was making manful effort to suppress ungentlemanly tears. "Out with it, sonny !" Annister urged in a kindly tone. "Oh, Uncle Ced Father isn't in trade, is he?" The question came in a horrified half -whisper. "In trade! Ha! Rather not!" The Captain 320 Pilgrims Into Folly leaned over and laid a gentle hand on the boy's shoulder. "He holds a very high position er office in the States/' Annister was as glib as possible. "I don't think it would be going too far to say that he is one of the most important men in New York. It's a bit hard to explain/' "Is he Lord Mayor of New York?" Norris asked ...- hopefully. "Well, not that, just." Annister stalled for a moment ; then he added as by inspiration : "But he often entertains the Lord Mayor mayor they call 'em over there at his table. Your father's enter- tainments are famous, Norris. The President of the United States, the Duke of Connaught, great statesmen and celebrities everybody that is any- body, I dare say, has dined with your father first and last." "I'm glad you told me that, Uncle Ced." The boy thanked his tutor with his expressive eyes. Then suddenly: "I say, Uncle Ced Father hasn't done anything wrong has he?" "Have a care, sonny !" Annister' s tone was genu- inely severe. "That sort of a thing isn't asked, you know." "I'm sorry," said Norris, but he looked no less moodily out to sea. The Captain, mindful of the sacrifices which The Ideal Gentleman 321 father had made for son, turned again to his young ward, this time sternly. all honourable men I know, Pierre is - " ^ he began, and clipped short his words. The boy's keen eyes were upon Annister' s face. "Pierre !" Norris caught up abruptly. The Cap- tain averted his glance. "Pierre!" repeated the boy more questioningly. Annister could not meet the searching gaze. "Pierre Pierre ugh ! Who's Pierre? You said that oddly. Pierre ! That sounds like a head waiter. Half the head waiters in the world are Pierres." For a moment Norris paused. There was a heavy silence before the boy shot out: "Is my father known as Pierre, Uncle Ced?" "Only to his intimates, lad," declared Annister, regaining himself. A little longer those eyes lingered on the Cap- tain's face ; then Norris got up. "Pierre," he repeated once more quietly, and walked away. ^**** Annister remained seated by his glass as the boy- ish form disappeared through the small door. An- nister wondered if he had not, in his honest, blun- dering English way, let out the secret which he had guarded for years. Like some genie, respondent to his thoughts, a servant appeared through the same small door which had just swallowed up the boy, and laid a 322 Pilgrims Into Folly cablegram envelope on the table beside the Captain, who broke the seal and read : Come back with Norris immediately. PIERRE. So Henry Brown had chosen to break the wall of silence between himself and his son. Why? Mr. Tanquay, a trifle more toadlike of figure, a carat more expensive of scarfpin than upon the day when first he tapped Pierre for knighthood in head- waiterdom, occupied broadly, patiently, the chintz- covered rocker which he had filled this long half- hour since the figure of Pierre, stooped, attenuated, bald-headed, had followed a nurse behind the se- cretive mahogany door of Dr. Bendorp, fashionable specialist. Mr. Tanquay pulled his moustache. He was con- science-stricken to reflect how he had overworked this important cog to his restaurant-machine. . . . He hoped Pierre wasn't going to be seriously ill, right in the midst of the big season. Leaning against the bookshelves near the door, Mr. Tanquay permitted the leaves of Irving's "Sketch Book" to flutter through his fingers. Cer- tainly the doctor was taking his time to it in there. The Ideal Gentleman 323 There were long silences, and once he heard Pierre's voice speaking at length in what sounded like a pathetic monologue. Now came the squeak of casters rolling across the floor ; again there was the subaqueous clatter of some instrument being soz- zled in water, then more droning talk. Pierre had done enormously well, reflected Mr. Tanquay; he had been an invaluable commercial asset, and this thought added a glow of warmth to his musings. His faithful head- waiter had cleaned up enormously in gratuities these four years. Sly old dog ! What was he doing with his coin ? The voice of the physician behind the door rose to a stronger, more authoritative key; the click of steel against glass, too, became more insistent. Then the door itself opened slowly at last, and Pierre, followed by certain rumbling instructions from the dictator within, came forth into the re- ception-room. "Anything serious ?" enquired Mr. Tanquay, so- licitously taking his friend's arm. "Doctor's talk/' grinned Pierre. "Nothing really wrong. Thinks I ought to take these." He waved a sheaf of prescription-blanks. "It's ten-thirty," answered the restaurateur. "I've got a taxi outside and we can get in and spin around the Park." Such a diversion was a novelty to the hard grind of Tanquay's, and Pierre wondered vaguely what the proprietor was scheming now. It was not until 324 Pilgrims Into Folly their vehicle had rounded the turn up Fifth Avenue that the subject was ventured. "Brown " said Mr. Tanquay, using Pierre's genuine name, as he always did, and laying a fat palm on his friend's lank knee. "In the first place, Brown, I want to say it plain and simple you're an exceptional man. That's why I picked you out." "It's very obliging of you to speak that way," Pierre acknowledged, but without servility, because he never forgot that Tanquay had himself been a waiter. "There's one thing has kept me puzzled about you for years." Tanquay poked a black cigar under his moustache. "You're a riddle, Brown. Nearly all head-waiters get stuck on themselves sooner or later. In some of them it's a charm; in others it gets to be a positive nuisance. In your case I think it would add a lot to your manner pride in your profession, Brown. The biggest actors have it; the leaders of society eat and drink it why, look at that doctor who just soaked you ninety dollars for a fifty-cent prescription. He's oozing with it. Now, why haven't you got any of it, Brown?" "I'm only a servant, Tanquay." His voice was tired and sad. "Only a servant! Why, man alive, don't you know you're the greatest servant in America? Travelling dukes and steel kings and theatrical man- agers ask for you and won't accept a substitute. In The Ideal Gentleman 325 a year, Brown, I don't mind saying it now there's a chance for you in the partnership." "In a year !" echoed Pierre, and his voice seemed miles removed. "In a money way, you've cleaned up a great deal more than I have, during the past season. The big- gest swells in the land think it the compliment of their social career to have you bow to 'em and call 'em by name. Servant! Why, Brown, you're an ambassador." "That's one way of looking at it," mused Pierre. "I'm not criticising your style," Mr. Tanquay persisted. "But I'm just suggesting that something might get under your skin and make a lot more money for you and me. You're a famous man, Brown. You're being watched and copied by head- waiters in the big European restaurants. You have done more to make Tanquay 's the vogue than Benoit's cooking or Lurline Mahoney's roof-danc- ing." Bright spots of colour suddenly stood out from the pallor of the other man's cheeks. "And that's what I'm getting at," Tanquay re- sumed. "This is booked to be the biggest season Tanquay's has ever known. Not only are we pull- ing most of the official banquets away from the other fellows, but society is tagging us for all the swell private dinners ^ The car was now warping toward the curb in 328 Pilgrims Into Folly front of Tanquay's. The proprietor took the head- waiter by an arm and helped him down. "Working up a little pride now, Brown ?" smiled Tanquay as they were parting near the elevator. "You'd be surprised to know how much I have," replied Pierre, and took the lift to his office on the second floor. In this businesslike sanctum, with its rows of letter-files, its roll-top desk and clicking typewriter, Pierre might have assumed the dignity of a prosper- ous lawyer. Miss Gilfoyle, his stenographer, was copying menu cards, and on his desk were many opened letters. Pierre, as he sat himself down to plan the day, looked upon his office and his desk and his mail through the eyes of a new philosophy. The letters before him were addressed simply: "Pierre, Tan- quay's" and he realised the sufficiency of it, for his was a great name. Had not that god of his idol- atry, Mr. Vanderhuyden, said, "There is only one Pierre?" Yes. He made those two syllables famous, like a trademark, his trademark, which he could capitalise for over forty thousand dollars a year. Even Vanderhuyden had to say "Pierre" to get service worthy his taste everybody had to say it. "And I am Pierre," thought the head-waiter sud- denly, pride like a great flame illuminating that in- ner temple which was his ego. "Miss Gilfoyle," he said feebly to his stenog- The Ideal Gentleman 329 rapher, "give these to a messenger and have them filled at once." Vaguely he presented the prescrip- tions which the doctor had written. "And, Miss Gilfoyle, before you go, take this cablegram and have it sent to Captain Cedric Annister, Grand Ho- tel, Naples: " 'Come back with N 'orris immediately/ J v "Sign it Tierre/ " he added, and turned weakly to his desk. VI Captain Annister engaged rooms for himself and his pupil, and almost immediately thereafter took a taxicab for Tanquay's. He found Pierre, quite naturally, standing at his usual place just inside the gilt-embowered doorway, for it was now past the luncheon hour and there was little to do. True to caste, Pierre gave the Captain his customary bow of servile respect. "How are you, Pierre?" asked the Englishman, looking around the dining-room, not a glance less arrogantly than of old. "Good afternoon, sir. You've been a long time away," was Pierre's typical rejoinder. "You've redecorated the room," Annister ob- served. "Yes sir. Two years ago. Tanquay fancies red panellings, sir. Will you have your usual table, Captain?" 33 Pilgrims Into Folly Captain Annister regarded Pierre. His cheeks were drawn and careworn, his hollow eyes eager; yet not a word had he broached about his family affairs which had brought Annister and the boy all the way from Europe. "No, thank you," he said a bit more brusquely. "When can I talk to you?" "In my office, Captain Annister, if you don't mind. I'll be free in five minutes." Annister found the office empty, the stenographer gone. He stood inspecting the businesslike place when Pierre, in much less than the promised five minutes, entered upon this inspection. "Where's my boy?" he asked breathlessly. "I've brought him," said Annister. "We're reg- istered at the Hotel Susquehanna." "Is he well? Is he growing up?" came in a volley. "He's an exceptionally fine lad, Pierre." "Have you made a gentleman out of him?" The deep eyes glowed hungrily. "He shows form, you might say," Annister re- plied. "I'll tell you why I've sent for you." Pierre plunged into explanation. "Something's happened to me going to happen which makes it so I've got to see him soon or maybe never." "Health, you mean?" enquired Annister anx- iously. Pierre nodded his greyish head. The Ideal Gentleman 331 "Heart, 15 he explained, sitting down and laying a clenched fist on his left side. "I've had two or three spells, and they took me to a big specialist last week. A man can't be sick as I am and be all right. He said I'd broken myself with hard work. Said that with a rest I might hang on a year or so, but that I couldn't keep on at this pace. It might strike me at any time, do you see ? To-night or to-morrow or in a week." "Man alive, you're going to rest!" exclaimed Annister. "How?" he asked. "Who's able to take my place?" "There's only one Pierre." Something almost majestic in the way the man took the compliment astounded Annister. "Pierre has become a name capitalised, you might say," the head-waiter agreed quietly. "And I couldn't lay off this week or this month, because they're relying on me to arrange the Norris Van- derhuyden dinner. It. will be the greatest job of my life." "I saw in the papers it was coming." Annister looked curiously at Pierre. "And about your son?" he enquired. "I'll tell you. All these years I've kept him away because I was ashamed of my profession. But the time has come when he's got to know his father. And I've chosen to-night to break it to him. The dinner will be in the Peacock Room on the third 33 2 Pilgrims Into Folly floor. There's an alcove at one end with big cur- tains. I want you to take my boy up there, where he can't be seen, but can watch the affair. Don't you see?" "Rather not exactly," said Annister in a tone of puzzlement. "I think you can understand, Captain Annister," Pierre replied a trifle testily. "You must know what my life-work means to me. I've come up from nothing to where I am. I want my son to see it that way, to see me at my best, managing the best dinner in N.ew York for the finest gentleman in America. This will be the top-notch of my life- work, Captain, and I want my son to realise how big it is to see his father at the climax of his career and be proud of him." Pierre's eyes were shining now with the enthusiasm of his dream. "Very good excellent!" was the Englishman's rather dry comment. "Come in at the carriage entrance at eight o'clock. You'll find a page-boy waiting for you there. Tell him you're Captain Annister and he'll show you up." "We'll be there on time, Pierre," Annister as- sured him, rising to go, for Pierre had turned to- ward his desk and was already going over the busi- ness of checking off orders to the florist for the great Vanderhuyden dinner. "And Captain, please!" There was a touch of the old servility in Pierre's voice as he looked The Ideal Gentleman 333 around, a pathetic yearning in his gaze. "Don't forget to keep my boy's attention on me." VII It was eight o'clock. Sitting in semi-darkness behind the heavy cur- tains of deep blue velours, Annister and his pupil peeped forth into the exotic splendours of the high, vaulted Peacock Room. Norris had, at first, quite properly objected to such a spying method of seeing American society; but the Captain, whose judgment he revered, had explained to him that this was a necessary detail in his social education. Before them, under the blaze of light-dripping chandeliers, they could see the great oval table, showing a green- ish silk undercloth beneath a covering of Spanish lace; and on this ground arrayed, there glittered the diamond brightness of Tanquay's celebrated crystal. The boy's eyes, as he sat beside his tutor in the semi-darkness, were bulging with excitement to behold this luxurious picture, thrilling even to his sophisticated senses. The brilliant vault before the observers seemed galvanised with the magnitude of the event impending. Subordinates passed rapidly here and there, casting keen professional glances at each golden plate; a troupe of florists leaned care- fully across the chairs, massing a great bank of 334 Pilgrims Into Folly remarkable lilies of a species only to be found in the Vanderhuyden greenhouses. hen are they coming, Uncle Ced ?" asked Nor- s in an awed whisper. Hush ! They'll be here soon/' came the reply of the man beside him in the dim light. A moment later they beheld a tall, gaunt man in a dress suit at the door. Glancing once, eagerly, at the long blue curtains, he turned his master mind to the business of the evening, causing the assembled army of flunkies to stand at nervous attention while he gave sharp instructions, partly in English, partly in bad French. "Who is he?" asked the boy behind the curtain. "Why er he is the gentleman who is giving the dinner," said Annister. "Oh, Uncle Ced, you're ragging me," laughed the boy. "He isn't a gentleman. He's a head-waiter. He's got on the wrong sort of cravat, for a gentle- man." "Well, he's giving the dinner, in a manner of speaking," Annister hedged. "I want you to watch him closely. He's the most famous head-waiter in America." "That will be amusing, won't it, Uncle Ced?" boy's eyes were glued on the door, for all the waiters in the room whipped napkins over forearms like a comic-opera chorus awaiting the rise of the curtain. Pierre at the door was gazing down the hall, and his watchers could see how the movement The Ideal Gentleman 335 of his eyes presaged the coming event. Laughter could be heard afar, outside the great door at the opposite end of the room; then a company of eve- ning-clad people brightened the Peacock Room. It was at this moment that Captain Annister, from his point of ambush, was amazed to see the contrast between the feeble, ailing Pierre of the afternoon and the keen-eyed, efficient, affable director of to- night. Like a corps of intelligent automata, his waiters had sprung to chair-backs ; and Pierre him- self, his careful pose suggesting capability in a great man's service, stood easing a chair under the knees of the handsome, red-faced, dissipated-look- ing man who sat at the head of the tableXlt was easy to read irritation in the pleasure-softened fea- tures of the host. As he turned to give his first instructions to the head-waiter at his elbow, the watchers behind the curtain could catch a querulous note. The man's mood seemed to communicate itself to his guests, and there was an air of restraint around the table. "What's wrong, Uncle Ced?" asked the boy. "That chap doesn't know how to treat a servant." "But the servant knows how to treat that chap," put in the Captain. Pierre's manner in this situa- tion was that of a trained ambassador soothing the mood of a petulant prince. A sudden fear filled Annister's mind that this af- fair, almost deliberately designed to be the show- event of Pierre's life, was in danger of becoming a 336 Pilgrims Into Folly wretched fiasco before the eyes of the person whose esteem he most value^^ "Who is the tall lady with the pearls ?" asked Norris. "The Duchess of Orncaster. But look, my boy. The head-waiter is serving the soup. He's no end good form at that." Although Pierre stood impressively, gracefully at the sideboard, sweeping his commands with broad gestures of his lean hands as his little army ad- vanced with the precious liquid which, Annister knew, must have cost the host something over two dollars a plate, the boy in hiding persisted in study- ing the gay oval of jewelled coiffures and white shirt-bosoms. In a sudden rush of sympathy, An- nister noted how flat-footed Pierre had become through continued years of standing while the gentry dined, but his manner of spinning toe and heel, right about face, to render new attention to the head of the table and his guests, was a classic for aU head-waiters to copy. y*W hat's his name?" asked Norris finally. * "Pierre," responded Annister. "Pierre!" The boy shot one of his searching glances at his guardian, and then for a moment was silent. "Who is the gentleman who is giving the din- ner?" he asked presently. "He's a Mr. Vanderhuyden," replied Annister shortly. The Ideal Gentleman 337 "Oh, Uncle Ced. That's my middle name. He's in a beastly funk, isn't he?" The dinner went on stiffly for several courses, Pierre serving with the precision of an automaton but rewarded by scant courtesy from the head of the table. Matters were certainly not improving when a bungling assistant dropped a goblet directly behind Vanderhuyden's chair. The magnificent one did not deign a glance around, but even Pierre's arch diplomacy could not mask the pervading horror as the fragments were being swept away. "Poor old duffer," said the boy behind the cur- tain. Annister merely grunted a iiepl^X "Hush," he said a moment later^or it was ap- parent by an atmosphere of impending drama that one of the great ceremonials in the ritual of diges- tion was about to take place. Waiters were already arranging themselves at the sideboard. Through the service door, two uniformed boys reverentially propelled a silvered wagon with an enormous dome- like cover. If Pierre's professional poise had been in any way disturbed by the earlier catastrophes of the evening, it was now completely restored; for with the flourish of a field marshal Pierre ordered his assistants to roll the silver wagon beside Vander- huyden's omnipotent place. No hands but Pierre's were to lift that domelike cover. Pierre stepped to the high ceremony, leaned devotedly and rolled back the heavy lid, every one of his ten fingers expressing 338 Pilgrims Into Folly extreme devotion. Meanwhile his eyes were focused upon Vanderhuyden's face with a solicitude that was technically perfect. Vanderhuyden, looking down, regarded the dish critically, coldly, arrogantly. Something in the wrinkle of his rather disagreeably formed nose caused a flush to mount to the jowls of the Eng- lishman observing him from behind the curtain. "See, Pierre is serving the roast/' he whispered to Norris. Annister could see the boy's glance rove for a moment to the black-clad man at the sideboard who, never descending from his pose as a public func- tionary, yet laid the knife on the tender meat with all the inevitable science of a practised surgeon. Noiselessly, swiftly, he permitted the slices to fall to their proper plates; nimble hands were there to bear away each savoury portion. Momentary vi- vacity seemed to thrill through the room as the Lucullan luxury was served to the accompanying sparkle of champagne. Annister's eyes followed the movements of Pierre, who with extra skill bore a portion to Vanderhuyden's place. Everything within the well-bred Englishman had naturally revolted at the gaucherie of this man whom he had heard so broadly advertised as a model for the American haut monde. But Vander- huyden's conduct now raised the Captain's blood to boiling point. Without taking the trouble to lift knife or fork, the great man sat staring at the The Ideal Gentleman 339 Southdown lamb as if the slaughtered animal itself had done him a personal insult. The guests were chaffing idly among themselves. The Duchess of Orncaster was flirting with the man to her right. Waiters were passing sauces around the table. Sud- denly out of the polite orderliness of the room, a high, petulant whine arose in a half falsetto. "Oh, dear me, Pierre!" "Yes, sir!" Pierre was standing at Vanderhuy- den's elbow. His pose was technically correct, but Annister could not overlook the suggestion of an added droop to his already sloping shoulders. "Pierre/' began Vanderhuyden in a voice so strident that not even his most polite guest could escape overhearing. "Pierre, what does this mean?" He held up his plate. "Isn't it as you like it, sir?" asked Pierre, taking one edge of the plate with gingerly fingers. "No," he said abruptly; and turning to the Duch- ess : "I must apologise for Pierre to-night." The woman turned compassionate eyes upon the head-waiter, who seemed suddenly to have grown fifteen years older. "I think everything is beauti- fully done," she replied, addressing Pierre, " ex- cellently served." Pierre moved his lips, but no words came. "I wish you'd tell Tanquay," pursued Vanderhuyden, wriggling around in his chair to face Pierre, "what I've just said. I've taken great pains to raise this 34 Pilgrims Into Folly mutton for my table. This is the second time there's been some kind of a substitution." "I beg pardon, sir/' interrupted Pierre humbly. "I saw it arrive myself Tuesday. It was on the Baltic under your own seal." The boy's eyes and Annister's were fastened upon Pierre. At that moment his whole frame seemed to weaken as under an insidious blow. Norris' hand pressed on the Captain's sleeve: "I think he's ill, Uncle Ced," he whispered. "Can't we " "Hush!" said Annister, patting the boy's shoulder. Vanderhuyden's rasping voice reached the pitch of self-satisfied egotism. "Pierre," he went on, "I want you to understand you can't foist this sort of thing upon discriminative people. Remove the plates, please." "I think I can get you a better cut," persisted Pierre, and not to be daunted in the pride of his profession and in his pride for Tanquay's, he turned soldier-like upon his heel toward the silver wagon. Assistants had supplied another plate. Poising his knife with the most delicate precision, Pierre se- lected two morsels of the precious meat, laid them upon the plate, surrendered his carving tools ma- jestically to subordinates; and it was a momentarily revitalised Pierre who began a stately progress to- ward his patron. He had gone five steps. A few yards from Van- The Ideal Gentleman 341 derhuy den's elbow, he was seen to flag, pause, half totter "What's up?" breathed Annister behind the cur- tain. The boy's clutch tightened. Pierre was the vision of a stricken man. His thin knees gave; his body quivered, every muscle tense and tortured as though by a high electric voltage. The plate crashed from his hand, and his body after it. As if by magic, the room had been cleared of its guests. A knot of waiters, the house physician, Tanquay himself, were gathered around the long and prostrate form upon the floor. Behind the cur- tain the boy was struggling against Annister's re- straining arm with all the ferocity of a little wild anknal. "I want to go to him ! I want to go to him !" he was shrieking. "I want to go to my father!" The Captain, as he held a big gentle hand on Norris' shoulder, looked into the boy's agonised face and suddenly realised that the fostered lie of many years was a failure. The truth was out. "Go ahead!" he said gruffly. And the words were scarcely out before the boy had bounded into the centre of the great room and wedging himself in through the tangled group surrounding the fallen man, had thrown himself at his father's side. "Pierre! Pierre!" he sobbed. "I know I know; this is Norris!" 342 Pilgrims Into Folly The eyes of the old man for he was an old man now opened. He looked upon his son. "You know?" he repeated feebly. His chest heaved to abnormal proportions in his fight for air. His lips were blue and damp. His sombre eyes searched wildly. "You know?" he asked again. "And did I do my work well?" "Wonderfully, Father wonderfully!" said the boy brokenly. A look of joy and peace relaxed the dying man's features as vainly he sought to raise a hand to his son's shoulder. "Captain Annister finest man I ever knew did he make a gentleman out of you?" "I hope so, Father." The ghostly shadow of a smile passed over Pierre's face. "A gentleman like Mr. Vander- huyden?" "No, Father, no!" There was enquiry in Pierre's eyes, although his lips moved helplessly. Norris read the look. He leaned close to his father's ear. "No, not like that," he said. "Like you." "Thank God, you said it," whispered Annister as. he led the boy away. saajs?-*- **S*?3!* ouj? r $/.o S< N THE S **GN TH YB 68346 , UNIVERSITY QF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY